This study, drawing upon data triangulated from interviews, classroom research reports, and school documents, sheds light on how cross-border teachers from mainland China to Hong Kong construct and negotiate their identities when teaching English creative writing. Using identity control theory (ICT) this study examines discursive and complex identity development and reveals contextual and interpersonal factors that hinder identity construction among teachers of English creative writing. Factors include isolation from local colleagues, failure to integrate into the host community due to cultural and linguistic differences, standardized school instruction, heavy workloads, students' distrust, and students' low English proficiency. Cross-border teachers were found to experience negative emotions including stress, anger, and unease due to failed teacher identity verification in a new land. This study contributes to theoretical knowledge of ICT, suggesting inaction and secondary emotions as outcomes of the incongruence between the meanings of identity standard and input. Relevant theoretical and pedagogical implications are also discussed. Copyright © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.

The past decades have witnessed an increasing number of studies documenting native English teachers’ (NETs’) challenges in professional development and collaboration with nonnative English teachers’ (NNETs’) across multiple educational contexts. There are also debates in TESOL regarding the essentialized dichotomy of NETs and NNETs with insufficient recognition of the educational and cultural experiences of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) / English as a second language (ESL). Little research has been conducted on the lived experiences of transnational multilingual NETs who work in heritage contexts; and how they position themselves when they conduct their teacher identity work and negotiate between heritage identity and NET identity. This study, drawing on the notion of ethical self-formation and its application in teacher identity research as a theoretical lens, addresses the gap by investigating the identity construction of two transnational NETs of Chinese ethnicity returning to their home context in Hong Kong to teach. The findings indicate that (1) the participants negotiated their multilingual identity and the monolingual NET identity ascribed in the workplace, (2) they developed counter-strategies to turn the knowledge of the local language and culture into resources in teaching, and (3) they agentively expanded the definition of NET and situated them in the full institutional and social context to consider their identity conflict and self-empowerment. The findings have implications for education policy to accommodate and value the plural-competences of NETs and NNETs. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Novice teachers often undergo an identity shift from learner to teacher. Along this process, their instructional beliefs change considerably which in turn affect their teacher identity formation. Drawing on data collected mainly through interviews with three novice English teachers for more than one year, the present study examines their first-year teaching experience in Hong Kong secondary schools, focusing on changes of their English teaching beliefs and the impact of these changes on their identity construction. Findings reveal that while the teachers’ initial teaching beliefs were largely shaped in their prior school learning and learning-to-teach experience, these beliefs changed and were reshaped a great deal when encountering various contextual realities, and these changes further influenced their views on their teacher identity establishment, unfortunately in a more negative than positive direction. The study sheds light on the importance of institutional support in affording opportunities for novice teachers’ workplace learning and professional development. Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper reports on our inquiry into how language teachers' identities relate to their efforts to teach intercultural communicative competence. In the study, we collected data through in-depth interviews with and observations of 16 Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong's international schools. The analysis revealed that the participants simultaneously embraced multiple professional and sociocultural identities related to intercultural communicative competence teaching. Specifically, the professional identities included a Chinese language teacher identity and a school staff member identity, while the sociocultural identity comprised a Chinese culture bearer identity, a multicultural identity, a cultural transmitter identity, a culture learner identity, and a cultural bridge identity. These identities were found to compete with or reinforce each other in mediating the participants' efforts in relation to teaching intercultural communicative competence; different identities were often associated with different understandings of and approaches to teaching intercultural communicative competence. The findings suggest that language teacher educators need to recognise teacher identities as an important pedagogical resource when preparing language teachers for teaching in cross-cultural contexts. Copyright ©2021 Routledge.

Drawing upon the Triadic Reciprocity Framework, this longitudinal qualitative multiple-case study examined how three Hong Kong secondary English as a second language (ESL) teachers exercised their teacher agency to take control of their teaching and professional development. More specifically, the study aimed at exploring how teachers' intentions and actions for the establishment of their professional identity were afforded and constrained by their workplaces. Findings reveal that these ESL teachers exercised different degrees of proactive, reactive, and passive agency. The four properties of human agency, i.e., intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness, influenced the teachers' proactive, reactive, and passive agency when they responded to personal, behavioral, and environmental determinants. The findings shed light on a three-layered Triadic Reciprocity framework on teacher agency and contributes to a systematic and comprehensive discussion about the various internal and external factors that might exert influences on agency of early career teachers. This study offers pedagogical implications for school teachers, school leaders, and policy makers in Hong Kong and beyond. Copyright ©2021 Frontiers Media SA.

