Methodology

In this section, the research questions pursued in this study, the approach adopted, the
background of teacher participants are presented.
Research questions:
The case study aimed to address two specific questions :
What are the factors affecting teachers sense of vulnerability ?
What are the consequences of teachers become vulnerable on their teaching, well
being ?
Case study approach
A case study approach was selected to capture in detail what factors affecting
teachers sense of burnout and the current situation of their teaching / well being. As
argued by Nisbet and Watt (1984), this approach can catch unique features that may
be lost in larger scale data. Case study approach allowed us to have a comprehensive
understanding with the teachers who had volunteered to participate in the study and to
obtained a detailed account of what was happened and heard in their contexts. For
reasons of confidentiality, the name of teachers and their schools are denoted as
respective letter, that is the interview with teacher T (School T, Kimmy ), P (School P,
Candy), R (School R , Lizzie) and C (School C, Karen).
Teacher participants
The teachers was selected from four different schools. They were chosen according to
teaching years, position and nature of employment (regular or contracted). Their
teaching years are ranging from 3 to 33 years respectively while including teaching
assistant, teacher and panel head. The main reason to set such criteria was aimed to
have more diversify analysis from different perspective in which an in depth did not
done. Besides, given the rapid changing educational system of Hong Kong,
especially for the employment of teachers, exerted stress into both pre service and
contracted teacher to be adopted at regular teacher system. Therefore,
Data Collection
Data were collected from these four teachers through interview. The interview was
semi structured, encouraging teachers to talk about their opinions regarding to their
job, teaching and feeling about the working environment. A set of core questions
asked in the interview were :
Background Information:
1. How many subject do you teach ?
2.
How long have you been teaching ___________ (Subject name) (respectively
if he / she teach more than 1 subject)?
3.
Which secondary level do you teach? How many classes do you teach, and
how many students are there in each class?
4.
Do you need to be class teacher / vice class teacher ? If any, which level of
class do you head ?
Working environment / policy:
5.

What do feel about your working environment / school atmosphere ?

6. Do you think the working environment of your school / position is stressful ? if

so , why ? / could you explain more ?
7. Are you in charge some administrative / ECA affairs? If so, what is it (what are
they ? ) do you think it affect your quality of teaching (e.g concentration , lesson
preparation, etc.)
8. What do you think about contract system ? do you think it affects teachers sense
of burnout ?
9. Do you feel more stressful under the NSS curriculum / for your subject taught ?
Teachers parents relationship :
10. What do you feel about the teachers parents relationship nowadays ? do you
think it pose some pressure for you job / work ?
11. Did you come across / heard about some monster parents ? could you briefly
talk about this phenomenon ?
Teaching :
12. During you teaching, what factors will make you feel uncomfortable / stressful ?
13. Will you feel sense of vulnerability / burnout when come across with students
problem ?
Conclusion :
14. To conclude, do you think the teachers nowadays is stressful ?
15. What suggestions could be made for alleviating this situation ?
Follow up questions, such as why and how were asked quite frequent as the research
team know that every case is unique. Further elaboration was needed for clarification
and analysis. The interviews was conducted in Chinese and was translated, transcribed
and coded. During the coding process, the factors affecting teachers sense of
vulnerability and the consequence to their teaching were identified. The findings are
presented in the next section.
Findings
The relationship between working environment / policies and teachers
vulnerability
Although the four teachers held different feeling for their working environment,
teachers P had pointed out that the current situation of teachers, as the over supply
of teachers led to teacher feel insecure for their job , therefore, it is hard to focus on
their work. Besides, teacher R explain his / her working environment from
comparison, he / she suggested that the working atmosphere now is just like a
heaven, for example, there is no exercise book inspection there, which is different
from the past. It might revealed that the working environment played a less important
role for teachers sense of vulnerability when it didnt involve extra work / practices.
When asked about whether there are extra stress for their respective position, the
majority of teachers provided a positive feedback for their stress. In specific, teacher
T , as a teaching assistant of Liberal studies expressed some concerns of their

position:
Teacher T : The administrative work besides teaching is not too much for posing
extra stress .
Interviewer : How about insides subject panel ?
Teacher T : Although it is not so much too, I just in charged at external contact
for organizing Liberal studies courses, competition, etc. Sometimes, I need to pay
extra effort to finish, shorten my rest time.
Teacher C, although he / she turned his / her employment into additionally explained
his / her anxiety as a contract teacher before :
Teacher C : Most negatively. It is undeniable that the insecurity [being a
contracted teacher ] will affect our feeling to our job in a bad way.
Interviewer: Why ?
Teacher C : Let say if I can suddenly replace by someone easily, as I am not
contract teacher, how can I concentrate on my work ? Let alone I am quite sure
that they (the board) do not decide to keep you according to your teaching
performance.
The data shows that the contract system create a sense of insecurity to them. Although
teacher T does not showed an explicit anxiety for his job, he need to work overtime
for completing his job sometimes, it shows that he might be a very passionate one.
However, in general, a sense of insecurity may affect teachers performance, in both
positive or negative sides, making them to feel stress.
For the panel head and regular teacher, their stress were mainly come from the
administrative work, Teacher P , as a panel head of Chinese language, pointed out the
administrative work to her involved a balance between her colleagues and the goal of
school. Panel head was played the role as an inspector for labour division, it might
pose some stress to a regular teacher like Teacher R, the inspection frequency for his
school is once annually, making him to feel more relax and satisfied for his job.
Teachers parents relationship and teachers burnout
Although all four teachers held different feels to the teachers parents relationship
nowadays. However, in general they all thought it is a bit negative for the teachers
parents relationship. For instance, teacher R expressed his serious concern for
misinterpretation teachers parents relationship as a relationship between consumer
and service provider :
Teacher R : Higher banding of the schools, More annoying the parents will be.
Especially for the direct subsidies school , the parents thought that they are
consumer , if they were not satisfied with the service provided by teachers,
they just complained. Such alienation of teacher parents relationship make
teachers feel disappointed.

Teacher C explained this phenomenon by the parents academic background, higher

their academic background, lower their respects for teachers. The data shows that the
teachers parents relationship nowadays is weak and slightly to be negative.
Teachers vulnerability and teaching
All four teachers expressed their concerns on the workload, Teacher T had more
concrete explanation on the preparation of teaching materials according to cater
different levels of students. Similarly, teacher P pointed out part of her students lack
of learning motivation, lowering the teaching and learning of her and other
classmates. T further suggested to have individual tutorial for those students. Besides
the classroom teaching, Teacher R suggested the unreasonable given by the school
affected the teachers passion of their job :
Teacher R : Unreasonable requirement given by the schools made me feel
uncomfortable .
Interviewer : Why ?
Teacher R : Just like the previous school that I taught before , there was regular
meeting per week. It made my couldnt focus on the lesson preparation and
teaching. Also, it contradicted with my teaching philosophy that you wanted to
teach student , but such requirements confused me a lot. I felt extremely
depressed when I started to be a teacher.
The data revealed that inside classroom teaching, some deviant learning behavior, for
example, lack of motivation make the teachers feel stressful. However, for most of the
case, the workload of lesson preparation and designing teaching materials poses huge
pressure on their jobs. Also, if the requirement if school is unreasonable, it made the
teachers feel depressed and dissatisfied for his / her job.