Employing the professional competencies continuum for enhancing student teachers' professional development in field experience in Hong Kong

Many researchers have addressed the significance and importance of teachers' professional development and the field experience components in teaching effectiveness. They have conceptualized various types of teacher development models in which teachers will, for example, go through the proficiency levels ranging from novice, competent, to accomplished or expert. This paper aims at introducing a new conceptualization of field experience in which the professional maturity of student teachers could be enhanced in accordance with a newly developed framework of Professional Competencies Continuum derived from the project of "Professional Development Progress Map in Field Experience" conducted by a number of colleagues in the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The Continuum is adopted to help student teachers in Hong Kong locate identifiable stages of growing professional achievement as a result of their field experience in their four-year course of study in teacher education in the Hong Kong. Copyright © 2005 Institute of Educational Sciences.