This paper reports on a longitudinal case study of a Hong Kong early career ESL (English as a second language) secondary teacher, Joyce (pseudonym), who experienced different stages of personal–professional development over seven–eight years (August 2013–December 2020), as follows: (1) entering, and engaging, in teaching for five–six years, upon graduation from a local teacher education BA degree program in summer 2013; (2) resigning from her full-time teaching position and leaving the teaching profession, in response to an “insulting” classroom revisit in her third school; (3) working in an NGO for a short time, after “recovery” from the “insulting” event; and (4) weighing possibilities for resuming teaching, after leaving the NGO in 2019. Drawing on multiple data that were collected over seven–eight years, including interviews, informal communications, and autobiography, this study aimed to examine the issues of teacher attrition and sustainable professional development, in relation to teacher agency and teacher identity, in Hong Kong secondary school contexts. The findings revealed that school and social contexts intertwined with personal experiences, culminating in Joyce’s leaving or staying in the teaching profession. Through focusing on Joyce’s long-term experiences of becoming and being an ESL teacher, the findings shed light on the affordances for, and constraints upon, teacher agency and teacher identity in school contexts. Copyright © 2021 MDPI AG

Teacher professional development (TPD) is regarded as crucial to fostering teacher improvement. Recent calls for the internationalization of teacher education and professional development, including teachers undertaking courses taught abroad, have enhanced the scope of TPD opportunities. Yet, little is currently known about how such international experiences of TPD shape the perspectives of these teachers. It is also unclear how the learning these teachers experience in foreign settings is reflected in their engagement in the practices and activities of schools and classrooms upon returning to their home country. Therefore, this paper reports the results of a study that explores the perspectives and experiences of one group of in-service mainland Chinese teachers who undertook professional development in Hong Kong. Grounded in a theory of teacher identity construction and using in-depth interviews, results suggest that the teacher’s identities were shaped by the learning they experienced during professional development. However, following their return to teaching positions in mainland China, relations of power within their schools blocked the construction of their preferred teacher identities in practice. Suggestions are made for supporting the identity construction aims of teachers who undertake international professional development and implications for future research are considered. Copyright © 2020 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

While there is growing recognition of the mutually shaping relationship between teaching with information technology (IT) and teachers' beliefs, skills and self‐efficacy, there has been a paucity of research attention on the construction of teacher identity during actual IT‐assisted in‐class teaching and out‐of‐class networking with students, in a full institutional and social context. This study investigates how a group of secondary school English as a second language (ESL) teachers regulated their teaching and practices and constructed their identities in relation to governmental requirements for the use of IT in teaching. Teachers from seven government‐subsidised schools in Hong Kong were interviewed about their experiences of using IT in teaching. We frame the reported practices of these teachers as a process of construction of identity, formed in the context of the 'governmentality' supporting current examination‐oriented educational policy. Observing from the perspective of what has been termed 'governmentality' and an ethical framework for self‐formation of personal identity makes it possible to see these teachers' professional identities constructed through the use of IT practices within the contradictory conditions of professional/personal demands, compliance/resistance, school promotion/peer non‐cooperation, advantage/disadvantage in use of IT, use of IT/content and pedagogical knowledge. This study has implications for developing a more supportive and rational environment for the use of IT in teaching, in which more autonomy and identity options—rather than constraints—can be provided for teachers in the digital era. This study also informs practitioners and policy makers in other educational settings experiencing a similar IT boom in teaching. Copyright © 2019 British Educational Research Association.

This paper reports on an investigation into two pre-service teachers' reflective learning through a series of integrated and interactive tasks (i.e., collaborative lesson planning, group consultation, microteaching and videoed reflections) in a teacher education course in Hong Kong. Relying on data gathered from interviews and reflection videos and informed by a tripartite model on teacher identity in practice, discourse and activity, the study revealed how the pre-service teachers engaged in reflective practice and identity construction in the course. The paper concludes with practical implications on how to design and implement effective reflective tasks in preparing and developing competent language teachers. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Educational-policy makers worldwide are concerned with finding effective strategies to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. The recruitment of second-career teachers has been seen as one means of fulfilling this aim. Against a background of calls to better understand SCTs, this article reports the results of a qualitative study investigating the experiences of six second-career teachers in Hong Kong. Based on a theoretical framework of teacher-identity construction, discourse analysis was used to explore the participants' perceptions of their professional development. In-depth interviews were conducted to gain detailed insights into how the teachers construct their identities-in-practice and identities-in-discourse within Hong Kong schools. The findings expose tensions between attempts the positioning of SCTs within dominant discourses as 'traditional' and 'conventional' teachers, for example, and the participants' self-positioning in practice as 'innovative' and 'risk-taking' teachers. Ways in SCT agency, and hence identity construction, can be facilitated through the introduction of the innovative pedagogical practices which many SCTs seek to pursue in Hong Kong schools are considered. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.