Abstract
This article reports on a study of the professional identity of expatriate teachers working in an international school in Malaysia. It examines the practical, cultural and professional challenges they experienced as they transitioned to an international school setting. Their experiences of curricular, organisational and cultural change are explored, and the impact of these on their professional identity is analysed. Also explored is the importance of a professional community with shared norms to maintaining a continued identity in the face of change.
Introduction
In many parts of the world, teachers’ work has changed significantly over the last 25 years, shaped by the forces of neo-liberalism and globalisation (Maguire, 2010). There has been a shifting and ambiguous relationship between teachers and the state since the 19th century (Connell and Payne, 1985; Lawn and Grace, 1987); however, it was in the closing decade of the 20th century that researchers became increasingly preoccupied with the impact of prevailing economic discourses on the workload, autonomy and cultural conceptualisation of teaching across the developed nations (see, for example, Hargreaves, 1994).
Extensive studies have been conducted on the effects of policy changes on teachers’ work, and evolving conceptions of professionalism in response to government-led reforms in organisational structure and management, curriculum and accountability (e.g. Comber and Nixon, 2009; Connell and Payne, 1985; Hargreaves, 1994; Smyth, 2001). The research hitherto conducted on these changes in teachers’ work has focused on the impact of legally imposed change in various national settings. There has been less attention given to teachers choosing to work in schools operating outside of such prescriptive national frameworks, although the study of teachers in such schools provides insight into the effects of discourses rather than directives. The robustness of conceptions of professionalism and professional practice in the face of unforeseen consequences of such choices therefore remains unexplored. For this reason alone, studying the professional work and identity of teachers leaving national settings in order to work in international schools would be of interest.
This research gap is addressed by this article, by examining the experiences of teachers seeking to continue their career in an international context. While there has been some study of teachers in international schools (e.g. Chandler, 2010; Joslin, 2002), research on the careers and professional identity of teachers in international schools remains little theorised. The significance of such a study is underlined by the growing numbers of teachers working in international education, either for all or part of their careers. Brummitt and Keeling (2013) predict that while in the year 2000 there were only 90,000 full-time staff working in international schools, by 2022 the number of English speaking teachers required for such (generally English medium) schools will have reached 529,000. Yet, the lives of international school teachers and the ease with which they are able to transition between national and international institutions remain little researched (Hayden and Thompson, 2010).
This article offers a preliminary analysis of discourses of professionalism articulated by expatriate teachers at a case study international school in Malaysia. It identifies elements of their professional identity and compares and contrasts these to the data that have been obtained by researchers into professionalism in the countries of origin for some of these teachers. I argue that teachers are able to re-claim elements of their autonomy and articulate a strong sense of professional role and freedom in their new setting.
Literature review
The concepts of professionalism and professional identity have received extensive examination in recent years. Firstly, discourses of professionalism – that encourage certain behaviours and inhibit others – have been examined, and shifts in these discourses identified. Comber and Nixon (2009) identify competing discourses of their professional work among Australian teachers facing changes in their work as a consequence of educational reform agendas. They argue that a bureaucratisation of teachers’ work has occurred, with a corporate discourse of managerialism being introduced that reduces teacher autonomy in the classroom. These authors suggest that some teachers are deploying a competing democratic progressive discourse associated with caring, but that a language whereby teachers can articulate pedagogical aspects of their work seems lacking.
These discourses are closely related to changes in the nature of teachers’ work itself. As Ball (1990) points out, ‘discourses of derision’ of teachers in England and Wales have been used to justify government measures changing teachers’ working conditions. Alongside such accounts, then, other researchers have focused on changes in the nature of teachers’ work over the past 20 years and the impact of these on teachers’ professional identity. One suggestion is that there has been an intensification of teachers’ work, whereby there is an expectation of higher outputs (such as examination results) or an increased workload with additional administrative tasks, yet no additional time is given in which to achieve these tasks. Many researchers, in different national settings, have reported on the increased workload and decreased sense of autonomy teachers have experienced in recent years (e.g. Lasky (2005), reporting on the Canadian context). Similarly, Smyth (2001) has charted how power and control over teachers have been increased by changes in curriculum, assessment and accountability in Australia. In the United Kingdom, Day et al. (2007) note the many changes in teachers’ work over the last 20 years which have affected feelings of professionalism; these include intensification, restructuring and a decrease in perceived autonomy; they argue that many UK teachers feel de-professionalised by these changes.
Osborn (2006) argues that policy changes across a range of European teaching contexts have shifted the underlying model of teaching from a ‘professional covenant model’, based on a sense of vocation and linked to a sense of self, to a ‘contractual performance model’. The new model means that professionalism was seen as ‘The fulfilment of a contract to deliver education, which is seen as a commodity for individuals and a national necessity for economic growth’ (Osborn, 2006: 251). Osborn (2006) identifies this with ‘less confidence, fulfilment and spontaneity in teaching’ (p. 251). In summary, then, there is a considerable body of research suggesting that teachers across the developed world have experienced intensification, reduced autonomy and a consequent de-professionalisation and erosion of their pleasure in teaching. As will be seen below, this situation is in marked contrast with the reports from teachers at the case study international school studied here, who reported finding a renewed joy in teaching in the international context.
What, then, have these changes meant for teachers’ professional identity? There have been several attempts to identify contrasting discourses of professional identity and to use these to chart historical shifts in professionalism among teachers (e.g. Hargreaves, 2000; Sachs, 2003). Sachs (2001) argues that in its conventionally used sense, professional identity is essentially a conservative concept, defining itself on the basis of exclusion (i.e. by who is not included in the professional group). She argues that it is a set of attributes that are imposed either from without or from dominant groups within the group in question. She contrasts this with a competing discourse of professional identity, democratic identity, which she suggests has underpinned initiatives in Australia aimed at challenging an individualist notion of teachers’ work.
Previous research has indicated that a teacher’s view of their professional self may change over career stages (e.g. Ball and Goodson, 1985), and that the particular school and policy reform context may also be influential (Sachs, 2000). As Day (2002) concurs, Identity, so important in the lives of teachers, is not … something which is fixed or static. It is an amalgam of personal biography, culture, social influence and institutional values which may change according to role and circumstance. (p. 689)
Vähäsantanen et al. (2008) examine how the work organisation, the professional community and a teacher’s sense of individual agency all contribute to their professional identity. They contrast two teaching organisations (a university department and a vocational institution) in Finland – one in which teachers reported that the management had strong control over teachers’ work practices (which they term Stronger Social Suggestion Management) and one in which the teachers felt they had more control over their working practices (termed Weaker Social Suggestion Management). The authors argue that teachers in the Weaker Social Suggestion organisation had more agency over, and commitment to, their professional identity. On the other hand, there was less sharing of ideas between teachers in the organisation, with looser management structures. Similarly, Ballet and Kelchtermans (2009), in a study of Belgian primary schools, have suggested that a school’s organisational culture and a teacher’s own processes of sense-making mediate their experience of intensification.
A teacher’s professional identity is therefore complex, multi-faceted and constantly evolving. As Sachs (2001) cautions, identity is fluid and we should guard against the essentialising of professional identity. A teacher’s conception of themselves in their role as a teacher is related to their view on the skills required for teaching; to their current, past and expected future roles and the pressures they experience within them; to their relationships with their colleagues; and to their view of their current institution, and its systems for curriculum and assessment. In this way, identity can be understood as performative, an approach that Butler (1999) has developed extensively in relation to gender identity, but which can be applied equally to other aspects of identity. In this article, the concentration is exclusively upon the performance of a professional identity as a teacher, but questions about the relation of this to ethnicity and gender are implicitly raised by some of the findings below. These are complex relationships that deserve further exploration than they can be given here.
All of these factors may differ greatly for those working in an international school with an international student body in a new culture from those experienced by teachers working in a familiar national setting, even when that national setting has been subjected to rapid policy change. Yet, whereas studies of changes in teachers’ work in various national contexts abound, there is a paucity of data examining teachers’ work in international schooling. Relocating to teach in a different national context is a major decision that involves a degree of culture shock and adaptation of one’s own culture and practices to a new context (Joslin, 2002); in consequence, we might predict that working internationally might have an important impact on a teacher’s daily work and professional identity. Joslin’s (2002) personal reflections on her own experiences of various moves over the course of a career in international schooling illustrate well the importance of research that enables the voices of international teachers to be heard.
There have been attempts to classify teachers in international schools (e.g. Garton, 2000; Hardman, 2001), including classifications employed by the schools themselves. The first distinction to be made – which generally impacts upon contracts, salaries and employment rights – is between the local teacher (who holds the nationality of the country hosting the international school) and the expatriate teacher (who is a foreigner). Beyond that, many international schools further differentiate between ‘local-hire’ expatriates (already living in the country at the time of appointment) and ‘overseas-hire’ expatriates (who re-locate to the country in order to take up the position). Expatriates may be ‘local-hire’ for a host of reasons, including teachers who are ‘trailing spouses’ and have moved to the country because of their partner’s international career, and teachers who are married to a local national. As the number of teachers working in international schools increases, it is clear that we need a more complex explanation of the motivations and careers of teachers in international schools.
This study is a preliminary attempt to begin a more complex explanation. By exploring the reasons why these teachers were drawn to a case study international school as well as the impact on their work and identity, we can begin to identify some of the issues relating to professionalism that arise in international schooling more generally.
Methodology
The data reported here are from a wider project researching international schooling in Malaysia. In Malaysia, the number of international schools has increased from 26 in the year 2000 to 112 by 2013 (‘International schools see Malaysia as prime location for expansion’, 2013), as the government has relaxed in recent years restrictions upon the number of Malaysians who may attend international schools in Malaysia. The project is an in-depth examination of the impact of these policy changes upon a case study international school, here given the pseudonym ‘Kolej Malaysia’.
Kolej Malaysia is an established, co-educational boarding school with approximately 600 secondary-school students aged 11–19. It follows the curriculum of England – leading to iGCSEs and A levels – and has students from around 20 different nationalities (mainly from around South-East Asia), with Malaysians now forming just over 70% of the student body. The Board of Trustees has limited the recruitment of international (defined as non-Malaysian) staff to 40%, and while approximately one third of the teachers are from the United Kingdom, South Africans and Australians are also on the staff. There is a smattering of staff from other nationalities, and the staff interviewed for this study consisted of three UK, two Australian, two South African and one ‘other’ teacher. One particular feature of the school that should be noted is that it is predominantly a boarding school, and the responsibilities of working in a boarding environment featured heavily in many of the staff interviews. Boarding is, to a greater or lesser extent, an element of many of the international schools operating across Malaysia.
The wider project included interviews with Malaysian students attending the school, and contrasted their views of international schooling with the views of expatriate teaching staff at the same institution. At the same time, website analysis was conducted of representations of internationalism among a large sample of international schools in Malaysia. However, the data drawn on here are simply the eight narrative interviews conducted with expatriate teachers at the school, with the staff being given pseudonyms in the discussion that follows in order to protect their anonymity. All expatriate staff at the school were contacted by email and asked to volunteer, and it is important to note that it cannot be inferred that the staff who volunteered are necessarily representative of all staff at the school, let alone all staff in international schooling. Further, it should be noted that I had previously worked part-time at the school and was personally connected to the school management, which may have either inhibited or facilitated the sharing of confidences. Nevertheless, these interviews can be viewed as illustrative of some dimensions of professionalism in the context of an international school.
The interviews were semi-structured, in-depth and wide-ranging, covering interviewees’ personal histories as teachers, their arrival at Kolej Malaysia and their working life at the school. The interviews ranged from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours in length. As the data were analysed, using discourse analysis, the theme of professional identity and discourses of professionalism emerged as important (though unexpected, by the researcher) aspects of the move to teach in an international school. The data were then systematically analysed for elements of the discourses of professionalism and professional identity that were discussed by the teachers as they talked about their work. Through repeated re-readings and identification of recurrent themes across the eight interviews, four aspects of their professional life were identified as being salient to these teachers:
Changes in curriculum, organisation and culture;
Skills and de-skilling;
Time and resources;
The professional community.
After contextualising the move to international schooling by considering the teachers’ reasons for coming to teach in the school, these four elements will be analysed in turn through the discussion below.
Discussion
Hargreaves (2005) has pointed to the importance of age and generational differences in influencing how teachers respond emotionally to educational change. At Kolej Malaysia, three of the teachers interviewed were in the first 5 years of their teaching careers, two believed they were in the last 5 years and three were mid-career; yet, these very different generations were surprisingly similar in their reasons for coming to work in an international school and in their comments about their work in this institution.
Time and again, the teachers reported having decided to teach in an international school for ‘an adventure’ or ‘an experience’. Yasmin explicitly stated that she had entered teaching in order to travel overseas. Jane had thought it would be a challenge to work outside her ‘comfort zone’, and had had a sense that there was ‘so much more to life’ than her old familiar routines. The teachers were attracted to the novelty of Kolej Malaysia. Only one of the teachers had worked in an international school before, and he came to Malaysia because he had never before worked in Asia. For another teacher, Kolej Malaysia was her first teaching job. For the younger teachers, it had been easy to up-sticks and move to Malaysia; the older staff reported waiting until children had grown up and left home before seeking work overseas.
Hayden (2006) has hypothesised that some people start working in international schools in order to escape personal or professional problems in their passport countries, and concludes that ‘In that sense the international school sector has the potential to be the French Foreign Legion of the education world’ (p. 75). However, there was no evidence of this from the teachers’ self-reports at Kolej Malaysia; for them, it was the pull factors of the different and exotic that mattered, and there was little attention to push factors causing them to leave home. However, both Yasmin and Stephanie had previously left the teaching profession in the United Kingdom, because of the pressures of the job which had marred their enjoyment. They both reported that they had subsequently missed teaching and had decided to return to it in an overseas setting; both reported a renewed pleasure in their job at Kolej Malaysia.
Chandler’s (2010) survey of international school teachers suggests that school location is a major factor in the recruitment of staff, but plays a decreased role in staff retention. By contrast, the teachers in this study had ended up in Malaysia by chance. For Patrick, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision: ‘I didn’t really care. I was just looking for something new. I was just going to Malaysia and that was exciting enough’.
In summary, then, all of the teachers were actively seeking change when they arrived at Kolej Malaysia. In consequence, the challenges of the job were experienced as part-and-parcel of this adventure, and were seen as something they had chosen, rather than something imposed by circumstance. As we shall see in the following sections, this meant that their teachers’ responses to these challenges and their impact on their professional identity differed markedly from the impact of recent national policy changes on teachers across the developed world.
Changes in curriculum, organisation and culture
Teachers arriving at Kolej Malaysia had to adjust to the organisation, to the curriculum and to the culture of the country beyond the school. Only two of the teachers interviewed had worked in a boarding environment before. None of them had previously worked in Asia. Four of them had never taught the English curriculum before. For Lizzy, arriving from a boarding school in South Africa, the organisation of the school day was familiar but the number of English language learners was a shock. For Tom, the only participant to have worked in an international school before, being in a boarding environment for the first time was utterly exhausting; while not all the teachers had responsibilities in the boarding houses, the 6-day week and events on Saturday evenings meant that the boarding environment impacted on all. And for all of the teachers, adjusting to the Malaysian environment was a challenge.
Merryfield (2000) found that white teacher educators in the United States often drew on profound experiences of discrimination and outsider status while living outside their own country in increasing their effectiveness in preparing teachers for multicultural and global education. Similarly, experiencing culture shock in the classroom was an important experience in making the Kolej Malaysia teachers reconceptualise teaching. Tom had an ‘eye-opener’ when using a picture of Adolf Hitler in class as it drew an admiring ‘Heil Hitler’ from the students. Patrick had accidentally caused a boy to lose face in front of his peer group by jokingly flicking water at him. Patrick concluded, Before, I’d think if you take a big classroom you could say anything and they’d just go with it, but here I’m more careful about what I say.
Similarly, Jane worried about saying anything that touched on religion – a very sensitive subject in multicultural Malaysia: I’m definitely more aware of what I say here than I was in SA. Even though in South Africa there could be a political history to it, in my class I wouldn’t be worrying that I might say something that was insensitive. Whereas here – definitely.
There was a sense among the teachers that the parameters of their role had become more uncertain in an international environment. Jane noted that she had lost some job security in seeking a job in a private international school; she felt that she could be dismissed easily if her interpretation of the job, and of what it was acceptable to say or do, differed from that of management.
Yet, on the whole, the teachers at Kolej Malaysia revelled in and enjoyed the uncertainty and the change. Day (2002) found that those UK teachers he studied who had started working before recent curriculum and organisational reforms were introduced viewed the reforms more negatively than did younger teachers who had started working during or after the changes. The teachers at Kolej Malaysia resembled Day’s younger teachers; they felt that they had actively chosen these challenges, rather than having them imposed on them. As we shall see below, this meant that they saw their skills as growing from the experience.
Skills and de-skilling
Hayden (2006) has suggested that experienced teachers entering international schools for the first time may feel ‘de-skilled’ as their new pupils react to them differently than the teachers had expected. There was some evidence of this occurring initially among the teachers in Kolej Malaysia; while the expatriate teachers reported that the curriculum was similar to what they had taught before, they felt inexperienced in teaching classes in which a majority of the students did not speak English as their first language, and they also experienced uncertainty in managing classrooms and students in a new cultural context.
A teacher arriving at an international school from overseas requires not only induction into a school but also induction into a whole new culture. Every teacher, when asked about starting the job, told me about their arrival in Malaysia. They talked about their first shopping trip and the strange fruit and vegetables they encountered, or about the cockroaches in their flat; at this stage, the school’s curriculum and organisation very much took a back-seat. Teachers reported having felt fearful at what they had undertaken when they first arrived at the school; however, these initial fears were rapidly put to rest when an established expatriate teacher took them under their wing.
Several teachers reported that differences in learning styles meant that they had had to adjust their teaching. For example, both Yasmin and Stephanie explained that at their schools in the United Kingdom, they had had to focus on classroom management, whereas at Kolej Malaysia the students were highly motivated and the challenge was to ensure that the students engaged critically with the material covered in class. Stephanie observed, I’m used to students being really boisterous and having to control the crowd to get any kind of point across, and here it’s the complete opposite; it’s been really challenging to get them to say anything or to do anything or to get them to express themselves. And often they’ll just sit and look at me. So at first it was quite challenging.
Patrick felt that he had to change his teaching style in order to encourage students to ask questions, and to make them more comfortable with making mistakes in the classroom. Similarly, Jane felt that she had to be more creative in her teaching in order to build up the children’s confidence and to engage them in her class. She also expressed the uncertainty she had felt at first in discussing sensitive subjects with students.
Although the teachers felt that there had been an initial de-skilling, they also suggested that they had in the longer term been re-skilled by their experiences at Kolej Malaysia. For example, Patrick reported needing to know advanced mathematical concepts that he had never covered on the English curriculum. Meanwhile, Jane had been initially nervous about establishing close relationships with students from such different cultures. She concluded, ‘But after a while you realise teenagers are just teenagers everywhere’.
In contrast to Comber and Nixon’s (2009) finding that the Australian teachers they studied lacked a language for discussing pedagogy and seemed reluctant to discuss pedagogy unless pressed, the teachers in Kolej Malaysia enjoyed describing the pedagogical challenges they had faced at the school and how they had overcome them. They discussed the teaching strategies that they had adopted in the new context, clearly enjoying explaining how they had adapted their previous pedagogies; this discourse stressed their autonomy in adapting appropriately. In Tom’s words, My initial teacher education gave us a very strong sense of practice and ethos, and I think once you’ve got the strategies and the confidence to work with kids, the rest is really on the job. You need that foundation, and that gives you the ability to adapt to your circumstances.
This offers an interesting point of contrast with Richards’ (2002) suggestion that there should be an international teacher training programme and qualification; none of the expatriate teachers interviewed for this study felt that they had been ill-prepared for international schooling by their initial teacher training.
Teachers reported encountering completely different challenges to those they would face in their own national context, and learning to overcome them. For example, Yasmin had been horrified to discover that there was no curriculum in her subject for Forms 1–3, and that she would have to write it from scratch. Tom talked about his ignorance of Malaysian (and Asian) cultural icons and landmarks, and needing to develop the cultural knowledge that could help him to structure lessons and scaffold student learning. Overall, then, the teachers reported that they were enjoying the opportunities this offered for Continuing Professional Development. For example, a number of teachers had undertaken an optional course on teaching English as an Additional Language that had been offered by the school, and talked enthusiastically about the new teaching techniques this had given them. Sally, who had not taught before arriving at Kolej Malaysia, summarised the overall consensus: I think the school does try to give us plenty of opportunities for ongoing education, and I love the ongoing education.
In summary, in contrast to a process of de-skilling whereby teachers feel their knowledge and skills are not valued, after the initial transition the teachers at Kolej Malaysia felt that their teaching strategies and approaches were valued in the new context and that they had opportunities to further develop their skills. This contrasts with the de-skilling and loss of autonomy that has been reported in many national contexts (Ball, 1990; Hargreaves, 1994; Sachs, 2001).
By contrast, the expatriate staff did not value the teaching strategies of some of the local staff, which they described as ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘indoctrination’. Stephanie commented, The local staff hasn’t been trained in teaching and learning strategies, and we’re running ahead with these new initiatives and they don’t actually know what the training is. They’ve missed the basics; they’re just being asked to follow what we do.
In other words, the differences between the teaching styles of the local staff and the expatriates were evaluated by the expatriates, and the expatriate staff were believed to be ‘ahead’ rather than simply exemplifying a different teaching style. Meanwhile, Sally suggested that the local staff required re-training overseas: I think they have to go … and train overseas so that they can build up their understanding and then come back. And then maybe expat teachers and local teachers will be on the same wavelength.
It would seem, then, that contrary to Hayden’s (2006) assertion that expatriate staff may feel de-skilled, it was the local staff who were being de-skilled by such discourse. However, the data presented here are based exclusively on the expatriates’ views and further research is needed to elicit the opinions of the Malaysians. They do, however, sensitise us further to the ethnic and gender dimensions of the performance of identity being enacted by these teachers.
Time and resources
An intensification of teachers’ work in many national contexts has been a contributory factor to their sense of being de-skilled and losing autonomy (Bailey, 2000; Stevenson, 2007; Valli and Buese, 2007). With increasing pressures on their time, and limited resources with which to achieve their aims, teachers have felt increasingly enslaved to managerial discourses prioritising administration over pedagogy. It might, therefore, be hypothesised that it is the additional resources and time available to teachers in international schools that somehow protect them from de-skilling. However, there was no evidence of this at Kolej Malaysia – by contrast, in a boarding school environment, many of the teachers felt that they could never leave their work behind, there were complaints about the resources not working efficiently or in the way to which they were accustomed and yet the teachers did not experience stress and intensification of their work.
The teachers were generally impressed by the facilities at the school; in addition, they enjoyed the semi-rural campus and felt that it was a pleasant physical environment in which to work. They all reported that in some ways their job was easier in Malaysia because there were fewer behavioural issues than they had experienced in their previous schools. However, one repeated frustration was the unreliability of the Internet and other IT facilities. In addition, several of them had been shocked by the absence of what they considered to be basic structures and processes at the school. In Stephanie’s words, I was expecting simple things, really; schemes of work, lesson objectives, lesson plans, standardized assessment procedures, and things to be much more organized.
Jane echoed this frustration: I’d thought, international school – unlimited resources and impressive beyond belief – and that hasn’t really been the case.
Julie commented about the paucity of information, inefficient information systems and her irritation with the slow pace of the support staff in the school.
For teachers who had never been in a boarding environment before, being available to students 24/7, sleeping and eating alongside them, and never escaping the job except when they left the campus were particularly exhausting. Yasmin commented ‘Sometimes I feel like I don’t rest because I go to work, I come home and my home is my work’. Despite this, she said that she was enjoying teaching more than she had done before. It is interesting, then, that whereas Osborn (2006) reports that the teachers in her study felt under pressure because of their expanded role, the Kolej Malaysia teachers were accepting of it and some even stated their intention to increase their role further. For instance, Lizzy was highly critical of decisions in the past to ask students with special educational needs to leave the school, and stated her personal commitment to giving increased time to these students.
It is ironic that, in a private institution such as Kolej Malaysia where the forces of supply and demand are played out directly through the school fees and the need to recruit students, the pressures of intensification and decreasing autonomy seem to be less than in the marketised public systems of education studied by, for example, Ball (1990) in England and Sachs (2001) in Australia. Stephanie and Yasmin had both left teaching in the United Kingdom because of the stress they had experienced at their state schools, but had enjoyed returning to education in an international school: I really love Kolej Malaysia; I love the kids, the staff, I feel like I can relax here. I don’t feel like it’s a really pressurized environment, so I feel like I can do well in this kind of environment. (Yasmin)
Interestingly, at Kolej Malaysia it is not the staff who seem stressed and outcome-driven, but rather – according to the staff – the students. A common theme across all the staff interviews was that the expatriate teachers were shocked by the social pressure on students (from themselves, their peers and sometimes their parents) to achieve certain grades: The thing that is a little scary sometimes is the amount of pressure that students place on themselves. You know, this one girl, she gets her mid-term assessments, she gets a B and she starts crying hysterically. And I said, a B is really great; a B is great. And they said, miss, we’re not Bsians; we’re Asians. (Jane)
The professional community
Despite a sense of re-skilling and a sense of escaping from the stresses of working in many national contexts, it is important not to idealise the world of Kolej Malaysia. A teacher’s sense of their professional community is important to their professional identity, since it is the group with which a teacher can identify. The professional community at Kolej Malaysia was felt by all of the expatriate teachers interviewed to be strongly stratified, and a contrast between expatriate and local teachers was invariably identified.
For an expatriate teacher in an international school, the membership of their teachers’ professional community could take a number of forms; it could be all of the teachers in the school, all of the teachers teaching a particular subject, all of the expatriates teachers, all of the overseas-hire teachers or all of the teachers sharing the same nationality, to take just a few examples. The stratification of the staffroom emerged as a central concern of teachers in Kolej Malaysia; it was notable that the division between expatriate staff and local staff was of far more significance than divisions among the expatriates by nationality or between local-hire and overseas-hire. Jane summarised how she saw the distinction in the staffroom, and explained that she could distinguish between locals and expatriates, but that she did not make distinctions within each of those two categories: When I look at the staff, I look at the local staff and then I look at the expats, and . . . when I see local, it’s local; it’s not Chinese local or Indian local or Malay local. And with the expats I forget that not everyone’s from South Africa.
In many national contexts, devolving school management in schools has led to competitive environments for staff, with summative assessment measures being used to rate departments and individuals. Julie reflected positively on the contrast between Kolej Malaysia and her previous teaching experience in the United Kingdom: I didn’t feel the sense of competition [at Kolej Malaysia] in the sense that one of the schools I worked at in England, a primary school, was very competitive, and there was competition between departments and between teachers, and that was one thing that wasn’t that pleasant, but I don’t see that here.
