This chapter reports the struggles of one group of ethnic minority early career teachers (EMECTs) to construct their personal and professional identities in Hong Kong. Although all early career teachers will, at times, encounter tensions as they struggle to construct, sustain, and advance their preferred teacher identities, EMECTs, because they are part of a group that lives within particular and possibly pejorative societal discourses about ethnic minority populations in Hong Kong, face additional challenges to construct their teacher identities. Nevertheless, the voices of these teachers have hitherto been largely absent from the literature. This chapter addresses this gap in current knowledge by using a narrative short story approach to explore these voices. Grounded in Bakhtin’s framework, the narratives reported in this chapter reveal discursive tensions in which EMECTs’ desire to construct their professional identities comes into tension with their identification by others as members of ethnic groups within Hong Kong. Results underscore the role of relations of power, as discourses compete to define what it means to be an EMECT in Hong Kong. Implications for supporting the identity construction efforts of these teachers are discussed and suggestions for future research are considered. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Zia Tajeddin and Bedrettin Yazan; individual chapters, the contributors.

Background: Preschool teachers’ well-being is positively associated with their students’ development and learning outcomes. Developing a positive psychological intervention that can foster preschool teachers’ well-being would be essential.Purpose: This study examined the effects of an intervention based on the PERMA (i.e., positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment) model on well-being outcomes among preschool teachers in Hong Kong.Method: We recruited 116 preschool teachers (Mage = 34.14 years, SD = 10.17, range = 21–59; female = 98.51%). Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 51; received four online workshops that cultivated the PERMA dimensions in 4 weeks) and waitlist control group (n = 65; only received the workshops after the data collection). Participants completed a survey that measured the PERMA dimensions of well-being at baseline 4- and 8-week follow-up occasions. MANCOVA and ANCOVA, controlling for gender, age, and teaching experience, were employed to examine the intervention effects.Results: A significant time x group interaction effect was found in the MANCOVA, Wilks’ Lambda F(10,102) = 2.19, p = .02, η2 = .18. The results of ANCOVA revealed that participants in the intervention group scored significantly higher on engagement, relationship, and accomplishment (η2 = .02 to .05, p < .05) than those in the control condition across time.Conclusion(s): Our findings highlighted the effects of PERMA-based interventions to promote mental health of preschool teachers. Teachers are encouraged to engage in positive psychological activities (e.g., positive reappraisal and self-compassion) to cultivate their well-being. Copyright © 2023 ICBM.

Earlier work has been well-documented how emotional of teaching connecting with professionalism and affected by moral purpose of teachers, cultures, and contexts (Day & Qing, 2009; O’ Connor, 2008). However, there is a missing link to explore how teachers interpret emotional experiences from ethical dilemmas encountered at work. Using social constructivist perspective, this study argues that emotional experiences are conditioned by the contexts in which social interactions with students, parents and other colleagues take place (Lasky, 2005; Oplatka & Arar, 2019). This qualitative study attempts to understand kindergarten teachers’ emotional experiences by analyzing how they perceive and navigate the ethical dilemmas in work. An interpretive approach is applied with interview data collected from twelve Hong Kong kindergarten teachers. Data are analyzed inductively based on descriptions of critical incident cases reported. Researchers interpreted, coded, and grouped data into themes. The interview quotes exhibit that teachers’ emotions are contextually bounded. The dilemmatic experiences stemmed from teachers can be characterized into three ethical considerations: Role of empathy and care, culture of reciprocal trust, and dispositions related to cultural responsiveness. The discussion will contribute to the depictions of emotional experience, especially teachers are facing multiple challenges in working with different stakeholders. It also gives us some insights into how teachers develop ethical judgment for dealing with the situations given in such critical incident cases. Copyright © 2023 ISA, International Sociological Association.

Since the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022, generative AI tools—capable of creating human-like content such as audio, code, images, text, simulations, 3D objects, and videos—have gained significant attention. While the impact of these tools on language teaching and learning has been widely speculated, the perspective of language teacher educators concerning their influence on initial language teacher education (ILTE) remains unexplored. This study investigates how teacher educators, who play a crucial role in adapting ILTE to technological advancements, perceive the effects of generative AI tools on ILTE. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with thirteen English language teacher educators from all four Hong Kong government-funded universities offering ILTE. Findings reveal that participants believe generative AI tools will substantially affect the ILTE curriculum, instruction, and assessment. However, most participants believed they lacked the confidence and competence to address the implications of generative AI tools effectively. This study highlights the need for further research and training to support teacher educators in adapting ILTE to the emerging influence of generative AI. Copyright © 2024 The Authors.

