Constructing International School Teacher Identity from Lived Experience: A Fresh Conceptual Framework

Abstract

This paper responds to Bailey and Cooker’s (2019) paper entitled ‘Exploring Teacher Identity in International Schools: Key Concepts for Research’ in which the authors offer a typology of international school teachers based on interviews with non-qualified teachers. This paper builds upon the typology of international school teachers by offering a framework for researching international school teacher identity. The framework is illustrated by interview data with an expatriate teacher in a Chinese Internationalised School, both of which remain under-researched. Chinese Internationalised Schools typically cater to local middle-class elites and offer some form of international curricula, such as the International Baccalaureate Diploma, alongside study of the Chinese national curriculum. Rather than utilising a priori teacher types derived from existing typologies, the framework utilises teachers’ lived experiences to inductively construct a ‘snap-shot’ of their teacher identity. Drawing upon postmodern approaches to teacher identity, identity is conceptualised as an ongoing dialogic process. Interview data with an international school teacher called Tyron (a pseudonym) is utilised in order to take the reader through how the framework is intended to be put into practice. The framework is an alternative approach to researching international school teachers that guides researchers away from labelling teachers by observation and instead looks at what they do and their histories. Moreover, this approach involves both the researcher and the teacher, and not, as is typically the case, only the researcher.

Keywords

International school teachers teacher identity lived experience international schools

Introduction

International school teachers remain an under-researched group in the field of international education (Bunnell, 2017). Not only is there a paucity of data examining teachers’ work in international schools (Bailey, 2015), but little has been said about the realities of working in international schools, or about who become international school teachers and why (Bunnell, 2017). Previous attempts to develop typologies of international school teachers (e.g., Hardman, 2001; Garton, 2000) have been critiqued (e.g. Savva, 2015) for being ‘insufficiently nuanced to capture this group’s motivations and identities’ (Bailey & Cooker, 2019, p. 129). Fortunately, the last few years have seen a growing interest in the lives and experiences of teachers in international schools (Arber et al., 2014; Bailey, 2015; Blyth, 2017; Bunnell, 2016, 2017), which could be likened to something of an international school teacher turn in the field of international education. Of particular note is how this literature has explored the positive and negative experiences of working in international schools by appropriating the constructs of the Global Middle Class (Tarc, Tarc & Wu, 2019) and the precariat (Bunnell, 2016). Another concept that could also help to elucidate teachers’ experiences in international schools, but that has yet to be fully realised, is that of teacher identity. Teacher identity encompasses the complexity of identity formation (Edwards & Edwards, 2017), the importance of the context, sub-identities or I-positions/identity positions (Hermans, 1996), and the interpretation of personal experiences, and agency (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004). The concept of teacher identity would have particular utility in international schools. For example, on moving to a new school, expatriate teachers are confronted with the task of adapting to new cultures and cultures of learning, which can challenge pre-existing identities thereby necessitating the development of new teacher identities.

Despite having yet to be fully taken up by international educational researchers, the concept of teacher identity in international schools has recently been addressed in a paper in the Journal of Research in International Education by Bailey and Cooker (2019) entitled ‘Exploring Teacher Identity in International Schools: Key Concepts for Research’. In their paper, the authors draw upon the concept of teacher identity in order to understand the commitment and motivation of teachers in international schools. The authors’ work on teacher identity is much welcomed, as it focuses on a group of international school teachers who have received little attention from international education researchers – namely, teachers who do not possess formal education qualifications such as a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in the UK. The authors’ paper advances our understanding of non-qualified (and perhaps even qualified) teachers in international schools by proposing three conceptual lenses for understanding international school teacher identity: ‘The Accidental Teacher’, ‘Third Culture Teachers’, and a ‘Typology of International School Teachers’. More recently, Rey, Bolay and Gez (2020) have also proposed an ‘original typology of international teachers’ (p. 4) which consists of three teacher types: the ‘expat’, the ‘local’, and the ‘adventurer’. Although this paper does not engage with this typology directly (it was published whilst this paper was in the course of production), many of the arguments made in relation to Bailey and Cooker’s use of a typology are equally salient. It is my intention to engage with the Rey et al study in future publications.

This paper builds upon the ‘Typology of International School Teachers’ by offering an alternative conceptualisation of international school teacher identity. In keeping with Bailey and Cooker’s paper, the concept of teacher identity is taken as a starting point for understanding the experiences of non-qualified teachers in international schools. However, rather than utilising pre-existing typologies from the field of international education (including Hayden and Thompson’s (2013) typology of international schools), this paper offers what is provisionally called an ‘International School Teacher Identity Framework’ (also referred to here as ‘the framework’). The framework is predicated upon postmodern approaches to identity that hold that individuals’ identities are discontinuous, ambivalent and open-ended (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011), contingent upon the discursive opportunities available within a given context (Mockler, 2011). Rather than imposing a priori categories onto teachers, thereby reifying them as a particular type or essence, the framework utilises teachers’ lived experiences to inductively construct a snap-shot of their teacher identity. The framework is both an innovative and an alternative approach that moves us away from labelling teachers by observation and instead considers what they do and their histories.

In order to illustrate this framework, data are analysed from an interview with an international school teacher based in Shanghai, China who is referred to here by the pseudonym Tyron. Before presenting Tyron’s interview data, this paper first discusses Bailey and Cooker’s ‘tool-box of concepts’ (2019, p. 125) for researching international school teachers in order to lay the groundwork for presentation of the international school teacher identity framework.

