The growing concerns regarding the risks of transmitting the COVID-19 virus have intensified the job-related stressors commonly encountered by teachers in various cultural contexts. Evidence shows how the COVID-19 crisis has negatively impacted teachers' mental health outcomes such as stress, depression, and quality of life, which highlights the significance of designing psychological programs to boost teachers' well-being. This study examined the effects of a well-being intervention based on the Positivity, Relationship, Outcomes, Strength, Purpose, Engagement, and Resilience (PROSPER) framework on well-being outcomes among 76 in-service teachers (Mage = 26.05 years, SD = 4.71, range = 20–45; female = 93.4%) in Hong Kong. Participants completed survey measures associated with the seven PROSPER outcomes at baseline and 2-month follow-up. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that there were statistically significant multivariate effects for intervention conditions, Wilks' Lambda F(7, 58) = 4.50, p =.01. Results demonstrated that teachers who were assigned to the intervention condition (n = 36) had significantly higher scores than those in the control condition (n = 40) on positivity (b = 0.41, 95% CI [0.16, 0.65], p =.01), strength (b = 0.62, 95% CI [0.23, 1.01], p =.01), purpose (b = 0.61, 95% CI [0.18, 1.04], p =.01), and resilience (b = 0.57, 95% CI [0.07, 1.07], p =.04). Our findings provide evidence on the mental health benefits of the PROSPER-based psychological intervention program for preschool teachers. Copyright © 2022 Society for the Study of School Psychology. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The past decades have witnessed an increasing number of studies documenting native English teachers’ (NETs’) challenges in professional development and collaboration with nonnative English teachers’ (NNETs’) across multiple educational contexts. There are also debates in TESOL regarding the essentialized dichotomy of NETs and NNETs with insufficient recognition of the educational and cultural experiences of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) / English as a second language (ESL). Little research has been conducted on the lived experiences of transnational multilingual NETs who work in heritage contexts; and how they position themselves when they conduct their teacher identity work and negotiate between heritage identity and NET identity. This study, drawing on the notion of ethical self-formation and its application in teacher identity research as a theoretical lens, addresses the gap by investigating the identity construction of two transnational NETs of Chinese ethnicity returning to their home context in Hong Kong to teach. The findings indicate that (1) the participants negotiated their multilingual identity and the monolingual NET identity ascribed in the workplace, (2) they developed counter-strategies to turn the knowledge of the local language and culture into resources in teaching, and (3) they agentively expanded the definition of NET and situated them in the full institutional and social context to consider their identity conflict and self-empowerment. The findings have implications for education policy to accommodate and value the plural-competences of NETs and NNETs. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

This article illustrates the social construction of teachers’ emotions by drawing on the emergent sociological perspective of inhabited institutionalism to report on a qualitative research project on teachers’ emotions in Hong Kong. A thematic analysis was performed on the transcripts of interviews conducted in 2012 with 21 teachers at Hong Kong secondary schools and on the policy documents and newspaper articles from the education reform era of 1980 to 2011. Three major themes emerged from the data: (1) the institutional logic of whole-person education, (2) the institutional logic of accountability, and (3) an asymmetry between these institutional logics, which is causing a displacement of the meaning of education and thus has emotional consequences for teachers. Taken together, these themes show that managerialist education reforms bring the institutional logic of accountability into the institutional environment of education, which results in the recoupling of school administration and teachers’ work. This recoupling leads to the decline of teachers’ work autonomy. The institutional logic of accountability tends to inhibit the institutional logic of whole-person education and to replace the instructional meaning of education with managerial meanings. In the institutional context, teachers are forced to do a lot of work that they interpret as meaningless, but they find that they are powerless to change the situation. They may therefore choose to inhabit the institutional logic of accountability and the tightly coupled institutional context of school organizations. Consequently, teachers may become unhappy at work during and after managerialist education reforms. According to these findings, teachers’ emotions can be regarded as an interactional–institutional construction. That is, teachers’ emotions may be socially constructed through the negotiation of meaning under the institutional logics that guide their actions and the interactions that uphold the institutional

In recent years, many teachers suffered different kinds of negative emotions in the context of education reforms. A typical explanation was that the education reforms disempowered teachers in teaching, so teachers were forced to do much non-instructional work. Teachers considered their work meaningless but were powerless to change it, and eventually indulged themselves in negative emotions. However, the present research suggested that this explanation had neglected teacher agency and might be incomplete. Arguing from the perspective of social constructionism, the research showed that teachers in Hong Kong experienced negative emotions in education reforms because, on top of the disempowerment, the reforms structurally displaced teachers’ educational goals with administrative goals. The goal displacement impeded teachers’ evaluation of the instructional values of their work. Thus, teachers perceived their work as inconsistent with their major purpose of teaching (i.e. making a difference) and they felt negative towards work. Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

 Since the mid 1990s, teacher burnout has become a crucial phenomenon in the Hong Kong education system, as increasing numbers of Hong Kong teachers have been reported as stressed, exhausted, and depersonalized in their teaching. In the Hong Kong community, including the academic circle, many people have applied the psychological theory of burnout to study the psychological causes of teacher burnout. However, this article argues that teacher burnout has become a social issue and is not a purely psychological phenomenon. Thus, it is important for us to identify the structural causes rather than the psychological causes of teacher burnout, to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of teacher burnout, and to develop better solutions. This article therefore theoretically analyzes how teacher burnout can be caused by certain structural forces, including structural education reforms, the administrative structure of schools, and the occupational and career structure of teaching, from the perspective of the sociological theory of work alienation. The article also gives recommendations for further studies based on the theoretical analysis. Copyright © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The study explores the social psychological process of teachers’ emotional experiences. Twenty-one secondary schoolteachers in Hong Kong were interviewed. The findings show that the teachers generally felt caam² (a Cantonese adjective that covers a range of meanings like gloomy, dreadful, tragic, pitiful, pathetic, and miserable) in teaching. The social psychological process of the emotional experience of caam² involves how teachers interpret the significance of their actual work in attaining the teaching goal of making a difference. If they interpret their work as incapable of fulfilling the goal, they will experience negative emotions in teaching. The findings also suggest that the interpretation is affected by teachers’ power which is unequally distributed according to teachers’ teaching experience and managerial roles. Copyright © 2016 Tsang and Kwong.

