International Teachers’ Lived Experiences

“This book is a timely and valuable contribution to research on Chinese education mobilities, especially on international teacher mobility to China. Poole’s theorisation of the ‘sur-thrival’ of these international school teachers is innovative and carries tremendous analytical promise for the field. This book would be of great interest to scholars and students of teacher education, international and comparative education, China studies, and migration studies. I highly recommend this book.” —Cora Lingling Xu, Assistant Professor in Education, Durham University, UK “Poole delves deep into an under-researched and under-theorised world. The lived experiences of those who ‘accidently’ end up teaching in the emerging arena of non-traditional international schools in mainland China offer a fascinating insight into coping within a complex field of insecurity and precarity. The Chinese Internationalised School is a growing beast and hearing the voices of some who work in themis a fascinating treat.” —Tristan Bunnell, Lecturer in International Education, University of Bath, UK 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 middle class in China, offering some form of international curriculum which is taught by host country Chinese nationals and expatriate teachers. Chapters focus on three dimensions of teachers’ lived experiences of working in these schools: the intercultural, which explores teachers’ negotiations of intercultural teacher identities; the precarious, which highlights the struggles they might face at work; and the resilient, which illustrates how teachers survive—and even thrive—in the position. The author identifies a complexinterplay between surviving and thriving, giving rise to the concept of “sur-thrival.”