In recent years international trends towards teacher empowerment and leadership have gained increased attraction in East Asia's education policy and practice. Yet, as scholars have noted, the values underlying these practices often conflict with traditional cultural norms of East Asian societies which stress hierarchical and status differences. This study explored the efficacy of an approach to developing distributed curriculum leadership among school teachers. The research employs discourse analysis of video-taped meetings of teachers in a mathematics curriculum development team in order to explore the leadership and teacher learning. The results provide initial support for strengthening school-level capacity for teacher leadership as a means of fostering teacher learning in East Asian schools. Implications include the need for incorporating programmes that build leadership and team development into more general staff development for teachers.
[Copyright © 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.]

Adopting a case study approach with multiple data sources, this paper explores the ways in which rapport is built, and its impact on the learning process based on five successive writing support consultations between a native English-speaking (NES) tutor and her second language (L2) tutee in a Hong Kong university. With reference to the prepared coding categories, six strategies that realize the four key elements of rapport management were identified, namely greetings, small talk, the use of qualifiers and mitigation devices, first-person plural pronouns, praises and expressions of empathy, and open-ended questions. These strategies symbolized association, addressed face work and emotional reactions, and encouraged equity in the directive and tutor dominance writing consultations. Motivated by the harmonious relationship, the tutee gradually took a more active role in learning in different ways by asking questions, expressing an opposite view, admitting inadequate knowledge, reflecting on cognitive processes, and initiating small talk. The implicit impact was further reflected in her improved self-rating and the completion of the five consultations. Pedagogical recommendations for tutor training are made.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Taylor & Francis. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2015.1038275]

This article examines language teachers’ attitudes towards use of the first language (L1) in second language (L2) learning and teaching from the perspective of teacher identity. Drawing on a theory of identity as both experiential and relational, in-depth interviews are used to explore the perspectives of six pre-service English language teachers in Hong Kong who had recent experiences of medium of instruction (MOI) policies and their implementation within Hong Kong secondary schools during an eight-week teaching practicum. The results suggest that MOI issues presented significant challenges to the participants as they struggled with multiple identities at the institutional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels. Implications for language teacher education, the formation and implementation of policies towards use of the L1 in L2 teaching and learning, and future research are discussed.
[Copyright © 2013 Asian EFL Journal.]

Background: In the past decade, educational settings worldwide have experienced a significant increase in the number of school-based teaching assistants (TAs). The deployment of these TAs has been accompanied by reports of confusion and uncertainty about their roles and responsibilities within schools. While the need to reframe the role and purpose of TAs is recognised, it remains unclear how this can be best achieved. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to explore the ways in which one group of TAs deployed in Hong Kong schools construct their professional identities, to understand the constraints and enablements to these processes, and to consider how different stakeholders might be able to best support this identity work. Sample: The primary participants in this study are nine English language teacher assistants employed at different schools across Hong Kong. Other participants include full-time English language teachers who have experience of working with one of these TAs, as well as students who attend English language classes in which these TAs participate. Design and methods: A qualitative multiple case study approach is adopted. In-depth interviews with TAs, teachers and students are used to gain a contextualised interpretation of the primary participants' experiences of constructing professional identities within schools. A multilevel, multidimensional theoretical framework, which considers identity construction as both a discursive and experiential accomplishment, is then used to understand the constraints and enablements TAs experience in constructing these identities. Findings: Results indicate that TAs face challenges in constructing their professional identities at institutional, interpersonal and intrapersonal levels within Hong Kong schools. In addition, the TAs believe that exercising agency to contest their positionings within schools is often insufficient to place them on a trajectory towards become a teacher. The results also suggest that the identity

Short-term international experience programmes are a common element of English second language (ESL) teacher education in many countries. This study problematizes the belief that such programmes necessarily result in beneficial changes in pre-service teachers thinking about themselves as teachers - their beliefs, habits, and values - by exploring the experiences of eight pre-service ESL teachers from Hong Kong as they undertook a short-term international experience programme in Australia. Drawing on a theory of identity construction, the findings suggest that identity conflicts impacted how the student teachers experienced this programme as they struggled to reconcile past, present, and future trajectories of teacher identity. In particular, the student teachers constructed rigid divisions between different types of teachers and teaching they experienced at home and abroad. These divisions were reflected in antagonistic relations between the types of English language teachers and teaching they aligned their own teaching activities and practices with and the teacher identities that they perceived to be available to them within the Hong Kong education system. Implications for addressing such identity conflicts throughout international experience programmes are considered and implications for future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2011.566997]

This paper sets out to queer education's normative human-centric assumptions and to de-centre the straight and narrow vision of the child as only ever becoming an autonomous individual learner. It re-focuses upon the more-than-human learning that takes place when we pay attention to queerer aspects of children's, as well as our own, entangled becomings in the common worlds in which we live. In this case, the entangled becomings are those of children and dogs. Drawing upon Donna Haraway's notion of 'queer worlding' and Karen Barad's assertion of 'nature's queer performativity', the authors explore how we might go about 'queer worlding' childhood. Using deconstructive and diffractive methods, they trace a selection of entangled child-dog events across three sites: the streets of Hong Kong; an Australian early childhood education bush setting; and an exhibition in a Swedish art museum. Through narrating some of the more disconcerting aspects of these events, the authors reveal how we might tap into the 'queer worlding' ways in which the world is acting on us, even as we are acting on it.
[Copyright of Discourse is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2014.888842]

Debate over educational reform in many countries has addressed the question of how to attract and retain teachers. As part of a multiple case study that includes eight beginning English language teachers in Hong Kong, this article offers an in-depth analysis of the experiences of two participants, Christine and Samuel, during their initial year of full time teaching in Hong Kong schools. The data, collected during an entire academic year, suggests that Christine used her experiences of becoming a teacher to justify and reaffirm her determination to pursue a career within English language teaching. In contrast, Samuel's preliminary year of full-time teaching culminated in his decision to leave the teaching profession. A contribution of this study is to explore these very different experiences and outcomes using a framework of teacher identity construction. From this perspective, findings suggest that the participants' engagement in the practices and activities of teaching, their relations with colleagues, and their positioning within different discourses of teaching and learning by their schools as well as by the wider educational environment, shaped their decisions about whether to continue to pursue a teaching career. Implications for attracting and retaining teachers, as well as for future research, are discussed.
[Copyright of Australian Educational Researcher is the property of Australian Association for Research in Education. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13384-012-0067-7]