Legitimate teacher authority is fundamental to effective teaching, but is often a thorny issue that teachers need to grapple with when teaching in cross-cultural teaching contexts. By interviewing 18 pre-service Chinese language teachers on their understanding of legitimate teacher authority throughout teaching practicum at international schools in Hong Kong, this study revealed that the teachers changed their perception about the essentiality and the nature of the pedagogical and interpersonal components of legitimate teacher authority. They developed a more nuanced and balanced understanding about legitimate teacher authority over time. However, their abilities in reaching the balance were constrained by their cultural knowledge and skills in achieving positive interpersonal dynamics when implementing student-centred pedagogies.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2015.1081717]

An increasing number of studies have been carried out on teacher identities, but there are few studies exploring how individuals could enact their ethical agency to consider the possibilities of comprising their teacher identities differently. In this chapter, I attempted to investigate the understanding of teacher and teaching profession among a group of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong and their discursive determination in identity construction. The findings indicate that teacher identities are contingent and constructed, and that the notion of the ethico-politics of teacher identity opens up scope for moving beyond the narrowing of focus on particular meanings of teaching and enables the teachers to build ethical agency for identity reformation and reconstruction.
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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.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

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.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

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.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

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.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

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.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

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.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]

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.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht]