In this chapter, we report on an inquiry exploring experiences of ten elite mainland Chinese student teachers of English as to understand why they came to Hong Kong for the teacher education programme. The study revealed that these students were largely attracted to teaching in Hong Kong because of its extrinsic benefits such as professional stability, the prestige associated with the English language teaching profession, and the opportunities to acquire valued skills transferable to other professions including English competence. Facing challenges as non-local students, they were also uncertain of becoming teachers in the new context. This raises questions as to how these talented non-local teachers can be retained in Hong Kong’s schools.
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This chapter reports a comparative study exploring the motivation to teach and the commitment to teaching among non-local student teachers from mainland China and their Hong Kong local counterparts. The findings indicate that with similar entry perspectives, the two groups develop different degrees of commitment to teaching after the first semester of the programme. While the mainland Chinese participants reassess the suitability of teaching in a culturally unfamiliar context and tend to think of transferring their knowledge to other careers, Hong Kong participants develop an interest in putting the theory into practice and become more committed to teaching. The reasons underlying the differences are explored.
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The processes of “becoming a teacher” are dynamic, fluid, and ongoing (Britzman (2003). Within contemporary multilingual educational settings the uncertainties and challenges of becoming an English language teacher are especially pronounced as the often conflicting values and interests of different stakeholders ensures that language-in-education policy is frequently a source of educational, political, and social tension (Li 2009; Tollefson and Tsui 2004; Tsui and Tollefson 2007). For language teachers and teacher educators working within such settings these challenges are currently being played out against a larger background of transition as forces of globalization reshape teaching and teacher education in general (Bates 2008) and as second language teacher education in particular seeks “a new identity as it draws on new knowledge and employs new pedagogic practices” (Wright 2010, p. 288). The studies in this book have therefore addressed the need to better understand the ways in which issues of language, teaching, and teacher education shape and are shaped by the experiences of becoming an English language teacher within multilingual contexts such as Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

In this chapter, I problematize a widespread belief that teachers in Asian contexts including Japan and China are well protected by a tradition that reveres teachers. Instead I contend that cultural traditions, together with educational reforms and sociocultural changes, can also undermine the teaching profession. To this end, I report on an inquiry that explored the social censure of teachers, especially language teachers in Hong Kong. In the inquiry, I took advantage of an Internet discussion concerning the ‘falling’ language standards, a widespread concern in the region. The analysis of the discussion revealed the high expectations that the public had of language teachers as well as the increasingly complex conditions for teachers’ professional practices due to ongoing educational reforms and cultural changes.
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In this chapter, we attempt to capture experienced Chinese language teachers’ voices on the medium of instruction (MOI) issue as Putonghua is being promoted as an MOI for teaching Chinese in Hong Kong schools. The interpretative inquiry involved the collection of eight experienced Chinese teachers’ professional experiences with a focus on their attitudes concerning the potential shift towards the use of Putonghua as an MOI in Chinese classes. Through a collaborative interpretative process, the study revealed a wide spectrum of attitudes including reservations and enthusiasm for the possible switch to Putonghua as an MOI. We interpreted the participants’ attitudes with reference to shifting political, demographical conditions, the participants’ experiences of curriculum reforms and their concerns with pedagogical conditions.
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This chapter reports on a qualitative study that explored the discursive positioning of native-speaking English teachers (NETs) within schools in Hong Kong. It draws on insights from discourse theory to examine NETs self-positioning, as well as their positioning by other stakeholders, as part of a dynamic process of identity formation. The participants were eight teachers who were employed in both primary and secondary schools under the Hong Kong Governments Native English Teacher Scheme. In-depth interviews with each of the participants were used to understand how the teachers discursively positioned themselves, as well as how they believed they were positioned by others, within their schools. The findings suggest that the NETs self-positioning as ‘professional language teachers’ was challenged by other stakeholders who questioned the value of their teaching experience and practices within the context of English language classrooms in Hong Kong. The chapter explores how NETs attempted to negotiate the antagonism between different positionings. Implications for attracting and retaining NETs, as well as for future research, are also discussed.
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In this chapter, I report on a study investigating the construction of teacher identity of a group of mainland Chinese pre-service teachers of English in a Teacher Education Institute in Hong Kong. The study revealed that the participants experience and express opposing and potentially contradictory identities. They were found to negotiate their identities with the positionings from peers, students, prospective schools and social discourses. It was also found that they construct legitimacy in the professional community drawing on their own linguistic and cultural repertoire. This study offers a way of thinking about teacher formation as a process of identity development and extends understandings of the interconnected relations of discourse and identity in such contexts.
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Chapters 2 and 3 considered the challenges mainland Chinese preservice teachers experience in becoming English language teachers in Hong Kong. This chapter continues to explore the perceived challenges of becoming an English language teacher in multilingual contexts such as Hong Kong from the perspective of local Hong Kong preservice teachers. The current chapter discusses the results of a qualitative study that aimed to explore how one group of preservice English language teachers in Hong Kong constructed their identities as teachers. Using in-depth interviews to gain a rich understanding of participants’ teacher identity formation in practice and discourse, the perspectives of six preservice teachers about teaching and teachers at the completion of their undergraduate teacher education program are examined. In contrast to the theorization of teacher identity construction, the results suggest that the participants often held rigid views about teaching and how they saw themselves, and others, as teachers. It is argued that this rigidity may lead to antagonistic relations between these preservice teachers and their more experienced colleagues as the participants move into teaching and explores the implications for challenging this rigidity within the context of teacher education programs.
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A teacher shortage in Hong Kong in core subjects, such as English, has led to interest in the recruitment and retention of teachers. In Chap. 6, it was argued that recruiting large numbers of non-local students to undergraduate teacher education programs does not necessarily offer a reliable solution to this difficulty and suggests the need to explore alternative routes through which teachers may be recruited. This chapter considers one such alternative, namely the role second career teachers could play in meeting possible teacher shortages in multilingual contexts such as Hong Kong. The chapter draws upon Wenger’s (Communities of practice. Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998) theory of identity formation and using data from interviews with eight second-career English language teachers in Hong Kong, this chapter explores how second-career teachers may be better supported in their professional development. The study found that second-career teachers’ skills and experiences were not valued within their schools and that this was reflected in a rigid division the participants drew between the institutionally endorsed identity positions made available to them and the type of teachers they wanted to be. In response to this antagonism, second-career teachers used their position of non-participation to establish identity territories that connected aspects of their first-career identities such as engineers and managers to their emerging teacher identities. It is suggested that non-participation, a potentially negative experience in Wenger’s (Communities of practice. Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998) framework, was deployed by this group of teachers to create the space they needed to enact their own preferred teacher identities. Implications for attracting and retaining second-career teachers are discussed.
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Short term international experience programmes are a common element of English second language (ESL) teacher education in many countries. This chapter problematizes the belief that such programmes necessarily result in beneficial changes in preservice teachers thinking about themselves as teachers – their beliefs, habits, and values – by exploring the experiences of eight preservice 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.
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