Background: Hong Kong is currently a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. It has autonomy over many policy areas, including finance and education. It is a community of seven million people, which has changed its focus and identity significantly over the last 25 years, from predominantly manufacturing to a service and knowledge economy with particular strengths in financial services.
Purpose: This paper will consider the market for teacher education places and the market for teachers, and explore the career intention and commitment implications of high numbers of well qualified applicants applying for teaching in the context of reduced work opportunities elsewhere, an increasing higher education focus on intake scores and the challenge, for the teaching profession and the education system, of teaching becoming less secure work. Sources of evidence: Governmental and institutional publications and data, along with research and survey findings, together with comparative literature underpin the reactions to past, present and possible future effects on teacher education in Hong Kong.
Main argument: Given its financial focus, Hong Kong would be expected to suffer significantly during the recent financial crisis and that this would impact across all its sectors including Education and Teacher Education. In addition to the financial crisis, other changes have affected teacher education in Hong Kong, including major reforms in curriculum and school and higher education structure and a significantly diminished birth rate reducing posts in teaching, and raising concerns about job security.
Conclusions: Hong Kong is a very prudently managed economy with substantial reserves and a commitment to "small government" and the impact has been different from many other systems. Places on teacher education programmes remained unchanged. Applications for teacher education programmes however increased significantly during the crisis.
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In this article Hong Kong's policy on initial teacher training is used as a case study of the interplay between international trends and local policy. Traditionally initial teacher preparation in most countries has been based in higher education institutions. In recent years alternative routes for initial teacher education have proliferated in the United States and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile university-based pathways to teacher certification have been criticised as deterring talented candidates from entering the profession. The authors argue that these trends have had significant impact on Hong Kong's policies for initial teacher preparation. In Hong Kong untrained teachers have served as a convenient buffer to meet teacher demand for many decades. It was only in 1997 that the new Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government announced the policy objective of requiring all new teachers to be degree holders and professionally trained. However, this policy was short-lived. There is substantial evidence that government policy has been influenced by the development of alternative routes of teacher preparation elsewhere. This case study can provide useful insights for policy formation elsewhere.
[Copyright of Journal of Education for Teaching is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607470802401370]