‘I’m a foreign teacher’ : legitimate positionings in the stories of a migrant teacher

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ‘I’m a foreign teacher’ : legitimate positionings in the stories of a migrant teacher © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published version Ennser-Kananen, Johanna; Ruohotie-Lyhty, Maria Ennser-Kananen, J., & Ruohotie-Lyhty, M. (2023). ‘I’m a foreign teacher’ : legitimate positionings in the stories of a migrant teacher. Journal of Education for Teaching, 49(3), 491-506. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2022.2105138 2023 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjet20 Journal of Education for Teaching International research and pedagogy ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjet20 ‘I’m a foreign teacher’: legitimate positionings in the stories of a migrant teacher Johanna Ennser-Kananen & Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty To cite this article: Johanna Ennser-Kananen & Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty (2022): ‘I’m a foreign teacher’: legitimate positionings in the stories of a migrant teacher, Journal of Education for Teaching, DOI: 10.1080/02607476.2022.2105138 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2022.2105138 © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 07 Aug 2022. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data ‘I’m a foreign teacher’: legitimate positionings in the stories of a migrant teacher Johanna Ennser-Kananen and Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty Department of Language and Communication Studies, Jyvaskylan Yliopisto, Jyvaskyla, Finland ABSTRACT This qualitative study examines one migrant teacher’s identity positions in the context of a peer mentoring group setting in Finland. Combining theories of legitimacy and teacher narratives, this study asked which positions were available and legitimate for a migrant teacher. The analysis of three of the stories the teacher (‘Ji Yoo’) shared was inspired by Barkhuizen’s three-step framework for examining positioning in teacher narratives. Findings showed that Ji Yoo’s most legitimate positions were being ‘foreign’, novice teacher, cultural broker, and expert teacher, the latter two being the least frequent and least explicit ones. The authors suggest that migrant teachers’ struggles of having their expertise and experience recognised and shed their ‘foreign’ label persist even in contexts that are intended to support and empower practitioners. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 3 May 2021 Accepted 31 January 2022 KEYWORDS Migrant teacher; language teacher; legitimacy; positioning; peer mentoring Introduction What can we learn from a migrant teacher’s stories? Although the importance of narratives in language education has been recognised, and there is a growing body of research on language teachers’ narratives (Benson, 2014; Kalaja & Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2019; Kubanyiova 2012; Ruohotie-Lyhty & Pitkänen-Huhta, 2022), stories of migrant teachers are still underresearched (Elbaz-Luwisch 2004, 389). This is surprising, given that the potentially disorienting and taxing experiences of migration can affect the processes of professional development and professional identity narratives (Block, 2017a; 2017b). Lately, the increasing importance of migrant teacher narratives has been recognised (Ennser-Kananen & Wang, 2016; Barkhuizen, 2009; Schmidt & Schneider, 2016), yet more research is needed to build effective support systems and tap their assets for schools and educational systems. This article contributes to such needed work by paying attention to migrant teachers’ lived experience as it surfaces in their stories in a professional development context (Ruohotie-Lyhty, Aragão, Pitkänen-Huhta, 2021). This study understands teachers’ professional identities as conceptualisations of themselves as professional actors (Eteläpelto and Vähäsantanen 2006) and approaches teacher identity (re)construction through an analysis of one teacher’s storytelling in a professional community. Our participant Ji Yoo (a pseudonym) is an English teacher of East-Asian origin who has recently moved to Finland and participates in the activities of this CONTACT Johanna Ennser-Kananen [email protected] JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2022.2105138 © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. voluntary professional development group. In order to understand her legitimate positions in the contexts of her stories and her peer group, we analyse her stories with the ultimate goal of identifying and challenging underlying well-documented (e.g. Habel 2012) oppressive dynamics in migrant teachers’ professional environments. More specifically, we seek answers to the following research questions: 1. Which positions does the migrant teacher adopt in the stories she tells to the peer group? 