Background: Recently, studies have found that more and more teachers in Hong Kong express negative feelings toward their work, such as feelings of dissatisfaction, exhaustion, meaningless and powerless. These negative emotional experiences may affect both their well-being and the quality of their teaching. In order to have a better understanding of this phenomenon, researchers employ the sociological concept of emotion management. Therefore, this paper reviews different sociological perspectives on the phenomenon in order to give recommendations for educational reforms and policies and for further research on teachers' emotional experiences at work in Hong Kong. Aims or focus of discussion: This article considers two major sociological approaches to understanding emotion management in teaching: Conflict theory and symbolic interactionism. At the end of the discussion, implications for educational reforms and policies and recommendations for further research are suggested respectively. Arguments/comments/suggestions: The article argues that symbolic interactionism is a more appropriate approach to understanding emotion management of teaching than conflict theory because it considers the effects of both structural conditions and teachers' agency on teachers' emotions. Thus, it may provide a more comprehensive and realistic account and framework for our investigation. Conclusion: The article suggests that we should study teachers' emotional experiences at work in Hong Kong from a symbolic interactionist perspective of emotion management of teaching. Accordingly, we should try to answer the following questions: What are teachers' expectations about their work? What are the conditions of their work? Are there gaps between their expectations and reality? What are the constraints that affect the realization of their expectations? What emotions do they actually experience at work? In order to answer these questions more effectively, this article recommends adopting in-depth

During the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching and learning activities had to be conducted fully online. To sustain quality education, teachers could use open educational resources (OERs) available in the public domain to make online mathematics teaching more effective and interactive. However, we currently know little about the use of OERs in primary school settings. Therefore, this study seeks to understand their school policies and guidelines on and teachers’ experience of using OERs during the pandemic. Our overarching goal is to provide recommendations on the future development and use of OERs in the context of primary school mathematics education. We employed a qualitative approach and interviewed 13 mathematics teachers from different primary schools. Our findings suggest that teachers tended to rely on OERs more during the pandemic than before. They used OERs to introduce mathematics and to facilitate class interactions in online lessons. However, not all schools had policies and guidelines on the use of OERs in place. Some teachers also encountered challenges when using OERs, such as finding that the resources were unsuitable for school contexts and lower primary school students. Based on the findings, we discuss some possible strategies for the improvement, such as ensuring the suitability of OERs, through developer–teacher collaborations. Copyright © 2022 by the authors.

This study assessed the effect of a teacher professional development (PD) programme that incorporated culturally responsive teaching on Chinese kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of learning motivation of ethnic minority (EM) vs. Chinese pupils in Hong Kong. The moderating role of classroom ethnic composition was examined. Forty-five teachers in the intervention group attended 20 sessions of PD courses over 10 months, whereas 40 teachers who did not attend the current programme formed a control group. Pre- and post-tests were conducted to assess teacher perceptions of learning motivation and engagement of Chinese and EM pupils. Hierarchical structure of data was accounted for with multilevel modelling. Results showed that the intervention resulted in positive changes in teacher perceptions of learning motivation of EM (vs. Chinese) pupils among teachers working in classrooms with low proportions of EM pupils when compared to teachers in the control group. The findings highlighted that teachers’ cultural diversity training programmes should be evaluated in relation to classroom ethnic composition and other contextual factors that influence the quality and frequency of interethnic contact. Copyright © 2022 International Review of Finance Ltd.

This study explores the impact of teachers’ entrepreneurial behavior (TEB) in school in the context of the Hong Kong system. Schools face continuous education reform and a decline in birth rates. In order to survive and thrive in the keenly competitive education market, teachers need to wrestle continuously with a new school-based curriculum. In fact, business corporate employees also deal with new tasks and projects every day. Many empirical studies indicate that developing Employee entrepreneurial behavior (EEB) is an effective way to facilitate employees to deal with the problems currently facing teachers. However, there are only a few empirical studies about TEB in education. As a result, I would like to investigate the impact of TEB. The following research questions guide the study. 1. How do teachers and leaders understand and enact TEB and its components?2. How do they perceive TEB’s impact in schools?3. What school conditions enhance or challenge TEB?This study employs a qualitative multiple-site case study to answer the research questions. This research provides insights drawn from teachers’ views about TEB in Hong Kong. Enacting TEB is a process by which a teacher demonstrates entrepreneurial competencies and attributes in actualizing an innovation at school. Entrepreneurial teachers have a positive impact on teachers, students, and school branding given conducive school conditions. It contributes to the knowledge base by clarifying and justifying the impact of TEB on school development. This study also promotes the professional development of teachers and principals across the profession with a rubric for assessing the key contribution made by entrepreneurial teachers. Furthermore, this study generates a practical means of defining the term ‘innovative teacher’ for the policymaker. All rights reserved.