Trainee teachers' perception of features of expert science and mathematics teacher education

The current global movement in the reform of education seems to focus in a number issues which include standards, quality, and teacher preparation. With regard to the latter, while teacher education curriculum in mist parts of the world attempts to strike a balance between content and professional training, the emerging scenario id that of training expert teachers. Three types of knowledge identified as necessary for expert teaching are content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. For Hong Kong to embark on a satisfactory and effective public education reform, it is absolutely essential that its most valuable human resource (i.e., teachers) must be comprehensively and adequately developed. Attention must be paid to both pre-service and in-service training through both on-campus face-to-face and distance education modes of raising an excellent quality-oriented teaching force for Hong Kong. Teacher educators and researchers make important and well-informed decisions about what should be included in pre-service and in-service teacher development programmes. However, it is also very important to take into account the teachers' own perceptions about the areas in which they feel confident and knowledgeable and those in which they do not. One practical avenue of sourcing such valuable information is the teacher in training who are learning to acquire and display expertise. This paper reports on an investigation using a sample of 183 science and mathematics trainee teachers in distance education and face-to -face modes. A 60-item instrument, the Science and Mathematics Expert Teacher Preparation Survey (SMETPS) was developed to gather data on trainee-teachers' perception of their current knowledge and what they think they need to know more about to become expert teachers. The data, analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics, indicated that trainee teachers can make important contributions towards expert training. Several issues, which emerged from the results, have been discussed with reference to Implications to current efforts in science and mathematics expert teacher training in Hong Kong and world wide.