With the acceleration of internationalization, higher education systems have increasingly become hybrid spaces where global, national, and local sociocultural, economic, and policy dimensions intersect (Lingard, 2021; Mok & Marginson, 2021). A central challenge of internationalization concerns how local systems engage with global paradigms while remaining responsive to national development priorities. In China, internationalization has shifted from adaptation and integration toward collaboration and strategic exchange, reflecting its growing role as a national development strategy (Yang, 2014; Yang, 2018; Yang & Yang, 2025).

Within this context, Hong Kong occupies a distinctive position as a Regional Education Hub bridging Mainland China and the global academic community. It functions as a strategic intermediary in talent cultivation and human capital development, particularly in higher education and professional training (Cheng et al., 2015, 2016). At the same time, higher education in China bears the responsibility of cultivating teachers for basic education (MOE, 2023).

Against this backdrop, the Master of Education Degree Program in Teaching in Key Subject Areas, also known as the National Excellent Teacher Training Initiative (NETTI, Guoyoujihua), was established as a national policy initiative to strengthen teacher education capacity. The program aims to provide prospective teachers with solid grounding in educational theory, research, and practice across diverse regional contexts. The NETTI was extended to universities in Hong Kong (MOE, 2024), creating a distinctive policy-context interface in which a national plan for cultivating localized, high-quality teachers is enacted within Hong Kong’s unique academic and internationalized environment.

Also, cross-border NETTI students provide a lens for examining how national strategies of internationalization are interpreted and experienced at the individual level. Their decisions to study in Hong Kong reflect the interaction between national policy frameworks, institutional arrangements, and personal aspirations. Moreover, studying in Hong Kong situates these students at the intersection of cultural, academic, and professional identities shaped by global-national-local dynamics (Lingard, 2021). This cross-border educational experience also represents a pivotal phase influencing their future career expectations and professional trajectories. Therefore, this study examines NETTI students in Hong Kong, focusing on their motivation, identity formation, and career expectations within a cross-border policy context.

This study addresses the following research questions: What factors motivate NETTI students to pursue their Master’s degree in Hong Kong? How do NETTI students perceive and negotiate their identities during their studies in Hong Kong? What expectations and plans do NETTI students hold for their future professional lives?

This study develops an integrated theoretical framework combining the “push-pull” model with life course theory to analyze NETTI students’ cross-border educational experiences. The “push-pull” model (Altbach, 2004) is employed to examine factors influencing students’ motivation and career planning. Prior research has applied this model primarily at the macro level, focusing on social, political, and economic structures (Altbach, 2003; Dai et al., 2023). However, the model has been critiqued for its limited capacity to capture micro-level processes and individual agency (Choi & Tang, 2016), as well as for framing mobility as a unidirectional response to deficiencies in the home country (Findlay et al., 2012). In the context of China’s use of internationalization as a national development strategy, student mobility increasingly reflects mutual engagement shaped by national policies and institutional agendas rather than simple push-pull dynamics.

To address these limitations, life course theory is adopted to provide a process-oriented perspective on how individuals construct meaning. Life course theory emphasizes the interplay between personal agency and structural contexts, focusing on trajectories, transitions, and turning points across time (Elder et al., 2003). From this perspective, studying in Hong Kong constitutes a significant transition that may function as a turning point influencing students’ identity development and career trajectories. 

Given the need to address these conceptual inconsistencies and the highly context-specific nature of educational settings such as classrooms, schools, or districts, a single case study design is considered most appropriate (Berku, 2025). Case study research typically refers to the intensive examination of a single case or a small number of cases through in-depth, detailed, and context-sensitive analysis. This approach allows researchers to focus closely on a bounded case and to conduct a thorough investigation of complex social phenomena (Flick, 2022, p. 404). This study aims to investigate the situated experiences of NETTI students in Hong Kong, making the case study method a fitting choice. This suitability can be elaborated from two perspectives. First, the cross-border educational journey is deeply contextualized, embedded within the specific sociocultural and institutional environment. Second, this journey is not only shaped by external contexts but is also constructed by students through ongoing negotiation and meaning-making. The research will be conducted at C University (pseudonym) in Hong Kong. There are 14 NETTI students enrolled at C University. In-depth interviews will be conducted with all participants. Regarding ethical considerations, formal ethical approval will be sought from the university prior to data collection. Informed consent will be obtained from each participant, and pseudonyms will be used to protect participants’ identities. Data collection will involve semi-structured interviews and observations. First, semi-structured interviews will be conducted with NETTI master’s students at the research site. The interviews will focus on four key areas: (1) motivations for choosing the NETTI program in Hong Kong; (2) students’ understandings of their roles and identities; (3) key events influencing their educational and career choices; and (4) future career plans. Interview protocols will be developed based on the push-pull model and the life course framework, with particular attention to key transitions and individual agency. Second, observations will be carried out at the case university, with the researcher entering the field in the role of a teaching assistant. Observations will focus on NETTI students’ classroom participation and interactional practices, including: (1) identity performance and negotiation; (2) academic engagement and responses; and (3) interaction styles with peers and instructors. Observational data will be documented through detailed fieldnotes (Emerson et al., 2011). Fieldwork will be conducted through sustained engagement at the research site, including attendance at relevant courses.

At the macro level, the NETTI program operates as a national policy script that articulates normative expectations regarding the cultivation of high-quality teachers (MOE, 2024). This script links professional development to national priorities and internationalization, thereby defining legitimate professional goals and framing desirable career trajectories. From a push-pull perspective, such macro-level policy arrangements constitute structural conditions that shape students’ educational and career orientations. At the meso level, universities function as institutional mediators that translate the macro-level policy script into localized organizational practices, curricular arrangements, and support structures. In doing so, institutions selectively interpret and enact national policy imperatives within their specific academic and internationalized contexts. These meso-level translations shape the opportunity structures and evaluative criteria through which students engage with the NETTI program. At the micro level, students encounter and interpret these translated institutional scripts through their evolving professional self-understanding and career expectations. Drawing on life course theory, students’ engagement with the NETTI can be understood as a dynamic process in which individual trajectories are shaped through key transitions and anticipated futures. Rather than exercising autonomy in isolation, students’ agency emerges through their situated interpretation of macro- and meso-level conditions in relation to imagined professional pathways. From a bottom-up perspective, students’ engagement is activated by environmental stimuli that draw attention to particular opportunities and constraints (Ocasio, 2011). These stimuli include peers’ career trajectories, labor market requirements in Hong Kong and Mainland China, interactions with everyday academic experiences. Such stimuli trigger processes of sensemaking, decision-making, and mobilization (Thornton et al., 2012), through which students interpret institutional expectations, develop career orientations, and strategically deploy the symbolic and material resources associated with the NETTI program. In this sense, students’ autonomy can be conceptualized as a form of situated agency that is produced through the interaction of structural conditions and biographical meaning-making over time.

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