In recent years, it seems that teachers in Hong Kong feel negatively about their work. To some extent, the negative emotional experiences may not only affect teachers’ well-being, but also the quality of schooling. Thus, it is necessary for us to pay attention to the phenomenon of teachers’ emotional experiences, especially the negative ones. In the literature, researchers have investigated teachers’ emotional experiences from the psychological perspective. Nevertheless, the psychological perspective may neglect the social impacts on teaches’ emotional experiences. The limitation may create an incomplete or inaccurate understanding about the phenomenon. In order to overcome the limitation, this article proposes a sociological research agenda for further investigation on the basis of symbolical interactionism. Copyright © 2014 Sjournals. All rights reserved.

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

 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.

In alignment with the New Academic Structure, the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE) was launched in 2012 to replace the former Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) as certification for completion of secondary education, and the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE) as the main credentials for university admission in Hong Kong. Standards-referenced reporting is adopted for the HKDSE with the objective of reporting candidates' results against a set of prescribed levels of achievement based on typical performances at those levels. Clearly defined standards facilitate learning and teaching as well as enable users of the qualification, including tertiary institutions and employers, to set appropriate entrance/job requirements. The standards are set and maintained by expert judgement supported by psychometric data to ensure fairness and consistency of standards across subjects and across cohorts. Systemic and implementation issues and their resolutions are discussed in the context of the education reform in Hong Kong. Copyright ©Routledge.

Despite the trendsetting of East Asian HPES, education policy commentary and literature on this region remains rather underdeveloped and predictable. In Comparing High-Performing Education Systems: Understanding Singapore, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, Dr Charlene Tan moves scholarship on East Asian HPES in a new, sorely needed direction. This review essay of Comparing High-Performing Education Systems describes the guiding conceptual framework of the book and summarizes the book, chapter-by-chapter. This review essay also comments on two striking issues – the explanatory power of Confucian habitus, and the intersectionality of performativity, Confucianism, and neoliberalism. The aim in this review essay is to both celebrate the boldness of Comparing High Performing Systems and offer questions to further enrich the employment of Confucianism as a conceptual and analytical tool to examine education policies, processes, and outcomes in East Asian systems.
[Copyright of Discourse-Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education is the property of Routledge.]

This article analyses and compares the responses of parents to education policy initiatives in Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The education reform in three localities converges on changing an exam-centric culture and equipping students to thrive in a globalised world. Through a discussion of three representative policy initiativesDirect School Admission in Singapore, extended and inquiry/research curricula in Shanghai and Liberal Studies in Hong Kongthis article contends that the parents variously make sense of, negotiate, support and circumvent the policy initiatives. Their strategies, it is argued, are grounded in and shaped by their shared habitus, manifesting the four processes identified by Zhao, Selman and Luke (Bourdieu and Chinese education: Inequality, competition, and change, Routledge, Oxon, 2018) for understanding the formation of habitus. A major implication arising from the study is the usefulness of the concept of habitus in illuminating the educational expectations and proposed actions of parents when confronted with educational changes.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Education Review is the property of Springer.]

「優質學校改進計劃」是個大學與學校夥伴協作計劃，自1998年起一直給予中、小學全面專業支援，目的是整體學校改進。2000年，教育統籌委員會發表了《香港教育制度改革建議》，在充滿理想的改革原則策動下，中、小學教育及課程有明顯改變，但在推行及實踐各樣改革時，教與學的實際困境亦一一浮現。本文以香港「優質學校改進計劃」下的學校個案，探討學校領導為何在由上而下的改革浪潮下，引進大學專業人員的知識及實踐經驗，並從學校領導的視角，探索「計劃」在學校教育的不同層面所起的作用。Quality School Improvement Project (QSIP) is a university-school partnership program for comprehensive school improvement. Since 1998, QSIP has provided holistic professional support to primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. In 2000, Education Commission published the Reform Proposals for the Education System in Hong Kong to outline some desirable education reform principles and proposals for schools. Following the reform principles, school education system and curriculum have some remarkable changes. When implementing the various education reforms, challenges and difficulties have also surfaced in the teaching and learning environment in schools. This article reviews why school leaders introduce QSIP into their school reform environment and how the professional supports from QSIP have influenced school education in different levels from school leaders' perspectives. Copyright © 2011 香港中文大學.

