Exploring Teacher Identity in International Schools: Key Concepts for Research

Abstract

This paper explores the identity of teachers in international schools who are embarking on postgraduate studies in education. Based on semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers starting an international qualification, it establishes key aspects of their identity and notes that they feel distinct from teaching professionals in their passport countries. From this discussion, a tool-box of concepts for understanding the identity of international school teachers is suggested, together with a typology of international school teachers echoing Hayden & Thompson’s (2013) typology of international schools. It is suggested that these concepts require further exploration and empirical substantiation in order both to understand their implications for addressing teacher shortages and to understand the knowledge, skills and attitudes that teachers with non-conventional qualifications and backgrounds may offer to schools.

Constructing International School Teacher Identity from Lived Experience: A Fresh Conceptual Framework

“…Previous attempts to develop typologies of international school teachers (e.g., Hardman, 2001; Garton, 2000) have been critiqued (e.g. Savva, 2015) for being ‘insufficiently nuanced to capture this group’s motivations and identities’ (Bailey & Cooker, 2019, p. 129). Fortunately, the last few years have seen a growing interest in the lives and experiences of teachers in international schools (Arber et al, 2014; Bailey, 2015; Blyth, 2017; Bunnell, 2016, 2017), which could be likened to something of an international school teacher turn in the field of international education.…”

“…Despite having yet to be fully taken up by international educational researchers, the concept of teacher identity in international schools has recently been addressed in a paper in the Journal of Research in International Education by Bailey and Cooker (2019) entitled ‘Exploring Teacher Identity in International Schools: Key Concepts for Research’. In their paper, the authors draw upon the concept of teacher identity in order to understand the commitment and motivation of teachers in international schools.…”

“…In order to illustrate this framework, data are analysed from an interview with an international school teacher based in Shanghai, China who is referred to here by the pseudonym Tyron. Before presenting Tyron’s interview data, this paper first discusses Bailey and Cooker’s ‘tool-box of concepts’ (2019, p. 125) for researching international school teachers in order to lay the groundwork for presentation of the international school teacher identity framework.…”

“…The second conceptual lens, ‘Third Culture Teachers’, refers to teachers who ‘see themselves not as professional teachers in their country of origin or in their country of residence, but as belonging primarily to a third culture of teacher identity – that of the teacher in an international school’ (Bailey & Cooker, 2019, p. 135). The authors explain that many of the teachers in their sample found that the job they did in international schools was considerably different from that in other kinds of schools.…”

Understanding the impact of collaboration on group learning on an international school teaching team

“…These schools are typically supported by parent or company paid tuition and are not for profit, trust based schools (Bunnell et al, 2016). Hayden & Thompson's creation of a typology of international schools consider these Type A international schools (Bailey & Cooker, 2019). Type A are also referred to by Hayden & Thompson as traditional.…”