Our choice of cases arose from NETs viewed by the school community as good
collaborators. The cases are Anna, a highly experienced language arts teacher
and teacher adviser from Australia; and Pat, an Irishman, a qualified counsellor
and foreign language major, who had previously worked for three years on the
JET scheme. Anna was approached as a research participant because her collaborative
work had been publicised in a good practices publication (Education
Department, 2000), while Pat was approached because he had been described
by his panel chair5
as ‘the NET from paradise’. Based on Hong Kong norms,
Pat’s students were of above average academic ability, while Anna’s were
somewhat below average. Team teaching in Hong Kong secondary schools
is rare (Storey et al., 2001) and that both Anna and Pat had been team teaching
in their schools for four years was indicative of their special qualities which
we believed could illuminate collaborative practice. Further contextual background6
is not provided for reasons of space and because our intentions are to
raise issues for further exploration rather than to make universal claims.