Partnership with Schools

Exchange with parents

1. Preamble
   The major aim of School-University Partnership is to achieve and consolidate in-depth collaboration between schools and the Faculty of Education (FoE), HKU to enhance the continuous professional development of schools and teachers, and the success of initial teacher education.
   
   
2. What is a WSMS approach?
   WSMS is an advocated mentoring approach to school change which has the potential to enhance professional learning of different parties (mentor teachers, non-mentor teachers, student teachers, university tutors and school pupils) and to increase school effectiveness.
   However, a whole school mentoring approach is not only a process, but also a philosophy, of professional development through mentoring. It is characterized by:
   
   
   1. a commitment on the part of a school that all its staff members should, at one time or another, be engaged in mentoring student-teachers (ST) and/or beginning teachers;
   2. a belief that mentoring is not just a pair-wise endeavour (dyad between mentor and mentee) but is a process that is most effectively achieved through collaboration and sharing of experiences between all parties; and
   3. commitment on the part of a university that its university-tutors (UT) should be actively engaged in the mentoring process through the support of, and as partners with, the school's mentor-teachers (MT).
   This approach contains salient features of change management principles, collaborative lesson planning, mentoring and co-mentoring, open class observation and sharing, and synergy and team work. The outcomes involve changes towards a collaborative and open culture, synergistic relations with one another, and the formation of professional communities of practice.
   
   
3. What makes the WSMS approach different?
   There now follows a comparison of the 'current' common practice with that of the WSMS approach:

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