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Abstract

In the late 1990s, Hong Kong and Shanghai began placed increasing emphasis on teacher development to raise the overall quality of education. As such, this research is guided by three questions: First, what approaches to teacher development have Hong Kong and Shanghai used? Second, in the views of teachers in the two cities, how have the different approaches to teacher development contributed to their professional growth? Third, how have reflection and collegiality helped teachers’ professional development in the two cities? This study used a qualitative approach based on in-depth interviews, with a sample of four schools in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Among the four schools studied, only the renowned Shanghai school had a strong teacher development system in place. The other three schools lacked systematic approaches to teacher development. Teacher reflection differed among the two cities: Hong Kong teachers tended to exhibit individual reflection, whereas Shanghai teachers tended to show imposed reflection, a method that had been set into place by the school's teaching research unit. Collegiality in the Hong Kong ordinary school could be identified as sharing, whereas collegiality in the Shanghai renowned school could be categorized as contrived collegiality. Teacher development in the Hong Kong's renowned school and Shanghai's ordinary school mainly relied on individualism.

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Approaches to Teacher Development in China: Hong Kong and Shanghai

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