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Asia Pacific Journal of EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cape20
Cultural identity in teaching acrossborders: mainland Chinese pre-serviceteachers in Hong KongMingyue Michelle Gua
a Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education,Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong KongPublished online: 10 Sep 2013.
To cite this article: Mingyue Michelle Gu (2013) Cultural identity in teaching across borders:mainland Chinese pre-service teachers in Hong Kong, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 33:4,407-423, DOI: 10.1080/02188791.2013.808987
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.808987
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Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 2013 Vol. 33, No. 4, 407–423, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.808987
Cultural identity in teaching across borders: mainland Chinese pre-service teachers in Hong Kong
Mingyue Michelle Gu*
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
(Received 14 September 2011; final version received 19 June 2012)
This study explores transformations in the cultural identities of a group of pre-service teachers from mainland China during their educational experiences in Hong Kong, and how these transformations subsequently impact their professional identity. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 16 cross-border pre-service teachers from a teacher education institution. Findings demonstrate that 1) the participants recast their extant ideologies and cultural beliefs in response to multiple influences in their new context, enabling them to move beyond pre-established teaching values to re-construct their teaching identity; and 2) some participants constructed a bicultural and multilingual identity to gain legitimacy in the host context. The findings indicate that a more supportive context that provides more room for cultural awareness should be co-constructed by local and non-local pre-service teachers, institutions and policy makers. The study extends understanding of the interconnected relations between teacher identity and historical and social discourses.
Keywords: cultural identity; teacher professional development; cross-border teaching; Hong Kong
Introduction
Globalization has fostered widespread teacher mobility, both between countries and within national borders. Cross-border pre-service and in-service teachers are faced with the challenge of adapting themselves to the host learning and teaching community and teaching students who hail from cultural and linguistic backgrounds different from their own. The extent to which their teaching behaviour becomes an extension of their previous experiences and incorporates the cultures and norms of their home regions will influence the construction of their teacher professional identity (Hollins, 2008) and their professional practice. In recent years, a steadily increasing number of mainland Chinese students have begun studying at Hong Kong universities, including trainee language teachers (Li & Bray, 2007). The trainee teachers are entitled to seek employment in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools upon graduating. It can be argued that this changes the demographic composition of teachers in Hong Kong schools and complicates Hong Kong’s linguistic and cultural context. Moreover, the situation may not be unique to Hong Kong, due to the internationalization of higher education and international migration. There is therefore a need to deepen our understanding of the experiences of cross-border teachers working in host regions or countries.
In 1997, Hong Kong, after over 150 years as a British colony, was returned to Chinese control as a “Special Administrative Region”; a key condition of the handover, however,
*Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]
q 2013 National Institute of Education, Singapore
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was that Hong Kong would retain its existing economic and social systems. Although both Hong Kong and mainland China are, broadly speaking, Chinese societies, their economic and social systems differ, in some ways quite significantly. Its unique past and complex present circumstances have combined to make Hong Kong culturally different from mainland China.
As such, cross-border pre-service teachers from mainland China and their Hong Kong counterparts, despite both being ethnic Chinese, have been raised in different social and cultural environments and have distinct cultural identities. Cross-border pre-service teachers face both linguistic and cross-cultural obstacles to their socialization with their local counterparts and experience struggles and contradictions in the construction of their teaching identity (Gu, 2011, 2013; Gu & Lai, 2012). As previous studies have shown, teacher identity is historically constructed and continuously shaped by beliefs, attitudes, experiences and contextual and social factors (e.g., Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004; Menard-Warwick, 2008; Morgan, 2004). Given that one’s professional and personal identities are closely related (Au & Blake, 2003), it is interesting to discover how cross-border pre-service teachers negotiate the interaction between their cultural and professional identities during their learning-to-teach process. However, to date there has been little research into the interaction between cultural and professional identity construction with regards to Chinese teachers.
This study explores transformations in the cultural identities of a group of pre-service teachers from mainland China during their educational experiences in Hong Kong, and how these transformations subsequently impact their professional identity. An investigation of the complexities of professional development faced by a particular group of mainland Chinese student teachers in Hong Kong will shed light on the interplay between the cultural identity and professional identity of cross-border teachers studying and working elsewhere in the world. The paper begins by reviewing the relevant studies on teacher identities. The linguistic and cultural situation in Hong Kong will then be introduced, after which the findings will be presented and discussed.
Professional teacher identity and cultural identity
Studies on teacher knowledge, teacher cognition and teacher beliefs have flourished over the past two decades. As noted in Borg’s (2003) comprehensive review, much of this work adopts a psychological approach, with a focus on individual teachers’ cognitive development. Some researchers, however, frame teacher education in terms of the development of teacher identity rather than the acquisition of a set of skills and techniques (e.g., Clarke, 2008; Trent, 2010; Varghese, Morgan, Johnson, & Johnson, 2005).
