Hong Kong university teachers’ conceptions and articulation of teacher care: towards building a model of caring pedagogy

This paper addresses university teachers’ conceptions and articulation of teacher care as informed by their teaching practice within the Hong Kong university context. The research is predicated upon the perspectives of caring university teachers identified through a systematic process of reputational-case selection, and their narrations analyzed by thematic analysis. Three overarching themes, ‘humanitarian caring whole-person education’, ‘student-centred caring teaching’ and ‘invisible caring acts’, were identified. Based on the overarching themes, we propose a model of ‘caring pedagogy of student-centredness and invisible care’. This study contributes to enriching the existing literature on teacher care and caring pedagogy from university teachers’ perspectives. We advocate the integration of care into pedagogy, whilst university administrators could provide more institutional support for practising caring pedagogy for the benefits of our students.