| Rivers provide the central metaphor around which this thesis is built. Its overarching topic is the Hong Kong Chinese experience of caring. This thesis seeks to: (1) identify the essences of the phenomenon of caring; (2) explore teachers' experienced knowledge of caring; and (3) seek for teacher transformation through arts-based activities.;Six co-researchers, including myself, searched for the meanings of caring and for its greater understanding through telling and retelling our stories. I employed two qualitative research approaches, namely heuristic phenomenology and arts-based educational research, and integrated them to launch an inquiry-based catamaran (my methodology). Heuristic phenomenology provided a rigorous foundation for this caring inquiry, while arts-based educational research enriched it with creative and artful representations.;This inquiry involved four to six in-depth interviews for each co-researcher as well as a heuristic self-inquiry. I present each co-researcher's experiences of caring as portraits. For these, I wrote "in-role" accounts of each co-researchers' experiences of caring to celebrate their individual voices. I also used Chinese watercolor paintings of the "River of Life" and the "River of Caring" for each co-researcher to re-present their meaning-making accounts visually. These artful expressions helped to empower both the co-researchers and myself, evoking our experience and enlisting empathy for it.;I identify the essence of our experience of caring, making particular reference to Hong Kong, its Chinese cultural context. The overall essence of caring relates to genuine understanding. According to the co-researchers, genuine understanding is achieved through suspending subjectivity, and enlisting empathetic listening and perspective-taking. Also based on our experiences, I further identify three culturally specific Chinese essences of the experience of caring: (1) acts of filial piety; (2) provision of food; and (3) physical touch.;In addition, I examine caring in terms of temporal and spatial continuity, as well as of sacred stories, secret stories, and cover stories. I discovered strong autobiographical connections between our caring and our teaching practices. Finally, I describe our own professional transformations as the treasures revealed by this inquiry. |
