The development of kindergarten practitioners’ professional identity in Hong Kong: Results of the first phase of research

Recent reforms have given rise to a set of paradoxes about the nature of kindergarten education and the professional identity of kindergarten practitioners in Hong Kong. Against the current policy environment, the present research employs a mixed-method approach to investigate the professional identity development of Hong Kong kindergarten practitioners, who are caught between the different expectations of the government and parents. This presentation will report the results of the first phase of the research, in which individual and focus group interviews were conducted with the principals and teachers of eight randomly-selected kindergartens to identify the attributes of professional identity that are relevant to the context of kindergarten education reform. The evidence generated will shed light on the complexity of the relationships among parents, kindergartens, and the government within the context of educational restructurings and inform the development of the instruments which will be used in the following data collection phases.