The evolving self : a narrative inquiry of experience shaping and identity shifting in native-speaking English teachers (NETs) in Hong Kong secondary schools

Abstract

This study explores the lives and experiences of teachers in their first year teaching abroad and, in particular, investigates how their professional identity shaped and was shaped by their experiences. Six newly-recruited Native-speaking English Teachers (NETs) to Hong Kong wrote reflective journals over a ten-month period and participated in a conversation at the end of the year. Interim participant stories were co-constructed and final research texts constructed while attending to the three ―commonplaces‖ of narrative inquiry – temporality, sociality and place (Clandinin & Connelly, 2006). The findings from this study offer intriguing insights into the early lived experiences of teachers entering cross-cultural contexts. While each participant‘s story was unique, four resonant threads (Clandinin & Connelly, 1988; Clandinin, 2013) emerged as these teachers encountered students, colleagues and an unfamiliar educational system: arriving with past experiences and stories; bumping with new landscapes; shifting identities and liminal spaces; and, reliving past stories / living new stories. Understanding how the identities of teachers entering unfamiliar educational and cultural contexts shaped their experiences and how their experiences shaped their identities has practical implications for support needed that might contribute to sustaining positive teacher identity and effectiveness through periods of instability during personal and professional change. Though this study focused on NETs in Hong Kong, it has broader theoretical and social significance for opening up possibilities for better understanding the complexities of the liminal space (Kennedy, 2001) of becoming cross-cultural teachers, and for moving towards collaborative co-constructions of cross-cultural perspectives on curriculum and practice within the context of global and multicultural landscapes.