Adam Poole

The Education University of Hong Kong | ied · Department of Education Policy and Leadership (EPL)

Educational borrowing from the West has been considered of strategic importance to China's ongoing educational reform. Whilst existing research has highlighted issues in the implementation and contextualisation of borrowed policies and practices, surprisingly little has been written about the impact of professional learning programmes that have bee...

There is growing evidence to support the normalisation of performativity. However, what has been less remarked on are the tensions that emerge when teachers seek to implement performative learning in a post-performative teaching context. This paper draws on interviews with 9 Chinese teachers undertaking Cambridge's Professional Development Qualific...

A major development in recent years concerning the growth of ‘private English-speaking international schooling’ has been the transition from a ‘traditional’ mode of activity towards a ‘non-traditional’ context. This is especially the case in Asia, where the majority of international schools now reside. Moreover, we find that in mainland China two-t...

Elink to paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/share/AWAJPAFRPJCCSHZMEFP3?target=10.1080/03057925.2023.2212110 This review article identifies the trends and developments regarding teachers in international schools from 1998 until 2022. International school teachers as a group are worthy of study as the number of schools delivering a curriculum in Eng...

Poole’s book illuminates the experiences and perspectives of host country national teachers at internationalised schools in China. The international school sector in China has undergone significant changes in recent years. This is due to the growing demand for international education from local middle-class families. In response, a new type of scho...

Recent policy changes to the regulation of international schooling for Chinese nationals in China has seen restrictions on curriculum, admissions, and ownership. Whilst there is evidence of the impact of these changes at the institutional level, it is not clear how recent regulation has impacted the actors at the local level. In order to address th...

二战后“国际学校”在全球范围广泛兴起，在亚太地区特别是在中国内地得到了长足发展。本研究主要关注“中国国际化学校”中的教师群体。通过深入考察中国上海郊区的一所国际学校的四名教师的生活世界，研究发现，案例教师主要呈现三类跨文化身份：文化沙文主义者、文化局内人和文化中间人。国际化学校教师的不稳定危机主要表现在短期合同的制约、表演型文化的压力和国际教育的困惑等。这些教师通过一系列策略来应对不稳定境况，包括调整认知、转移精力、加强锻炼、控制饮食、存放基金、寻求非正式支持等，从而培养韧性和积累复原力资本. The post-World War II era has seen the emergence of "international schools" around the world, with...

Despite developments in the funds of identity literature, little scholarly attention has been paid to how the funds of identity approach impacts the teacher/researcher. Given the transformative potential of participatory methodologies, it would be useful to understand how an approach like funds of identity impacts the researcher. In order to addres...

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...

This article argues for ventriloquism as a method of (post)qualitative inquiry for appropriating the voice of the Other and amplifying multi-voiced selves. Thinking with embodied figures, ventriloquism captures philosophical conceptions of the subject and object through the self and other. To sustain the existence of “abject” voices, we orient read...

Whilst the impact of the 'publish or perish' adage has received considerable attention from academics in the West, it remains under-researched in non-Western contexts, such as China. We address this gap by examining our lived experiences of navigating Chinese academia and academic publishing in the form of a duoethnographic collaborative self-study...

This chapter explores the notion of performativity and teacher discretion in two Chinese internationalised schools in Shanghai, China. Utilising an autoethnographic perspective supplemented with interviews with three international school teachers, this chapter explores how neoliberalism manifests in the Chinese internationalised school, how it regu...

Review of Alexandra Coleman's 'Class, place, and higher education: experiences of homely mobility'

This blog article is inspired by the recent controversy surrounding that paper published in Qualitative Research. The paper, titled ‘I am not alone – we are all alone: Using masturbation as an ethnographic method in research on shota subculture in Japan’ (Andersson, 2022), focuses, frankly stated, on a man’s experiences masturbating to Japanese com...

Although international school teachers have always been hired on short-term contracts (usually from two to three years in duration), there has been relatively little research examining this aspect of international schooling. Whilst short-term contracts may appear to be a positive feature of international schooling, particularly for younger teachers...

We approach the topic of Global Citizenship Education from the perspective of the experienced teacher working in the continuously growing arena of private English-speaking international schooling. Although the diverse body of international schools defies a consensus definition, and always has done since the title was first being used by the school...

Although the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic in terms of school closure and the sudden shift to online learning has started to be explored, little has so far been written about the impact on teachers. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on the first author’s autoethnographic experiences of working in the growing body of ‘Non-Traditional...

In order to address the paucity of research on Chinese teachers and to foreground their 'Other(ed)' ways of knowing and experiencing, this paper draws on interviews with fifteen host country Chinese teachers from three internationalised schools in China. Specifically, this paper explores the participants' pathways into internationalised schooling....

The number of schools delivering a curriculum in English outside an English-speaking nation is growing both in scale and importance, reaching 12,000 by 2021. Such schools are traditionally staffed by expatriate teachers and mainly from Britain and North America. In recent years, a newer arena of commercially driven ‘non-traditional’ international s...

