Drawing upon the mutually constitutive notions of possible selves and agency, this study illuminates how maintaining a future orientation in doctoral education acts to supply candidates with a pivotal sense of direction and drive their experimentation with disparate pathways to realise their academic career aspirations. In-depth analysis of two longitudinal cases reveals that participants' trajectorial differences were closely linked to their exercise of agency towards different ends and to different extents under the biographical, institutional, local/national, and global conditions and contingencies they engaged with. However, neither was immune to the risk of suffering an unpredictable employment outcome following candidature. While this plight has much to do with the fierce competition inherent to the neoliberal academic job market, findings also underlined its association with the prominent absence of supervisory and programme support along their doctorate. The study concludes with proffering practical implications beneficial to nurturing and supporting candidates' (diverse) career-possible selves. Copyright ©2025 Routledge.

Moral education is not a new concept in universities; however, university students’ firsthand learning experience and valuation of moral education have not been fully explored. As part of a teaching and learning study conducted in two undergraduate classes in a Hong Kong university, this study explores the university students’ perceptions of learning moral education. Data were mainly collected through student interviews and their reflective journals. Most students supported the learning of moral education. They asserted that moral education has a lifelong nature; thus, they should learn it in universities. The study reveals that moral education can facilitate the university students’ personal and social betterments, showing the intrinsic and instrumental values of moral education. This small-scale case supplements the literature on the understanding of the development of moral education in higher education. This study also reflects the necessity to rethink the moral aim and the moral education curriculum of higher education. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This qualitative case study investigates two early-stage doctoral students' developing conceptions of research in their situated context. Drawing on data collected from in-depth interviews and informal conversations with the participants over two years, the study showed that the participants' research conceptions were in a symbiotic relationship with their research activities. Also, their developing research conceptions were influenced by their past academic experience and future goals, interaction with significant others in their community, and disciplinary and institutional practices, which acted to change or sustain their perceptions and engagement as an emerging academic. The findings indicate that reflection can be useful for doctoral students to manage their own conceptions of research and for supervisors to adjust practice to enhance doctoral education. Implications for universities regarding how institutional practice and discourse may dominate and foster doctoral students’ research conceptions are provided. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This study explores two higher education-based language teacher educators' teaching beliefs and how they implemented their beliefs in classroom practice. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews and classroom observation, the findings revealed the teacher educators' multiple and complex beliefs, which were derived from their past experiences and continued to be shaped and transformed through their professional work. The study also shows that while the participants tried to act in accordance with their beliefs in their teaching of teachers, they encountered some contextual obstacles (e.g. the 'publish-or-perish' system) which resulted in the gap between their beliefs and practice. Through their continuous reflections and agentive work, the teacher educators tried to close the gap and facilitate their students' learning to teach. This study concludes with some implications for current teacher education and higher education on how to promote language teacher educators' cognitive learning and continuous development.
[Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

Drawing on the theoretical and analytical tools from the sociology of education, in particular the work of Basil Bernstein and Karl Maton, the paper explores the tensions within curriculum reform discourses and how these tensions play out in different global contexts. The analysis focuses on two curriculum reform policies -- Hong Kong and South Africa. On the surface the policies appear to be addressing a similar problem of inadequate schooling systems and proposing a similar solution, the restructuring of the undergraduate degree from three to four years. Drawing on the principles of temporality and specialization from Legitimation Code Theory, the analysis shows that the underlying logic for these reforms is very different. A comparison of these different logics provides insight into the highly contested space of curriculum reform and the implications for addressing inequality.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1023287]

Hong Kong's higher education system is undergoing an enormous change. At great cost, higher education and the school systems that feed into it are moving from a three-year university system that favored early specialization within a discipline and very few conversations across disciplines to a four-year university system to be fully implemented with the beginning class of 2012. This move will provide a framework in which disciplinary study is grounded in broader knowledge that encourages self-directed learning, critical thinking, and an understanding of the role of individual in society. So what are the cultural challenges to attaining these far-reaching goals? This essay attempts to delineate some of them, make some comparisons to the US, and also present some suggestions for meeting the challenges.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2012.658565]

The internationalisation of higher education in countries such as Australia and the UK has resulted in increased numbers of South-East Asia students in higher education classrooms. While considerable attention has been given to exploring the implications of internationalisation on students in 'Western' university contexts, there is a paucity of research concerning the effect on teachers of higher education and, in particular, those employed in to teach in countries culturally foreign to their own. This paper aims to initiate such discussion through an exploration of the experiences of two teaching academics working in Hong Kong. Discussion will focus on issues of language and communication, and social and cultural distance, and the effect of hierarchy and related teaching strategies developed to meet the inter-cultural learning needs of themselves and their students. It is argued that, the development of inter-cultural understandings must permeate the curricula, and be a shared goal and responsibility of both teachers and students.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/135625100114975]

In higher education teaching, enhancing learner autonomy has become a key concern for curriculum planners and classroom teachers. The significant body of research about learner autonomy in language learning over the last 20 years (e.g. Holec 1981, 1988; Riley 1985; Dickinson 1987, 1992; Wenden & Rubin 1987; Little, 1991; Dam, 1995; Benson & Voller, 1997) has indicated an on-going search for more understanding of how learner autonomy can be implemented in different contexts.
This paper is based on a research study which was conducted in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong. The study explores learners' attitudes and expectations of language learning, teacher and learner roles, their learning preferences and perceptions of learner autonomy. The paper reports the results and discusses their implication on the development of a learner-centred approach in higher education.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562510120078045]

This paper focuses on peer feedback in relation to assessment processes. It examines the rationale for peer feedback, emphasizing its potential for enhanced student learning. We draw on relevant literature to argue that the dominance of peer assessment processes using grades can undermine the potential of peer feedback for improving student learning. The paper throws further light on the issue by drawing on a large-scale questionnaire survey of tertiary students (1740) and academics (460) in Hong Kong, supplemented by interview data. The findings indicate that a significant number of academics and students resist peer assessment using grades and that the majority report that students never or rarely grade each other in assessment activities. This paper explores why there is resistance, in particular, by academics to peer assessment and argues the case for a peer feedback process as an end in itself or as a precursor to peer assessment insolving the awarding of marks, It also recommends some strategies for promoting peer feedback, through engaging students with criteria and for embedding peer involvement within normal course processes.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562510600680582]