VET Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Professional Roles and Responsibilities in International Education

Abstract

This chapter presents VET teachers’ perceptions of their professional roles and responsibilities under the changed circumstances of the internationalized VET. The analysis of the data gained from semi-structured interviews and fieldwork show that the teachers position themselves mostly as cross-cultural facilitator and mediator. The findings reveal that the teachers’ self-positioning of their professional roles is mainly shaped by their personal experience in teaching international students onshore and offshore, and being international students in the past. The chapter argues for VET institutes’ better recognition of the contextual influences on the nature of VET teachers’ professional tasks as well as for more support for VET teachers to meet the new demands of their work roles.