Living and Teaching Internationally: Teachers Talk about Personal Experiences, Benefits, and Challenges

Abstract

This study reports on the impact of international visiting faculty’s teaching experiences in the United States on their personal, professional, and intercultural development. It is based on the principles of qualitative research and can be described as a case study. Data collection involved a questionnaire, a written narrative, and a semi-structured interview with each of a number of teachers. Participants included a group of 22 visiting faculty. Three main categories, each of which can be subdivided into benefits and challenges, emerged from the analysis: intercultural matters, professional matters, and personal matters. A wide range of benefits was identified, suggesting that the participants adapted to new life styles, became more mature, obtained a deeper understanding of themselves, reaffirmed their own educational values and philosophies, raised cultural awareness, became more flexible, and developed attitudes that involved tolerance and respect. Conversely, visiting faculty reported that they faced challenges related to language barriers, interaction with native speakers, classroom management, lack of support from school administrators, and separation from family.

A Pattern of Tolerance Values Transformation by Parents Towards Early Childhood

“…Based on the results in Cigugur society, parents sometimes bring the young children to visit some different religious places of worship such as mosques, churches, and other places. In addition, Ospina and Medina (2020) believe that when young children are brought to some other members of family which have different backgrounds or different cultures, they will tend to be more tolerant so that they should have some respect towards the other religions.…”

Stories of Teachers’ Identity: Between Personal and Professional Experience

“…Besides learning in the workplace, leaving the workplace for a while, especially in terms of an international experience, is also vital for a teacher's identity and professional development. Ospina and Medina (2020) researched a group of visiting teachers in the United States in terms of the benefits from their intercultural experiences and the challenges they faced. For benefits, teachers mentioned that the visit helped them build a good rapport with students, which affects the teachers' self-esteem.…”

“…However, culturally different educational contexts also bring challenges. It appears that some school districts made efforts to support international educators by assigning a mentor, although those efforts were not structured enough to provide sufficient support and guidance to the mentees (Ospina & Medina, 2020). How the cross-cultural teaching experience of a Chinese beginning teacher in Singapore influenced the development of his professional teacher identity was captured in the narrative study by Yip et al (2019).…”

Transnational Teaching: Evaluating the Application of Heideggerian Phenomenology and IPA in a Study of Lived Experiences

“…Rapport building and negotiation (Lynam, 1992) were also documented as important and essential for the development of collaborative work between participants. More recent work by Ospina and Lopera Medina (2020) investigated the personal experiences, benefits, and challenges of international teaching experiences. Findings resonate with other studies, whereby participants became more mature, flexible, and developed a deeper understanding of themselves as people through having engaged in these overseas experiences.…”