A narrative inquiry into the experiences of Hong Kong teachers' understanding of child developmen

This is a narrative study by a teacher educator inquiring how Hong Kong pre-school teachers make sense of their lived experiences that shape their understanding of child development. The two participants Simy and Tina, and I are Chinese women who have experienced cultural and social changes in Hong Kong during a period when a city of Chinese nation was under the British rule. There is no doubt that these changes subtly became the pivotal foundation for our cultural values and philosophical thinking about children in many aspects as varied from those of our parents or counterparts in other countries. In formulating the theories of child development, our past experiences and Chinese beliefs inevitably affect us to accept one theory over the others. This narrative inquiry explores how Chinese culture interacts with the modern theories of child development and how three Hong Kong women adapt the child developmental theories to the Hong Kong Chinese context. The focus of this study is to understand how teachers' knowledge of child development is shaped.;In a bid to understand the impact of Chinese culture in relation to the question being researched, a fluid inquiry is selected to facilitate my participants and myself to revisit our past experiences, specifically the significance of embedded stories, Chinese fables and the Three Character Classic, and their role in shaping our cultural values and beliefs that further foster our understanding and interpretation of child developmental theories. The study points to the importance of narrative as a viable tool in helping preschool teachers to understand what they know and how they learn about children's development. By telling, retelling, constructing and reconstructing our childhood stories, this study has evoked conceived images of children and explained how they affect the teachers' practices. This study not only brings theoretical contributions to, but also implications for parental education, teacher education, and curriculum planning in the field of child development.