The outsourcing of education services has been widely adopted across international contexts as a ‘tested solution’ or panacea to meet various educational problems including school management, curriculum design, teaching and student discipline. Contracting third-party providers, it is argued, enhances organisational goals such as efficiency, quality and school improvement. However, the outsourcing of education services has also impacted on established notions concerning the boundaries around teachers’ work. This paper deploys the framework of discursive institutionalism to offer insight into how the idea of outsourcing has been activated and circulated by discursive communities in three diverse international settings. Despite its problem-solution logic, the institutionalisation of outsourcing creates its own problems, not least the undermining of teacher professionalism, the ‘businessification’ of schools and a diminishing of their educational mission. Copyright © 2019 British Association for International and Comparative Education.

融合教育的理念在香港少有爭議，然而其實踐却引來業界以至整個社會的不安。而收納有特殊學習需要學童的主流學校數目亦有增無已，自1999年教育署正式啟動「融合教育計劃」後至去年止，已超過半數香港主流小學參加了「融合教育計劃」。這項標示人權、公平、與「反隔離」的教育倡導，漸成香港教育改革中的一項重要議程。然而，除了政府的正面報導外，不論在報章上、學術研討會上，或在學界的調查研究中，我們都可接收到各類有關持份者痛陳目前的融合教育政策與執行缺失的訊息。為數非少的家長、主流學校、及特殊學校都在這看似融合美境之中叫苦連連。本文從教育生態角度，剖析香港十年教改與融合教育措施的互動關係，分析主流學校與特殊學校的藍海策略，提出可借鏡某些國家承認雙重國籍的方案，提供融合生雙重學籍，以解構教育系統二分法造成的三輸局面。 The conceptual good will behind integrated education in Hong Kong attracts very little debate, while its implementation arouses unrest amongst the education sector and the community at large. Since the inception of integrated education by the Government in 1999, statistics last year indicated that there were more and more schools joining the programme and over half of the primary schools in Hong Kong have then joined the programme. This new trend, demonstrating the respect for human rights, equality and anti-segregation, is now becoming one of the key issues of concern within the education reform of Hong Kong. Except the favorable remarks made by the Government about the policy, there were heated debates in the education sector and the public concerning the negative impacts resulting from the implementation of integrated education within the media, academic conferences and researches. Parents, mainstream schools as well as special schools are all agonizing about the glossy picture painted for the policy. Using an ecological perspective to look at the implementation of integrated education in the past 10 years while focusing on the dynamics between the education reform issues and strategies for integrated education, the "Blue Ocean Strategy" can be adopted as a basic principle for mainstream and special schools to work successfully together. Similar to a country giving recognition to dual nationality, one of the strategies might be the adoption of a dual-registration system for students to register with both types of school for ensuring their successful survival within integrated education. The proposal can be a practical

In 2000, the Education Commission launched a 10-year campaign that strived reform education by reconfiguring the academic system, including redesigning curriculum aims and assessment mechanism. Intense and frequent changes that resulted transformed the ecology of the education system. Local surveys indicated that most teachers suffered a high level of stress and many of them were nearly burnout. A combined inquiry was used to probe the external and internal influences that education reforms had upon teachers in schools for children with physical disabilities in Hong Kong. On the external influences, historical study and document analysis were employed. As to the internal influences, three methods were utilized. First, a four-section modified questionnaire was distributed to investigate these teachers' (n=92) stressors and gather data regarding their professional development. Second, 11 individual interviews were conducted in order to collect in-depth concerns from the representatives of novices, experienced and administrative teachers. Third, a focus group discussion with six experienced teachers was held to collect further data. Results of data analysis were discussed in order to provide recommendations to various stakeholders in supporting teachers along different stages of their career paths. 在2000年，教育統籌委員會啟動長達十年的教育改革，不但重新規劃香港學制，也重整課程目標及評估機制。自此，轉變密集而頻繁，改造了整個教育系統的生態，而本地多項調查顯示大部分教師承受着高度的工作壓力，有許多更近乎耗盡。本文採用綜合方法，深入調查教育改革對肢體傷殘學校教師所帶來的外在及內部影響。就其外在影響，作者運用歷史研究法及文件分析法調查；至於內部影響，則透過問卷調查、個別面談、焦點小組三種方法搜集資料。經過分析資料及討論觀點後，作者向教育官員、學校領導、特校教師提出建議，望後者在不同階段的教學生涯中獲得支援。
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