Teachers' Identities and Life Choices: Issues of Globalisation and Localisation (Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects Book 19)

This book discusses issues related to teachers’ identities and life choices when globalisation and localisation are enmeshed. It examines how competing cultural traditions and contexts acted as resources or/and constraints in framing teachers’ identities and their negotiations in the family and the work domains according to their gender positioning, their roles in the family such as husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, son and daughter and roles in the school such as principal, senior teacher or regular teacher. Contrary to an essentialist approach to identity and culture, teachers’ stories show that their identities and life choices were hardly free choices; but were often part and parcel of the culture and contexts in which they were embedded. Teachers’ identities are found to be fluid, complex, hybrid and multifaceted. Using Hong Kong as a case study, this book provides not only traces of the continuity and changes of Confucian self and cardinal relationships but also a glimpse of how educational reform as neo-capitalist discourses in the workplace interacts with Confucian cultural traditions creating new hybrid practices (problems or possibilities or both) in the school and in the daily lives of teachers. Front Matter....Pages i-xvii Introduction....Pages 1-10 Hybridities, Border Crossing and Yin – Yang ....Pages 11-23 Methodology....Pages 25-36 Dialectics of the Chinese Culture: Continuities and Changes in the Confucian Order....Pages 37-51 Evolving Hybrid Femininities ( Yin ) and Masculinities ( Yang )....Pages 53-69 Intergenerational Issues Concerning Primary School Teachers....Pages 71-90 Teachers’ Professional Identities and Career Choices when Education Reforms Meet with Confucian Cultural Heritage in Education....Pages 91-114 Midlife Secondary Female Teachers’ Identities, Work and Work–Life Interface....Pages 115-129 Struggling with Gender Borders: Implications for Gender Equity for the Next Generation....Pages 131-149 Conclusion....Pages 151-159 Back Matter....Pages 161-170