This paper captures the group dynamics underpinning preservice teacher identity formation to understand how childhood schooling and teacher education shape the teaching metaphors teachers construct of intercultural education. We propose a theory of identity grafting (IG) for a precise framing of the diverse ways teachers identify with intercultural education vis-à-vis other pre-established aspects of their teacher identities. Studying their IGs helped us connect the preservice teachers’ experiences with the experiences of other teachers that had emerged in global literature. We draw insights from our efforts to co-construct with preservice teachers their professional development in facilitating intercultural education. Adapting the activities based on their responses, we co-constructed with each other during the workshop teacher identities with a sense of connectedness between intercultural education and other pedagogical forms. We observed preservice teachers as we facilitated their discussions, employing ethnographic approaches to immerse ourselves in the interactions of the workshop participants. The findings revealed that preservice teachers had become more mindful of the implications of their intercultural education practices after having reflective dialogues with each other. However, although the teachers successfully integrated each other's views about intercultural education practices, this could not be sustained when they attempted to contextualize these efforts. The teachers could not reconcile their disparate childhood experiences with cultural diversity as students graduating from schools with differing academic performance rankings (school banding). Therefore, they struggled to connect their experiences with other pedagogical forms that they had previously encountered. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The present study examined the association between pre-service teachers’ mindfulness and critical thinking dispositions, as indexed by engagement, cognitive maturity, and innovativeness in critical thinking. A total of 72 Chinese pre-service teachers were recruited from Hong Kong to complete an online questionnaire cross-sectionally. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that mindfulness was differentially associated with critical thinking dispositions. As important dimensions of mindfulness, mindful presence was positively associated with engagement in critical thinking, whereas mindful acceptance was positively associated with cognitive maturity in the regression models. However, neither mindful presence nor mindful acceptance was related to innovativeness in critical thinking. As a covariate, gender was not related to dimensions of mindfulness and critical thinking dispositions. The present findings inform the literature on the relation between pre-service teachers’ mindfulness and critical thinking dispositions, particularly in the Chinese context. As a major implication, policymakers should be made aware of the importance of strengthening pre-service teachers’ mindfulness, such that they could have a greater disposition to teach critically as they enter the workforce. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). 

This narrative study explored pre-service teachers’ critical learning experiences in Hong Kong during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement and how these experiences transformed their perspectives on the teaching profession. Forty pre-service teachers participated in the study, including 16 local participants and 24 originally from mainland China. Using Jarvis’s transformative learning model, this study identified four categories of narratives: society-centred, person-centred, relation-centred, and witness-lens narrative accounts. These narratives demonstrated the participants’ various approaches during the transformation process, including reflection, emotion, and self-identification. Changes resulting from these experiences varied from radical perspective-taking to no change occurring. The Hong Kong locals mainly presented society-centred narrative accounts, whereas the majority of participants from mainland China reported person-centred narrative accounts. Their varied previous lifeworld experiences and self-identification explained the differences. The present study highlights the importance of including emotion and identity instead of taking a single constructive perspective when explaining the process of transformative learning. In addition, it shows that the process and outcomes of transformation do not naturally follow a positive direction of growth. Future studies should examine teacher’s transformation using a narrative approach and longitudinal design. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s).

A wealth of studies has shed light on how the identity and emotions of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers are formed and interinfluenced. However, very few studies focus on a specific emotion of ESL teachers that adversely affects teacher professionalism. Drawing upon the notion of melancholy (Brady and Haapala 2003), this chapter conducts narrative inquiry and thematic analysis to investigate how melancholy is experienced by early career English teachers in their narratives. The research is conducted through a longitudinal qualitative multiple-case study of three ESL teachers working in secondary schools for seven years in Hong Kong. Specifically, the chapter elucidates how socio-cultural factors, such as self and personality, school culture, peer relationships, and student performance, contribute to the melancholy experienced by ESL teachers. The findings of this study serve to conceptualize the melancholic sense of ESL teachers regardless of institutional changes and provide implications for enhancing the well-being and career sustainability of ESL teachers in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

This study examines how new ways of learning (NWL) affects students’ study engagement and learning satisfaction with online teaching, and whether subject lecturer support moderates the effect of NWL and study engagement on learning satisfaction. Undergraduate students in Hong Kong were invited to complete a survey about their experience of online teaching. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that NWL were positively related to study engagement and learning satisfaction. Subject lecturer support moderated the relationship between NWL and study engagement, which mediated their interactive effect on learning satisfaction. The results imply that academic institutions can transform traditional face-to-face teaching into online teaching that achieves learning satisfaction for students. © 2023 The Author(s).

Due to the challenging nature of teaching and learning in the 21st century, educators must assume additional roles in schools to meet the expectations of students, parents, and communities. Studies in general have focused on all teachers as a group. The PISA 2015 assessment and analysis framework indicates that the focus of the current round of assessment is on science literacy. Therefore, science teacher professional collaboration, teaching self-efficacy, and teacher job satisfaction were also the focus of its measurement. In this study, 1039 science teachers from Hong Kong participated. Through literature review analysis, this study concluded that (a) teacher professional collaboration and teaching self-efficacy have a positive effect on job satisfaction; (b) teacher professional collaboration has a positive effect on teaching self-efficacy, and (c) teaching self-efficacy has a mediating role in teacher professional collaboration and teacher job satisfaction. A mediation model was developed to test this hypothesis. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results of the study confirmed our hypothesis. In addition, we examined the applicability of the model using multi-group SEM mode, and the results demonstrated that the effect of professional collaboration on job satisfaction among science teachers in Hong Kong, China did not differ by gender. © 2023 by the authors.