Inquiry learning (IL) is one of the most prominent features of the New Senior Secondary Curriculum reform and has become a major approach in the teaching and learning of many subjects. However, it remains open to what teachers’ perception of IL is and what extent IL is actually used in day-to- day teaching. In the study presented here we elaborate— from the perspective of social science teachers—the current status of IL in day-to-day teaching and the difficulties they encountered in implementing IL, based on the analysis of relevant data collected from a survey, interviews, classroom observations and documents. Further, in order to gain insights on multiple factors that influence teachers’ perception and implementation of IL, a comparative study between two case schools was conducted. We present selected results from this comparative study that for the first time provides general ideas of senior secondary social science teachers’ perceptions and current use of IL, as well as how school context, curriculum and measurement, the support from students and parents affect teachers’ perceptions and implementation of IL in the context of Hong Kong.

An increasing number of studies have been carried out on teacher identities, but there are few studies exploring how individuals could enact their ethical agency to consider the possibilities of comprising their teacher identities differently. In this chapter, I attempted to investigate the understanding of teacher and teaching profession among a group of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong and their discursive determination in identity construction. The findings indicate that teacher identities are contingent and constructed, and that the notion of the ethico-politics of teacher identity opens up scope for moving beyond the narrowing of focus on particular meanings of teaching and enables the teachers to build ethical agency for identity reformation and reconstruction.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

In this chapter, I report on a study investigating the construction of teacher identity of a group of mainland Chinese pre-service teachers of English in a Teacher Education Institute in Hong Kong. The study revealed that the participants experience and express opposing and potentially contradictory identities. They were found to negotiate their identities with the positionings from peers, students, prospective schools and social discourses. It was also found that they construct legitimacy in the professional community drawing on their own linguistic and cultural repertoire. This study offers a way of thinking about teacher formation as a process of identity development and extends understandings of the interconnected relations of discourse and identity in such contexts.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

A teacher shortage in Hong Kong in core subjects, such as English, has led to interest in the recruitment and retention of teachers. In Chap. 6, it was argued that recruiting large numbers of non-local students to undergraduate teacher education programs does not necessarily offer a reliable solution to this difficulty and suggests the need to explore alternative routes through which teachers may be recruited. This chapter considers one such alternative, namely the role second career teachers could play in meeting possible teacher shortages in multilingual contexts such as Hong Kong. The chapter draws upon Wenger’s (Communities of practice. Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998) theory of identity formation and using data from interviews with eight second-career English language teachers in Hong Kong, this chapter explores how second-career teachers may be better supported in their professional development. The study found that second-career teachers’ skills and experiences were not valued within their schools and that this was reflected in a rigid division the participants drew between the institutionally endorsed identity positions made available to them and the type of teachers they wanted to be. In response to this antagonism, second-career teachers used their position of non-participation to establish identity territories that connected aspects of their first-career identities such as engineers and managers to their emerging teacher identities. It is suggested that non-participation, a potentially negative experience in Wenger’s (Communities of practice. Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998) framework, was deployed by this group of teachers to create the space they needed to enact their own preferred teacher identities. Implications for attracting and retaining second-career teachers are discussed.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

Along with the increasing global emphasis on creativity, creative teaching has become an issue of concern for a large number of researchers. This study addresses this issue by exploring the belief of Hong Kong teachers on creative teaching. The research results obtained through qualitative approach show that the beliefs of Hong Kong teachers about creative teaching cover process and product dimensions. The informants can be grouped into five categories with reference to their various preferences. The evidence shows that a part of the beliefs of Hong Kong teachers is aligned with ideal theoretical framework advanced by scholars. The deficiency and problems in the belief of teachers in creative teaching are also discussed in this paper.
[Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.]

In response to the perceived ‘feminisation’ of primary school teaching, educational authorities in many countries have implemented policies designed to encourage more men to take up teaching positions in primary schools. While challenges to the efficacy of such policies have emerged in the literature, limited attention has been given to the voice of male primary school teachers themselves. Using a qualitative multiple case study approach, this study addresses this imbalance by examining how five male primary school teachers construct professional identities within Hong Kong primary schools. In-depth interviews give voice to these male primary school teachers, revealing the dominant discourses that make available certain identity positions to all primary school teachers in Hong Kong. The study explores how these five teachers exercise individual agency as they struggle to be recognised as competent members of a community of primary school teachers. The case studies also describe the limits to such personal agency, suggesting the need for policy initiatives that support the identity work of all primary school teachers by going beyond calls for the recruitment of greater numbers of male primary teachers. Some of the ways in which educational policy and practice could provide such support are considered and implications for future research are discussed.
[Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis.]

Teachers have often been placed in the heart of educational reform. They are expected to play a pivotal role in the enhancement of educational quality. Various forces energize the professionalization project of teaching and there has long been advocacy that teachers should be regarded as professionals. Although literature shows that there are divided views on whether it is entirely favorable for teaching to become a 'profession', there is little disparity that teachers should uphold professionalism. While teachers as professionals may well be a conception that denotes different meanings by different people, this paper seeks to understand the conceptions of a professional teacher held by four fist year primary school teachers in Hong Kong. The paper reports the results of a study which entails three main parts. The first part is about the societal expectations of a professional teacher in Hong Kong. With reference to the profession literature, selections of key educational documents of Hong Kong were analyzed to find out the common expectations. The second part involves the analysis of the first year teachers' conceptions of what makes a professional teacher. Each of the four teachers have been followed through in the first year of teaching by four in-depth face to face interviews and at least three telephone interviews. Their conceptions of a professional teacher have been studied and analyzed in the context of their career events. The third part of the paper identifies the similarities and differences of the conceptions between those identified as the societal expectations and those held by the informants. The paper ends with a discussion on the various implications of the findings.