Teacher identities are not pre-determined, fixed and static, but highly fluid, less coherent, fragmented, multiple, negotiated and mediated in and through the processes of learning-to-teach and teaching (Day, Kington, Stobart, & Sammons, 2006; Martin & Van Gunten, 2002). This has spawned a discussion of the interaction between the individual and the social in identity formation. For example, Coldron and Smith (1999) argue that teachers’ professional identities are constituted by the choices they make in learning and teaching, whereas Moore, Edwards, Halpin, and George (2002) stress the importance of policies and institutions restricting teachers’ development. In this study, agents are viewed as being able to reflect upon and create social arrangements that facilitate their own particular interests and ambitions (Toohey&Norton, 2003). At the same time, social structures such as policies and institutions are seen as anterior to and providing an enduring context for learners, in that the conformity required by institutions or policies can undermine and sometimes even
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marginalize teachers’ active location in social contexts (Tsui, 2007). The active notion of agency enables researchers to explore how learners critically examine the social world and exert power to maintain or to modify it; conversely, social structure’s anteriority and endurance shapes human agents. Thus, identities are formed and constructed through continuous negotiation, discussion and justification (MacLure, 1993), which implies that they are both given and achieved, and that agency exists within the social process of becoming (Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson, & Fry, 2004).
Varghese et al. (2005, p. 22) note that, in order to understand teaching and learning, “we need to understand teachers: the professional, cultural, political and individual identities which they claim or which are assigned to them”. In this sense, the construct of cultural identity enables us to explore how professional teacher identity is historically and socially constructed (Hollins, 2008). Cultural identity refers to one’s “sense of belonging or not belonging to particular groups, based on his or her history and participation in particular practices and systems of meaning” (Menard-Warwick, 2008, p. 624), and is rooted in shared norms and practices (Eriksen, 2001). Tracing the interplay between professional identity and cultural identity, we need to recognize the shaping effect of social structure on individuals as well as the agency of those individuals, and the mediation of immediate learning context and power struggles between different linguistic and cultural groups. While most identity studies have focused on in-service teachers, more recent studies have begun to investigate identity construction in pre-service teachers (e.g., Alsup, 2006; Clarke, 2008; Danielewicz, 2001; Duff & Uchida, 1997); however, most of these examined teachers who were studying in their native countries or home regions. Although it should not be ignored that cultural dissonances can also be experienced by trainee teachers who hail from the same context in which they are trained, our understanding of teachers’ professional development can be enhanced and enriched more by an examination of pre-service teachers studying in other contexts, such as mainland Chinese students studying in Hong Kong. The concepts of “culture” and “discourse” and the community of practice (CoP) framework are the core constructs informing this study of cross-border teaching and interactions among different cultural groups, and are introduced below.
Theoretical framework
This study involves interactions between pre-service teachers from different language groups and different cultures. It is tempting to view cultures as synoptic “things”; however, this view is problematic because it conveys the impression that culture is static and that different cultures are separate and self-contained. Within this essentialized framework of culture, individuals tend to be stereotyped and generalized as belonging to a particular culture (Holliday, 1999). Moving beyond this framework allows for a more dynamic view of individual and society and the relationship between the two, and enables the researcher to remain more open and flexible about the meaning of culture (Clarke, 2008). Such an approach allows us, in this study, to resist casting culture as the main exegetic tool for understanding mainland Chinese pre-service teachers and their local counterparts, and to avoid making sweeping claims about cultural characteristics. Culture entails a permanent tension between agency and context, as it is located in neither “organic determination” nor “the autonomy of the spirit” (Eagleton, 2000, pp. 4–5). Therefore, we do not treat culture as “all-determining”, but take a developmental view of both the individual and the cultural world that he/she inhabits. In this study, culture is seen as a dynamic process in a constant state of flux, always changing, evolving and adapting to new contexts and environments (Francis, Archer, & Mau, 2009; Street, 1993).
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While a fluid view of culture permits a better understanding of the interaction between individuals and context, the CoP model (Wenger, 1998) offers a more specific consideration of the social, spatial and historical dimensions of identity formation, while its notions of legitimacy, marginality and participation make it particularly relevant to this study. The CoP model, which has been used elsewhere in studies investigating the experiences of the novice teachers (Bathmaker & Avis, 2005; Trent, 2010; Tsui, 2007), views the process of learners’ socialization into a given community as moving from “legitimate peripheral participation” (LPP) to full participation. Initially, newcomers need to gain legitimacy to make their actual participation possible. Marginality involves both non-participation and participation, including “a form of non-participation” that “prevents full participation” (Wenger, 1998, pp. 165–166). Wenger (1998) investigates identity formation through three modes of belonging – engagement, imagination and alignment. In the engagement mode, pre-service teachers’ identity can be considered in relation to their actual participation in and negotiation of meanings around shared practices in the learning community. In regards to imagination, identity can be investigated in terms of pre-service teachers locating their participation in relation to past, future and “elsewhere”, and their understanding of language-culture issues. Finally, identity can be explored in terms of the alignment with broader social practices, by examining how pre-service teachers locate themselves in historical, social and cultural contexts, and how they negotiate perspectives and construct alliances.
