A narrative study on pre-service teachers’ transformative learning in a social movement in Hong Kong

Abstract

ABSTRACT This narrative study explored pre-service teachers’ critical learning experiences in Hong Kong during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement and how these experiences transformed their perspectives on the teaching profession. Forty pre-service teachers participated in the study, including 16 local participants and 24 originally from mainland China. Using Jarvis’s transformative learning model, this study identified four categories of narratives: society-centred, person-centred, relation-centred, and witness-lens narrative accounts. These narratives demonstrated the participants’ various approaches during the transformation process, including reflection, emotion, and self-identification. Changes resulting from these experiences varied from radical perspective-taking to no change occurring. The Hong Kong locals mainly presented society-centred narrative accounts, whereas the majority of participants from mainland China reported person-centred narrative accounts. Their varied previous lifeworld experiences and self-identification explained the differences. The present study highlights the importance of including emotion and identity instead of taking a single constructive perspective when explaining the process of transformative learning. In addition, it shows that the process and outcomes of transformation do not naturally follow a positive direction of growth. Future studies should examine teacher’s transformation using a narrative approach and longitudinal design.