Transnational teachers in Australian schools: Implications for democratic education

Abstract

While current debates on education for children from migrant background often focus on the prevailing problems of self-segregation and racialisation in Australian education, I take my point of departure from such perspectives to ask how the evolution of a burgeoning mobile teacher, who operates on a global scale, can matter to the distribution of educational opportunity and shape of democratic education outcomes for both domestic and overseas-born children. Consistent with the Special Issue, this article seeks to open a space for further research, to ask some old and some new questions about teaching for democracy. To examine how democracy can be fully realised in and through education, this article moves beyond problematising the dangers posed by globalised neoliberal school reform to attend to the cross-border flows of culturally and ethnically diverse transnational teachers in Australian schools. The article has two foci: first, it explores the role 'transnational teachers' have in education for democracy by understanding their place in the relations between education and access to sociocultural opportunities. Second, the article deploys a Deweyan approach to democracy and education, to argue for an education that is embedded in contexts, beyond than a locality, to incorporate sustained cross-border relationships and patterns of teachers' social formation. Finally, the article details key pedagogical considerations for democratic education, moving beyond largely Eurocentric practices to include aspects such as generating diversity, cultivating transnational civic engagement, and advancing transnational aspirations of both teachers and students shaped by processes of globalisation.

Profiling Academic Research on Language Teacher Identities

“…Within the field of TESOL, LTI has been the focus of a myriad of studies in the recent two decades. However, transnational language teachers' identity has never been part of it until recently when transnationalism is regarded as a social field under the impulse of neoliberal forces and shaped by the process of globalization (Soong, 2018). De Costa and Norton (2016) also suggest exploring the evolvement of teacher identities driven by globalization and neoliberal impulses for identity research work in the future.…”

Teachers in Transition. A Biographical Perspective on Transnational Professionalisation of Internationally Educated Teachers in Germany

“…Therefore, also for refugee teachers the following applies under different circumstances:“Transnational teachers encounter fields with rules which are new to them, their habitus must gauge the field, figure out the logic of the field and how to best position oneself. Habitus, as a socialised subjectivity, is a product of embodied social practices and is considered as a tool for helping transnationals to mediate change within a foreign field” (Soong, 2018: 407).…”

Transculturality in higher education

“…Globally, mobile learners experience different academic systems, communication differences, racial and ethnic distinctions, and often a lack of social interactions with members of the host society (Leask 2008;Soong 2018). Higher education has responded to the emergence of globalisation, migration and transculturality through a rapid expansion of its internationalisation programmes (Killick 2017;Soria and Troisi 2014).…”