However, how individuals respond tomarginality andhowsuch responses influence their identity construction has barely been discussed in CoP framework (Creese, 2005). Exploring resistance to or conflict in marginalism is important for several reasons; for example, these phenomena can represent cross-border pre-service teachers’ attempts to legitimate their own positionwithin both their learning and prospectiveworking communities. Other studies have taken social antagonism into consideration when examining the potential for resistance and conflict in identity formation (Gu, 2010; Clarke, 2008; Torfing, 1999). Laclau and Mouffe (1985) theorize the construction of antagonistic relations in political processes using the logic of equivalence, which “consists in the dissolution of the particular identities of subjects within a discourse by the creation of a purely negative identity that is seen to threaten them” (Howarth, 2000, p. 107). While the logic of equivalence allows for the division of social space by condensing meanings around a dichotomy, the logic of difference seeks to move against and counteract opposition and to push division and related discourse to themargins of society (Howarth, 2000; Torfing, 1999). Furthermore, the idea that identities are constructed through difference (Connolly, 2002) is employed when examining interpersonal relationships and intrapersonal identities. Connolly (2002, pp. 14–15) states,
Identity is always connected to a series of differences that help it to be what it is . . . there is . . . a pressure to make space for the fullness of self-identity for one constituency by marginalizing, demeaning, or excluding the differences on which it depends to specify itself.
Therefore, to compensate for the perceived inadequacies of Wenger’s (1998) framework, and to achieve a better understanding of the discursive strategies that pre-service teachers from a mainland Chinese background in an English Teacher Education programme adopt to establish their identities as English language teachers, I employ Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theory and Connolly’s (2002) ideas on identity and difference. Based upon the theoretical framework discussed in this section, this paper attempts to explore the formation of teaching identity in a group of pre-service English teachers from mainland China studying at a teacher education institute in the multilingual context of Hong Kong. Specifically, the following questions were addressed:
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In what ways do the cultural backgrounds of a group of cross-border pre-service teachers in a teacher education institute in Hong Kong have impacts on their learning-to-teach process, on their understanding of teaching, and on their professional identity construction in the host context?
The study
Research context
Hong Kong’s complex and fluid linguistic situation has been the subject of numerous studies (e.g., Bolton & Lim, 2000; Davison & Lai, 2007; Morrison & Lui 2000; Tse, Lam, Loh, & Lam, 2007), the findings of which have shown Cantonese to be the dominant language in daily life and the one most commonly used by indigenous Hong Kong Chinese on political, social and cultural occasions. Although Hong Kong universities have a relatively high portion of non-local staff and students, Cantonese is still the most commonly-used language for out-of-class activities and communications. Widely used in the business and professional sectors, English is also regarded as a symbol of Hong Kong’s international image and an important asset for one’s career and social development. Since 1997, Putonghua, the national language of the Chinese mainland, has been increasingly used, especially in business and official communications, and has become an important subject in most primary and secondary schools. Except for those students from provinces where Cantonese is commonly spoken, such as Guangdong, mainland Chinese students speak Putonghua and have had little exposure to Cantonese before coming to Hong Kong.
Participants and research method
In-depth semi-structured interviews were employed to capture the complex relationships involved in the process of teacher identity construction – such as those between marginal status and legitimate membership in a community, or between prior experience, present practice and social context. Interviews were conducted in Putonghua, the participants’ mother tongue, in order to reduce or eliminate possible misunderstandings or inaccuracies that might result from the use of a second language and to preserve the participants’ own personal perspectives. As I was interested in identifying the interaction between cross-border students’ cultural and professional identities during their university years, this inquiry focused on English Department students from mainland China in the final year of their four-year cohort in the academic year 2009–2010. Sixteen students agreed to participate in response to an invitation from the author. Table 1 presents a brief overview of their backgrounds; all names are pseudonyms.
To answer the research question, the article draws on three focus group interviews (each involving six student teachers) and six follow-up individual interviews conducted between February and April 2010. All interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. The three focus group interviews, each approximately 90 minutes in length, were used to gain a general sense of the participants’ views, their shared understandings of teaching and their educational experiences in Hong Kong; the interactive nature of the focus group interviews allowed topics to be widely discussed and different perspectives on a given topic to emerge. Six participants (two from each focus group) who had indicated a willingness to talk about their experiences in greater depth were invited to participate in follow-up individual interviews. The individual interviews, which lasted approximately 50 minutes each, enabled us to seek out individual participant’ voices, enhance our
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Table 1. Participants.
Name Interview type Gender Place of Origin Native languages Department
Xu Individual F Zhejiang Putonghua English Zheng Individual F Guangdong Cantonese, Putonghua English Zhu Individual M Hubei Putonghua English Yuan Individual F Zhejiang Putonghua English Hao Individual F Tianjin Putonghua English Wu Focus group F Zhejiang Putonghua English Yang Focus group M Guangdong Cantonese, Putonghua English Lingling Focus group F Hunan Putonghua English Fang Focus group F Fujian Putonghua English Jing Focus group F Shanghai Putonghua English Linxin Focus group M Fujian Putonghua English Huang Focus group F Fujian Putonghua English Hong Focus group F Shanghai Putonghua English Jiayi Focus group F Guangdong Cantonese, Putonghua English Liyan Focus group F Guangdong Cantonese, Putonghua English Ping Focus group F Anhui Putonghua English
understanding of their life realities (Johnson & Golombek, 2002), and gather data of a wider depth and breadth. While a semi-structured interview guide (Appendix 1) was used in the process, we encouraged the participants to recount their life experiences whenever possible. Unusual or interesting information emerging from the focus groups was explored in greater detail in the individual interviews, and continually emerging themes were identified and conformed. Unless otherwise indicated, all extracts shown below were taken from individual interviews. Chinese-language data extracts in this article were translated into English by the author.
