This chapter explores the themes of acculturation and identity transformation among seven Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong. These teachers, who initially taught Chinese as a first language in local Chinese schools, later transitioned to teaching Chinese as a second or near-native language in English-dominant international schools. This study utilises a qualitative research approach, focusing on the long-term teaching experiences of the participants to gain insights into their transformational experiences and acculturation processes from their narratives. We draw on flexible acculturation theory and teacher identity theory to examine the connections and disconnections between acculturation processes and identity change across schools. The findings underscore the participants’ profound meaning-making processes as they trainsitioned from teaching in local schools to international schools. The participants’ previous professional identities as L1 teachers allowed them to draw on multiple resources with a deeper understanding about language teaching and and self-assurance in their changing roles as language educators. They critically reflected on these changing experiences in their subsequent teaching practices within international school contexts. This study holds implications for teacher education and professional development programmes, suggesting the need for tailored initiatives designed to support Chinese language teachers during their transition to teaching in international schools. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

To transform existing education practices in tackling different challenges and future uncertainties, it is essential to engage teachers as active agents in students' learning, collegial collaboration, school development and societal issues throughout the career. This study investigates the change and continuity of teacher professional agency associated with the individual position and socio-cultural factors in Hong Kong. Data from semi-structured interviews were collected with 14 teachers over a two-year period in 2018 and 2020, and narrative analysis was utilized to examine teacher agency. The changes and continuity were categorized into four types: 1) expanding, 2) strategic, 3) exploring, and 4) withering agencies. The way teachers took and made work-related actions and decisions on their career trajectories could be associated with the changes in individual positions, the organizational culture, and the leadership style in the socio-cultural context. This study contributes to the existing understanding of the temporal development and enactment of professional agency. Despite the strong hierarchical structure embedded in the school managerial practices, a trusting management and collaborative work community that allow channels to receive bottom-up suggestions and spaces to enable individual learning could support positive changes and the continuity of professional agency. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

Research Findings: Early childhood educators' own disposition has been suggested to contribute to their ability to promote physical literacy (PL) in young children. There is currently limited evidence of educators' own PL, and studies have not explored how PL relates to teaching knowledge and behaviors in the early childhood education (ECE) context. This current study examined the relationships of teachers' perceived PL with their self-efficacy and perceived professional competence in relation to promoting physical activities in ECE settings. A total of 338 early childhood educators from Hong Kong responded to an online survey that consisted of the Perceived Physical Literacy Inventory (PPLI), Chinese version of the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (C-TSE(R)), and Teachers' Professional Competence (TPC) questionnaire. The findings revealed that educators' perceived PL is moderately associated with self-efficacy and professional competence when conducting physical activities in ECE contexts. The PL attributes of self-expression and communication, and knowledge and understanding were significant predictors of educators' self-efficacy in classroom management and teaching strategies, as well as their professional knowledge and attitudes. Practice or Policy: The findings suggest that ECE teachers' training should consider aspects of their own PL to enable their self-efficacy and perceived competence for conducting physical activities in ECE settings and thereby promote the PL of young children. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

Internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) as an important element of internationalisation has seen many challenges. The literature shows that successful IoC cases are rare. Drawing on the concepts of powerful knowledge and 'knowing', we argue that a more comprehensive understanding of knowledge engagement in the IoC process is needed. Currently, engaging knowledge appears to be a barrier to IoC, particularly in hard disciplines such as science and engineering. This study investigated how faculty members from different disciplines engaged knowledge in their approaches to IoC through semi-structured interviews with 34 faculty members based in three Hong Kong universities. The findings show that engaging knowledge is indispensable to IoC because it provides theoretical foundations for 'being' and substantiates discussions on global issues using disciplinary lenses. Furthermore, faculty members from all disciplines show productive ways of engaging knowledge, whilst the differences lie in the expected role of 'knower' and the relationship between 'knowing' and 'being'. Specifically, facilitating an intimate relationship between 'knowing' and 'being' through students' own dispositions was featured in soft disciplines, whilst taking perspectives based on scientific principles was identified in hard disciplines. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

A lack of evidence bridging the chasm between professional learning practices and commonly used, publicly available resources such as YouTube videos, remains a long-term challenge in both research and practice. The study introduced a YouTube video club for female early childhood teachers in Hong Kong (N = 29) to view, analyse and discuss STEM teaching videos. The participants wrote reflections and discussed with peers to exchange views on teaching content and strategies. All participants completed pre- and post-intervention surveys reporting their teaching beliefs, and five participants from the experimental group were invited for individual interviews. The questionnaire survey data were analysed using statistical analysis, while the interview data were analysed through inductive thematic analysis. The study, which was pre-post quasi-experimental, showed that the video club enhanced teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards professional practices in early childhood education. Qualitative analysis of teacher interviews revealed benefits and constraints of using YouTube videos for professional learning. The study transformed video clubs into a web-mediated mode using YouTube, Google Classroom and Zoom. The results have implications for the design and implementation of video clubs in teacher learning programmes. Copyright ©2023 Wiley.

