Daphnee Hui Lin Lee

Chinese University of Hong Kong | CUHK · Department of Educational Administration and Policy

Developing cultural inclusiveness has been a prominent agenda in European and North American teacher preparation programmes. Beyond these societies, however, discussion on teacher education programme diversity remains tokenistic. Hong Kong, a city often marketed as Asia's World City, is not an exception, given the relatively recent history in the r...

This paper captures the group dynamics underpinning preservice teacher identity formation to understand how childhood schooling and teacher education shape the teaching metaphors teachers construct of intercultural education. We propose a theory of identity grafting (IG) for a precise framing of the diverse ways teachers identify with intercultural...

50 copies of the published MS available for download here: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/V5ZSVPCFHFCCFPD8XEXP/full?target=10.1080/02188791.2023.2235914

Singapore’s higher education history had students involved in anti-colonial movements. This study examines how historical discourses on state efforts to manage university student movements (1953–1980) unintentionally reproduce in the intercultural business practices of today’s professionals. It explores how professional accounts of intercultural bu...

This article provides school leaders with insights into within and beyond-school influences on school collaborative culture. The study examines how social demographics, and school culture prevalent in different school bandings, influence school capacities (principal leadership; shared and supportive leadership; shared values and vision; and collabo...

This study identifies how a teacher’s entrepreneurial behavior (TEB) changed when promoted to higher positions in a school. It distills her experiences over time to uncover the symbiotic relationship between teaching and administrative entrepreneurial behaviors in promoting school innovation. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with tea...

This paper examines teaching practices prevailing across five cities (Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, Singapore and Taipei) for the underpinning pedagogical identities that inform practice (identity grafting). The study adopts innovative approaches via OECD teacher surveys to identify relationships between pedagogical identities (highly effective, outc...

Abstract: After securing independence from British colonial rule, education policy in Singapore had successfully established an independent English education system with strict restrictions on local student enrollment in international schools. In contrast, education policy in postcolonial Hong Kong adopts an open attitude towards local student enro...

Students in Asia prevalently receive financial literacy education in English. This study examines foreign language effects at home and school on financial literacy education among secondary school students in Hong Kong (N = 1011). This study traces English home and school language influences on student risk-taking values, financial attitudes (consc...

I had the honor to be a part of the discussion panel for UC Berkeley Emeritus Professor Michael Omi’s Distinguished Professor Lecture. Scan the QR code to view the Lecture and the Discussion Panel.

Scroll to the end for Research Impact Video QR Code. Blurb and Research Impact of Paper: Lee, D. H. L., & Ip, K. K. (2021). The influence of professional learning communities on informal teacher leadership in a Chinese hierarchical school context. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, DOI: 10.1177/1741143220985159.

Book Blurb - Managing Chineseness (2017)

Chinese school systems have only just moved from the margins closer to the core of the global stage in achieving and sustaining student performance in international benchmarks. In this keynote, I examine the values underpinning teachers in the Chinese context to gain insight into the influence of professional identity and values on overcoming inequ...

Purpose Both Hong Kong and Singapore leverage teacher collaboration to improve student learning, but state reforms differ in how teacher collaborative capabilities are prioritized. This paper provides a nuanced comparison of Hong Kong and Singapore teachers' values (risk-taking, power distance and uncertainty avoidance) to develop insights into how...

This paper examines the effects of English Childhood home language (CHL) on teacher risk taking and identity in a Chinese context where Chinese and English bilingualism is prioritized in its national school curriculum. Data were collected from 3388 Chinese Singaporean teachers. We used structural equation modeling to examine the relationships among...

Video version: https://2015fix.s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/epl/impact/daphnee-lee-202104.mp4 Research Impact from funded project: Teacher leadership: Influences of hierarchical Chinese contexts on the capacity of professional learning communities to empower the classroom teacher (28605318), ECS/GRF, 01/01/2019 – 30/06/2021. See also my pap...

This study examined the multiplicative associations of the social categories of ethnicity (Hong Kong Chinese, mainland Chinese, or ethnic minorities), gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) with overall belongingness (to one’s self, personal networks, and society) and national belonging to China among youth (aged 18–24 years) in Hong Kong. Our anal...

This paper extends the theorization of identity grafting (Lee 2017), developed to understand individual cultural identity processes that buttress repression, born-again, integrated, and situational strategies to reconcile identity tensions that arise from change in a Chinese context. A qualitative case study approach is employed to examine two grou...

Research on financial literacy has focused on the influence of teachers and parents in financial literacy education, which mediates the impact on students’ financial behaviour. Much less attention has been given to the influence of traditional Chinese hierarchical culture on a child’s identity as a student. This paper applies Author’s (2017) theory...

This paper examines the global implications of policy borrowing, employing case examples of Chinese school systems, which enjoy the success of grafting new identities to improve education. The paper comments on contemporary scholars’ use of identity grafting theory (Lee in Managing Chineseness: identity and ethnic management in Singapore, Palgrave...

This paper examines the influence of professional learning communities (PLCs) on informal teacher leadership in Hong Kong schools to overcome issues reported in the literature on the challenges to teacher leadership posed by Chinese hierarchical school contexts. We test the relations among PLC, informal teacher leadership, teacher focus on improvin...

This paper introduces and summarizes the articles in this Special Issue of the Journal of Educational Change on “Identity Grafting: Teacher and School Development in Chinese School Systems.” (Lee, Managing Chineseness: Identity and ethnic management in Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017). It begins with Fengqiao Yan’s key thoughts and alte...

This paper examines the unintended consequences of state language policy and planning (LPP) that adopt subtractive approaches on teachers’ subsequent receptivity to policy fine-tuning. A comparative approach is adopted in this statistical study of two strategic contexts, where the influence of the world’s two leading languages—English and Mandarin—...

A standardised financial literacy curriculum ensures that all students in a school system receive financial knowledge, which offers them the necessary support to make informed decisions about money management and practise appropriate financial behaviour. In Hong Kong, all secondary schools supposed to teach financial literacy via a standardised cur...

This report highlights results from a one-day sympoisum that took place on Minorities and Education: Future Priorities. Policy-makers, NGOs, school leaders, practitioners, community members and academics met at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) on 2 June 2018. Professor Alfred Chan, former Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, ga...

This mixed-methods study employed Hargreaves and Fullan’s (Professional capital: transforming teaching in every school, Teachers College Press, New York, 2012) concept of professional capital to re-examine whether professional learning communities (PLCs) transformed instructional practices in contexts that endorse hierarchical cultures. PLCs that f...

Validated survey instruments for PLC study. This is available in the following forthcoming publication in the form of supplementary electronic content: Lee, D.H.L. & Lee, W.O. (forthcoming). Transformational changes in instruction with professional learning communities?: The influence of teacher cultural dispositions in high power distance context...

Chapter 8 builds upon discussions in previous chapters and in particular the policy and theoretical implications derived from Chap. 7 to draw conclusions for this book. Insights are presented on the impact of social reproduction in the management of Chineseness and the transformative potential in managing Chineseness. As an extension to these insig...

This chapter sets the context for an examination of how personal experiences are interlinked with global, regional, and national contexts of capitalist industrialization. Through the concept of identity grafting, policy and social constructions of Chineseness are analyzed for the impact of accelerated development and the emergence of dual hegemonic...

Chapter 6 highlights the use of peer orientalism among ECI corporate representatives, where state discourse of ethnic Malay Singaporeans as ‘lazy natives’ and ‘willful natives’ was replicated as a point of comparison with themselves as ethnic Chinese. Although childhood socioeconomic and linguistic backgrounds continue to influence, the positions t...

While ECI corporate representatives offer insight into dispositional outcomes on the economic forefront, teachers form a good sample as the core professionals that socialize other professions. In the extension of the concept to a larger segment of Chinese Singaporean professionals, teachers thus formed the sample for statistical testing. Policy and...

In this Chapter, occidentalist state discourse will be compared with the subtexts that undergird the Born-Again Chinese worldview. ‘The boys wear high heels with platforms,’ derived in vivo from state discourse, echoes Born-Again Chinese occidentalism. In contrast, the Integrated Chinese have chosen to reconcile the interests and conflicts that had...

This historical critique outlines the relationship between identity management and political economy. History informs the rationale of proactive identity management in state efforts to establish Singapore’s strategic position within the global political economy. Starting with pre-independence historical events, the emergence of ethnic management an...

Chapter 3 outlines typologies of managing Chineseness. Drawn from qualitative data at ECI, typologies provide ideal types from which the theorization of identity grafting is built up. As endeavors to manage Chinese are transnational, an examination of the construct, unbounded by national and pre-established territorial imaginations, is necessary. A...

The title of Chap. 4, ‘The Complex,’ was derived in vivo from interview accounts. It captures the echoes of auto-orientalism that have emerged among the Repressed Chinese. The Repressed Chinese shared the profile of having grown up in non-English-speaking families with marginal childhood SES. Situational Chinese corporate representatives were emplo...

Purpose This paper explores how principals’ leadership approaches to teacher professional development arise from school banding and may impact upon teacher professional capital and student achievement. Design/methodology/approach The case study is situated within the context of school-based management, comprising reflective accounts of nine scho...

This paper makes sense of the Chineseness of Chinese Singaporean professionals, looking at their past schooling experiences when they were students. As the student cohort that had experienced three language reforms in school, the attitudes of these present-day professionals toward Chineseness vary. They are partial to specific reform eras, and draw...

This book explores the personal experiences of professionals who are a part of the post-colonial and late-industrializing reality in the global value chain in Singapore. Looking at Chinese Singaporean employees at a French multi-national firm, the author explores the evolving social constructions of ‘Chineseness’. Sociologist Manuel Castells once h...

To cite this article: Ning, H. K., Lee, D. H. L., & Lee, W. O. (2016). The relationship between teacher value orientations and engagement in professional learning communities. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 22(2), 235–254. The development of teacher professional learning communities (PLC) has attracted growing attention among practi...

Singapore has been participating in large-scale international student assessments for the last two decades, and the performance of students in Singapore on the various cycles of international student assessments was outstanding. However, there is sparse research on the factors contributing to Singapore students’ sterling performance. The authors, t...

To cite this article: Ning, H. K., Lee, D., & Lee, W. O. (2015). Relationships between teacher value orientations, collegiality, and collaboration in school professional learning communities. Social Psychology of Education, 1-18. Unlike past research which has mainly examined whole school or whole department professional learning communities, this...

To cite this presentation: Lee, D.H.L. (2015). Dynamism in theory, policy and practice of professional learning communities in Singapore schools. Paper presented and symposium chaired at Redesigning Pedagogies Conference, Singapore. This symposium offers a dynamic take of how teacher collaborative learning unfolds in its conceptualization, implemen...

To cite this presentation: Lee, D. H. L., & Areepattamannil, S. (2016, March). Exploring the potential for teacher enactment of instructional and transformational leadership: Factors, dispositions, and practices. Paper presented at the Asia Leadership Roundtable 2016: Surfacing indigenous leader practices (knowledge), National Institute of Educatio...

The last two decades have witnessed a mushrooming of standardized international student assessment tests, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the International Civic and Citizenship Education...

To cite this article: Lee, D.H.L. Hong, H. & Niemi, H. (2014). A contextualized account of holistic education in Finland and Singapore: Implications on Singapore educational context. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher (TAPE), 23, 871-884. This paper examines holistic education initiatives of two high-performing education systems—Finland and Si...

To cite this presentation: LEE, D.H.L. (2014). Disjuncture between state program and reality... for the better?: Professional learning communities in Singapore schools. Paper presented at Australian Association for Research in Education Conference, Brisbane, Australia. This paper provides ethnographic findings to the reality of how a state-led init...

In this chapter, we posit the thesis that learning is not just in the head or in social-cultural contexts, but very much also in the body. In this sense, the adaptivity in the body as it struggles to reconcile to the mind and the social others surrounding the individual. While bodily adaptations can be connoted to habits, we recognise that these in...

To cite this presentation: Kaur, B., Areepattamannil, S., Lee, D. H. L., Hong, H., & Su, R. H. C. (2014, April). Does bullying at school predict student academic performance? Evidence from 65 countries. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, United States.

To cite this presentation: Kaur, B., Areepattamannil, S., Lee, D. H. L., Hong, H., & Su, R. H. C. (2014, April). Does bullying at school predict student academic performance? Evidence from 65 countries. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, United States.

To cite this article: Areepattamannil, S., & Lee, D. H. L. (2014). Linking immigrant parents’ educational expectations and aspirations to their children’s school performance. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 175(1), 51‐57. The authors examined the relationships of parental expectations and aspirations for their children's educational attainment to...

This paper seeks to explore the empirical fit of two PLC models, using Singapore as a case. Insights emerged from documentary analyses and interviews with state-affiliated agents from the Academy of Singapore Teachers. The proposed DuFour– Fullan model, despite policy aspirations, remains largely DuFour-predominant in practice. Aspirations for a Fu...

To cite this article: Lee, D.H.L. (2013). Bourdieu’s Symbolic Power and Postcolonial Organization Theory in Local- Expatriate Relationships: An Ethnographic Study of a French Multinational Corporation in Singapore. Current Sociology, 61(3), 341-355. This empirical study seeks to illustrate the complementary interplay between Bourdieu’s theory of...

To cite this article: Lee, D.H.L. (2013a). Beliefs On "Avoidant Cultures" In Two French Multinational Corporations". Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, 20(1), 20-38. Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the trajectory of cultural stereotypes on Uncertainty Avoidance emergent from two French multinational corporation...

To cite this article: Lee, D. H. L., Hong, H., Tay, W. Y., & Lee, W. O. (2014). Professional learning communities in Singapore schools. Journal of Co-operative Studies, Special issue: Transformative power of co-operation in education, 46(2), 53-56. This paper describes a state-led initiative that aims to instil a co-operative approach to teacher...

To cite this proceedings: Lee, D.H.L. Hong, H. Tay, W.Y. Ning, F.H.K. Lee, W.O. (2013). State-Led Implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) in Singapore Schools – A Study. Paper and proceedings presented at The Transformative Power of Co-operation in Education. Scarborough, United Kingdom: International Association for the Study of...

To cite this article: Lee, D.H.L. (2012). Branding Asia through public diplomacy: Structural‐historical factors, convergences and divergences. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 8, 209-221. This article extends on ongoing discussions of nation branding in Asia from a conceptual and practitioner viewpoint. Insights on assertive and accommodative...

To cite this article: Lee, D.H.L. and Shaari, I. (2012). Professional Identity Or Best Practices?: An Exploration Of The Synergies Between Professional Learning Communities And Communities Of Practice. Creative Education, 3(4), 457-460.

To cite this proceedings: Lee, D.H.L. Lee, W.O. (2012). The Development of Professional Learning Communities: The Singapore Case. Paper and proceedings presented at International Conference of Education Research, Seoul, Korea. This paper seeks an understanding of the rationale for the implementation of the PLC initiative by the Singapore Ministry...

The way Chineseness is managed by the state in ethnic Chinese majority nations is examined as a late-industrializing initiative. Using Singapore as the case study, identifications with Chineseness were studied for the key themes within late-industrializing discourse constructions. Chinese Singaporean respondents were asked for their interpretation...