Data analysis
Data analysis was ongoing, recursive and iterative, and was conducted in tandem with data collection (Strauss & Corbin, 1998); the dataset, related research literature on linguistic ecology and identity, and coded categories were constantly evaluated, re-evaluated and reformulated through a gradually evolving process. NVivo qualitative research software was used to categorize and encode data during the first stage of the study, as it allows a range of possible ways to approach and handle data. After each interview, the resulting data were subjected to preliminary analysis; this often generated new questions, which were then posed in subsequent interviews.
A “selected reading approach” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 93) was adopted to uncover themes related to the research question, meaning that statements, phrases and words used by the participants (e.g., “multicultural identity”, “withdrawal from the local community”, “teaching in Hong Kong in an inferior position”, and “mainland Chinese background as an advantage”) were examined to reveal interactions between cultural identity and professional identity. The development of these themes can be illustrated in the following comment, in which Zheng (using her multicultural experiences in both mainland China and Hong Kong as a resource in her teaching practice) constructs her identity as an English teacher who can develop her students’ critical awareness of cultural variety:
Well, I have more cultural exposures than local students. I think when I am teaching English, I can help students grow out of any isolated mono-cultural views and nurture their tolerance and exploration of varieties. (Zheng)
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After the relations between themes were identified and considered, more theoretical categories were constructed, informed by the data, the relevant literature and the theoretical framework. Examples included “participation in a learning-to-teach community”, “negotiation around meanings of teaching” and “teaching in Hong Kong”. The findings were also checked against the participants in focus group interviews for clarification and modification.
Findings
Cultural background and participating in a learning-to-teach community
Twelve out of 16 participants interviewed felt that their lack of knowledge of local cultures and their accented Cantonese prevented them from communicating effectively and smoothly with local peers, and made it difficult for them to gain a legitimate position in the learning community. The following extracts are representative:
When they are talking in Cantonese, sometimes I cannot follow. Even when I can follow, I am not familiar at all with the topics they are interested in, such as TV plays produced by TVB and gossip about certain celebrities. (Xu)
However hard I tried, I could not speak Cantonese without an accent. I would be laughed at sometimes. Even though they didn’t have any ill intent, I still felt very frustrated. (Yuan)
It is commonly stated by the 16 participants that the stereotypes about mainland China and mainland Chinese held by their Hong Kong counterparts, such as being underdeveloped and far from being civilized, having low English proficiency and less exposure to a wider world, have also hampered their integration into the learning-to-teach community. For example,
They always keep pointing out the differences between Hong Kong and mainland China. In their eyes, mainland China is very underdeveloped. They use a lot of code-switching between Cantonese and English in conversation. We didn’t speak that way at first but this is not because we are not good at English as they think. We can become qualified English teachers. (Jing)
They usually say, “we are Hongkongese and you are Chinese”. They keep indicating that Hong Kong is much more civilized than mainland China, and mainland Chinese have limited knowledge of the outer world. Somewhat there are prejudices and we don’t think they are totally right (Hao)
Thirteen out of the 16 participants also reported experiencing an enhanced sense of cultural identity as they faced the dichotomy constructed between mainland China and Hong Kong by local students. The following is a representative excerpt:
The comparison makes me more aware that I am a mainland Chinese. But I developed a stronger sense of belonging to the values and cultures of mainland China. For example, I think that family members and relatives should have intimate relationships, and that students should show respect to the teachers, etc. (Hao)
Opposition between the cultural norms and values in mainland China and Hong Kong is constructed in the above extract. This participant indicates her preference for certain traditional Chinese values and implies her lack of identification with Hong Kong’s different values. Ten participants indicated their lack of identification with Hong Kong culture, which can be seen in the following representative excerpt:
Maybe it is because of its special history, but I think Hong Kong has developed a kind of culture that lies between Chinese and Western cultures. Hong Kong students know little about Chinese cultures, like Chinese classical poems, architecture, history, etc. Some of them even
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don’t know who Du Fu1 is. It is interesting that I never realized Chinese traditional culture was so valuable and colourful until I came to Hong Kong. (Hong)
The above extract shows that the learning-to-teach experience in Hong Kong somewhat reaffirmed the pre-service teachers’ affiliation with their home culture and that, by drawing on ideological dichotomies, they tended to position Hong Kong’s culture as “other”.
Paradoxically, perhaps, all the participants actively involved themselves in the local community despite strongly contrasting their cultural identity with that of their Hong Kong peers. The following extract represents the participants’ views:
I watched Hong Kong TV plays in Cantonese before I came to study here and learnt some Cantonese. My Cantonese, even now, has an accent and at first was often laughed at by others. But now at least I can communicate freely with the locals. I grasped every chance to practise English and Cantonese. (Zhu)
Fifteen out of the 16 participants reported that they proactively learnt local culture and Cantonese. English proficiency, Putonghua and their cultural background become resources that allowed them to create an equal and reciprocal relationship with Hong Kong students. For example,
While I grasped any opportunity to learn Cantonese from the Hong Kong classmates, I was also willing to teach them Putonghua and always spent time explaining the origins of some usages. My English is improved a lot as well and I think generally we can do better in English than the local students, especially in pronunciation and grammar, because we have received more strict training in mainland China. English is very important to me because that is what I need to rely on to make a career here. (Wu)
Some international students told me that more and more people in Europe are learning Putonghua. My Putonghua proficiency has gained me several international friends. Like the dominant status of Western cultures was tied to the spread of English, I think Chinese cultures will become increasingly popular as more and more people choose to learn Putonghua due to the economic advancement of China. (Fang)
Here we also find that the participants emphasize that Putonghua and English proficiency may give the mainland Chinese pre-service teacher a competitive edge, as a counter discourse to the stereotyped view imposed on them, and the marginal position in the teaching community in Hong Kong. The interviewees’ awareness of the increasing value and popularity of Putonghua and the potential global prevalence of Chinese culture is evident in Fang’s account.
The above representative extracts show that the participants constructed a stronger affiliation to their native cultural identity and in the meanwhile keep assigning new elements to their cultural identity, as they began to face the marginal position they originally held in the learning-to-teach community. An opposition between mainland China and Hong Kong, and between mainland Chinese identity and Hong Kong identity, is established by both cross-border and local pre-service teachers. In spite of this, the former make efforts to learn local language and cultures; in the meanwhile, the increasing values of their linguistic and cultural backgrounds are deployed to create a legitimate identity in the community.
Cultural identity in negotiations of meanings around teaching
The data indicated that the increasing importance of Putonghua on the global stage moves all the participants in this study to value their mainland Chinese backgrounds and identify those aspects of Chinese traditional values that may be transferable to Hong Kong
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classrooms in their year four teaching practicum (TP). This can be represented in the following extract,
I know that Hong Kong classrooms advocate sensitivity and equality. But I found, with shock, that the classrooms were like a big market when I taught in a band three secondary school last month. Students shouted, laughed and talked when the teacher was talking. This was in big contrast to the classrooms in mainland China, where children are taught to respect their teachers and respect their work. Although mainland Chinese classrooms problematically produce passive learners, I think I could find a kind of balance between these two styles. (Zhu)
In the above extract, we can see that the participant identifies the need to strike a balance between mainland Chinese and Hong Kong styles of teacher-student interaction. She finds there is strong “contrast” between this somewhat uncontrollable classroom in a lower-banding secondary school in Hong Kong and the more “disciplined” classrooms in mainland China. She also admits that “mainland Chinese classrooms problematically produce passive learners” and therefore proposes the necessity to combine the Hong Kong style, which promotes equality in classroom and interactive teaching, with the mainland Chinese style, which emphasizes the traditional values, especially the hierarchical relationship between teacher and students, in her future teaching.
Furthermore, nine participants also see their knowledge of Chinese history as an important asset in teaching Hong Kong students, which can be shown in the following representative extract:
I found, in my TP, that Hong Kong students didn’t have enough knowledge of Chinese history and didn’t have interest in Chinese cultures, but most of them were crazy about Western and/ or Japanese cultures. As an English teacher, I should provide guidance to help them to think critically about different cultures, rather than simply follow the trend. (Linxin)
Ten participants reported to utilize their symbolic resources to develop the students’ critical cultural awareness by comparing different cultures and juxtaposing different values and viewpoints. However, as they establish their identity as English teachers with a valuable mainland background, they face challenges from both their local counterparts and their students. For example,
No matter how much we wanted to make friends with our Hong Kong classmates, or how we tried to adjust to their communication style, they directly or indirectly told us, with a sense of superiority, that we were different from them. I learnt from the local students that if a mainland student and a Hong Kong student were both in a teaching job interview and didn’t have much difference in their English proficiency level, the Hong Kong student would be more likely to get the job, because we don’t have local teaching experience. (Zhu)
In the TP, some students were interested in my mainland background and wanted to know more about China, but others became more rebellious in class because of their stereotypical view that mainland Chinese were not competent to teach English in Hong Kong. (Fang)
Here we see that not all local secondary students regarded cultural diversity in the same way; while some valued the pre-service teachers’mainland background, others associated it with inadequacy in English teaching proficiency. To avoid being marginalized, some participants concealed their mainland background in local classrooms. Below are the representative extracts among the participants whose native language is not Cantonese:
During the TP, I communicated with the students in Cantonese after class. They first thought I was a Hong Kong teacher as I didn’t clarify my background, but when they started sharing with me their hobbies and lives, I found my lack of local living experiences was still a major problem. Our discussions could not go very deep, otherwise they would find out I am not really from Hong Kong and I was afraid the students would thought my English is not good and would not listen to me. (Yang)
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Two other participants from Guangdong who can speak Cantonese echo the above feelings:
I have been placed in an awkward position. I speak standard Cantonese but I don’t have resonance with their growing experiences. I could have designed a lot of in-class activities to introduce Chinese cultures and the new developments happening in China if I had told them I was from mainland China; if I had done so, however, I believe my English teaching ability would have been challenged, because they tend to think that mainland Chinese teachers’ English is not good enough, though this is not true, and my native proficiency in Cantonese would be wasted. (Jiayi)
I think English teaching should not be restricted to vocabulary, lexis and grammars, but should also cover more social and cultural topics. But I forced myself to imagine what a Hong Kong teacher would do when I did the teaching design. I felt lost. (Liyan)
Jiayi’s extract highlights the stereotype that mainland Chinese teachers are less proficient in teaching English, a static view of culture held by some secondary students that marginalized the position of these cross-border teachers. One can feel the power interplay in Liyan’s account. Recognizing that the value of her mainland Chinese background was diminished in local classrooms, Liyan chose to imitate what a Hong Kong teacher would do when teaching; she nonetheless experienced a process of negotiation between her own beliefs in teaching and the teaching discourse in Hong Kong, however, as reflected in her statement that she “felt lost”. It seems that the participants from Guangdong could maintain a relatively “secure” position when teaching English in Hong Kong, as their fluent Cantonese concealed their mainland roots and made it less likely that their English teaching ability would be challenged by Hong Kong students; maintaining this fac�ade, on the other hand, prevented them from utilizing many of their mainland Chinese cultural resources when teaching.
It can be found among all the participants that the previous learning experiences in the place of origin influence their attitudes towards the classroom teaching in the host context and in turn mediate teacher identity formation. For example,
I can behave like a Hong Kong teacher, but I dislike the casual teacher-student interaction in Hong Kong classrooms. We have been educated since childhood that good students should show respect to their teachers. I also feel that teacher-centred teaching method was more effective than student-centred when teaching English. But if I implement my values in a Hong Kong classroom, I will be seen as weird. (Jiayi)
One major difference between Hong Kong classrooms and mainland classrooms is that mainland Chinese teachers, who are the powerful figures and whose instructions the students must obey, tend to favour high-achieving students and ignore those students with low grades. I myself had very unhappy experiences in secondary school. I was ignored by my English teacher, had to totally obey the teachers and had no right to speak my own opinion. In Hong Kong, teachers at least appear to treat students fairly. I dislike the teacher-dominant classroom and prefer the communicative teaching method in Hong Kong because language should be learned in more authentic contexts. But I also found treating students fairly sometimes allowed the classroom to get out of control, especially after they found out that I was from mainland China. (Zhu)
Here Jiayi and Zhu construct different attitudes towards English classroom teaching in Hong Kong, with Jiayi preferring a more traditional Confucian hierarchical teacher-student relationship and teacher-centred teaching method, and Zhu criticizing the hierarchy and inequality of mainland Chinese classrooms, and advocating that “language should be learnt in more authentic contexts”. The different ways in which the participants represent culture are historically and socially constructed. Jiayi’s more traditional view comes from the deeply-rooted and widely-accepted mainland Chinese cultural value that “good students
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should show respect to the teachers”. However, despite growing up in the same social and cultural background as Jiayi, Zhu developed a different perspective on teacher-student relationship, because of her own “very unhappy experiences in secondary school”.
The above extracts show that, some pre-service teachers constructed their identity as English teachers with a valuable mainland background, but did not gain recognition for doing so; on the contrary, more challenges emerged in their classrooms. On the other hand, the participants from Guangdong, who found it relatively easier to gain a legitimate position in the learning community by minimizing their mainland Chinese cultural identity and establishing a Hong Kong identity, seemed to face a dilemma – while hiding their mainland Chinese background kept it from becoming a target of attack, it also prevented them from utilizing mainland Chinese cultural practices that would have been be valuable in their teaching (Kramsch, 1998).
Teaching in Hong Kong
Seven participants foresaw even greater difficulties if they entered the teaching profession in Hong Kong, due to the difficulties they encountered during the socialization process in the learning-to-teach programme. The following extract is representative:
As a mainland Chinese, I doubt the possibility of entering the mainstream English teaching community, which is dominated by local teachers, if I choose to work in Hong Kong local schools. The experiences at the Institute taught me that it is very difficult for mainland and Hong Kong people to push their interaction beyond the surface level, because we have different understandings of cultures, values and life objectives. If we are unable to integrate into the community, how can we gain enough chances of development? (Lingling)
The participant is aware that having a legitimate position in the community is important for her professional development, and that, based on her university experience, her cultural identity as a mainland Chinese teacher would hinder her integration. She sees her cultural identity as fixed and unchangeable, something to be questioned by her students rather than something that can be adapted and used in her teaching. Five other participants also doubt the feasibility of putting their teaching philosophy into practice. For example:
In mainland China, English teachers are different from teachers of other subjects, because they are responsible for teaching students to look at cultures from different perspectives. We think the prevalence of English may make it easier for young people to admire Western cultures and ignore their own. Here, English teachers only focus on teaching the subject contents. If we cannot enter the mainstream of the teaching community in the school, we cannot really put our ideas in practice. (Jing)
This participant identifies the political meaning embedded in teaching English, that is, developing students’ unbiased view of different cultures while helping them to appreciate their mother culture. These ideas, heavily influenced by the national education they received in mainland China, reflect the role that cultural identity plays in constructing an English-teaching identity. The participants believe that owning a legitimate position in a mainstream community dominated by Hong Kong teachers is a precondition for the implementation of their ideas, and that their lack of local experience and English proficiency places them at a disadvantage. For example,
I cannot see any advantage we have in teaching English in Hong Kong. We don’t have any local experiences of Hong Kong teachers, and we don’t have the native proficiency of native English teachers. (Jing)
Perhaps not surprisingly, eight out of the 16 participants showed little commitment to teaching English in Hong Kong. The following extracts are representative:
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I won’t work here for a long time. I will go back to mainland China. I will find a larger stage there. (Hong)
I plan to study abroad after graduation. My experience in Hong Kong is like a transition for me. I love English and love teaching, but I cannot find my place in Hong Kong. (Xu)
Both contextual and individual factors impede these participants’ commitment to teaching English in Hong Kong. They see a dichotomy between their cultural background and Hong Kong culture, regarding the former as an obstacle towards teaching English in Hong Kong even as it is reinforced by interaction with Hong Kong students and local cultures.
