University-school partnership for the professional development of teachers in Hong Kong

In the recent decades, there has been a trend of adopting community of practice (CoP) approach to a university-school partnership (USP) to promote teaching and learning and teacher professionalism since the Hong Kong education reform in 2000. Particularly, a CoP project entitled ‘Support Programme on Fostering Communities of Practice to Enhance Small Class Teaching’ has been lunched in 2015, which aims to enhance teachers' pedagogical knowledge and effective teaching practice in applying self-directed learning (SRL) to students. Given that it is a pioneering initiative in promoting SRL in Hong Kong, this chapter intends to offer a conceptualization of CoP-USP within the local education context. In this chapter, the successful criteria and challenges of USP will be discussed, with brief introduction on the development of USP and SRL development in Hong Kong. A single-cluster case study method was adopted to review a case from a CoP project, a comprehensive scope of professional development programme for in-service teachers (ISTs) in Hong Kong, aiming at examining how the CoP project can work out as a USP to help develop teachers' SRL-based instruction skills and strategies. The findings were revealed in themes through qualitative data analysis, with discussion on whether the CoP Project is a successful USP. Finally, this chapter attempts to offer further insights for future development of USP in other contexts.