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'I've Become a Lot Tougher': Expatriate Teachers' Experiences of Precarity and Resilience in Non-Traditional International Schools in China.
- Source :
- Beijing International Review of Education; 2022, Vol. 4 Issue 4, p590-609, 20p
- Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- The arena of education known as 'international schooling' has grown enormously, from a body of 2,500 schools in 2000 to almost 13,500 by 2022. By 2019, China had emerged as having the most schools delivering a non-national curriculum in English outside of an English-speaking nation. The arena continues to be dominated by British and North American educators. One enduring aspect of workplace reality is the short-term contract, normally of between two and three years. The field is acknowledged to be inherently precarious and insecure, with high levels of turnover, and a bleak 'negative' lens of imagination has always persisted. This paper focuses attention on the lived experiences of expatriate teachers among the growing body of 'non-traditional international schools' that might be best termed 'Chinese Internationalised Schools'. Through in-depth phenomenological interviewing of six expatriate teachers, the reality of 'short-termism' was examined. Whilst the findings highlighted, as expected, the negative aspects of short-term employment, the findings also identify many positive outcomes. These include opportunities for developing resilience, agency, and reinvention. This offers scope for a new vision, based upon the accumulation of 'resilience', which helps to explain the continuous growth of the arena despite the presence of precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- INTERNATIONAL schools
PRECARITY
TEACHERS
NONCITIZENS
PSYCHOLOGICAL resilience
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 25902547
- Volume :
- 4
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Beijing International Review of Education
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 162384580
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1163/25902539-04040006