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ENQUIRE PROJECT DETAILS BY GENERAL PUBLIC |
| Project Details |
| Funding Scheme : | General Research Fund | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Number : | 14613518 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Title(English) : | Nurturing teachers for culturally diverse schools in Hong Kong: How can teachers be equipped to be culturally responsive teachers? | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Title(Chinese) : | 培養教師回應香港學校的多元文化：如何裝備教師成為回應多元文化的教師? | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Principal Investigator(English) : | Prof Wong, Jocelyn Lai-ngok | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Principal Investigator(Chinese) : | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Department : | Dept of Educational Administration & Policy | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Institution : | The Chinese University of Hong Kong | ||||||||||||||||||||
| E-mail Address : | jlnwong@cuhk.edu.hk | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Tel : | 26096955 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Co - Investigator(s) : |
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| Panel : | Humanities, Social Sciences | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Subject Area : | Education | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Exercise Year : | 2018 / 19 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Fund Approved : | 607,920 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Status : | Completed | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Completion Date : | 31-12-2022 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Objectives : |
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| Abstract as per original application (English/Chinese): |
Ethnic minority students have long been perceived as a disadvantaged group in schools. In Hong Kong, research on school performance of ethnic minority students has had a key focus on language learning and cultural adaptation but not much has been done regarding the role of teachers. Teachers’ cultural awareness, professional needs and training highly affect their interaction with and teaching of ethnic minority students. Studies focusing on teachers’ competency to develop a culturally responsive learning environment for ethnic minority students are also rare. To bridge this research gap, this study will be guided by the research question “How can teachers be equipped to be culturally responsive teachers?” It will examine teachers’ views on cultural diversity, views that will affect their multicultural daily practice. Their professional needs and whether their needs have been addressed by existing teacher education programmes will be fully explored to seek a basis to develop culturally responsive classrooms. Suggestions on ways to improve the existing teacher training to equip teachers as culturally responsive will also be discussed.
This study will apply a mixed method approach with three stages of the data collection process. Data collected from individual interviews with 20 school teachers and the analysis of school document (Stage 1) will identify teachers’ sense of cultural diversity, their daily practice of teaching ethnic minority students, their professional needs, teacher training and ways to encounter challenges. In Stage 2, documentary analysis of teacher education courses aiming at equipping teachers with competency to teach ethnic minority students will take place. Results of these two stages will serve as the foundation for the design of a questionnaire (Stage 3). It is planned that 300 questionnaires to 60 schools will be delivered in order to collect wider views from teachers who teach ethnic minority students.
Findings of this study will contribute to the global discussions on influential factors and ways to develop culturally responsive teachers by examining their views, daily practice, professional needs and the teacher training they received. It is expected that the current research gap regarding this particular aspect will be reduced by this study. Furthermore, identifying ways to help schools and teachers develop socially just classrooms will not only contribute to the re-examination of the existing teacher education programmes by placing more emphasis on social justice but also may help initiate the reallocation of education resources to support the educational initiative to provide equal learning opportunity for students.
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| Realisation of objectives: | This study applied a mixed method approach to explore local teachers’ perceptions on their sense of multiculturalism, and their professional needs when they encounter challenges brought by students with diverse cultural background. Their views on ways to enhance their roles to perform as multicultural teachers has also been discussed. All of these shed light on the discussion of the revisited of the teacher education programme for helping teachers to develop a culturally responsive practice in schools. The data collection process included three stages. Firstly, qualitative data were generated from interviews with 33 teachers with varied experience to teach ethnic minority students from both primary and secondary schools. Secondly, the existing teacher education programmes offered by the tertiary education institutions, the government and NGOs, aiming at nurturing teachers with multicultural competency were collected. Thirdly, a questionnaire based on findings of the interviews plus several related surveys was designed. 197 valid questionnaires from 31 secondary schools and 30 primary schools were collected. Exploratory Factor analysis was applied to analyze the collected data. Viewing the results of this study, the four stated objectives are all fully achieved. Details are explained as belows: Objective 1: Fully achieved Findings of Research question 1 “What are teachers’ views on multicultural education for ethnic minority students?” provide relevant information to respond Objective 1 of this study. Two data set can address this objective. Firstly, multicultural awareness of teachers who teach ethnic minority students was statistically analyzed and divided into three major groups: "N1 Getting along with people of different cultural backgrounds," "N2 How I communicate and connect with people of different cultural backgrounds," and "N3 Bias against people of different cultural backgrounds. Except for the third factor, the other two factors (N1, N2) are higher than 3.45. Hence, "N1 Getting along with people from different cultural backgrounds" and "N2 How I communicate and connect with people from different cultural backgrounds" are "more necessary" and "very necessary" in terms of respondents' professional needs. Viewing this, teachers’ perceptions on multiculturalism is deemed the basis of how they deliver multicultural education to their ethnic minority students. Teachers’ perceptions on implementing multicultural education can also be viewed from the challenges faced by them. After the analysis, these challenges can be broadly classified into three major categories: "A1 Teach and understand ethnic minority students" (3.52), "A2 Teaching and administrative support for inclusive learning for ethnic minority" (3.61), and "A3 Ethnic minority students’ Chinese language teaching"(3.94). Therefore, it shows that the majority of the respondents were most concerned about teaching Chinese to ethnic minority students and how the students can use Chinese language as a medium of learning. The above two set of data have been highly associated with teachers’ views on their willingness to implement multicultural education in their daily practice. Objective 1 of this study, therefore, has been fully achieved. Objective 2: Fully achieved Findings of Research question 2 “What are the professional needs of teachers who work closely with ethnic minority students?” provided answers for Objective 2 of this study. Data address the intellectual and structural needs for teachers to develop their cultural competency. Intellectual needs mainly refer to learning needs of teachers including the knowledge, skills and attitudes they expected to acquire. Among five learning needs of teachers studied, skills issues are ranked higher than other needs, such as knowledge and attitudes. Skills needs seem to involve three parts, all of which were rated as a higher score as 4, including “N2 Needs in having skills to teach ethnic minority students effectively” and “N5 Needs in having skills to help ethnic minority students to overcome learning disadvantages” have the same score as 4.06. “N3 Needs in having skills to guide and educate ethnic minority students” is slightly lower with the scoring as 4.01. Relatively, knowledge which is named as “N1 Needs in having knowledge about teaching ethnic minority students” covered nine questions, the largest number of this section, but its scoring only at 3.95. Learning having appropriate attitude seems to have the lowest means score among all five learning needs with scoring at 3.90 on “N4 Needs in having inclusive attitude to ethnic minority students”. From the data shown, interestingly, respondents seem to generally feel that learning how to teach ethnic minority students (Skill needs N2, 3 and 5) was rather important than what to teach (knowledge needs N1), and why have to teach (attitude needs N4). For the structural needs, teachers would like to have supports from their schools and the government. Data showed that teachers' needs for support can be categorized into two major groups: "R1 Substantive training" and "R2 Teachers' autonomy in teaching". Almost all of the questions had a mean value higher than 4. Among the 16 items, only "Reducing overall teaching time" scored lower than 4, with a score of 3.85. Combined findings from both structural needs and learning needs, Objective 2 has been addressed. Objective 3: Fully achieved Findings of Research Question 3 “What teacher education programmes have they received, if any, to equip them to have cultural competency and cultural awareness in teaching?” provided answers for Objective 3 of this study. This study showed that only 27.5% of respondents had received relevant teacher training to equip their teaching competency for ethnic minority students. They grouped their learning content into three types: “PP1 Learn to guide ethnic minority students to have cultural inclusiveness”, “PP2 Enhance ability to teach ethnic minority students effectively” and “PP3 Have Better understanding of ethnic minority students”. However, the means sore of each group of factors showed that such training programmes seem to put a more learning content in the skill aspect rather than knowledge of cultural diversity. Equipping teachers with the view of cultural diversity as a way to help students to develop their sense of inclusiveness has not yet been placed at a higher priority of the existing training programmes. Objective 4: Fully achieved Findings of Research Question 3 also provided answers for Objective 4 of this study. Teachers were asked their expected training to equip them with cultural awareness. After the analysis, their responses were grouped as two: “ET1 Expect to have better understanding of ethnic minority students and have ability to guide them to be cultural inclusive” (4.03) and “ET2. Expect to have ability to teach ethnic minority students effectively” (4.16). Clearly, teachers studied seem to put their key focus on how to teach rather than develop their cultural understanding of ethnic minority students. Viewing this, a proposed teacher education framework with a three level study scheme for frontline teachers has been suggested based on Van Manen view’s (1977) on reflection. Practical reflection helps teachers have a clear alignment of what and how they have to teach (Level 2) with the consideration of their knowledge of different cultures (Level 1). Critical reflection may shape teachers’ understanding of Level 1 if a whole school approach to the diversity issue is applied. If so, teachers may move away from their monocultural mindset and transform their role as ‘cultural broker’ with an ‘emic view’. Level 3 courses can act as independent or action research which serves as a platform for participants to put what they have learnt about multiculturalism in Level 1 and 2 into their school practice. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Summary of objectives addressed: |
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| Research Outcome | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Major findings and research outcome: | Major findings of this research are presented as follows: 1. Language competency of multicultural teachers Teachers studied generally face the greatest challenges is to use Chinese to teach. Ability to address both native and learning languages in order to create an effective communication environment could be one type of efficiency competency that a multicultural teacher should have. 2. Focus of teacher learning programmes Interestingly, respondents seemed to view that attitude aspect (why to teach) is less important than teaching skills (how to teach) and knowledge to teach (what to teach). Therefore, the design of the teacher education programme should put a strong emphasis on nurturing teachers with openness to diversity, self-awareness and self-reflectiveness and commitment to provide a socially just learning environment for students. 3. Being human relations multicultural teachers Teachers studied ideally would like to take up their role as ‘human relations” multicultural teachers but the existing classroom language arrangement may force them being “assimilationist”. A revisited of the language policy in schools may help teachers to bridge such a gap. 4. Reflection in teacher education programme Teachers studied have not yet reached a level of social action approach of diversity. Therefore, a proposed teacher education framework with a three level study scheme may help to respond this challenge. Outcomes of this research project take three forms. Firstly, one manuscript entitled as “What type of knowledge can equip teachers to be culturally responsive?” was submitted to Teaching and Teacher Education (Q1 SSCI) for review. Another manuscript entitled as “What do I need to learn when I teach ethnic minority students in moncultural school settings? A study in Hong Kong” was submitted to International Journal of Educational Research (Q2 SSCI) for review . Another manuscript entitled as “Cultural awareness of teachers in Hong Kong: A perspective of professional capital” is in the pipeline. It is planned to be submit to Journal of Education for Teaching, a Q1 SSCI journal, in July 2023. Secondly, three conference presentations funded by the GRF grant were delivered. Another conference presentation with the acknowledgement of GRF grant will be conducted in July 2023. Thirdly, one technical report based on the findings of this research was sent to each participating school and each interviewee respectively. Suggestions on ways to improve the quality of teaching ethnic minority students have been made. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Potential for further development of the research and the proposed course of action: |
Two possible future research directions can be further considered: Firstly, research on the design of appropriate assessment framework that can facilitate ethnic minority students’ learning could be a way forward. The Education Bureau in Hong Kong continues to use the same standards to teach ethnic minority students whose cultural traditions are different from the local culture and values. This not only makes it more difficult for teachers to teach ethnic minority students, but also makes it more difficult for ethnic minority students to pursue higher education. Research on the differentiation, rather than one size fit all approach, of assessment framework can match the learning needs of ethnic minority students will definitely motivate ethnic minority students to learn. Secondly, home school collaboration has been an influential factor to promote good quality of learning experience for ethnic minority students. However, this is an area that has not yet been fully discussed. In Hong Kong, moncultural school practice make home school collaboration with ethnic minority parents being unlikely to achieve. Viewing this, research on how to encourage ethnic minority parents to engage in local schools is important. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Layman's Summary of Completion Report: | Research on teaching ethnic minority students has put its key focus on students’ learning difficulties. Little attention has been paid to the professional needs of teachers when they have to face challenges brought by diverse student background. To address this research gap, this study focusses on “what teachers learn and how they develop themselves to be culturally responsive” by identifying their professional needs, examining challenges they encountered when they interacting with ethnic minority students, their expected teacher education programmes that can nurture them with a sense of cultural awareness and teaching competency. Data gathered in this study help us to understand teachers’ sense of multiculturalism, challenges they have to face, their learning needs and expected supports from their schools and the government. Findings of this study may contribute to the design of teacher education programmes for nurturing teachers in Hong Kong with multicultural competency by pinpointing key areas where the skillsets and knowledge bases of teachers studied need to be supplemented for maximum effectiveness. More importantly, this study sheds further light on the global discussion on improving teaching quality for ethnic minority students by addressing teachers’ professional needs. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Research Output | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Peer-reviewed journal publication(s) arising directly from this research project : (* denotes the corresponding author) |
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| Recognized international conference(s) in which paper(s) related to this research project was/were delivered : |
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| Other impact (e.g. award of patents or prizes, collaboration with other research institutions, technology transfer, etc.): |
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| SCREEN ID: SCRRM00542 |