Discovering the inner world of young curriculum leaders in Hong Kong secondary schools : a biographical research

Abstract

Leadership in management is always one of the most elaborated topics when professional development of teachers is concerned. However, not much investigation has been covered to explore the inner thoughts of the teachers who undergo role changes in educational institutions in the course of time. In the recent decade, new teachers in secondary schools in Hong Kong have experienced a harsh time and have been having burnout for almost twenty years (Mo, 1999). With the downsizing student intake that decreased the number of staff in the establishment of the schools, together with the New Senior Secondary curriculum introduced in 2009, novice teachers were facing challenges in their workplace in terms of both workload and adaptation to a new stage of life. It is therefore deduced that novice teachers who aspire to progress in the educational institutions might need extra effort to demonstrate their ability and outstand in the school to become administration leaders. Five budding curriculum teacher leaders were interviewed in this biographical research to explore how they perceived themselves as curriculum leaders and what attributed to their growth. From the narratives in the research, it was observed that young curriculum leaders’ growth is mostly driven by their personal factors, which include their personalities of being courageous, organizes and possessing the quality of integrity. These consists with Yukl’s analysis of the personality traits model of leaders (2002). Amidst the heavy workload issues in Hong Kong working as teachers (Lam, 2014), young curriculum leaders aspire to lead changes in their serving school and with their strong vision and mission in working in the field and they are willing to take up extra workload to help the growth of their students. They are suggested to expand their scope professionally to be ready to shine in the workplace as well. From an institutional perspective, these five young leaders’ inner voice express truly how they feel about the school’s delegation of tasks, planning of the school development plans and reactions to their opinions (Cheng and Szeto, 2016). With deliberate discussion on the benefits of building collaborative workplace that supports teachers’ growth (Lambert, 2003; York-Barr & Duke, 2004; Muijis and Harris, 2007), it seems that administration in the field still fail to listen to their young teachers and cause some frustration within in the course of time. It is hoped that members on the top of the school hierarchy ladder can ponder on how they can assist the growth of the new teachers more effectively by spending more time on them and respond to their professional needs more holistically.