Exploring the excellence : the study of expert history teachers in Hong Kong

Abstract

“Boredom” and “Impracticality” are the two words that might have in most cases featured history lessons though, expert history teachers have always been able to make a contrary. In Hong Kong, four award-winning history teachers revitalized history teaching with diversified pedagogical practices, such as debate sessions, mini-research project learning exercises, historical field studies, and even fancy fashion shows and trendy game rooms, bringing history lessons away from the classroom to a much wider horizon, making it a more lively learning experience for their students. Their pedagogical excellence would not be made practical without the four history teaching experts’ outstanding knowledge, firstly, in the academic nature of history as a school subject, which drove them to apply enquiry-based learning approach in each and every new pedagogies they employed. It also relied on their familiarity with new pedagogies, with classroom practices, with their students, and with both the school context and the broader circumstance, which enabled them to select the best for their students among a large variety of pedagogies. The commitment and conviction of these pedagogical experts were no less important in their professional development, which served as the driving forces to motivate constant self-reflection to their pedagogies, hoping to make a meaningful education, which consisted not only of transfer of academic knowledge, but also cultivations of values. Their positive responses towards changing circumstances, either within the school or outside of it, also helped secure extra resources with which to improve their teaching, and inspired them to develop innovative though unorthodox pedagogies. Analytically going through the stories of the four expert teaching professionals using the qualitative approach of “life history”, this study intended to provide a systematic account on the professional knowledge held by expert history teachers, as well as their professional development – players of central importance in providing fruitful and thought-provoking history education, alongside curriculum design, education policies and academic trend. It offered not merely a response to the dearth of scholarships regarding teaching expert in history education, but also practical recommendations to teacher training institutes as well as in-service teachers for the overall improvement of history education.