This paper investigates the making and governing of Hong Kong teachers along and beyond a Foucauldian governmentality lens, untangling how the three technologies along neoliberalism, Confucian thesis, and affective dimensions play with and against one another in conducting the conduct of teachers. Through a discourse analysis of 27 local teachers' interview texts, we find Hong Kong teachers are both morally divided and redeemed as an effect of the entangled governing dynamics. First, the neoliberalized technologies of performativity and accountability are turning teachers into "service providers" accountable for incessant evaluations from the institutions, students, and parents. Second, such neoliberal rationalities collide with a Confucian respect for teachers to the extent that teachers feel not-respected, sad, and disappointed. Last, some teachers, amidst such contested situations, turn to affective support, i.e., a family-like teacher-student relationship, that ends up redeeming them from a negative governing grid towards maintaining a congruent self-identification. With this finding, this paper further explicates Confucian affective teacher-student relationship as a foundational historical-cultural episteme that largely conditions today's teaching and learning in Confucian context. This recognition enables us to re-ponder the theoretical-methodological-epistemological complexities in applying Foucault's framework to an Asian context along a (de/anti/post)-colonial gesture. Copyright © 2023 Routledge.

The disruptive effects of this pandemic are predicted to redefine the priorities of continuing professional development (CPD) in the educational sector and reconstruct the identity and role of educators in future educational systems. Accordingly, the primary aim of the proposed research is to critically assess the factors shaping post-COVID-19 identity formation amongst secondary school teachers in Hong Kong to determine the influence of CPD and systemic needs on teacher role perceptions and goal-setting. This study will apply a mixed-methods approach to the collection of quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interview) data from a sample of Hong Kong educators. Through a critical, comparative analysis of these findings and triangulation of the evidence with prior academic theories, a model of educator development and identity formation will be proposed to improve and target developmental support throughout normalisation and post-COVID-19 recovery. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis.

Pre-service language teachers develop their critical thinking in teacher education courses. They learn to teach critical thinking mainly during the teaching practicum. Their learning to teach CT takes place through different forms of mediation. Their learning is impeded by the gap between the curriculum goal and its implementation. Informed by a socio-cultural perspective, this study investigated how two student teachers developed their CT-oriented pedagogies in a pre-service language teacher education program in Hong Kong. Drawing on multiple sources of data including semi-structured interviews, relevant documents, and informal communication, the findings revealed the participants' growing pedagogical knowledge and competence in CT teaching, influenced by various forms of mediation – i.e., object-regulated, other-regulated, and self-regulated – afforded in the situated context. The gap between the curriculum's goal and its implementation was identified as a crucial factor that impeded their learning to teach CT in the program. The paper concludes with practical implications that can help integrate CT into pre-service teacher education programs with a view to preparing future teachers with a high level of CT and CT-focused pedagogies. Copyright © 2023 Elsevier.

Teacher education for social justice aims to enable teachers to work toward equity and justice in society and humanizing the educational experience of their students. Conceptualizing teaching as a political and ethical endeavor, social justice teacher education must engage seriously with the local and lived experiences of both teacher educators and student teachers. How then does teacher education for social justice move across communities and identities, and through cultural, social, geographic and temporal spaces? This chapter presents an autobiographical narrative inquiry into social justice teacher education across sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts, across time, and within different educational communities. Bakhtin's dialogic theory (1981) helps to trace the narrative threads wherein "each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life" (p. 293). The study examines my ideological becoming (Bakhtin, 1981) as a critical teacher educator in the context of a youth mentoring service-learning course for undergraduate teacher candidates. I examine the complexities and tensions in exploring experiences and co-constructing understandings of oppression, privilege and social justice with my student teachers on the youth mentoring course in dialogic struggles with my experiences of justice and education in the USA and Hong Kong as an English-speaking Chinese American. Providing an in-depth examination of the convergence of identity, social relations, place, and time in my knowledge formation, I critically reflect upon the notion of social justice to suggest that social justice teacher education is multi-voiced and lived both locally and globally. Copyright © 2023 Emerald Publishing Limited.

The paper traces the evolution of the Centre for Learning Enhancement And Research (CLEAR) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) from early 2002 to the end of 2021. The University needed a centre to support both institutional and local (department and faculty) needs and aspirations for enhancing teaching and learning. Five key strategies adopted by CLEAR are: embedding the practice of existing teachers into policy development, localizing quality-assurance processes, relating professional-development activities to career development, involving students, and producing research evidence from within the Hong Kong context. The evidence base that supports these strategies, and the cultural and community factors involved, will be woven into an evidence-based narrative that spans 20 years. Copyright © 2023 Georgia Southern University.