Innovative learning with an emphasis on concerns of practice
Note: The instructional team for each course may vary depending on availability.
Dr Darren Bryant is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Education Policy and Leadership. He holds concurrent position as Associate Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change. He served as Programme Coordinator of the Executive Master of Arts in International Educational Leadership and Change—an innovative online programme, and Managing Editor of the Journal of Educational Administration. His research focuses on leader development, middle leadership and leaders in international school contexts.
Prior to completing his PhD in the University of Hong Kong’s Policy, Administration and Social Sciences Education department, he served for 12 years as a social sciences teacher and middle leader, holding positions of head of department and curriculum leader. This work provided practical experience in leading teams involved in school-based curriculum development, program design and evaluation, and social sciences education.
Dr Hayes Tang is Assistant Professor of the Department of Education Policy and Leadership. A sociologist, Dr Tang is interested in the fields of education policy, higher education, academic profession and youth studies. His research focuses on the impact of university on educational innovation and the sociological role of education in entrepreneurial society and global city. He is committed to create new knowledge in application for better education governance and policy innovation in East Asian entrepreneurial societies.
He aspires to build lifelong partnership with students and professionals so as to enlighten his analysis on educational development and policy anew with fresh perspectives, along with greater social impact and professional relevance. He is now serving as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education (the official journal of Comparative and International Education Society’s Higher Education Special Interest Group), Associate Editor (Sociology and Education) of Humanities & Social Sciences Communications and on the Editorial Board of Chinese Education & Society (Taylor & Francis).
Professor Allan Walker is Adjunct Chair Professor at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). He was the former Joseph Lau Chair Professor of International Educational Leadership, Dean, Faculty of Education and Human Development and Director of The Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change Prior joining the EdUHK, he has worked in universities in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong and has conducted leader development courses and/or research in America, Europe and across the Asia Pacific.
Professor Walker has published extensively on educational administration and leadership; and school leadership development and learning. His work also explores the relationship between culture and school leadership. Allan Walker serves on the editorial boards of the top ranked journals in his field and has published over 300 books and articles with international publishers and in the world’s most prestigious academic journals. His recent research focuses on expanding knowledge of school leadership in Chinese and other Asian societies and disseminating this internationally. Prof. Walker has also acted as a consultant/advisor on large-scale research and development activities in countries including Singapore, China, Taiwan, Norway, Finland, Vietnam, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Canada, the US, UK, and Australia.
He is known internationally for his passion for school leadership, innovative approaches to leader development and the promotion of leader control and accountability for their own professional learning. In 2010 Professor Walker was made a Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Leadership for his contribution to educational leadership research and development globally, but especially in South and Southeast Asia. In 2011, he was awarded an endowed chair professorship by The Education University of Hong Kong in recognition of his outstanding research and academic achievements in international educational leadership. In 2015, he was awarded the Edwin M. Bridges Award by the University Council of Educational Administration in recognition of his significant contribution to the preparation and development of school leaders. He has won six General Research Fund grants and twenty other competitive research and development grants.
Dr Daphnee Lee is a sociologist and researcher in education. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Education Policy and Leadership, The Education University of Hong Kong. Daphnee is on a research journey to understand how professional identities are shaped by change, and how professionals develop strategies to empower themselves in the face of change. Recently, Daphnee is focused on how teacher professionals collaborate to develop strategies to improve teaching and learning through professional learning communities. She is interested in examining collaborative relationships in teacher professional development within the social context of Chinese school systems.
A fundamental question that Dr Daphnee Lee is currently grappling with is: Can teacher leadership emerge from contexts that share the common foundations of centralized education policies and alignment with authoritative opinion leaders? Specifically, can collaborative relationships empower the everyday classroom teacher to initiate change, if she possesses the conviction to improve the learning of students, but does not have the authority of formally appointed leaders?
In her recent book on Managing Chineseness (Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 2017), Dr Daphnee Lee examines the theoretical implications of Chinese professional identities through the concept of identity grafting. Identity grafting is the result work supported by two research grants she undertook as Principal Investigator on Professional Learning Communities, and Teacher Professional Identity when she was a Research Scientist at the National Institute of Education (Singapore), Nanyang Technological University. Her PhD work at the Australian National University laid the foundations to the sociological explanation of empirical work on the way identities are constructed and exercised, linking individual, social, and organizational experiences to global reforms and movements.
Dr Haiyan Qian is an Associate Professor at the Department of Education Policy and Leadership and Co-Director of The Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change. She studied in Mainland China, UK and HK and joined the Education University of Hong Kong in 2012.
She has won the Early Career Award 2014/15 from the University Grants Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Research 2015/16 and the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Teaching (Team Award) 2016/17 from the Education University of Hong Kong.
Dr James Ko had extensive training and education in linguistics, psychology and education, with diplomas and degrees from Canada, Hong Kong, and the U.K. He is currently Professor of the Department of Education Leadership and Policy and Associate Director of the Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change of the Education University of Hong Kong.
