Teachers' Identities and Life Choices

1.Introduction

2.Hybridities, border crossing and yin-yang

3.Methodology

4.Dialectics of the Chinese culture: Continuities and changes in the Confucian order

5.Evolving hybrid femininities (yin) and masculinities (yang)

6.Intergenerational issues concerning primary school teachers

7.Teachers' professional identities and career choices when education reforms meet with Confucian cultural heritage in education

8.Mid-life secondary female teachers' identities, work and work-life interface

9. Struggling with gender borders: Implications for gender equity for the next generation

10.Conclusion

LUK-FONG Yuk Yee Pattie holds a BA (Geography) and a MEd (Curriculum) from the University of Hong Kong, a MAEd (Counselling) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a PhD degree (Education) from the University of Canberra, Australia. She is currently an adjunct associate professor of the Department of Special Education and Counselling at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd). For over three decades she has been a teacher educator: first in the teaching of geography, then in school guidance and counselling. She has worked respectively as a secondary school teacher, Teaching Consultant of the Faculty of Education of the University of Hong Kong, and Senior Lecturer and Principal Lecturer at the Grantham, the Sir Robert Black and the Northcote Colleges of Education in Hong Kong. She joined the HKIEd in 1994 and worked there as associate professor until her retirement in 2011. Her primary research foci are: guidance and counselling, self and personal identities, gender identities in teachers, and family changes. She developed and taught undergraduate and post-graduate courses on guidance and counselling, the Self and Personal Development module for Liberal Studies, and School-Based Family Counselling. She has published in over 25 international academic journals and over 15 book chapters, including "Competing Contexts for Developing Personal and Social Education in Hong Kong"(Comparative Education, 2001) and "Towards a Hybrid Conceptualization of Chinese Women Primary School Teachers' Changing Feminities - A Case Study of Hong Kong" (Gender and Education, 2011). She co-edited with Dr Lee Man Yuk Ching the book, 'School Guidance: Trends and Practices" (Hong Kong University Press, 2011). Dr Luk-Fong is a founding member of the HKIEd's Gender Matters Group, and the Consortium of Institutes on Family in the Asian region (CIFA). She was also the recipient of the Award for Outstanding Contribution toSchool-Based Family Counselling (Oxford Symposium in

 'The work on teacher identity tends to be "inward looking" i.e within the field only, whereas this [book] links broader issues to the lived experiences of actual teachers. The Hong Kong experience will have broad relevance - and not just in Confucian-heritage cultural settings. In addition, the accessible writing and broad contextualisation regarding globalisation suggest it will be very relevant to educators in most countries. I think it (this book) would complement recent work on teacher identity by major figures such as Janet Alsup, June, Beynon, or Ian Hextall, and update some of the older work e.g. Andy Hargreaves, Ivor Goodson etc' - Professor Marie Brennan, Victoria University, Melbourne  'Dr Pattie Luk has worked in this area for some time focussing on teacher identities in these uncertain times. The uniqueness of her work is in its cultural position. She is one of the few educators whose work comes specifically from a Chinese perspective. The book is theoretically rich in considering a diversity of views although there is of course a heavy weight on Eastern perspectives. But this is a strength, in my view, since these are largely missing from the large body of Western literature on this topic.More needs to be known about the distinctiveness of Eastern cultures and this book can make an important contribution in this regard.' - Professor Kerry Kennedy, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong

'The work on teacher identity tends to be "inward looking" i.e within the field only, whereas this [book] links broader issues to the lived experiences of actual teachers. The Hong Kong experience will have broad relevance - and not just in Confucian-heritage cultural settings. In addition, the accessible writing and broad contextualisation regarding globalisation suggest it will be very relevant to educators in most countries. I think it (this book) would complement recent work on teacher identity by major figures such as Janet Alsup, June, Beynon, or Ian Hextall, and update some of the older work e.g. Andy Hargreaves, Ivor Goodson etc'

- Professor Marie Brennan, Victoria University, Melbourne



'Dr Pattie Luk has worked in this area for some time focussing on teacher identities in these uncertain times. The uniqueness of her work is in its cultural position. She is one of the few educators whose work comes specifically from a Chinese perspective. The book is theoretically rich in considering a diversity of views although there is of course a heavy weight on Eastern perspectives. But this is a strength, in my view, since these are largely missing from the large body of Western literature on this topic.More needs to be known about the distinctiveness of Eastern cultures and this book can make an important contribution in this regard.'
- Professor Kerry Kennedy, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong