Confronting Difference: Learning to Teach in a Borderland School in Hong Kong

Abstract

This chapter traces one student-teacher’s (Marley) experiences of learning to teach English as a second language in a cross-cultural context during a teaching practicum in Hong Kong. The school-based practicum is a core component of many initial teacher education programmes. During this induction period, usually an 8-week block, student- teachers are placed in local schools to learn how to integrate theories into practice in real teaching situations. Specifically, I uncover how Marley grappled with the tensions and complexities of teaching young learners from a different cultural and linguistic background, in a small elementary school situated in the borderland between Hong Kong (an autonomous region of China) and Shenzhen (a province of Mainland China). Although China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, the former British territory has been allowed to retain its social, political, and cultural identities as a special administrative region. The post-handover era saw thousands of children born in Hong Kong to Mainland parents, thereby gaining permanent residency in the city. However, many of these children live in Shenzhen because their parents do not have right of abode to reside in Hong Kong. This phenomenon has resulted in a high number of students travelling across the Chinese border every day to attend schools in Hong Kong. This study used narrative inquiry as a theory and method (Caine, Estefan, & Clandinin, 2013; Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). The data in this chapter are drawn from regular conversations Marley, a pre-service teacher enrolled in an undergraduate teacher education programme, had with two virtual external mentors and a teacher educator (the author) in an online mentoring community during an eight-week teaching practicum block as well as in-depth face-to-face interviews with Marley during and after the field experience. Critical incidents from Marley’s practicum experiences were analysed to uncover how she dealt with the tensions and dilemmas in confronting difference and marginalising practices while learning to teach English as a second language (ESL) in the practicum school. The online community was created by the author, who is an ESL teacher educator, to provide student-teachers with opportunities to engage in ongoing reflective conversations with in-service ESL teachers in the Hong Kong teaching community during the practicum. Implications on how to develop initial teacher education programmes so that student-teachers learning to teach across cultural contexts can be encouraged to explore, confront, and “deal with the emotional terrain of understanding difference” will be discussed (Boler & Zembylas, 2003, p. 123; Zembylas, 2010).