Before his doctoral study, Dr Ko was an EFL teacher for about 20 years and Discipline Master, School Guidance and Counselling Master, and Committee of ITE of a secondary school for ten years. He led several innovative projects in student discipline, counselling and guidance, social and emotional learning, curriculum development, teacher professional development, and organizational learning, receiving external funds from the Educational Department, ICAC and Citibank.
His current research focuses on educational leadership, school improvement, and educational effectiveness. He has been the Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator in more than 20 local and international research projects, including three projects funded by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong. He collaborates with local academics and overseas researchers of the University of Oxford, University of Cyprus, University of Groningen, University of Nottingham, and the University of Helsinki.
Dr Jiafang Lu is Associate Head and Associate Professor at the Department of Education Policy and Leadership (EPL) and Associate Director of the Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change (APCLC), Education University of Hong Kong.
She received her doctoral degree in Applied Psychology from Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her current research is focused on leadership distribution and conflict dynamics in school leadership teams, change and innovation management, as well as organizational factors that affect teachers’ well-being and creativity. She shares her interest with similar enthusiasm for translating knowledge in these areas into teacher and leadership development realm.
Joining the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at the EdUHK seems very much like a joyful homecoming after having been away for so long for Dr Chen. Having taught at middle school and university level in Mainland China, Dr Chen left to study for a master’s degree in Education at the University of Groningen and then for her PhD at the University of Auckland. During her recent time as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, where the numbers of researchers in education are small and therefore people are strongly tempted to diversify, she is amazed at what she has got herself into.
Adding a range of qualitative techniques such as interviews, classroom observations, focus group discussions to her quantitative base skills such as Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modelling, she has found herself happily struggling to understand Kiwi children’s interesting versions of the English language.
Subject-wise, she has been drawn from her work in educational beliefs and teacher effectiveness into other fields, such as effective teaching, assessment, teacher emotions, and emotional leadership. She is willing to apply some of these skills and enlarge her research interest to advance the work of the EdUHK cooperating with colleagues in the coming years. This opportunity to work at EdUHK makes her feel very privileged indeed.
Dr Maxwell Ho commenced his teaching career in secondary business education after receiving his Bachelor of Education (Business Studies) degree at the Education University of Hong Kong (First class honours) in 2008. He further equipped himself by obtaining Master of Art in Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Dr Ho held a position of head of technology education (KLA) and administration group, as a middle manager. Because of serving in a new school, he developed practical experience in the academic affair, students’ affair, and administration affair. In 2016, he was awarded the Teacher award for business and financial education by the HKABE, HKEdCity, EDB, and IEC in recognition of his school-based finance and entrepreneurial curriculum.
He is now interested in studying teacher entrepreneurialism and business education. For the public services, he is also invited to be the executive committee member of Hong Kong Association of Business Education. He serves as a reviewer teaching kits and an invited speaker for liberal studies and BAFS subject.
Dr Miron Bhowmik is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Education Policy and Leadership in the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), and was previously the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Specialist at the Faculty of Education and Human Development and a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Department of Special Education and Counselling.
Prior to joining EdUHK, he was a Programme Officer at the UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education in Bangkok, Thailand. He has also worked for the British Council and several universities in Bangladesh. He is particularly interested in the educational policies and practices as they relate to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Dr Sedat Gümüş is an Associate Professor at the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership and a Research Fellow of the Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change at the EdUHK. Before moving to Hong Kong, he was an associate professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has published articles in core international journals of the field such as Educational Management Administration and Leadership, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Journal of Educational Administration, and School Management & Leadership as well as in other high impact journals such as Compare, European Journal of Education, Educational Studies, Higher Education, Scientometrics, and Teaching and Teacher Education. He currently serves on the advisory board of Rowman & Littlefield School Leadership Book Series, as well as undertakes editorial responsibilities in several academic journals.
Dr Gümüş defines himself first and foremost as a teacher. He worked around 2.5 years as a math teacher in Turkey before he moved to the USA for his graduate education in 2007. He received his PhD from the Department of Educational Administration at Michigan State University, USA in 2012 and his master’s from the same institution in 2010. He was nationally selected for the David L. Clark Graduate Student Research Seminar sponsored by University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) and later became a founding member of the UCEA Graduate Student Council.
Dr Trevor Tsz-lok Lee is a sociologist working on the field of education, particularly inequality and stratification, parenting, and policy. Trevor’s research is often located at the intersections of traditional research agenda in sociology, family studies, and educational studies, among other (sub-) fields, and often involves quantitative and qualitative methodologies. His recent research projects address questions concerning (1) the intricate ways that interrelationships between home, school and culture shape and reproduce social positions in the stratification system; (2) the middle-class alternative choice of homeschooling in Hong Kong and Taipei; and (3) online learning of Hong Kong primary school students during school closures in time of COVID-19. His new research agenda attends to digital inequality in relation to parenting and schooling.