This narrative study explored pre-service teachers’ critical learning experiences in Hong Kong during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement and how these experiences transformed their perspectives on the teaching profession. Forty pre-service teachers participated in the study, including 16 local participants and 24 originally from mainland China. Using Jarvis’s transformative learning model, this study identified four categories of narratives: society-centred, person-centred, relation-centred, and witness-lens narrative accounts. These narratives demonstrated the participants’ various approaches during the transformation process, including reflection, emotion, and self-identification. Changes resulting from these experiences varied from radical perspective-taking to no change occurring. The Hong Kong locals mainly presented society-centred narrative accounts, whereas the majority of participants from mainland China reported person-centred narrative accounts. Their varied previous lifeworld experiences and self-identification explained the differences. The present study highlights the importance of including emotion and identity instead of taking a single constructive perspective when explaining the process of transformative learning. In addition, it shows that the process and outcomes of transformation do not naturally follow a positive direction of growth. Future studies should examine teacher’s transformation using a narrative approach and longitudinal design. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s).

By innovatively applying positioning theory with reference to a framework of willingness, capability and power, this study explored how pre-service teachers’ professional identities dynamically change through the negotiation of various positions. A qualitative approach was adopted using data from six Hong Kong pre-service teachers in a teacher education programme for teaching Chinese as a second language. Multiple data sources, including interviews, reflective journals, classroom observations and lesson plans, were collected over one year. Pre-service teachers were found to negotiate individual deliberated self-positionings before entering the education programme and forced self-positionings from significant others during the education programme in three key stages: pre-positioning, negotiated positioning and performed positioning. Three differentiated positioning trajectories were identified that were greatly influenced by the pre-service teachers’ levels of willingness, capability and power. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper examines teaching practices prevailing across five cities (Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, Singapore and Taipei) for the underpinning pedagogical identities that inform practice (identity grafting). The study adopts innovative approaches via OECD teacher surveys to identify relationships between pedagogical identities (highly effective, outcome-centred, discipline-centred, diversity-centred and lowly effective) and teaching effectiveness in implementing pedagogically informed practice (instructional: learning-focused and assessments; classroom management: motivational, discipline and diversity). An original concept of identity grafting is employed to highlight which pedagogical identities best support teaching effectiveness (blending, integrating, reversing and repressing). Cluster analysis rigorously compares teachers’ pedagogical identities, teaching effectiveness and identity grafts in all five cities. Shanghai and Singapore have the largest segments of highly effective teachers within the local teacher population. However, Singapore likewise has the largest segment of lowly effective teachers among the cities, and Shanghai teachers are overall less likely to value diversity management than teachers in other cities. Across the cities, teachers who implement diverse practices by blending or integrating, and, to some extent, reversing pedagogical identities, have more effectiveness than those who repress their identities. The results provide globally significant insights into targeted professional development for different teacher segments within and between contexts. Copyright © 2023 International Professional Development Association (IPDA).

By innovatively applying positioning theory with reference to a framework of willingness, capability and power, this study explored how pre-service teachers' professional identities dynamically change through the negotiation of various positions. A qualitative approach was adopted using data from six Hong Kong pre-service teachers in a teacher education programme for teaching Chinese as a second language. Multiple data sources, including interviews, reflective journals, classroom observations and lesson plans, were collected over one year. Pre-service teachers were found to negotiate individual deliberated self-positionings before entering the education programme and forced self-positionings from significant others during the education programme in three key stages: pre-positioning, negotiated positioning and performed positioning. Three differentiated positioning trajectories were identified that were greatly influenced by the pre-service teachers' levels of willingness, capability and power. Copyright ©2021 Routledge.

This paper aims at extending the understanding of principal leadership in support of teachers' development of robot-based pedagogy for students in a cross-school professional learning community (PLC) of Hong Kong's special education. Sixty representative teachers from over 30 special schools, that is 50% of the total number of special schools, participated in the community over the past 2 years. The teachers not only developed the pedagogy but also observed and collaborated in the schools regarding their technological, pedagogical and content knowledge. The development of robot-based learning for individual students' different special educational needs is an innovative differentiated approach to fostering socially just learning in schools. The key research question is: How could teacher professional development of robot-based pedagogies for all students build a social-justice school? We adopted a qualitative cross-case study of four schools participating in the PLC. Although the professional development did not aim at principals' and teachers' social-justice practices for all students, the case study demonstrated the principals' leadership support and the teachers' enthusiasm for learning to change their pedagogies with the use of new robotic technology for socially just differentiated teaching. Implications of the cross-school PLC for building social-justice school communities are also discussed. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper aims to extend our understanding of the influence of school professional cultures and principal leadership effects on early-career teacher leadership aspiration, learning and development in the evolving hybrid of Western and Confucian cultures of Hong Kong. What are early-career teachers’ aspirations of leadership development in different professional cultures of the school? How do the principal leadership effects facilitate or hinder teacher leadership development in the professional culture? A multiple case study approach was adopted. Findings show that positive professional culture built by professional relationships between the principals and teachers and among teachers can stimulate early-career teacher leadership aspiration. The principal leadership effects can facilitate and hinder professional collaboration and support for the teacher leadership development in the Chinese school hierarchy of Hong Kong. This study contributes to unveiling in-depth understandings of teacher leadership aspiration, learning and development as the socially constructed experiences of the teachers in contrast to the professional culture highlighted in the school document. Insights gained from the study can inform the in-school progression of teacher leadership development in the school hierarchy. Implications for school achievement through continuing professional development are also highlighted. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Drawing on the approach of narrative inquiry, this study looks into how a novice language teacher educator constructed and reconstructed his professional identities through his research and publishing practice in the higher education context in Hong Kong. The findings of the study show that the participant constantly tried to defend and develop his identity as a ‘language teacher educator-researcher’, which was subjected to various contextual obstacles including the institutional policy, the ‘publish-or-perish’ culture and the potential bias against practice-oriented research and peripheral research contexts. This study contributes to our understanding of the challenges and complexities involved in novice teacher educators’ identity construction. The study also offers some practical implications for both language teacher education and higher education on how to help teacher educators construct a solid and strong researcher identity to support their professional practice and development.
[Copyright © 2016 International Professional Development Association (IPDA).]

This article reports on a qualitative study that explored the experiences of eight Hong Kong teachers of academic subjects who undertook a full-time, short-term professional development course (PDC) designed to provide them with specialized knowledge and classroom skills required to teach content subjects through the English medium. Using a theoretical framework for understanding teacher identity, the study examined how these eight teachers believed the experiences of a short-term PDC shaped their ongoing identity construction, particularly upon completion of the course and subsequent return to their respective schools. Based upon in-depth interviews with participants and using methods of discourse analysis, the results suggest that while participants believed the impact of the PDC in terms of their own classroom teaching was positive, they faced significant challenges in realizing their preferred identity positions within the context of their whole school communities. The response of some participants to these difficulties indicated that their PDC experiences may have contributed to the establishment of a rigid division between different types of teachers within schools and that relations of antagonism appeared to exist between these different teacher identities. Implications for overcoming such divisions for the design of PDCs and for future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2011.576262]

Educational reforms have created tremendous stress for teachers in many parts of the world. This paper discusses the inadequacies of policy-makers treating teachers as having 'deficits' that require 'fixes', rather than addressing bigger system issues that cause their stress. Drawing from the case of a Hong Kong professional teacher development course, this paper argues for the use of 'personal growth' as the main concept for professional development of teachers in the midst of educational reforms. The course addressed the changing roles and identities of teachers amid educational reforms and societal changes, and enhanced teachers' competence in dealing with increasingly diverse student populations. Quantitative and qualitative post-programme data showed that participants gained competence in self-understanding, caring for students as unique individuals, thinking within a systems framework and building a learning community. Implications for teacher education are discussed.
[Copyright of Professional Development in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415250903017341]

Mentoring has been widely recognized as an important aspect of the professional preparation of beginning teachers. How mentoring is viewed bears important implications for how mentoring is to be practiced and experienced. This study investigated the views of mentoring held by mentors, mentored in-service teachers and university teachers in a mentoring scheme initiated by a university in Hong Kong. Ten pairs of mentors and mentored in-service teachers and three university teachers participated in in-depth individual interviews designed to explore their views of mentoring with respect to five themes: mentor selection and preparation; mentor roles and responsibilities; mentor-mentee relationships; the mentoring programme; and school-university relationships. The findings show that the dynamic interaction between mentors, mentored in-service teachers and university teachers shaped the learning opportunities for the mentored in-service teachers. This paper argues that teaching practice and mentored learning to teach play an important role in in-service teachers' professional preparation. To strengthen in-service teacher learning, key players in the mentoring scheme should attain a shared vision of mentoring for in-service teachers and work together to create an integrated curriculum for the learning of in-service teachers.
[Copyright of Professional Development in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415250903115962]