Educational-policy makers worldwide are concerned with finding effective strategies to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. The recruitment of second-career teachers has been seen as one means of fulfilling this aim. Against a background of calls to better understand SCTs, this article reports the results of a qualitative study investigating the experiences of six second-career teachers in Hong Kong. Based on a theoretical framework of teacher-identity construction, discourse analysis was used to explore the participants' perceptions of their professional development. In-depth interviews were conducted to gain detailed insights into how the teachers construct their identities-in-practice and identities-in-discourse within Hong Kong schools. The findings expose tensions between attempts the positioning of SCTs within dominant discourses as 'traditional' and 'conventional' teachers, for example, and the participants' self-positioning in practice as 'innovative' and 'risk-taking' teachers. Ways in SCT agency, and hence identity construction, can be facilitated through the introduction of the innovative pedagogical practices which many SCTs seek to pursue in Hong Kong schools are considered. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study that examined the perspectives of one group of teacher educators and pre-service teachers about a teaching internship in Hong Kong. Reflecting recent interest in both a practice turn in pre-service teacher education as well as teacher identity construction, the study uses in-depth interviews to reveal how both teacher educators and pre-service teachers construct the meaning of a teaching internship. The results suggest that two discourses dominate such meanings: the discourse of integration and the discourse of separation. The study not only reveals the presence of these discourses but, moreover, considers how their interplay provides affordances for and constraints upon the capacity of pre-service teachers to construct their professional identities during the teaching internship. This exploration suggests that this interplay can lead to identity conflict for pre-service teachers. Implications for overcoming such conflict in ways that support the construction of pre-service teachers' professional identities are considered and suggestions for future comparative research discussed. Copyright © 2018 Teacher Development.

Despite widespread acknowledgement of the contribution of nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) to teaching English as an international language, the privileging of native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and native-speaker competency, and concomitant marginalization of NNESTs, continues in many countries. To investigate and problematize the role the NEST-NNEST dichotomy plays in teachers' professional identity construction, this article explores the ways in which multiple discourses interact to enable and constrain opportunities for such construction through in-depth interviews with teachers in Hong Kong. It raises questions about the failure of previous investigations to adequately problematize discourses that establish and support divisions between Hong Kong teachers and also questions the assumption that such divisions are necessarily associated with perceptions of marginalization among those positioned as NNESTs. This article presents suggestions for contesting discourses that establish and support hierarchical relations between teachers and discusses the implications for future research.
[Copyright © 2016 Taylor & Francis.]

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.]

Early childhood education in Hong Kong has developed rapidly in the recent years in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, in the past three decades, the social status of early childhood education and early childhood educators were low comparing with other educational sections. The recent growth in early childhood education in Hong Kong has raised the early childhood teachers’ teacher identity. Teacher identity is an explicit view of self as teacher (Franzak, 2002) and is continually being informed, formed and reformed over time (Cooper and Olson, 1996). It evolves over career stages (Huberman, 1993) and is shaped by different forces: background, school experience, school, reform, and political contexts (Datnow et al., 2000; Sachs, 2000). In this study, my intention is to discuss how these social phenomenon and educational policies enhance three early childhood teachers’ professional identity over three decades.

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.]