Understanding mainland Chinese students' motivations for choosing teacher education programmes in Hong Kong

Abstract

In this paper, we report on an inquiry exploring the experiences of 10 mainland Chinese student teachers of English so as to understand why they came to Hong Kong for a teacher education programme. The study revealed that these students were largely attracted to teaching in Hong Kong because of its extrinsic benefits such as professional stability, the prestige associated with the English language teaching profession and the opportunities to acquire valued skills transferable to other professions including English competence. Facing challenges as non‐local students, they were also uncertain of becoming teachers in the new context. As ‘elite’ Chinese students were often unwilling to become teachers, we found it strategic to attract a large number of talented non‐local students to the teaching profession and retain them. We conclude the paper with recommendations for various stakeholders to support these non‐local students' adaptation and development as committed and competent teachers in local schools.

Keywords:

• motivation
• pre‐service student teachers
• the biographic method
• mainland Chinese students
• English medium tertiary education

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Professor Peter Gilroy and reviewers for their constructive comments on our original manuscript. We would also like to thank the Research Centre into Language Education in Multilingual Societies (RCLEMS), Hong Kong Institute of Education, for its generous funding and support for the project.