This is a research about the life stories of Hong Kong secondary school teachers. It explores on the process of how these teachers implement their humanistic education beliefs and manifest their humanistic personal qualities, so as to achieve positive education results.
This research adopts the life history research method and focuses on the interviews of five humanistic teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools. Data from the interviews is analyzed by using the categorical-content approach. Such data plus the researcher's personal log are crossed with theories on humanistic education. Results are: (1) positive growing up background of the humanistic teachers nurtured their humanistic beliefs; (2) the humanistic teachers establish a teacher-student relationship full of genuineness, empathy and respect---when adding up equals to love, and such relationship facilitates the growth of their students; (3) the humanistic teachers do experience struggle in their career paths and they have to adjust for the incongruence between ideals and reality, but their greatest contentment is still the growth of their students.
The major finding of this research is that during the manifestation of humanistic beliefs of these Hong Kong secondary school teachers, a theory of "A Touch of Love Lights up a Life" is established---both the students and even their teachers themselves experience the lighting up of their inner energy and grow as a result if they are touched by the elements of love such as genuineness, empathy and respect in their life circumstances. Such growth-facilitating processes that happen in the education setting are highlighted.
This research also discusses the implication of its findings on education reform movements on-going in Hong Kong. Furthermore, directions for future research on the manifestation of humanistic education beliefs in Hong Kong are suggested.