Learning, teaching, and constructing identities: ESL pre-service teacher experiences during a short-term international experience programme

Learning, teaching, and constructing identities: ESL pre-service teacher experiences during a short-term international experience programme

• Trent, John Hong Kong Institute of Education

Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 31(2), 177-194, 2011

Routledge

2011

• M Teachers & Education for Teachers
  • MG Identities, Attitudes & Opinion of Educational Workers
• G Curriculum, Teaching & Learning: Specific Disciplines
  • GB English Language

Teacher Identity Discourse Analysis Teacher Education Abroad Impact Education & Educational Research

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Post-Secondary Education

Short-term international experience programmes are a common element of English second language (ESL) teacher education in many countries. This study problematizes the belief that such programmes necessarily result in beneficial changes in pre-service teachers thinking about themselves as teachers - their beliefs, habits, and values - by exploring the experiences of eight pre-service ESL teachers from Hong Kong as they undertook a short-term international experience programme in Australia. Drawing on a theory of identity construction, the findings suggest that identity conflicts impacted how the student teachers experienced this programme as they struggled to reconcile past, present, and future trajectories of teacher identity. In particular, the student teachers constructed rigid divisions between different types of teachers and teaching they experienced at home and abroad. These divisions were reflected in antagonistic relations between the types of English language teachers and teaching they aligned their own teaching activities and practices with and the teacher identities that they perceived to be available to them within the Hong Kong education system. Implications for addressing such identity conflicts throughout international experience programmes are considered and implications for future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2011.566997]

• English

Journal Articles

• 02188791

• 10.1080/02188791.2011.566997

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/9a067b83

2014-07-11