The teaching practicum is a pivotal event for pre-service teachers to experience the transition from being students to being teachers. This paper examines the emergence of 'unruly pupils' as a central concern for pre-service English language teachers in their teaching practicum. The inquiry relates the pre-service teachers' perceived challenge of 'unruly pupils' to the mediation of contextual conditions and processes as well as the marginal positions in which they found themselves during the teaching practicum. The article also reports on the efforts that they undertook to address this perceived challenge. The findings suggest that pre-service teachers are encouraged to interrogate the contextual conditions and processes underlying the perceived challenge of 'unruly pupils' in their transition to being teachers, rather than treat it merely as a relationship challenge.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2012.656440]

There has been a widespread belief that teachers in Asian contexts including Japan and China are well protected by a tradition that reveres teachers. However, in Chinese contexts, cultural traditions have been found to undermine the teaching profession, together with educational reforms and societal changes. This paper reports on an inquiry that explored the social censure of teachers, especially language teachers in Hong Kong. The inquiry 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 for language teachers as well as the increasingly complex conditions for teachers' professional practices due to ongoing educational reforms and cultural changes. The Internet discussion also offers a unique opportunity to examine how the teaching profession was constructed in these discourses and provides insights into teachers' professional vulnerability in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Research Papers in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671521003637146]