Presentation Schedule
How Can I Improve My Out-of-field Teaching? Learning Needs of Out-of-field Chinese History Teachers in Hong Kong (94444)
Session Chair: Khuloud Al Hammadi
Sunday, 13 July 2025 09:25
Session: Session 1
Room: UCL Torrington, G12 (Ground Floor)
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
Assigning out-of-field teachers to teach subject(s) or level(s) has been a common educational practice in many nations to resolve the problem of teacher shortage but at the expense of teaching quality. Recently, very few studies have focused on ways to improve the professional competency of out-of-field teachers in Mathematics and Science, but not on out-of-field teachers from Languages and Social Sciences. Their skill sets and knowledge bases that can be further enhanced to maximize the effectiveness of the teaching force have been under-presented. To address this research gap, this pilot study uses a phenomenological approach to report on interviews data gathered from ten out-of-field Chinese History teachers in Hong Kong from the Interconnected Model perspective (initial as IM, Clarke & Hollingworth, 2002). In 2017, 51% of the teaching force of Chinese History was from out-of-field backgrounds. This problem has been exacerbated since 2021, but with very limited extra resource inputs to remedy this problem. The initial findings of this study are twofold. First, content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, the elements of Personal Domain of the IM, are the urgent learning needs for teachers studied. Second, there is a mismatch between in-service learning programmes and the knowledge needs of teachers studied, an area which has not yet been fully explored in the External Domain of the IM. In all, this study attempts to help policymakers and school leaders be aware of providing support to make the out-of-field teaching force more sustainable.
Authors:
Jocelyn L. N. Wong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Jocelyn L. N. Wong is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong
See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule
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