Bailey and Cooker’s typology of international school teachers

Bailey and Cooker offer three conceptual lenses for exploring non-qualified international school teachers. The first, ‘The accidental teacher’, refers to a type of teacher who does not enter the profession due to a sense of vocation, but rather does so as an incidental result of other events in their life path, such as a desire to live in another country. This teacher type resonates with findings from my own research into non-qualified international school teachers in Chinese Internationalised Schools who became international school teachers as a means to an end, or out of sheer economic necessity, being unable to find comparable employment in their home countries (Poole, 2019b). The economic benefits of being employed in international schools are balanced by increasing precarity, such as short-term contracts (Bunnell, 2016), little or no recourse to representation in contract disputes (Blythe, 2017), and the psychological effects of living away from one’s home country for an extended sojourn, such as a sense of permanent liminality and feelings of self-doubt that can manifest as a loss of self-efficacy in relation to one’s teaching practice (Poole, 2019a).

The second conceptual lens, ‘Third Culture Teachers’, refers to teachers who ‘see themselves not as professional teachers in their country of origin or in their country of residence, but as belonging primarily to a third culture of teacher identity – that of the teacher in an international school’ (Bailey & Cooker, 2019, p. 135). The authors explain that many of the teachers in their sample found that the job they did in international schools was considerably different from that in other kinds of schools. This is borne out by the findings from other studies, such as Bailey (2015), who found that despite having accrued experience and holding qualified teacher status, teachers still struggled to adapt to international schools. One of the most significant reasons why teachers struggle to adapt is the co-existence of multiple cultural, pedagogical and epistemological traditions that are often perceived to challenge, and in some cases even undermine, western expatriate teachers’ professional beliefs and identities (Poole, 2019a).

The third conceptual lens, and the focus of this paper, is a ‘Typology of International School Teachers’, which takes its inspiration from Hayden and Thompson’s typology of international schools (Hayden & Thompson, 2013). To provide context, Hayden and Thompson’s typology identifies three types of school: Type A traditional international schools; Type B ideological schools; and Type C non-traditional international schools. Type A or traditional international schools were designed to cater for the children of globally mobile expatriates and, until late into the twentieth-century, represented the majority of international schools (Hayden & Thompson, 2013). In contrast to Type A schools, Type B schools were not created specifically to satisfy market demand, but to serve an ideological purpose (Hayden & Thompson, 2013). These schools are exemplified by the United World Colleges (UWC) and are based largely on the vision of Kurt Hahn who sought to promote international understanding and peace through education (Hayden, 2006). Finally, the most recent type of international school, Type C non-traditional international schools, has emerged in part due to the effects of globalisation, which has led to a growing international focus in some national school systems. The rise of Type C schools includes the growth of an Asian-wide phenomenon of marketisation and corporatisation (Kim & Mobrand, 2019), which has seen the Global South become a key player in the international school market (Machin, 2017). These schools are attractive to Asian parents who have growing aspirations for their children to experience an Anglophone international education that local systems mostly cannot offer (Hayden & Thompson, 2013; Kim & Mobrand, 2019).

Type C schools have been further argued to include Chinese Internationalised Schools (Poole, 2020). These schools cater to local middle-class elites, and are an alternative to more traditional international schools which most Chinese nationals are restricted from attending unless they hold a foreign (non-Chinese) passport (Poole, 2020). Chinese Internationalised Schools also offer some form of international curriculum, such as the International Baccalaureate Diploma, alongside study of the Chinese national curriculum. The coexistence of national and international orientations (in, for instance, curriculum and expatriate/local faculty) are often in tension, resulting in expatriate teachers feeling that their teacher identities are marginalised by institutional structures (Poole, 2019c). Teachers in internationalised schools have also been differentiated from teachers in Type A schools based on qualifications and professional capital (Poole, 2019a, 2020). Whereas expatriate teachers in Type A schools are generally licensed professionals, many teachers in Chinese Internationalised Schools are not. Critics have also noted that the international school sector is still predominantly Anglo-Saxon and white (Rey, Bolay & Gez, 2020). This is also the case in Chinese Internationalised Schools where expatriate teachers are valued not so much for their professional capital (qualifications and experience) as for their embodiment of highly racialised western attributes, such as English language abilities and white skin colour, in the form of ethnic capital (Farrer, 2019).

To return to Bailey and Cooker’s typology, the authors propose three types of international school teacher each of which corresponds to one of the school types suggested by Hayden and Thompson. I quote the authors’ definition of these types in order to make their argument more transparent to the reader, which will also serve to bring into focus the strengths and potential issues with their theorisation which this paper addresses. The three types are:

‘Type A teachers – see their job as teachers as supporting travel and mobility. Just as Hayden & Thompson’s (2013) Type A schools are there to serve the needs of the globally mobile, Type A teachers have joined the profession in order to be globally mobile.

Type B teachers – see their jobs in ideological terms. Just as Type B schools were founded to promote internationalism or global justice (Hayden & Thompson, 2013), Type B teachers see being open-minded and international as central to their role as international school teachers. They are committed to the profession because it enables them to make a difference to students’ lives: to change the world in global, ideological ways.

