British Students Professional Persona Development through Teaching English in Local Schools in Hong Kong

Description

There has been an increased interest in the student experience of learning in addition to the inclusion of representations of the student voice in research in Higher Education. Concerning the former, Active Blended Learning (ABL) has been at the forefront of teaching and learning initiatives at the University of Northampton (UoN); and students' at the university have placed high value on the practical aspects of work-based learning on module evaluations. The research project reported in this article was part of the UoN learning and teaching development that embraced ABL, and thus sought to develop a model for the development of professional identity for our student teachers and those that wanted to work with children in another capacity. The project came with a small grant for research funding by the university. The project comprised an investigation of students' professional identity and its development, because we had noticed a strong sense of professional identity from previous student cohorts. In addition, we sought to discover what value overseas mobility experiences played in professional identity development.. The authors sought to develop a theoretical model that could be applied for students interested in careers with children. There were 21 undergraduate students studying in the second year of two Bachelor's degree programmes, who took the opportunity to engage with the summer programme in Hong Kong for five weeks. The students were situated in various regular local primary and secondary schools to teach English through activity. Findings indicated the students had been engaged in personal and group transformative learning experiences, and as a result, a keen sense of professionalism emerged.

Period	13 Dec 2022
Event title	Oxford Education Research Symposium
Event type	Conference
Location	Oxford, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National