Peter Sidorko, Ruth Wong, Alice Tai and Eva Wong
To describe the introduction of a collaborative, user‐initiated, unmediated, interlibrary loan service for returnables between initially three and then all eight universities in…
Abstract
Purpose
To describe the introduction of a collaborative, user‐initiated, unmediated, interlibrary loan service for returnables between initially three and then all eight universities in Hong Kong.
Design/methodology/approach
Historical narrative combined with user and staff evaluation.
Findings
The introduction of the service has been a great success.
Originality/value
This article describes in detail the introduction of a service that will be of interest and relevance to many other libraries facing declining budgets and the need to share resources in an efficient and effective way.
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Teacher learning communities (TLCs) formed within subject departments are conceptualized as reform platform for facilitating school improvement and teacher development. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Teacher learning communities (TLCs) formed within subject departments are conceptualized as reform platform for facilitating school improvement and teacher development. The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which three TLCs were structured and managed for generating change capability in secondary schools in Hong Kong.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of the literature on the contribution of learning communities to teacher professional development, and the functions and styles of subject leadership provides the theoretical background of the study. Participant observations and semi-structured interviews were employed as the main instruments for the investigation into the potentials of TLCs for enhancing professional renewals. Narrative accounts were obtained from a total of 21 teachers (including three subject leaders) on the nature and process of their participation in the renewal projects.
Findings
The findings of the interview study reveal the landscape of subject leadership orientations that shaped the collaborative practices, power relations and knowledge representations within TLCs. Variability is noted in the subject leaders’ concerns for harmonious relationship, executive control, professional growth and leadership empowerment. The spectrum of knowledge structure in these communities is marked by a hierarchical relationship on one end, and a heterarchical relationship on the other.
Research limitations/implications
This paper portrays the dynamics within three TLCs, and depicts a continuum of three leadership styles. The literature on subject leadership in TLCs could be enriched with further investigations into the contextual variables and sources of influence that affect the choice of leadership orientations of subject leaders who grapple with a balance between managerial imperative for control and accountability and a learning imperative for participative explorations that satisfy teachers’ aspirations for autonomy and creative investments in their own professional enhancement.
Practical implications
Subject leadership training should emcompass reflective discourse on epistemological beliefs and assumptions on teacher learning and development, and leadership orientations that shape collaborative professional renewal practices.
Originality/value
While research studies conducted in the Western world show that reflective and collaborative inquiries within professional communities have helped to improve classroom practices and teacher development (e.g. Hord, 1997), yet little is known about the management practices of subject leaders that shape the internal cultural conditions, power relations and knowledge representation within their departments in the context of Hong Kong.
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The persistent growth of ‘nativists’ in Hong Kong not only highlighted people's consideration over mainlandization, it also stimulates Beijing's nerve on national security. This…
Abstract
Purpose
The persistent growth of ‘nativists’ in Hong Kong not only highlighted people's consideration over mainlandization, it also stimulates Beijing's nerve on national security. This paper adopts a critical perspective to explore the development of ‘Hong Kong Nationalism’ that emerged in 2015. It will show the development of ‘Hong Kong nationalism’ is a phenomenon compounded by the creation of critical academics, government exaggeration, and pro-Beijing media labeling. In fact, this phenomenon leads to the suppression of political space for critical opposition.
Design/methodology/approach
The interaction between Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government, central government, critical academics, and pro-Beijing media will be used to adopt a conceptual framework to show how their interrelationship would derive tremendous impacts to the development of ‘Hong Kong Nationalism.’ It will further investigate some implications for the further political development in Hong Kong.
Findings
The development of ‘Hong Kong Nationalism’ illustrates the triangular relations between critical academic, HKSAR and the Beijing government, and pro-Beijing media. The critical academics create and imagine such ‘Hong Kong Nationalism’ with Hong Kong's political destiny that stimulates the nerve of Beijing and HKSAR on territorial integrity. The ‘imagined nationalism’ advocated by critical and opposition academics and advanced by the activists not only opened the Pandora's box that derives a Trojan horse scenario for the development of pan-democratic camp which affects the democracy movement tremendously.
Originality
This paper is the first academic paper to explore ‘Hong Kong Nationalism’ through analyzing the discourse advocated by critical academics. This paper can also fill in the gap from existing literature about social movement in Hong Kong as most of them ignored the influence of radical nativist movement.
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This chapter details a cultural relevance of text project in-service K-12 teachers engage in during their graduate literacy methods class. Through this project, teachers, who work…
Abstract
This chapter details a cultural relevance of text project in-service K-12 teachers engage in during their graduate literacy methods class. Through this project, teachers, who work with emergent bilinguals, learn how to select culturally relevant texts using a rubric. They read their selection with a student and reflect on the experience. Four important conclusions came from an analysis of the projects teachers carried out. Teachers found that their students made connections and were more engaged when reading culturally relevant books. Participants found the rubric helpful in identifying what they should look for in a culturally relevant text. In addition, through this project, the teachers discovered that their libraries tended to lack culturally relevant literature. Finally, participant teachers learned more about their emergent bilingual students through the process of finding and reading culturally relevant stories. While this project was carried out by a limited number of teachers in urban environments, it has implications for teachers of emergent bilingual students in other contexts.
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This study aims to reveal and compare the cultural logics of university-educated Chinese mothers in Singapore and Hong Kong in their mothering practices to improvise their…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to reveal and compare the cultural logics of university-educated Chinese mothers in Singapore and Hong Kong in their mothering practices to improvise their femininities in constituting their work–family interactions.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative research, with the ethnographic elements, has included 32 Chinese mothers to share about their mothering experiences through semi-structured interviews. This methodological design with feminist lens embraces women’s own narratives as sources of knowledge and learns their voices to reinvent their role and bodily engagement in shaping their family dynamics.
Findings
This discussion basically reaffirms the argument where the mother’s involvement in their children’s schoolwork becomes one of the core elements in their actual everyday mothering practices. It has further reflected the dynamics of family quality time in the light of mothers’ cultural logics as much as their attentive agency capacity to present their respectable femininity in the form of mothering.
Research limitations/implications
This research process has revealed the actual experiences of the participants from their own narratives. For future research development, data collection can be extended to include the husbands’ profiles and their narratives in understanding their wives’ mothering experiences.
Originality/value
This discussion enriches the work-family literature by extending it to the Asian Chinese context. While the concepts of cultural capital and habitus have been addressed in previous studies, this discussion highlights the agency capacity of the university-educated Chinese mothers in their cultural logics to deliver their respective mothering practices. This filtering process to transmit cultural capital to their children is as much as they involve in reproducing status boundaries for the family.