Type C teachers – view their primary attachment as being to the locale in which the international school is situated. Just as Type C institutions mainly serve the local population rather than expatriates (Hayden & Thompson, 2013), so the Type C teacher feels connected to the location as well, perhaps because of personal interest, marriage or children.’ (Bailey & Cooker, 2019, pp 136 – 137).

The authors’ typology advances research on international school teachers in a number of significant ways. The typology is helpful for identifying and elucidating the different narratives of commitment offered by teachers, particularly those who lack a teaching qualification. Hitherto, little distinction has been made between different types of international school teacher. The typology goes some way to showing how international school teachers as a group or class are stratified according to experiences and qualifications, which also resonates with recent research that has extended the Global Middle Class construct to include international school teachers (Tarc, Tarc & Wu, 2019). The typology would also be particularly useful in the study of teachers in Type C non-traditional international schools, or more specifically in Chinese Internationalised Schools, as research (e.g., Poole, 2020) has highlighted that many expatriate teachers in this type of school do not possess a formal teaching qualification. Finally, by connecting a particular type of teacher to a specific type of international school, the authors move beyond purely phenomenological accounts of identity by foregrounding the role that organisational structures play in identity construction.

However, there are a number of constraints inherent to the construct of the typology itself that this paper addresses. Firstly, reducing teachers to a type or types assumes that they embody fixed traits or characteristics that transcend time and place. However, identity is both contextual and processual in nature (Valsiner, 2014), and therefore should be understood as process as well as product (or type). Secondly, the teacher types are also predicated upon a priori categories derived from Hayden and Thompson’s typology of international schools. This suggests a somewhat deterministic view of identity: teachers either choose a certain type of school based on pre-existing identities (‘I am a globally mobile teacher’) or they become a certain type of teacher as a result of working in one of these schools. This also assumes that the relationship between context and self is one-directional.

Whilst individuals may define themselves in terms of a core identity, research has shown that a core identity is also comprised of sub-identities or I-positions (Hermans, 1996) that are discursively performed through syntactic and semantic devices that internally connect texts, such as modality (should or ought) (Trent, 2010) or metaphor (Alsup, 2006) and can also be in tension. Following on from this, identity is not completely immanent, residing within an individual waiting to be articulated, but is half constructed in relation to the context in which an utterance is produced. Drawing on the work of Gee (2000), it is possible to make a distinction between discourse and Discourse. Whereas discourse could be likened to the linguistic building blocks of identity, Discourse relates to wider, macro structural aspects that regulate and shape how discourse is constructed. The utterance ‘I am an international teacher’ is an example of the discursive performance of identity in the form of a declarative sentence. However, what that identity means in practice and whether it can be performed within the context of the international school is another matter. Accordingly, identity is never produced in a vacuum, but is performed or constructed in a discursive space which is enabled and regulated by technologies of power (Foucault, 1991). Whilst in many international schools, the epistemologies and teaching strategies imported by western expatriate staff become dominant and lead to the marginalisation of local faculty’s knowledge and teacher identities (Lai, Li & Gong, 2016), the opposite is true in Chinese Internationalised Schools. For example, expatriate faculty members often face barriers in expressing their knowledge and can feel that their teacher identities are marginalised by institutional structures (Poole, 2019c). Teachers may be positioned by discourses, but they are able to position themselves within them and also to fashion new ones (Watson, 2009).

To summarise, one of the strengths of Bailey and Cooker’s typology of teachers is how it makes generalisations about an under-represented group of teachers (non-qualified or highly qualified, but only valued for their ethnic capital). Yet it precludes the identification of areas of tension and ambivalence within an individual teacher’s narrative, particularly in relation to sub-identities or I-positions. In order to address this lacuna, this paper offers an alternative approach to international school teacher identity that is based on the lived experiences of international school teachers, which is entitled an ‘international school teacher identity framework’. Rather than reifying teachers as types, this paper offers an innovative approach: a dialogic framework that allows for the continual (re)negotiation of international school teachers’ identities. As the framework is predicated upon identity as arising within domains of experience, it is possible to situate a teacher’s core identity within the context of their own narrative, thereby generating indigenous concepts that are grounded in the data.

Conceptual framework

Professional identity is an ongoing process of integration of the ‘personal’ and the ‘professional’ sides of becoming (Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004). ‘Personal’ experiences are understood as teachers’ personal life experiences since childhood, such as family, friends, and significant other people (Bukor, 2015); family and social roles (Day & Kington, 2008); teachers’ schooling and professional education (Bukor, 2015; Mockler, 2011) and the influence of significant others (Poole, 2019a). ‘Professional experiences’ are taken to refer to the participants’ teaching practice (Bukor, 2015); educational ideals of the teacher (Day & Kington, 2008); career history, teacher education and professional learning (Mockler, 2011). The personal identity domain is often out of step with the professional domain, leading to tension (Day & Kington, 2008). Given the transnational nature of international schools as culturally heterogeneous, it is also necessary to add a third domain: cross-cultural experiences. Cross-cultural experiences bring into focus the dynamic and complex nature of the ways in which teachers attempt to wrestle with conflicting identities as a result of their personal and professional experiences at home, and living and working in different host countries. The construct of ‘cross-cultural’ experiences takes on a number of configurations. It denotes the experiences of living and working in different cultures, but the prefix ‘cross’ also suggests the symbolic movement across all interactive spaces, regardless of whether they are national or international in nature. Cross-cultural experiences are understood as those experiences of living and working in different countries or transnational spaces that can lead to increased intercultural awareness, but also the retrenchment of values, beliefs and prejudices.

Figure 1 is a visual representation of the three domains of experience and the main themes within each one. The themes are derived from the author’s doctoral research (Poole, 2019a), which explored how internationalised school teachers constructed cross-cultural professional identities in a Chinese Internationalised School in Shanghai. The centre of the diagram, the point at which the three domains intersect, could be thought of as a teacher’s core identity.

Figure 1.

International school teacher identity framework.

The three domains are not discrete, but overlap. They are also often in tension, as indicated by the darker overlapping grey areas. This tension can also be conceptualised more positively in terms of a ‘borderland discourse’ (Alsup, 2006) in which conflicting subjectivities or I-positions (Hermans, 1996) are productively harnessed through reflexive critique in order to move teachers forward in their personal and professional lives. This tension between identities arising within domains of experience is conceptualised in terms of discursive dissonance. This term is appropriated from Koopmans and Olzak (2004), whose work explored the link between violence and public discourse in Germany, and is reconfigured in terms of Alsup’s (2006) notion of cognitive dissonance, which can arise when personal and professional subjectivities are in conflict. In this study, discursive dissonance is understood on two levels. The first is in relation to those discursive features that are in tension or in conflict, indicating the presence of competing sub-identities, which were unable to be integrated into a unified teacher self. The second is in relation to dissonance between the three domains of experience – personal, professional and cross-cultural.

This study

Data are drawn from interviews with Tyron, a South African teacher in his late forties. These data were part of a larger project on international school teachers’ experiences in Chinese Internationalised Schools, which formed the basis for this author’s doctoral research. Ethical clearance was granted as part of the doctoral research by the University of Nottingham, Ningbo. The participants were expatriate and local Chinese teachers who taught the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) in a Chinese Internationalised School in Shanghai referred to here by the pseudonym WEST. WEST is a private boarding school in Shanghai that offers an internationalised curriculum, combining aspects of Chinese and Western approaches to learning. Whilst previous studies have utilised parts of Tyron’s narrative (Poole, 2019b, 2019c), this paper is the first in which the data are presented in their complete form. That is to say, interview data are utilised in order to take the reader through how the international school teacher identity framework might be applied. Tyron’s interviews were selected because they contained many examples of dissonance and because they help to shed light on the more precarious aspects of international school teaching, something which is increasingly observed to characterise teachers’ experiences in international schools (Bunnell, 2016). Given the limited nature of the data (one participant), the findings are intended to be illustrative rather than representative.

Initial data collection took place over a nine-month period and involved two semi-structured interviews and a number of follow-up interactions. In-depth interviewing elicited rich description and verisimilitude due to the prolonged nature of the interviews, which created a snowball effect, whereby more data were generated through the member-checking process. The first interview focused on the participant’s personal experiences, and was designed to provide rich background information about Tyron’s formative learning experiences. The second interview focused on his professional and cross-cultural experiences, and was designed to elicit more specific responses about his current experiences of working at WEST. Both interviews were designed to operationalise the conceptual framework described earlier by highlighting identity positions signaled through verbal and non-verbal discursive features that would indicate discursive dissonance.

Data from follow-up interactions were collected over a twelve-month period, with the China-based social media tool ‘WeChat’ used to facilitate the member-checking process. Member-checking is often used to enhance validity (Doyle, 2007), check researcher bias (Birt et al., 2016) and act as a measure of trustworthiness (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Recent reconceptualisations of this process, however, have underscored the ethical dimension of data collection (Birt et al., 2016; Harvey, 2015). Based on this ethical approach, data collection, member-checking and data analysis constituted a recursive process in which rapport was continually maintained and strengthened through the sharing of raw and analysed data, with additional comments and suggestions being fed back into an emerging interpretation in order to generate more data and enhance validity.

Findings

Personal experiences

Experiences of school

Tyron’s experiences of school in South Africa in the 1980s are presented as playing a significant role in shaping his identity as an international school teacher:

If I think back now, I was actually a naughty student - but good naughty. I listened to the teachers. I mean I never threw my toys out of the box. We weren’t allowed to do that. I was taught in a way a lot like I think the schools in China like the teachers to teach. The way the teacher stands in front of the class with the chalkboard. He will explain something to us; he will give us some work to do; he will tell us to do the work and we were not at all to be (looking at IB Learner Profile on the wall) open minded, and risk taker. (Interview 1)

[The IB Learner Profile comprises ten attributes that provide an indication of the characteristics that the International Baccalaureate considers internationally-minded individuals should possess. Appendix 1 includes the definition of these attributes.] Tyron’s use of the oxymoronic ‘good naughty’ functions as a template for the kind of ideal learner that he wants to teach - a learner who follows the rules but is also inquisitive and is not afraid to question the teacher. However, Tyron was unable to realise this identity during his school days due to the authoritarian attitude of his teachers. The repetition of ‘he will tell us’ and ‘he will give us’ conveys a sense of resigned inevitability, as though the students are passively waiting to be given a series of relentless commands that they must dutifully carry out in silence, which is taken to be indicative of ‘good’ teaching. Significantly, Tyron juxtaposes Chinese education with the IB Learner Profile in order to construct his identity as an international teacher. For example, Tyron presents Chinese education in deficit terms as lacking in freedom. In contrast, he presents the Learner Profile as more student-centred in order to critique and re-appraise his experiences of school. In so doing, he reshapes his past experiences of school in terms of his present identity as an international school teacher by mobilising the attributes of the Learner Profile as a gold standard of learning against which his experiences of school are negatively contrasted.

Role of significant actors

Tyron also personifies his experiences of authoritarian education in the character of the headmaster who takes on the role of the main antagonist in Tyron’s narrative.

I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you a story. My headmaster was just the most awful man ever. I mean he was absolutely nothing (hits table) like a teacher (hits table) should be (hits table). Somebody would (hits table) have to look up and say (hits table) ‘I wanna be like that’ (hits table). I mean, again, you were not allowed to speak your mind at all. You were not allowed to be the Learner Profile. Maybe knowledgeable, yes. Reflective, but communicator, definitely not. Thinker, definitely not. Balanced, definitely not. Openness, open-minded – oh! They did not allow that at all. I always thought that if I do become a teacher one day that I will be exactly the opposite (strikes chair) like he was. (Interview 1)

Although Tyron signals that he is about to share a story (‘I’ll tell you a story’), the ensuing narrative chunk does not actually conform to the typical structure of a linear narrative. His anger towards the headmaster gets the better of him and he is forced to abandon his story and draw upon many of the expressions that he used in the previous narrative chunk, as if he is condemned to return to the same issue in order to make sense of it. Tyron also conveys his disdain for the headmaster through paralinguistic features, such as tone, intonation and striking the table. The striking of the table not only conveys his anger towards the headmaster and the repressive education system that he represents, but also accentuates what is he is saying. For example, the hits fall on ‘nothing’, ‘teacher’ and ‘be’, which are key words that help to articulate Tyron’s beliefs and identity as an international school teacher. The striking of the table becomes a discourse feature that Tyron mobilises to perform his identity as an international teacher, and also to discursively perform resistance. The striking of the table also reinforces the use of the modal should in signaling an international teacher identity position; rather than closed and repressive, a teacher should be open-minded and a good communicator, both of which are attributes of the IB Learner Profile.

Experiences of university

In contrast to his repressive experiences of schooling, Tyron presents his experiences of university as a liberating time where he started to develop a sense of identity as an individual as well as a teacher. His initial experiences of university, however, proved to be difficult:

I must say again the difference between university and schooling was so huge that from schooling, you came from this closed, if I can say, closed atmosphere where you weren’t allowed to say anything. To suddenly this open, you’re allowed to say anything – not anything that you wanted, but I mean you were much more open and much more like the IB Learner Profile . . . I just found that the difference between school and university was so huge that it was actually difficult for me. (Interview 2)

Once again, Tyron refracts his past experiences through the lens of the IB Learner Profile. This time, however, he does not just refer to individual attributes, but uses a simile (‘like the IB Learner Profile’) in order to portray university as more liberating. University, as it is presented in Tyron’s narrative, represents a transition from childhood to adulthood, from the closed, repressive microcosm of school, which is characterised by a lack of identity and agency, to the relatively emancipatory space of university in which Tyron starts to forge an identity as a teacher.

Professional experiences

Tyron narrates his decision to become a teacher as a teacher creation myth where he gradually discovers an essential teacher identity in collaboration with significant actors, such as his parents.

Reasons for becoming a teacher

Tyron’s parents played a key role in validating his identity as a teacher. This episode is presented as a turning point in his life:

I thought I’d never become a teacher because of the bad examples I had of teachers when I was at school. So, I was actually surprised when my parents told me ‘do you know you will make a good teacher’ and (hits table) I go ‘I will never become a teacher (hits table) because if you’re a teacher you must be ugly to kids. They must be quiet in class and just do what you tell them to do.’ So, I was actually told that I’ve got the personality to be a teacher and maybe my personality was such a way that I was, once again, much more like the IB Learner Profile where I would be open-minded and tell the kids to be risk-takers. And okay, so I was told by other people so I had the external influence on me. (Interview 2)

Tyron presents his identity as a teacher as a process of discovery rather than a process of becoming or construction, almost as if it were an essential part of his personality. Becoming a teacher is presented in terms of what could be called an epiphany narrative, in which an individual comes to realise that he or she was a teacher all along as they possessed ‘the personality to be a teacher.’ This notion of being (essence) rather than becoming (experience) is reinforced through the infinitive form of the copula ‘to be’ rather than the verb ‘become’, the latter of which was the form used in all interview questions. Tyron, for example, says that his personality was ‘much more like the Learner Profile’, thereby suggesting that for him teacher identity is understood as a core identity, based on an individual’s personality or disposition rather than a process or series of experiences.

Reasons for coming to China

In contrast to the more positive tone of his teacher epiphany narrative, this section highlights the stark economic reality that forced Tyron to leave South Africa to seek employment abroad. For Tyron, and many other teachers I have interviewed, teaching abroad is presented as a form of global exile, rather than a life-changing sojourn:

I was a part-time teacher in South Africa at the school. I was actually a physical therapist first then I was a part-time teacher. And the school would phone me and ask me if somebody’s sick or whatever then I’d go fill in for him. But I was actually immigrating to Canada, but I lost my job. So, the head of the department at the university – it was at Calgary – told me he knows a principal in China who needs a PE teacher (laughs). And he saw it on my resume that I am a teacher. You know, would I be interested? And from there on I had to do it because I had no work. I came to China because of practical reasons. I came because (laughs) I had no work. And I was kind of looking forward to it because, I mean, I kind of enjoyed it when I was doing it in South Africa. (Interview 1)

Tyron presents his move to China in terms of a redemption narrative, a narrative that explores the overcoming of, and learning from, negative life experiences, leading to a more positive and generative life (McAdams et al., 2001). Initially, he loses his job at the university in Calgary, where he was working as a post-doctoral fellow in order to establish an academic career, which also leads to his plans to immigrate with his family to Canada having to be abandoned. Tyron laconically and prosaically states that he moved to China because ‘I had no work’. The use of ‘I had to do it’ conveys a sense of disempowerment and helplessness. The more utopian dream of becoming an academic and making a better life for himself and his family in Canada is replaced with a grittier and more pragmatic reality of having to find a job and continue making money in order to support his family back home in South Africa.