This paper reports on an emerging type of international school, which we refer to as the Chinese internationalized school. This school caters to Chinese citizens and aspires to offer a fusion of national and international curricula. The majority of internationalized schools in China are to be found in large metropolitan centers. Accordingly, the li...

Previous work on working-class academics has highlighted recurring themes, such as micro-aggressions, imposter syndrome, liminality, exclusion, invisibility and habitus. These themes have been encapsulated in a number of metaphors, such as 'the ghost' and 'the phantom-limb', both of which connote absence, silence and marginalisation. Whilst these m...

Participatory based methodologies, like the funds of identity approach, often employ arts-based methods and graphic elicitation as a complement to the traditional autobiographical interview. The funds of identity approach addresses deficit discourses that position disadvantaged learners as problematic by encouraging teachers to construct curriculum...

Drawing on a larger study, this research in progress article reports on a case study investigating barriers to the implementation of two teacher professional development programmes for English language teachers. These programmes are Cambridge Examinations’ Certificate for English Language Teaching – Primary (CELT-P) and Certificate for English Lang...

This chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book by introducing key concepts and ideas. The first concept is that of the Chinese Internationalised Schools, which forms the main focus of this book. The second key concept is that of the ‘Accidental teacher’, who through happenstance or chance find themselves working abroad in International School...

This chapter explores teachers’ motivations for relocating overseas to work in International Schools. It then critically engages with a number of teacher typologies that have been developed. Whilst these typologies help to clarify motivation, they nevertheless paint a rather static picture of teachers’ identities and experiences. Adopting a postmod...

This chapter explores the first dimension of International School Teachers’ lived experiences, namely, the intercultural. This chapter problematises the assumption that teachers develop intercultural identities as a result of working in Chinese Internationalised Schools by drawing upon the notion of ‘critical interculturality’ as articulated by Fre...

This chapter explores the third dimension of International School Teachers’ lived experiences, namely the resilient. This chapter situates itself within Tristan Bunnell’s call for a more positive sociology of International Schooling by initially drawing upon ideas from positive psychology. This chapter then develops notions of the positive by adopt...

This chapter offers the reader information about the context in which International School teachers work, namely, International Schools. As there is a great deal of contestation concerning the definition and purpose of these schools, it is necessary to unpack this complexity for the reader. This chapter considers the metaphors of field, arena, and...

This chapter draws together the ideas developed in Chapters 5 and 6 in order to flesh out the concept of sur-thrival. This concept combines notions of precarity and resilience in order to develop the theorisation of International School teachers’ experiences in International Schools. The aim is to move beyond understanding International School teac...

This chapter explores the second dimension of International School Teachers’ lived experiences, namely the precarious. The chapter utilises the concepts of the precariat and precarity in order to explore the difficulties that teachers face working in International Schools. These difficulties are framed in terms of a prevalent negative discourse. In...

This book explores the emerging and under-researched phenomenon of internationalised schooling in China. It focuses on a group of “accidental” teachers who fell into teaching through happenstance or necessity, a group of teachers increasingly seeking refuge in Chinese Internationalised Schools. Chinese Internationalised Schools cater to an affluent...

The topic of teacher research has been widely discussed by researchers. What has been less discussed is how teachers make sense of classroom research. Given the difficulties of implementing teacher research, it is necessary to understand teachers' conceptions of research and the role that it plays in their work. Whilst there is a burgeoning literat...

The under-theorized arena of “English-speaking International Schooling” continues to grow and morph. The continuous growth seems paradoxical in light of the well-established view that the arena is an insecure and precarious working environment characterized by short-term contracts and subsequent high rates of annual turnover per school. We investig...

The arena of International Schooling is growing rapidly and changing in nature.The number of schools delivering a curriculum wholly or partly in Englishoutside an English-speaking nation reached 12,000 in 2020. China and theMiddle East is the emerging centre of activity, and local parents are the maincustomers. This is an increasingly important, ye...

This is a review of Moises Esteban-Guitart's book, 'Funds of identity: Connecting meaningful learning experiences in and out of school'

This paper critically surveys four typologies that have been used to identify and understand international school teachers. The critique highlights two main limitations with the typologies. The first, ontological in nature, is that reifying teachers as a type does not capture the complexity of lived experience. The second, ethico-political in natur...

The arena of 'English-Speaking International Schooling' continues to grow, reaching almost 12,000 schools in 2020. The growing teaching arena attracts 30,000 new entrants each year and continues to be dominated by British-trained teachers. Little is actually known about the motives or subsequent experiences of this body. However, the narrative abou...

This paper responds to Bailey and Cooker's (2019) paper entitled 'Exploring Teacher Identity in International Schools: Key Concepts for Research' in which the authors offer a typology of international school teachers based on interviews with non-qualified teachers. This paper builds upon the typology of international school teachers by offering an...