Nevertheless, the lack of social integration between the expatriate and the local teachers remained. Different teachers identified a range of contributory factors: Lizzy felt that teachers wanted to socialise with their own language groups; Patrick felt that the contrasting turnover rates of locals and expatriates also contributed; and Patrick further identified cultural misunderstandings which made joking around difficult in the staffroom.
One recurring element of the discourse was that the division between locals and expatriates was based on pedagogical differences, with a hierarchy being established in the expatriates’ interviews between the local (perceived as inferior) and the Western (superior) approach. For instance, Stephanie believed that the local staff were ‘left behind’ because of their initial teacher education: The expat staff come with different training and with different ideas of what education is, and they put those ideas forward and they drive them forward and then they leave. And the local staff – I just get the sense that they’re left behind and they don’t know really what’s going on.
This study did not explore how the Malaysian members of staff perceived their work, and whether they were aware of views such as these held by the expatriates – unanswered questions that should be a priority for further research.
There was, then, a sense in which the resilience of the expatriate teachers’ discourse of professional identity came at the expense of the local teachers, which echoes Sachs’ (2001) suggestion that conventional discourses of professional identity are based on exclusion. The expatriate teachers often talked about the ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘teacher-centred’ teacher techniques that were being employed by other teachers; their discourse thereby constructed themselves as bringing enlightened teaching methods into the institution, and constructed their skill in opposition to others’ lack of skills. Sally summarised this feeling: This indoctrination has to change, and it’s not going to change easily … I think they have to go out of that system and go and train overseas so that they can build up their understanding and then come back. And then maybe expat teachers and local teachers will be on the same wavelength.
Conclusion
The Kolej Malaysia teachers offer an illuminating point of contrast to the burgeoning literature on de-skilling, intensification and professional identify in many developed countries (see, for example, Ball, 1990; Comber and Nixon, 2009; Sachs, 2001). These teachers did face time and resource pressures, yet such pressures did not create a feeling that their work had been intensified or their autonomy eroded. Moreover, despite a temporary sense of feeling a loss of skill on arrival in this new work culture, the teachers had in the longer term enjoyed the challenge to their professional strategies and felt re-skilled by the experience. While reiterating that my connection to school management implies that there may have been a degree of self-censorship in those interviewed, the interviews suggest that further research to build on these findings could raise significant issues.
While acknowledging that these findings are based on limited data from a single national setting, the implications for school leaders and policy makers are nonetheless important. Firstly, they suggest that a sense of volition is critical in enabling teachers to feel empowered, rather than de-motivated, by major change. The teachers at Kolej Malaysia had encountered an acute and abrupt change in their working conditions and cultural context, but they had embraced the situation as a challenge and articulated with enthusiasm their enjoyment in adjusting their pedagogy to the new institution. They did not experience a sense of intensification, despite facing pressures in their working environment and an expanded work role to embrace a 7-day working week.
Secondly, these findings raise the possibility that, as international schooling expands rapidly across the world, national policy makers may be faced with a potential brain-drain from state education, as teachers experiencing intensification, de-skilling and de-professionalisation in their home nation choose to leave and seek new professional challenges in international schools. With the number of children and teachers in international schools predicted to continue to rise rapidly (Brummitt and Keeling, 2013), the implications of this possibility deserve attention on the teacher recruitment and retention agenda.
Thirdly, for leaders in these international schools, the creation of a unified discourse of professional identity for all teachers – and not simply for expatriate staff – is a challenge that remains. A stratified staffroom in which one group of teachers feels re-skilled and invigorated, while local teachers are constructed as unskilled in expatriate discourse, cannot be facilitating the optimum learning environment. Further research would be required to identify successful ways to address such division.
In summary, the teachers at Kolej Malaysia articulated both a resilient professional identity and reflections on pedagogy in the face of encompassing change, albeit that these were expressed as contrasting from, and opposed to, the skills and identities of the local teachers. Stephanie summarised her overall feelings about seeking work in international education thus: I imagined it to be quite frightening going to a different country, a different culture, new people, away from my family and friends. But it’s actually much easier than I thought it would be.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.