2. In which ways is the story-teller positioned or positioning herself as professionally legitimate in this peer group mentoring (PGM) setting? We, the two authors of this paper, are two white European women who work as teacher educators and researchers at a Finnish university. We acted as the facilitators of the mentoring group. By analysing narratives from the monthly group meetings, we critically consider our own work as teacher educators and provide new perspectives on questions of identity and legitimacy in the context of migrant teacher education. Our article opens with a review of prior work that has been done in the areas of migrant teachers, teacher identity narratives, and professional legitimacy. After laying out our context and methodological approach, we present three of Ji Yoo’s stories and discuss them through a lens of legitimate professional identities. Finally, we synthesise our findings in the context of current theory and practice of teacher education and call for a power-sensitive conceptualisation of professional legitimacy that recognises its intertwinedness with social factors such as class, race, and gender. Migrant teachers The term ‘migrant teachers’ has commonly been used for teachers who were born and educated in a different country than the one they currently work in (e.g. Bense 2014; Ennerberg and Economou 2020). We use the term to describe a teacher who has recently migrated to Finland and identifies as a member of a group (‘Asian’) that is commonly racialised in this context. In our literature review, we draw on research that has focused on migrant teachers more largely and summarise relevant perspectives that speak to their experiences. Moving to a new country often comes with changes in professional and social status as well as a changed sense of belonging (Block, 2017). Several studies have illustrated migrant teachers’ struggles with recertification of degrees and rebuilding of teacher identities (Beynon, Ilieva, and Dichupa 2004; Marom 2019). Besides obstacles in retrieving official credentials and status, migrant teachers face structural as well as individual oppression, which is well documented in existing literature from various contexts. For instance, Bartlett’s (2014) work in Californian schools illustrated the precariousness of migrant teachers who work in urban hard-to-staff schools. Related evidence exists for the Canadian (Schmidt 2010) and New Zealand (Nayar 2009) contexts. Subedi’s (2008) study with four Asian migrant teachers in the US examined the processes of racialisation of migrant teachers. For instance, he showed how teachers’ legitimacy was undermined by students’ racist perceptions of their cultural, religious, and gender affiliations, their colleagues’ deficit view of their cultural backgrounds or their discipline (e.g. ESL, English as a second language), and their persistent being-positioned as migrants and less qualified teachers. 2J. ENNSER-KANANEN AND M. RUOHOTIE-LYHTY We contend that challenging such oppressive structures is part of supporting teachers in building positive professional identities, which, in turn, is central for their sense of selfesteem and self-efficacy in teaching (Day 2004). Positive professional identities may not only increase teachers’ well-being but benefit the whole school community. For example, their ways of (re)constructing and enacting their professional and cultural identities can create spaces for cultural negotiation and learning (Sun 2012) and enhance curriculum and instruction in important ways (Ennser-Kananen & Wang, 2016; Seah, 2002). Many migrant-receiving countries have started to discuss or pursue a diversification of the teacher workforce, not only to reflect diversity among students, but also because migrant teachers’ international qualifications and experiences have been discovered as a valuable resource (Schmidt and Schneider 2016). It requires structures and resources to bring together the schools’ needs with migrant teachers’ existing and developing skills. Peeler and Jane (2005) have noted that simple knowledge transfer does not suffice or work to integrate migrant teachers into the workforce in productive ways. Mentoring programmes can be useful in supporting a process of mutual learning as well as migrant teachers’ identity building, which is also the context for the present study. Teacher identity narratives and professional legitimacy A large body of narrative studies has documented the deeply personal nature of teacher identity and highlighted individuals’ ‘desire for recognition, affiliation, security, and safety’, as a key dimension of professional identity development (Kalaja et al. 2016, 18). Importantly, these narratives do not emerge in a vacuum, but are formed in interaction with the professional environment. In order to renarrate themselves as legitimate professionals in a new context, migrant teachers ‘bring together experiences in the past and present, as well as those anticipated in the future’ (Block, 2017, p. 31). In this process, isolated events and experiences are connected to larger professional self-stories and societal discourses (Crossley 2000). As a consequence, an individual’s internalised and evolving life story, in other words, narrative identity is being formed (McAdams and McLean 2013). Our study examines one migrant teacher’s opportunities for (re)establishing her professional legitimacy, which refers to a sense of ‘acceptance and validation’ (Ennser-Kananen, 2018, 19) for one’s work-related ways of being, including one’s positions, decisions, actions, and beliefs. Previous studies on legitimacy have used the concept in connection with language practices (Ennser-Kananen, 2014; 2018) as ‘linguistic legitimacy’, a line of work that owes itself to Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of a ‘legitimate language’ (p. 650), more specifically to his concept of linguistic (and relatedly social, cultural, and symbolic) capital (Bourdieu, 1986), and the scholarship that has built on it, such as Norton’s (2013) theory of investment. Although linguistic legitimacy has been described as dynamic (Heller, 2006) and fleeting (Ennser-Kananen, 2014), it is not a politically innocent but rather a power-sensitive concept. For example, work in the area of raciolinguistics has shown that the ability to negotiate linguistic legitimacy is closely tied to racialisation of language users (Flores and Rosa, 2015). We apply legitimacy to the professional sphere, thus examining the discursive processes that grant or deny validation for someone’s professional expertise and competence. These aspects of professional life have to be constantly negotiated, particularly when professional legitimacy is sought in a sociocultural context that is different from one’s place of prior education. By conducting JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 3 a three-level narrative analysis as suggested by Barkhuizen (2009), we examine the positions that a teacher assumes and the legitimacy options they are granted in interaction with a particular group. Methodology Our approach aligns with what Barkhuizen (2014) has called ‘storytelling’ and defined as ‘the discursive construction of narrative in interaction’ (p. 451). Like Barkhuizen, we draw on Bamberg (2006), who understands positioning as simultaneous negotiation of content and social relationships in interaction. In his words, ‘speakers position themselves vis-à-vis the world out there and the social world here and now. It is in this attempt of relating aboutness/content to the social interactants [. . .] through which a position, from where these two “worlds” are drawn together, becomes visible’ (pp. 144–145). Thus, in our analysis, we examine how our main participant negotiates both the content of her stories and her relationships to her peers, and how in this interaction her positions emerge (or not) and become legitimate (or not). The peer mentoring context In Finland, in-service English teachers have generally a right to three annual development days (18 hours) (Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2021). In addition to this obligatory training, a large variety of in-service training courses is offered to teachers by the municipalities, universities and teacher organisations. This study is situated in a peer mentoring group that is part of the voluntary in-service training of teachers in Finland. Its purpose is to provide collegial support for the participants, who typically consist of teachers from all career stages. Peer group mentoring (PGM) allows for sharing and discussing the participants’ accounts of teaching as part of group meetings (Estola, Heikkinen, and Syrjälä 2014). Although the monthly meetings are facilitated by trained educators, all group members share the responsibility for negotiating the topics, methods, and policies that drive the meetings. In the fall of 2017, both authors initiated an Englishmedium group for teachers who were willing or hoping to use English, including some recently immigrated teachers. Participant This qualitative study has one focal participant who we call Ji Yoo. She is of East Asian origin and speaks the language of her birth country as her first language. She holds a master’s degree in English pedagogy from that country and, in addition to her English skills, reported having basic Finnish proficiency at the time of data collection. Already before moving to Finland, Ji Yoo was an experienced English teacher who had worked with a variety of age groups for about 10 years. In Finland, she had completed further coursework in so-called ‘foreign’ language (FL) pedagogy and was studying full-time in a PhD programme in addition to teaching part-time at a local school, where she was responsible for an extra-curricular English language course. These experiences as an English teacher in Finland were discussed in the mentoring group. Ji Yoo also started teaching courses in her first language in a private institution during the period of data 4J. ENNSER-KANANEN AND M. RUOHOTIE-LYHTY collection. In addition to the authors Johanna and Maria, the mentoring group consisted of six group members (see Appendix 1). In the first meeting, the group members were informed, orally and in writing, about the research study the facilitators were planning and consent to participate was given in writing by all group members. Data collection The larger data set from which the data for this study stems consists of audiorecordings of 5 PGM-meetings, which were described verbatim, preserving the voice of the participants as much as possible. In order to ensure informed consent, the group members were continuously informed about the potential risks of participating in the study. The discussion topics of the meetings included cooperation with peers, relationships to pupils’ parents, discipline in class, and ethical questions related to the values of schools and of individual teachers. Teachers oftentimes approached these topics by sharing experiences from