This article reports the results of a qualitative study investigating the experiences of five former English language teachers in Hong Kong during their initial years of full-time teaching and the reasons for their permanent departure from the profession. Guided by a theory of teacher identity construction, the study employed a discourse analytic approach to understand the participants’ perceptions of their professional identity construction in discourse and practice. The results of in-depth interviews provide detailed descriptions of the ways in which the former teachers perceived the constraints and enablements to their professional identity construction within the context of their ultimate decision to leave the teaching profession. The findings problematise rigid divisions between different types of teachers and suggest the need to establish new spaces for identity construction that allow for the meshing of different teacher identities.
[Copyright © 2016 Taylor & Francis.]

This article describes the results of a qualitative multiple case study investigation of the experiences of preservice teachers during a teaching practicum in Hong Kong. The study uses in-depth interviews with pairs of student teachers and their school-based supporting teachers to understand how the former positioned themselves as particular types of teachers through mutual interactions with other communities of teachers during a teaching practicum. Three case studies explore the ways in which the pairs of student teachers not only supported each other within the context of a teaching team, but also jointly deployed strategies to establish and defend the values of teaching and learning that were afforded a premium by their community of preservice teachers. The results underscore the importance of investigating relations between different communities, such as student teachers, school-based teachers and school authorities if the learning goals of the teaching practicum are to be attained. Implications for how relations that foster the professional development of all teachers within and across different communities during a teaching practicum might be achieved and sustained are discussed and implications for future research considered.
[Copyright © Routledge].

This paper reports on a qualitative study that examined the perceptions of eight preservice English language teachers from mainland China about their English language learning experiences within an undergraduate teacher education program in Hong Kong. Based upon a framework of identity construction, and using in-depth interviews conducted at regular intervals during their freshman year, the study explored how the participants’ constructed identities as English language learners as they crossed geographical and educational boundaries to pursue higher education in Hong Kong. The study illustrates that the participants’ experienced challenges in realizing the multiple language learner identities they sought to attain and that this may have resulted in conflicts and antagonism between different identities positions. Implications for providing language learning opportunities to mainland Chinese learners enrolled in higher education institutions in English speaking environments are discussed and suggestions for future research considered.
[Copyright © 2011 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]

Despite its rapid expansion in many countries around the world, private tutoring has attracted only limited attention from policy makers and researchers. This is especially surprising in the case of Asia, where high rates of private tuition have been reported. In particular, comparatively few studies have considered the views of the individual stakeholders in private tuition; students, parents, teachers, and tutors. This study addresses this research gap by using in-depth interviews to provide detailed descriptions of the challenges one group of private tutors in Hong Kong confronted as they positioned themselves within the teaching profession. The findings expose and problematize discourses which establish a rigid division between educators providing private tutoring and those in mainstream schools and constrain the capacity of the former to construct their preferred professional identities. It is argued that educational authorities should respond to the growth in private tutoring in ways that overcome the antagonisms that such division can imply for professional relations between educators in private tutoring and those in mainstream schools.
[Copyright © 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.]

This article reports the results of a multiple qualitative case study which investigated the challenges that seven early career English language teachers in Hong Kong confronted as they constructed their professional and personal identities. A series of in-depth interviews with participants during the entire first year of their full-time teaching experience provided a longitudinal perspective on the teachers’ experiences of becoming teachers. A contribution of this study is to examine such experiences using the analytical lens of teacher identity. The case studies illustrate that these teachers faced considerable challenges in constructing teacher identities as they negotiated the dominant discourses of teaching and learning within individual Hong Kong schools. It is argued that school-based support for early career teachers should include the problematisation of the identity positions available to all teachers within the profession as a whole in order to support the construction of the professional and personal identities that these teachers place a premium upon. Implications for teacher education and future research are also discussed.
[Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis.]

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, we report on an inquiry exploring experiences of ten elite mainland Chinese student teachers of English as to understand why they came to Hong Kong for the teacher education programme. The study revealed that these students were largely attracted to teaching in Hong Kong because of its extrinsic benefits such as professional stability, the prestige associated with the English language teaching profession, and the opportunities to acquire valued skills transferable to other professions including English competence. Facing challenges as non-local students, they were also uncertain of becoming teachers in the new context. This raises questions as to how these talented non-local teachers can be retained in Hong Kong’s schools.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

This chapter reports a comparative study exploring the motivation to teach and the commitment to teaching among non-local student teachers from mainland China and their Hong Kong local counterparts. The findings indicate that with similar entry perspectives, the two groups develop different degrees of commitment to teaching after the first semester of the programme. While the mainland Chinese participants reassess the suitability of teaching in a culturally unfamiliar context and tend to think of transferring their knowledge to other careers, Hong Kong participants develop an interest in putting the theory into practice and become more committed to teaching. The reasons underlying the differences are explored.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

The processes of “becoming a teacher” are dynamic, fluid, and ongoing (Britzman (2003). Within contemporary multilingual educational settings the uncertainties and challenges of becoming an English language teacher are especially pronounced as the often conflicting values and interests of different stakeholders ensures that language-in-education policy is frequently a source of educational, political, and social tension (Li 2009; Tollefson and Tsui 2004; Tsui and Tollefson 2007). For language teachers and teacher educators working within such settings these challenges are currently being played out against a larger background of transition as forces of globalization reshape teaching and teacher education in general (Bates 2008) and as second language teacher education in particular seeks “a new identity as it draws on new knowledge and employs new pedagogic practices” (Wright 2010, p. 288). The studies in this book have therefore addressed the need to better understand the ways in which issues of language, teaching, and teacher education shape and are shaped by the experiences of becoming an English language teacher within multilingual contexts such as Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

In this chapter, I problematize a widespread belief that teachers in Asian contexts including Japan and China are well protected by a tradition that reveres teachers. Instead I contend that cultural traditions, together with educational reforms and sociocultural changes, can also undermine the teaching profession. To this end, I report on an inquiry that explored the social censure of teachers, especially language teachers in Hong Kong. In the inquiry, I took advantage of an Internet discussion concerning the ‘falling’ language standards, a widespread concern in the region. The analysis of the discussion revealed the high expectations that the public had of language teachers as well as the increasingly complex conditions for teachers’ professional practices due to ongoing educational reforms and cultural changes.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]