• Teaching
• Research
• Knowledge Transfer
• Administrative Services

• Teaching
• Research
• Knowledge Transfer
• Administrative Services

Individual Award

Dr ZHANG Ling
張凌博士
Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Language Studies

Dr Zhang is a committed scholar and a caring teacher. The core of her teaching philosophy can be summarized as “CARE → Creative-Adaptive-Reflective-Effective”, including both personal and academic care. As an educator working at EdUHK, a cradle for nurturing future teachers, Dr Zhang hopes that her CARE teaching philosophy will be passed on and that her students will also become caring teachers in the future.

Dr Zhang believes that personal care is a heartfelt motivation for a teacher to care about students’ self-esteem and well-being. As the Programme Leader of the BA (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) programme [BA(TCSL)], she has made a great effort to enhance students’ whole-person development and provide a better career path, which has won her students’ respect and appreciation. In the latest UGC survey, for PM 1.1 (Undergraduate satisfaction with the quality and value which they have gained from their teaching and learning experience) and PM 1.2 (Undergraduate satisfaction with their overall learning environment), BA(TCSL) students gave the highest ratings among all EdUHK UGC-funded programmes.

Dr Zhang regards academic care as strategic wisdom to enhance students’ school engagement and learning outcomes. She was the originator of the “CARE → C-A-R-E” model, i.e., that academic care can be achieved through Creative inspiration, Adaptive modification, Reflective improvement, and Effective implementation. To be creative, Dr Zhang developed a creative educational app, named “Classical Chinese Poems Sing Along (古詩粵唱粵啱Key)”. To be adaptive, she made appropriate adaptations to accommodate changing teaching modes and individualized learning needs. To be reflective, she continually reflected on her most up-to-date research methods and findings in her classroom teaching. To be effective, she adopted assessment-enhanced teaching and output-oriented supervision.

Dr Zhang received several awards in recent years. In 2021, she received the Faculty Teaching Award from the Faculty of Humanities, and the Award for Excellent FE Supervision from the FE Supervision Appreciation Scheme. And in 2020, she received the Young Scholar Paper Award from the International Annual Conference of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in Taiwan.