When asked a year later what he thought about being an international teacher in China, Tyron expressed his identity in terms of being a mercenary:

I sometimes feel like I’m a mercenary now, like a mercenary soldier. Whoever pays me well, I will go there. It doesn’t matter where. I mean, I will go to Kathmandu and Tibet or wherever. If they pay well, I will go there. I will go to Antarctica! That’s how I see myself now. (Member-check WeChat correspondence)

The word ‘now’ underscores the extent to which Tyron’s conception of his teacher identity has changed. In contrast to the more positive tone of how he felt before relocating to China (‘I was kind of looking forward to it’) Tyron now presents himself as a mercenary, even utilising hyperbole by referring to Kathmandu, Tibet and Antarctica, as a way to underscore the lengths to which he will go in order to survive and provide for his family. Against this kind of stark reality, the notion of international teacher identity can appear somewhat abstract, a reminder that international teachers’ experiences of working overseas, whilst exciting and mostly positive, can also be precarious and uncertain in nature. Tyron’s existence as an international teacher can be seen as a complex nexus of personal, professional, cultural, and economic factors that are in tension. Unable to find employment in his home country due to the complex sociopolitical consequences of Apartheid, such as labour laws like Affirmative Action, Tyron has become in his own words ‘unemployable in my own country’ (Member-check WeChat correspondence) which has forced him into the global precariat – that is, into a state of permanent exile and uncertainty as an economic global migrant.

Cross-cultural experiences

Experiences of WEST

The majority of Tyron’s cross-cultural experiences took place in the school, which he presents as a monocultural space in which the construction of an international teacher identity is both prescribed and proscribed:

I’ve wondered many times are we - they say we are - a Chinese school with a touch of international (laughs). But what is that? What is international? Does it mean we’ve got a lot of people from different countries? We actually do. What is internationalism? Do we bring something different to the table, and that is internationalism? I don’t know. And also, what is an international curriculum? I’ll give you an example with our PE (physical education) department. They first said to us we have an international curriculum. We didn’t. They said ‘no, it’s not good enough, we have to have a Chinese curriculum.’ And these were the actual words from the principal: ‘with a touch of international in it.’ And we say, ‘what are we supposed to do now?’ Do we have to make it softer? Do we have to run less or run more? Do we have to talk less in this class or do we have to talk more? Do we have to show more pictures? Do we have to – I don’t know (Interview 2).

Tyron highlights areas of tension between teacher identity, curriculum and school identity. His embodiment of the Learner Profile in his teaching philosophy and practice clashes with WEST’s master narrative which is embodied in the figure of the principal. The principal is presented as appropriating the rhetoric of international education, but not its principles, such as promoting intercultural understanding. This clash is presented as leading to frustration and cultural dissonance (that is, ‘when cultural difference does not ‘make sense’ or it threatens to undermine our view of reality’ (Shaules, 2007, p. 63)). This discontinuity is conveyed discursively by presenting the school and teachers, of which Tyron feels a part, in diametrical opposition to the principal, who is portrayed as remote and authoritarian. Tyron also deploys many interrogatives in order to accentuate his confusion at trying to implement Physical Education as ‘Chinese education with a touch of international in it’. The ambiguity of the principal’s words is further accentuated through the use of repetition (‘do we’), which Tyron eventually abandons when he exclaims, ‘I don’t know.’

Whilst Tyron appears to be stranded in a borderland identity, he nevertheless uses the interview context as a space to reclaim agency. For example, he discursively asserts agency by mocking the principal’s words. The written transcript signals this mocking tone in the word ‘apparently’ and the repetition of ‘we have a touch’ which takes on an ironic overtone when repeated at the end of the narrative chunk. The audio recording, however, is far more revealing, as it reveals how Tyron uses intonation, pitch and tone in order to convey a different meaning from that which his words seem to express. For example, the opening part of the narrative chunk above, ‘they say we are a Chinese school’, was actually delivered (or perhaps performed) in a somewhat conspiratorial tone, with Tyron lowering his voice and raising the pitch of his voice, thereby undermining the statement by ridiculing it. Although subtle in nature, Tyron uses the interview space in order to construct resistance – that is, he is able to construct a resisting self which, while not translated into action, nonetheless empowers him to assert agency and therefore a sense of identity as an international teacher. In addition to the physical assertiveness of striking the table, Tyron also employed non-action or passivity as a form of resistance by staring at the floor during the flag raising ceremony or turning his chair away from the table during weekly high school meetings. These should all be considered discursive features of resistance that teachers draw upon in the construction and performance of international teacher identities.