Some participants strategically established an English teaching identity characterized by multi-lingual proficiency and biculturality or interculturality. For example,
Only after I gain a very high level of English proficiency can I turn my mainland background into an advantage. I can teach my students both English and Putonghua. I also learnt from the Hong Kong students about the local schools and asked about their views on how to teach well here. (Linxin)
One of our advantages is that we have more cultural exposure than local teachers. But some mainland students didn’t draw on this advantage because they set up a small circle, sticking to their mainland Chinese identity. We have richer experiences to share with our students, which is definitely beneficial to English teaching, because we can see things from different angles. (Ping)
These participants draw upon their language repertoire in Putonghua and English, arguing that they are able to provide more language learning support to their students, and on their intercultural identity to see social and cultural issues from both inside and outside perspectives. Linxin values her cultural background, while still trying to learn local cultures and effective teaching methods from her Hong Kong counterparts. Ping seems aware that sticking to a mainland Chinese identity and refusing to communicate with Hong Kong students would harm her professional development and negate the advantages of bicultural exposure and multilingual proficiency. These participants also indicate their tendency to value cultural diversity.
Discussion
So far, this paper has examined the effects of the participants’ cultural identity on the formation of their professional identity, as mediated by their educational experiences in Hong Kong. Those participants “who have both physically and symbolically crossed the border” (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000, p. 174) enter a new linguistic and socio-cultural environment, one in which they bring the ideologies and norms derived from their histories and experience the complex linguistic, cultural and political influences of their new context.
The educational experiences of the cross-border pre-service teachers in Hong Kong have allowed them to critically reflect on their preconceptions about teaching and teaching values, enabling them to move beyond these and re-construct their teaching identity. This critical reassessment has led some to re-evaluate meaning structures they originally thought were ineffective or even conflictual, and to reconstruct their orientation to cultural beliefs, values and behaviours (Shi, 2006). For instance, some participants, citing the hierarchical nature of mainland Chinese classrooms and the tendency of mainland teachers to favour students with high academic achievements, advocate a discourse of equality.
The interaction between the pre-service teachers’ cultural identity and their learning-to-teach process reflects how these individuals are being positioned within pre-existing
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historical social discourses and current social conversations (Davies & Harre, 1990; MacLure, 1993; Pennycook, 2003), while at the same time searching for linguistic and cultural resources to resist those identities that would position them in undesirable ways (Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). Power interplay can be seen to be involved in the participants’ professional identity construction (Prozorov, 2007). The value of the participants’ Putonghua proficiency and mainland Chinese backgrounds has diminished by their move to Hong Kong. In mainland China, Putonghua is the language of public life and social mobility, while in Hong Kong, as the participants in the current study perceived, despite its national language status, it is regarded a peripheral language symbolic of a non-urban, unsophisticated identity. Thus, mainland Chinese pre-service teachers’ most important symbolic resources, including Putonghua proficiency and their knowledge of Chinese cultures, are not recognized in their new social context, a process Bourdieu (1991) describes as “misrecognition”. Compounding this, a static view of culture could be detected among some Hong Kong secondary students, who regarded mainland Chinese teachers as having lower English proficiency and thus not being competent enough to teach English in Hong Kong.
The participants found their existing cultural identity to be unacceptable in and incompatible with their new context, and were forced to renegotiate and re-assess it. The illegitimate position of the cross-border pre-service teachers’ cultural identity may somewhat attribute to the huge differences existent in social, cultural, and political experiences between mainland Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong was politically and culturally isolated from mainland China from 1949 until the mid-1980s, during which period it became increasingly integrated into the global economy. Its status as a cosmopolitan centre of international commerce has reinforced the feeling among its residents that Hong Kong is more advanced than the rest of China (Simpson, 2007). Some participants constructed a binary opposition between a mainland Chinese cultural identity and a teaching identity in Hong Kong. For example, those from Guangdong hid their mainland Chinese cultural identity to avoid possible challenges in the English classroom and to reassure their prospective working community that they were able to teach English in Hong Kong as non-locals and non-native-English speakers. This can be seen as a compliant response to the power interplay between their cultural backgrounds and Hong Kong norms and values.
