Activating Peer Support

This document is presented on the basis of an action project funded by the University Grants Committee’s Action Learning Project. As the primary readers are student teachers, it is written in an interactive style as a professional discourse. It aims to activate peer support as a culture in teacher education by preparing student teachers to adopt a peer coaching system in the teaching practicum. It focuses on the promotion of reflectivity and action learning by helping student teachers to develop skills in rapport-building classroom observation and conferencing with each other, as teacher and as peer coach. The philosophy and skills under discussion are relevant to student teachers across different subject disciplines. The suggestions may be of interest to mentoring teachers and school principals who are involved in staff development work.

Dr Ora Kwo is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of Hong Kong.