This paper is a response to a recently published article in this journal entitled ‘Precarious privilege: personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers’ by Rey, Bolay and Gez (2020). In this follow-up paper, we take the notion of ‘precarious privilege’ as the starting point for theorising an emerging concept d...

The purpose of this study was to explore three International School Teachers’ experiences as part of the Global Middle Class (GMC) in China. This group is worthy of study, as their numbers are increasingly growing, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. However, little has been written about the negative aspects of sustained global mobility or ho...

This paper is a reflective account of using narrative inquiry and relational ethics as part of doctoral research that explored the lived experiences and identity construction of international school teachers in Shanghai, China. Specifically, it illustrates how narrative inquiry informed the whole research process by focusing on three aspects of the...

Building on Bunnell’s notion of ‘non-premium’ schools in China, this paper offers a nuanced theorisation of these schools, which highlights both their constraints and affordances. Rather than employing the rather pejorative label ‘non-premium’, the term ‘Chinese Internationalised Schools’ (CIS) is used. Not only does this term differentiate these s...

The topic of teacher autonomy has been extensively explored in state schools in the West. However, little research has been done on neoliberal discourses and notions of performativity within international schools. From the outside, it might seem that international schools are not subject to the 'tyranny of performativity' due to their relatively au...

There is now a general acceptance that schools need to prepare students for the realities of a globalised world, which necessitates developing intercultural competence. Such an educational mandate is felt particularly keenly in internationalised schools, where the work of teaching and learning involves the negotiation of diverse cultural assumption...

The purpose of this paper is to extend Bunnell’s (2016) thesis that international education teachers (IETs) are forming a ‘global educational precariat’. The paper draws upon interview data from a larger study of international teachers in two international schools in Shanghai, China. In order to substantiate and develop Bunnell’s thesis, narrative...

This paper is a theoretical response to recent developments in the funds of identity literature which has seen the introduction of two interconnected concepts, ‘dark funds of identity’ and ‘existential funds of identity’. However, while these recent concepts may expand the canvas from which researchers draw in developing interventionist approaches...

Cite as: Adam Poole, (2019) "I am an internationalising teacher: A Chinese English teacher’s experiences of becoming an international teacher", International Journal of Comparative Education and Development, Vol. 21 Issue: 1, pp.31-45, https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCED-08-2018-0026 FREE E-PRINT: https://www.emeraldinsight.com/eprint/z4jz4PZAvYnhnn4enb...

This thesis explored how four internationalised school teachers constructed cross-cultural teacher identities in an internationalised school in Shanghai, China (pseudonym, WEST). The topic of international teacher identity is of significance to practitioners, researchers and school leaders alike as there is growing consensus that teacher identity a...

This paper responds to recent developments in the Funds of Identity literature which has seen the introduction of two interconnected terms, dark funds of identity (Charteris, Thomas & Masters, 2018) and existential funds of identity (Poole & Huang, 2018). While these two concepts show a great deal of promise, neither has yet to be adequately theori...

There is still a tendency for researchers and teachers using a Funds of Identity approach for social justice purposes to exclude negative emotions and experiences from the classroom. This article addresses this issue by situating Funds of Identity within contemporary interpretations of perezhivanie to theorize what we call existential funds of iden...

This study explores school identity by analysing the perceptions of Chinese and expatriate teachers in a Type C non-traditional international school in Shanghai, China. The purpose of this study was to build on Hayden’s (2016) work by offering a detailed description of this type of school which continues to be under-researched. A mixed-methods appr...

This article presents findings from a case study that explored the way Sophie, an expatriate International Baccalaureate Diploma art teacher in an internationalised school in Shanghai, China, interpreted and implemented the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile. The findings challenge the view that the Profile exerts a regulatory force on tea...

The Avatar Project was a two-week English project in which Chinese high school students in an internationalised school in Shanghai China explored the topic of cultural and individual identity. The project synthesised prospective education with the Funds of Identity approach, both of which have particular relevance within an internationalised teachi...

This article builds on the growing work on Funds of Identity by offering a conceptualisation of identity in relation to Vygotsky's concept of perezhivanie which is then situated within the discourse on digital identities. I also suggest how teachers and researchers could use avatars, digital representations of online users, as an identity text for...

This article is designed as the starting point for future research into the implementation of the funds of knowledge concept in the People’s Republic of China. Utilizing an exploratory research design, I sketch how the funds of knowledge concept could be used by teachers to empower ethnic minority and city-born migrant children disadvantaged by gov...

This paper is a theoretically orientated analysis that synthesises the literature on Funds of Identity with the literature on digital identities. It makes the case for considering Funds of Identity as more than just an enrichment of the Funds of Knowledge approach by suggesting that it is in fact a development. This article also extends the concept...

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This article forms the first part of an Action Research project designed to incorporate formative assessment into the culture of learning of a bilingual school in Shanghai, China. It synthesises the empirical literature on formative assessment in China to establish some of the difficulties that teachers have faced in trying to incorporate this appr...