This thesis aims to study the dynamic relationships between teachers and politics. Adopting the cases of Taiwan and Hong Kong, it is a comprehensive and critical study of the factors, development and consequences of teacher participation in shaping politics since the 1980s. Employing the concept of empowerment, this thesis develops an analytical framework with three independent variables, including (1) political culture, (2) union solidarity, and (3) government perception, shaping an intervening variable in personal, collective and institutional modes, and then a dependent variable, namely teacher empowerment. Teacher empowerment has three dimensions: (1) personal empowerment (process to defend their professional and political status), (2) organizational empowerment (process to articulate their interests through unions), and (3) political empowerment (the ability to influence government and other non-educational policies).
Although Hong Kong and Taiwan have experienced varying levels of democratization beginning in the 1980s, a divergence can be found in relation to: (1) the nature of empowerment, (2) teacher participation, (3) union solidarity, and (4) government perception. In Hong Kong's context, the procurement of teachers' material needs and the protection of their professional autonomy are of major concerns. In Taiwan, however, teachers aimed to alter the authoritarian approach upheld by the Kuomintang (KMT). Regarding teacher participation, educational elites co-opted into the advisory committees in Hong Kong usually utilize institutional channels to portray as a teacher representative and defend the bureaucratic views on educational issues. Despite the occasional adoption of collective actions to express their grievances, most of the teachers lack the drive to press the authorities in order to alter the official domination and hegemony. Despite the foundation of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union (PTU), it has achieved limitedly to alter the authoritarian

This paper attempts to discuss the Chinese cultural implications of the recently proposed document: 'Global Qualifying Standards for Social Work Education' by the IASSW and IFSW. It seems that this document still embraces an ideology of western social work imperialism in perceiving the development of social work in other countries. With reference to Chinese culture and social work education in Hong Kong and in mainland China, the writer advocates that responsibility and rights, stability and changes, social norms and equality, as well as empowerment and relation, should be fully articulated in the definition, ethical principles, and core purpose of social work practice as well as in the mission and curriculum in social work education within Chinese communities.
[Copyright of Social Work Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0261547042000252316]