In response to the perceived ‘feminisation’ of primary school teaching, educational authorities in many countries have implemented policies designed to encourage more men to take up teaching positions in primary schools. While challenges to the efficacy of such policies have emerged in the literature, limited attention has been given to the voice of male primary school teachers themselves. Using a qualitative multiple case study approach, this study addresses this imbalance by examining how five male primary school teachers construct professional identities within Hong Kong primary schools. In-depth interviews give voice to these male primary school teachers, revealing the dominant discourses that make available certain identity positions to all primary school teachers in Hong Kong. The study explores how these five teachers exercise individual agency as they struggle to be recognised as competent members of a community of primary school teachers. The case studies also describe the limits to such personal agency, suggesting the need for policy initiatives that support the identity work of all primary school teachers by going beyond calls for the recruitment of greater numbers of male primary teachers. Some of the ways in which educational policy and practice could provide such support are considered and implications for future research are discussed.
[Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis.]

Teachers have often been placed in the heart of educational reform. They are expected to play a pivotal role in the enhancement of educational quality. Various forces energize the professionalization project of teaching and there has long been advocacy that teachers should be regarded as professionals. Although literature shows that there are divided views on whether it is entirely favorable for teaching to become a 'profession', there is little disparity that teachers should uphold professionalism. While teachers as professionals may well be a conception that denotes different meanings by different people, this paper seeks to understand the conceptions of a professional teacher held by four fist year primary school teachers in Hong Kong. The paper reports the results of a study which entails three main parts. The first part is about the societal expectations of a professional teacher in Hong Kong. With reference to the profession literature, selections of key educational documents of Hong Kong were analyzed to find out the common expectations. The second part involves the analysis of the first year teachers' conceptions of what makes a professional teacher. Each of the four teachers have been followed through in the first year of teaching by four in-depth face to face interviews and at least three telephone interviews. Their conceptions of a professional teacher have been studied and analyzed in the context of their career events. The third part of the paper identifies the similarities and differences of the conceptions between those identified as the societal expectations and those held by the informants. The paper ends with a discussion on the various implications of the findings.

On teacher preparation, Forlin, Chong and Au conducted a survey on a group of postgraduate students taking a module on catering for diversity in September 2005. A four-part likert instrument was used to obtain pre- and post-data. The survey aimed to find out whether there were changes in teachers' attitudes, beliefs, and concerns following participation in a course of study.

Teaching practice is regarded as an indispensiable component of teacher education programmes. Supervisors from teacher education institutions contribute to student teachers’ learning in teaching practice by paying lesson observation visits and holding post-observation supervisory meetings with student teachers. The question of what constitutes a good supervisory meeting is of great interest to teacher educators. This paper presents a study which looks into supervisors’ subjective accounts of the best supervisory meeting in teaching practice. The study was conducted with lecturers of a former College of Education in Hong Kong who paid lesson observation visits to student teachers in secondary schools. Seventy-five college supervisors completed a self-report inventory on the perceived best supervisory meeting during a block teaching practice period. These meetings involved observed lessons of fifteen subjects at the junior secondary level. Supervisors reported what happened in the perceived best supervisory meeting in retrospect in the inventory. They gave a quantitative account of the time spent on and the themes of discussion in the meetings. Qualitative data were also collected in the inventory. Supervisors reported the conferencing approaches which they adopted in the perceived best meetings. They quoted examples of questions which they asked to facilitate student teachers’ reflection and expressed their views on the characteristics of good supervisory meetings. The time spent on the best supervisory meetings varied a great deal among different supervisors, with a range of 15 to 120 minutes. The most frequently discussed themes in the meetings were student teacher’s instructional approach to the lesson and student teacher’s mastery of the subject matter while the school environment was the least frequently discussed theme. There was also slight difference between elective subject supervisors’ and general supervisors’ focuses of discussion in the meetings. As far as

Teachers' beliefs in human values significantly affect their interaction with students in effective classroom learning.! Whether a teacher has taken a humanistic approach or behavioral approach in the classroom is a curious question especially in a culturally mixed Hong Kong society. In response to this question, the researcher attempted to find out what the teachers believed in human values and how they practiced their beliefs in the classroom. As part of the major research,! this paper aimed to elaborate on the teachers' beliefs and practice during teacher pupil interaction and whether their] beliefs and practice were affected by the East and West educational philosophy. Education values and beliefs in whole child development underpin the aims of education in the 21st century. Literature! showed that a teacher's belief in humanistic approach in bringing out the holistic development of a child plays an important role in fulfilling the education ideology. The study of a group of 35 in-service primary school teachers in Hong Kong was launched in 1999/2000 regarding their teacher-pupil interaction. The research methods mainly included in-depth interviews, questionnaires and classroom observations. The research findings revealed that the participant teachers] practiced both humanistic and behavioral approaches, and the cultural perspective on humanistic or behavioral approach] was not prominent. Although a considerable number of them believed in the affective approach, they had technical] difficulties in the implementation owing to the constraint of time and resources. The research outcome implied that further] teacher development in affective education is essential to facilitate student learning in the current educational change.

This paper presents initial findings from a project which focuses on the changing masculinities of Chinese primary school men teachers in Hong Kong, which is a stage II of the a project on Contemporary Chinese primary women teachers' experiences of changing femininities. In this paper, four life stories of men teachers, representing two generations of teachers, will be presented. Bhabha's (1994) concept of a "hybrid" or "in-between" culture - such as when a predominantly Chinese society experiences western colonization and continuing changes in public spheres and Giroux's (1992) notion of "border crossing" will be used as the guiding framework for this study. The research uses qualitative interviews in constructing life histories of men teachers. The paper will present snapshots of these four men teachers in the ways they navigate and experience their changing masculinities both in the primary school workplace and at home in their lived experiences. The four stories show a lot of hybridities and border crossing, creating both tensions and integrations for these men teachers. Implications of this study to teacher education and gender equity education will be discussed. This study will raise fundamental issues for teacher education and professional development of teachers in contexts of cultural shift associated with globalisation. It will also have implications for pedagogy for teaching of personal, social, sex and civic education in schools in the various Chinese communities.