More than interchangeable ‘local’ teachers: Host country teachers’ journeys into internationalised school teaching in China

Abstract

In order to address the paucity of research on Chinese teachers and to foreground their ‘Other (ed)’ ways of knowing and experiencing, this paper draws on interviews with 15 host country Chinese teachers from three internationalised schools in China. Specifically, this paper explores the participants’ pathways into internationalised schooling. These pathways include an attachment to the local, a way to escape the vicissitudes and precarity of private language school teaching, a (re)entry point for teachers returning to China after studying/working overseas, and a vehicle for social mobility. The findings suggest that host country teachers as a group are far more diverse than has been assumed, with many of teachers migrating into internationalised school teaching from other educational sectors (such as language tutoring) or non-educational sectors (such as I.T.). The findings have implications for educational policy making for internationalised schooling in China, particularly in terms of notions of professionalism and what this might mean within the context of internationalised schooling.