their classroom, which all group members were invited to comment on. To analyse the narrative construction of Ji Yoo’s identities we chose three stories from this large data set for detailed analysis based on the amount of detail, coherence, completeness, and take-up by group members. The topics of the selected stories represent the overall content of the meetings in that they relate to ethical questions, personal values, and societal expectations. The stories presented here were the longest, and most detailed narrative accounts Ji Yoo offered in the course of the peer group meetings that also triggered most responses from other group members. Based on the aforementioned qualities these particular narratives provided the richest available data for an analysis of the narrative construction of Ji Yoo’s narrative identity in this context (cf. Barkhuizen 2016). Data analysis As stated above, our data analysis draws on the analytical framework of small story positioning analysis introduced by Bamberg (2006) and further developed by Barkhuizen (2009). In our adaptation of Barkhuizen’s (2009) framework, we followed his three suggested steps of analysing (1) the stories from within, (2) their situated performance and negotiation in the group, and (3) the positioning of the storyteller (Ji Yoo) in a larger societal context. First, we focused on the characters that appeared in each of Ji Yoo’s stories and the roles they assumed in them. Next, we examined the narratives and characters within the context of the mentoring group, uncovering the ways in which Ji Yoo’s stories and characters were co-constructed through group interaction and how Ji Yoo’s positions were maintained or challenged by the other group members. Third, we considered the ways in which Ji Yoo’s stories and negotiated positions served to (de)construct her teacher identity and legitimacy within the context of Finnish schooling. As a result of these analyses, we identified four key identity positions, which we present in the following section. JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 5 Findings After offering three short stories told by Ji Yoo, we outline the main identity positions that Ji Yoo adopted within and through these stories. Then, we look into the ways in which these positions were given or denied legitimacy in the peer group interaction. Three short stories told by Ji Yoo The story of saying no Ji Yoo’s first story came in response to a Finnish teacher’s story of about a girl who had cried because she didn’t want to play the bass as suggested by her teacher but didn’t know how to articulate that. As a response to this story, Ji Yoo started to talk about her own daughter: I don’t know like what’s the difference between, I mean, [East-Asian country’s] and Chinese culture but the thing is that in general in Asian countries, we don’t, we like, especially in the classroom situation, it’s so hard I mean to kinda, to like to, I mean, not obey to what the teacher says and they know that in educational situations we are educated, we have been educated, we really have to follow everything the teacher says. (Mentoring session, January 2018) After prefacing her story like that, Ji Yoo proceeded to describe her daughter’s conflict: [I]n my daughter’s case, like for example, she hates to dance. I mean it’s her DNA so she hated dancing, but I mean, they were preparing for the independency, Suomi sata vuotta [Finland one hundred years], and, you know, there was uh dancing, and she’s been talking, talking and she really didn’t want to do it, but she didn’t never told me about this problem, but she like, she had to do it. She didn’t know how to say no. (Mentoring session, January 2018) After that, the following exchange occurred in the group: R: I always try to tell her [the Chinese-heritage student] that you can say no if you don’t want to try something and you don’t have to do it, you can say no, but she never says no. J: She knows, I mean she knows, she can understand how you, I mean, she knows, but she’s not, like, she’s not used to it. So, she can’t do it. R: It’s like too difficult. J: Too difficult, it’s like very challenging, but she has to, I mean, I don’t know, I’m talking about my daughter situation. R: Yeah but I get the point now, because now I understood better that it’s difficult to say no. M: Especially maybe, this it’s also kind of a new situation for the parents that the school is asking like what is wrong? R: Yeah 6J. ENNSER-KANANEN AND M. RUOHOTIE-LYHTY A2: like I think, even for some Finnish parents I think, may have this kind of idea, why is the teacher asking me, like many of them can say something like, but like it might be also something that it’s difficult for teachers uh parents to say something. They are expecting from the teacher to say and be the expert. R: [. . .] I didn’t understand that that might be the problem that it’s difficult for her to say no, because the Finnish kids are like ‘No! I’m not doing that! I won’t be trying that!’, but then usually they are pushed to do it, because it’s like [unintel.] J: Cause, I mean like education, I mean, we, like China [. . .] I never tried not to push her, but she always, I always I mean encourage ‘You’re in Finland, so you can just say to the teacher, please say to the teacher you don’t want to do it’, and she’s ‘ok, I will do it’. And then the next day I ask her again ‘did you do it?’ ‘no I can’t’ (laughs), like you know, this happens, seriously, so (laughs). (Mentoring session, January 2018) This part of Ji Yoo’s story was evaluated with an appreciative comment from one of her peers (Raili): ‘That’s really good, thank you for telling this. Now I can really understand better the situation, yeah’. After that, the role of parents in dilemma situations was discussed. Interestingly, Maria's comment, which attempted to challenge the positioning of Finnish versus Asian parents vis-à-vis the teacher was not taken up by any of the group members. Instead, Ji Yoo continued to position Finnish kids in opposition to her daughter by characterising them as likely no-sayers and her daughter as being unable to say no. B. The sofa story During a meeting in February, Ji Yoo told a story in response to Maria's question about how the teachers in the mentoring group had experienced classroom management when using English as the medium of instruction. After the question was raised, whether using Finnish might be helpful, particularly when students who study English as a foreign language don’t seem to understand English instructions, Ji Yoo reacted by describing her lacking Finnish skills and her insecurity about whether and how to manage student behaviour. I don’t speak Finnish, I can’t speak Finnish, cause I mean whenever this kind of situation happens like, you know, I went blank, cause I mean this, I mean they’re Finnish kids this why, I mean and at the end of last semester I’ve spent like one semester with the kids and then there has been some curious stuff, I mean how I should react to their uh like you know sometimes bad behavior or something from my perspective. I didn’t know so I asked Maria, how can I, I mean I wasn’t even sure if I can uh discipline them I was not sure if I can do it or not, I mean, then and I also not sure how I mean and what is best way I mean to do it, cause that was my very first expression with Finnish kids, so I finally after spending one semester I asked her and she said yeah you can and okay, then I should discipline. But still I’m not sure. (Mentoring session, February 2018) After Ji Yoo’s had finished, Maria commented that Ji Yoo had experienced ‘complete immersion as a teacher’, acknowledging her work getting acquainted with both teaching in Finland and learning Finnish at the same time. Expanding on her approach towards classroom management, Ji Yoo continued by pointing to her position as JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 7 Bamberg, M. 2006. “Stories: Big or Small: Why Do We Care?” Narrative Inquiry 16 (1): 139–147. doi:10. 1075/ni.16.1.18bam. Barkhuizen, G. 2009. “An Extended Positioning Analysis of a pre-service Teacher’s Better Life Small Story.” Applied Linguistics 31 (2): 282–300. doi:10.1093/applin/amp027. Barkhuizen, G. 2014. “Narrative Research in Language Teaching and Learning.” Language Teaching 47 (4): 450. doi:10.1017/S0261444814000172. 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Schmidt, C., and J. Schneider, Eds. 2016. Diversifying the Teaching Force in Transnational Contexts: Critical Perspectives. Rotterdam: SensePublishers. Seah, W. T. 2002. “The Perception Of, and Interaction With, Value Differences by Immigrant Teachers of Mathematics in Two Australian Secondary Classrooms.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 23 (2): 189–210. doi:10.1080/07256860220151087. Subedi, B. 2008. “Contesting Racialization: Asian Immigrant Teachers’ Critiques and Claims of Teacher Authenticity.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 11 (1): 57–70. doi:10.1080/13613320701845814. Sun, D. 2012. ““Everything Goes Smoothly”: A Case Study of an Immigrant Chinese Language Teacher’s Personal Practical Knowledge.” Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (5): 760–767. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2012.03.002. JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 15 Appendix 1. The professional and cultural backgrounds of the mentoring group members. Pseudonym, gender Origin Teaching or teacher education experience at the time of data collection Ji Yoo, f East-Asian, recently moved to Finland PhD student, about 10 years of FL teaching in basic education, teaching English part-time in basic education 1 Maria, f Finnish 3 years of FL teaching in basic and secondary education, 10 years of teacher education Johanna, f Central European, moved to Finland several years ago 6 years of FL and L2 teaching in basic and secondary education, 10 years of teacher education Irina, f Eastern European, recently moved to Finland career in translation before moving to Finland, currently teaching English part-time in basic education Raili, f Finnish 1,5 years of teaching in basic education Lena, f Finnish several years of teaching in adult higher education Lisa, f Finnish 4th year student in basic education (class teacher 2 ) Leo, m Finnish 5th year student in basic education (class teacher), 1 year of daycare teaching 1 In Finland, “basic education” refers to the nine years of comprehensive education for students aged between 7 and 16 2 In Finland, a “class teacher” teaches most subjects of a class of students in grades 1 through 16 J. ENNSER-KANANEN AND M. RUOHOTIE-LYHTY