Some participants, primarily those who did not have cognate values in common with Hong Kong people and who could not speak Cantonese like natives, set up an opposition between their cultural identity and a teaching identity compatible with the Hong Kong context in face of their marginalized position. These findings reflect that, either by non-participation in the local teaching profession or by hiding their own cultural identity, the participants established an antagonistic obstacle (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) in order to “undercut the allegiance of a specific identity to a certain place or a certain property, and thereby to show that all identities are constructed in and through hegemonic power struggles” (Torfing, 1999, p. 255). The deconstruction of the binary opposition between their cultural identity and their identity as English teachers in Hong Kong enabled them to transform some elements of their cultural identity to construct a teaching identity.
Still other participants seemed to develop an “agonistic appreciation of difference” (Connolly, 2002, p. 167), constructing multicultural teaching identities that drew on their cultural and historical backgrounds, as well as on their educational and social experiences in Hong Kong. For instance, these participants attempted to reconcile their mainland Chinese background with a Hong Kong teaching identity by emphasizing the benefits of their cultural and historical backgrounds for English-language teaching, and by
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recognizing and absorbing local values, experiences and techniques. This bicultural aspect of their professional identity afforded the participants great flexibility, and allowed them to construct a wide range of identities, both in the classroom and in the professional community. Through negotiation and re-negotiation, these participants established new subject positions and modified their cultural and professional identities, essentially transforming themselves to ensure their “survival” or acceptability in the new sociocultural context.
A more supportive context that provides more room for cultural awareness among all trainee teachers in the learning community needs to be co-constructed by these cross-border pre-service teachers, their Hong Kong peers, the institutions and the policy makers. At the individual level, the participants need to take more agency in the learning community and local classrooms. They could, for example, actively involve themselves in the local community, join local student organizations or gain more knowledge of the local culture, as some participants have already done. They could also utilize the symbolic wealth inherent in their cultural background to establish their own unique identity, rather than emulating those of local teachers and native English teachers. A multilingual and bicultural classroom identity would offer the participants identity options not been previously imagined. At the contextual level, recognition of the benefits of biculturality would be an asset, as would the development, by school policy makers, of measures to support the integration of cross-border teachers into the Hong Kong teaching profession and to help them gain a legitimate position within the linguistic and cultural repertoire of local Hong Kong schools. It would be useful for both teacher training institutions and local schools to recognize and acknowledge the unique strengths and assets cross-border students bring to the Hong Kong educational environment. For example, mainland pre-service and in-service teachers’ Putonghua proficiency could be exploited and their identity as multilingual speakers constructed, or they could be assigned roles in setting up exchange programmes between Hong Kong and mainland Chinese schools. Whatever the measures taken to integrate these teachers into the learning and professional community, it is important that their voices be heard in the development process. Enhancing their knowledge of local schools and culture and their sense of belonging to the community would help to retain and sustain cross-border students in Hong Kong. Efforts such as these could transform the learning-to-teach and teaching environment in Hong Kong into one that values the unique and valuable contributions made possible by mainland Chinese students’ linguistic backgrounds and cultural resources. Heightened cross-cultural sensibility among mainland Chinese and Hong Kong pre-service teachers, the institutions and the policy makers would contribute to a learning community that embraces teachers with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
Conclusion
The benefits of recruiting cross-border students for the English education programme are obvious, such as relieving Hong Kong’s teaching resource shortage, enhancing collaboration between cross-border and local teachers in Hong Kong and creating multilingual and multicultural campuses. Realizing these benefits, however, requires an understanding of cross-border pre-service teachers’ educational experiences, especially their relationship with their local counterparts. This paper has addressed this by examining cultural identity transformation in a group of cross-border pre-service English teachers and its subsequent impact on their professional identity construction as they study in Hong Kong. Given that globalization has fostered rapid and wide-spread population mobility,
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both between and within nations, the cross-border teaching situation addressed in this study may not be unique to Hong Kong (c.f. Menard-Warwick, 2008). Other educational settings in which local and migrating pre-service teachers from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds interact are also likely to face such questions as how best to utilize and recognize the particular linguistic and cultural resources of cross-border teachers and how to establish social networks to facilitate knowledge sharing among and the professional development of pre-service teachers. Further research could explore the perspectives of other key stakeholders, such as local pre-service teachers, local students, school managers and policy makers, in order to enhance our understanding of how collaboration between cross-border and local teachers can be promoted, both in Hong Kong and in similar educational settings around the world. Such collaboration is beneficial because cultural and linguistic complexities are valuable resources that provide opportunities for learning and using different languages and for becoming familiar with different cultures.
Note 1. Du Fu (712–770), is a very famous poet in the history of Chinese literature.
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Appendix 1 Interview protocol
Why did you decide to study in Hong Kong? For what reasons did you decide to study in a teachers’ college? Would you please tell me briefly your learning experience in mainland China? Have you ever experienced the linguistic and cultural difficulties when you studied in Hong Kong? How did you overcome them? What is a good teacher in your mind? How is the conception of “good teacher” formed in your mind? Would you please tell us some experiences that have influenced your conception? Would you please tell us something that you have learnt from the college education in becoming a teacher? What do you want to do after graduation?
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