International school teacher identity

Tyron did not explicitly refer to himself as an international teacher. Rather, he drew upon the Learner Profile and its attributes as a discourse for articulating an international teacher identity. However, in follow-up communications, when explicitly asked whether he thought he was an international school teacher, Tyron responded that:

I think I am an international teacher. If you think about it, I am bringing something to the table, something different, something from the southern tip of Africa, my experiences, what I think about how a lesson should be taught. So, I think I am an international teacher in that sense, definitely. Or I see myself as an international teacher (member-check WeChat communication).

In making this statement about his identity as a teacher, Tyron appears to have answered the question posed earlier, in which he asked ‘what is internationalism? Do we bring something different to the table, and that is internationalism? I don’t know.’ The use of the declarative structure ‘I think I am an international teacher’ suggests that Tyron now has a clear conception of himself as an international school teacher. This is reinforced by the use of the copula verb (to be) which connotes a strong sense of commitment to this identity, as if being an ‘international teacher’ were an inextricable part of who he is, suffusing both personal and professional domains of experience. However, a multimodal approach to data analysis highlights dissonance between the discursive resources that Tyron employs to construct his teacher identity. For example, whilst Tyron employs a declarative sentence – ‘I think I am an international teacher’ – to express a clear identity position, he qualifies this with the hedge verb ‘think’, the conjunction ‘or’ which here functions as a qualifier, and the phrase ‘in that sense’, but then reverts to a more assertive tone by using the word ‘definitely’. This oscillation between certainty and uncertainty creates a form of discursive dissonance which suggests that there is tension between the way Tyron sees himself and the way that he is perceived or imagines he is perceived as an expatriate teacher in WEST.

The reference to ‘the southern tip of Africa’ signals what could be called a patriotic sub-identity. Tyron’s explanation of what makes him international resonates with this description: his status as a White Afrikaner (as implied in the reference to the southern tip of Africa) makes him more ‘western’ and therefore qualified to teach international curricula. This reveals an interesting tension. For despite being a part of the global precariat, Tyron’s identity (performed through his skin colour) is nevertheless imbued with ethnic capital that increases in value in the cultural, symbolic and physical movement from the Global North to the Global South. Tyron perceives his value as an international teacher, both culturally and economically, in this movement across borders, which has a better exchange rate, amplifying depleted forms of cultural capital that back in South Africa are devalued due to sociopolitical factors that, for him, marginalise his identity (and therefore capital) as a white Afrikaner.

Discussion

In recent years, teacher identity has largely been theorised as multiplicitous, contingent, and discontinuous (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). However, researchers have begun to reclaim ‘solid’ or modern approaches to identity, which is seen in terms of an individualistic, trait-like phenomenon and reflects a positivist stance towards the world. For example, Akkerman and Meijer (2011) approach identity from the perspective of the dialogical self, which offers a more elaborate approach to teacher identity. From this perspective, identity is both unitary and multiple, both continuous and discontinuous, and both individual and social. Given that teaching has a real-world application, it follows that a balanced approach to identity is required – one that acknowledges the open-ended nature of identity as fragmented, discontinuous and atemporal, but also recognises that teachers create identities from personal and professional experiences which are often perceived to be fixed and stable.

It is in relation to the distinction between modern and postmodern approaches to identity that the framework presented here complements, and enriches, the typology presented by Bailey and Cooker. Their typology appears to be modern in nature, as it is predicated upon the notion of teacher types, which presupposes fixed traits or an essence that transcends context. In contrast, the framework presented here is postmodern in nature. As mentioned earlier, reifying teachers as types is both necessary and to a certain extent desirable. It is particularly well-suited for recruitment purposes, where principals and hiring departments may be pressed for time, and therefore need to make generalisations about teachers. However, as a concept for the ongoing development of professional identities, it may have less utility, as it leaves little room for the negotiation or development of professional identities due to the imposition of a priori categories. The act of reification locks individuals into a never-ending present that is incongruent with how they understand their experiences subjectively as lived experience. For example, Tyron’s data includes numerous examples of I-positions – in addition to being an international school teacher, he is a father, a husband, a White South-Afrikaner, a global exile. All of these identities feed into his over-arching professional identity as an international school teacher. To just pigeon-hole Tyron as a certain type of teacher would be to lose sight of the fact that he is first and foremost a feeling, thinking individual, with a past and a future. However, it is equally undesirable to adopt an absolute postmodern approach to teacher identity. Research into international school teacher identity construction has found that core or solid identities also have a significant role to play in cross-cultural identities (Poole, 2019a). The focus on sub-identities also suggests a future avenue of inquiry. It may be worth asking if teachers in other types of international school have similar or different sub-identities. For example, do teachers in Type A and Type B international schools possess another set of sub-identities that are linked to ideological or mission-driven views and values? Alternatively, do teachers in other schools, such as profit-driven Type C schools, employ another set of sub-identities? Another interesting aspect that future research could investigate is how teachers use sub-identities in the negotiation of professional identities.

Whereas the typology of teachers provides researchers with a wide-angle lens on a specific group of teachers, the framework presented here is designed to bring into focus the idiosyncrasies of individual teachers. Its flexibility could also make it applicable to different types of international school teacher, in addition to non-qualified teachers. Taking up Hayden’s (2003) call for professional development that focuses on developing approaches to conceptualising and implementing intercultural understanding, the internationalised school teacher identity framework could be utilised as a starting point (perhaps during teacher orientation or in-house professional development) for teachers to reflect on their own educational experiences and how they reinforce, or contradict, the organisational practices of international schools. Teachers could be encouraged to make a list of significant experiences and then place them in one of the three domains of experience. They could also be asked to justify their inclusion, thereby encouraging them to reflect on their choices. It is also during this stage that new domains of experience could be identified. Thus, the framework functions as a heuristic or a starting point to facilitate reflection rather than an end in itself in the form of a typology of international school teachers.

The framework is also designed to facilitate on-going dialogue within and between teachers (and leadership) in order to create a more coherent professional identity. The framework is nuanced enough to recognise that ‘solid’ or core identities have a part to play in the construction of professional identity. Yet its main contribution lies in recognising that any articulation of teacher identity is a work in progress that at best provides a ‘snap-shot’ of who a teacher is or can be in a particular moment in time and space, rather than offering an absolute proclamation of who they are irrespective of context. If educators can come to recognise that identities are contingent and constructed in relation to personal, professional and cross-cultural experiences, then they may be in a better position to not only interrupt and question those received identities conferred by organisations, but also be open to ‘new creative assemblages’ (Zembylas & Chubbuck, 2018, p. 189) in order to develop new professional identities. The dialogic approach utilised as part of the framework could be adopted and adapted by school leaders in other international schools. One of the potential outcomes of such an endeavour would be for leaders to view their staff as agential and generative human beings with the capacity to change and develop new identities, rather than simply the embodiment of fixed traits or teacher types. More generally, this echoes Bunnell’s (2019) recent call for a new lens of inquiry through which to bring into focus the positive aspects of the international school experience.

Conclusion

This paper offers a new framework for discussion that is designed to guide researchers away from labelling teachers by observation and instead to looking at what they do and their history. Rather than imposing ready-made labels derived from pre-existing typologies, labelling (if indeed this term can be retained) is derived from the teacher’s experiences. Moreover, this approach involves both the researcher and the teacher, and not, as is typically the case, only the researcher. The aim is to foster a collaborative relationship in which teachers’ identities are negotiated, rather than imposed.

Given the novelty of the framework presented in this paper, there are a number of limitations that need to be addressed. This study focuses on a particular type of teacher whilst helping the reader in understanding the experiences of non-qualified teachers in internationals schools. Tyron’s experiences may be said to be typical of teachers in Chinese Internationalised Schools and other Type C schools that are profit-orientated. He is highly qualified (he has a PhD), but he is employed for his ethnic capital. More generally, Tyron’s experiences of precarity resonates with the precaritisation of the international school teacher experience although, as noted above, Bunnell (2019) has argued that research has now become too focused on the precarious aspects of teaching in international schools. A more positive approach is required that explores how teachers develop resilience in response to their experiences of precarity, which are increasingly characterised by, amongst other things, short-term contracts, destructive leadership (Bunnell, 2016), and dismissal without due process (Poole, 2019b). However, the extent to which teachers in Chinese Internationalised Schools can be said to be representative of teachers in other international schools is problematic. Therefore, future research could adopt a larger sample size, exploring the construction of international teachers’ identities across a number of different types of international school, such as Type A and Type C schools. This paper has presented data from one participant and although it is rich in nature, it needs to be supplemented with other narratives.

Finally, it has been suggested that the framework presented here could be used in tandem with the typology of teachers put forward by Bailey and Cooker. It is necessary for future studies to test this assertion. For example, is it possible for modern and postmodern approaches to identity to be combined? Would this lead to incongruence? Or is the experience of being an international school teacher so idiosyncratic and complex that it requires a combination of approaches in order to capture the realities of teaching and working in cross-cultural environments?

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix 1.

Definitions of the Learner Profile attributes.

Learner Attribute	Definition of Learner Profile attribute
Inquirers	Development of natural curiosity; active and lifelong learning; independence of learning.
Knowledgeable	Exploration of concepts and ideas that have local and global significance; development of knowledge across a broad range of disciplines.
Thinkers	Initiative in applying thinking-skills critically and creatively; make reasoned ethical decisions.
Communicators	Effective collaboration with others; ideas expressed confidently and creatively in different languages and in different modes of communication.
Principled	Students act with integrity and honesty; they take responsibility for their own actions and their consequences.
Open-minded	Appreciate their own cultures and personal histories, and are open to the perspectives, values and traditions of other individuals and communities; intercultural awareness.
Caring	Empathy, compassion and respect towards feelings of others. Commitment to service, and act to make a positive difference to the lives of others and to the environment.
Risk-takers	Unfamiliar situations approached with courage; have the independence of spirit to explore new roles, ideas and strategies; students are brave and articulate in defending their beliefs.
Balanced	Intellectual, physical and emotional balance to achieve personal well-being.
Reflective	Consideration of learning and experience; assess strengths and limitations to support learning.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Tyron, without whom this paper would not exist.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Adam Poole

Author biography

Adam Poole is a Practitioner-Researcher based in Shanghai, China. He has taught in a number of international schools in China and is currently teaching English (IGCSE and IB Diploma) in a bilingual school in China. His recently completed doctoral research project focused on the way in which five international teachers in a non-traditional international school understand and implemented the IB Learner Profile. Adam is currently developing an approach to Funds of Identity that involves using new technology as a strategy for drawing on, and valorising, Chinese learners’ out-of-school identities in the English language classroom.

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