G5 Doctoral dissertation (article)
Teacher identity tensions and professional agency in the Hong Kong context (2024)


Lau, J. (2024). Teacher identity tensions and professional agency in the Hong Kong context [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Jyväskylä. JYU Dissertations, 779. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-86-0147-0


JYU authors or editors


Publication details

All authors or editors: Lau, Josephine

eISBN: 978-952-86-0147-0

Journal or series: JYU Dissertations

eISSN: 2489-9003

Publication year: 2024

Number in series: 779

Number of pages in the book: 1 verkkoaineisto (80 sivua, 58 sivua useina numerointijaksoina, 3 numeroimatonta sivua)

Publisher: University of Jyväskylä

Place of Publication: Jyväskylä

Publication country: Finland

Publication language: English

Persistent website address: https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-86-0147-0

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Open Access channel


Abstract

Teachers are the frontline actors in transforming education practices and actualising pedagogical innovations to prepare young generations for societal challenges and future uncertainties. However, teacher identity tensions can arise when external demands and expectations conflict with teachers’ beliefs and values regarding the profession. The unsolved tensions decrease teachers’ job satisfaction and commitment to the profession. To reinforce teacher career development for education transformation, it is important to engage teachers as active agents and support their professional agency along the career trajectory. Teachers’ agency can be enacted by developing their own and community’s work practices, exerting influence in the organisation, and negotiating their professional identity with the situated context.
Research gaps still exist regarding what teacher identity tensions crop up along the career trajectory and how professional agency changes and continues via longitudinal lenses. Additionally, empirical studies that delve into contexts featuring a workplace culture of high power distance are even rarer. This dissertation aims to investigate teacher identity tensions and professional agency in the sociocultural context of Hong Kong. The dissertation includes three substudies utilising qualitative methods. Substudy I revealed teachers’ identity tensions in the situated sociopolitical context and immediate school context and how different career stages are related to these identity tensions and the associated coping strategies. Substudy II concentrated on teachers’ professional agency in the Hong Kong context, which features a centralised-decentralisation education governance system and a hierarchical cultural work environment. The substudy presented the agency enacted in terms of pedagogical and relational aspects and the agency-promoting factors related to the context. Substudy III was a longitudinal study that explored the changes and continuities of teachers’ agency and identified four agency types: expanding, strategic, exploring and withering.
This dissertation argues that teacher professional identity and agency could be empowered through trust in management, a collaborative work community, accessibility to resources beyond the school context, and the availability of democratic communication channels to the central policies despite the historically and culturally embedded hierarchical structure in a work environment like that in Hong Kong.

Keywords: longitudinal study; teacher career development; teacher identity tensions; teacher professional agency; qualitative analysis


Keywords: teachers; professional identity; values (conceptions); contradictions; human agency; career development; longitudinal research; doctoral dissertations

Free keywords: longitudinal study; teacher career development; teacher identity tensions; teacher professional agency; qualitative analysis


Contributing organizations


Ministry reporting: Yes

VIRTA submission year: 2024


Last updated on 2024-02-07 at 23:05