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This study aims to provide a complex account of a PhD candidate's reflexive doctoral engagement process emergent from the changing doctoral environment vis-à-vis the neoliberal higher education context. Drawing on a critical realist theory of reflexivity, it analyzed narrative interview data collected with the participant over an 18-month period. The analytical focus was on how the student's reflexivity mediated her exertion of agency within the structural affordances and constraints of her doctoral education to ultimately give shape to a unique doctoral trajectory. Findings revealed that the participant practiced distinct patterns of reflexive deliberations in three disparate but interweaving areas of her doctoral life: research progression, community belonging, and career construction. Notably, analysis highlighted the contingent and fluid characteristics of the reflexivity phenomenon and its context-dependent effects in the complexity of doctoral study. The study argues that a sociological view of reflexivity offers a novel means to understand the nuanced ways of agency-structure interplay pervading experiences of contemporary candidature.

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study that explores the perspectives of one group of parents on English language teachers' identity and practice in primary schools in Vietnam. Grounded in mixed identity theories (self and others), this study uses in-depth interviews to reveal how these parents position English language teachers and teaching in these schools. The results suggest that two discourses underpin a hierarchical relationship between different primary school English language teachers, which, in turn, establishes and perpetuates a deficit view of those identified as 'Vietnamese teachers' of English. It is argued that calls for greater community involvement in language education policy must be accompanied by opportunities for all stakeholders to discover and critically examine the discourses that underpin their positioning of language teaching and teachers. Implications for designing and implementing language education policy to achieve such problematisation in practice are discussed and suggestions for future.

Leaning on a holistic supervising doctoral writing framework, this study sets out to conceptualise and unpack the dialogic feedback experiences sustained within a PhD candidate's research article writing process. A juxtaposition of multiple data sources uncovers that effective employment of supervision approaches to feedback essentially varies across time and space, which is interlaced with student response dynamics, voices of academic community, supervisor professional experience, and dialogic mediums. The single interwoven narrative affords a nuanced understanding of the decision-making mechanism, practices, and relationship elements constituting supervisory feedback dialogues. It highlights the historically and socio-relationally shaped nature of personal agency through which individuals enact and interpret situation-specific feedback discourses.

Set against a background of international concern about teacher stress and attrition, this paper reports the results of a qualitative study which investigated the experiences of one group of primary school English language teachers in Vietnam. Drawing upon positioning theory and Bakhtin's dialogism, results suggest that the professional positioning of these teachers takes place within a struggle for centripetal status between multiple discourses circulating within Vietnamese society. These results also indicate that this struggle results in emotional dissonance for many of the participants--reflected in feelings of stress, frustration, and sadness--which lead some to reconsider their long-term commitment to the teaching profession. Arguing that proposals for English language teacher professional development in Vietnam which are limited to enhancing teachers' linguistic proficiency and teaching competency do not adequately respond to the needs of these teachers, the paper sets out suggestions for supporting teachers of English to young learners in ways that address their emotional struggles. Suggestions for future research in Vietnam and other analogous settings are also considered.

The study employs a narrative inquiry approach to probe a Chinese doctoral student's identity construction experiences fraught with interruption and transformation. The longitudinal narratives gathered through participant entries in Evernote, a face-to-face life story interview, and researcher memos, have enabled a dynamic configuration of the intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual dimensions characterizing doctoral identity development. Using identity-trajectory as an analytical lens, the study highlights how individual agency is embodied and exercised in institutional, relational, and personal spaces where doctoral identity is formed and contested. Findings are episodically ordered as: beginning doctoral study with great expectations; conceptualizing the nature of becoming a doctoral student; forces that are disruptive to the development of the doctoral-researcher identity; the ongoing process of being mediated by socialization into an extended research community, socio-professional support, and agentic reflexivity over time. The study argues for using narrative inquiry to speak of and express the subtleties and continuities of doctoral students' experiences. It also provides practical implications for action by supervisors and students in doctoral programs respectively.

This article reports the results of a discourse-theoretic study that considered the perspectives of one group of preservice mainstream teachers in Australia concerning their preparedness to teach English language learners (ELLs). Framed by a theory of teacher identity and using in-depth interviews, the paper explores the perceptions and experiences of six preservice teachers, revealing the presence of two dominant discourses of ELLs: a discourse of equity and inclusiveness and a discourse of difference. The results suggested that these discourses interacted in ways unanticipated by policy makers and that an unintended consequence of this discursive interplay was that participants experienced conflict between the professional identity positions that were made available to them within these discourses. The ways in which this conflict might be overcome to support the identity construction goals of teachers of ELLs are discussed and suggestions for future research considered.

Rather than being confined to academic knowledge provided by university-based programmes, there are calls for teacher education to embrace the knowledge situated within local communities. Drawing on the theories of community knowledge in teaching and teacher education, this paper reports the results of a study that explores community members' perceptions of teachers, teaching and teacher education in Vietnam. Using in-depth interviews, the study considered the perceptions and experiences of 20 community members in a large Vietnamese city. The results imply that community members consider K-12 school teachers' knowledge to be inadequate, criticising the pedagogical practices of these teachers as 'traditional' and 'inflexible'. The challenges confronting K-12 schools in Vietnam are, according to the participants, partly caused by the existing policies and practices of teacher education. Suggestions for addressing these concerns through collaboration between community members, teacher educators, teacher candidates and K-12 teachers with the aim of transforming teaching and teacher education within Vietnam are discussed and implications for future research considered.

Teacher professional development (TPD) is regarded as crucial to fostering teacher improvement. Recent calls for the internationalization of teacher education and professional development, including teachers undertaking courses taught abroad, have enhanced the scope of TPD opportunities. Yet, little is currently known about how such international experiences of TPD shape the perspectives of these teachers. It is also unclear how the learning these teachers experience in foreign settings is reflected in their engagement in the practices and activities of schools and classrooms upon returning to their home country. Therefore, this paper reports the results of a study that explores the perspectives and experiences of one group of in-service mainland Chinese teachers who undertook professional development in Hong Kong. Grounded in a theory of teacher identity construction and using in-depth interviews, results suggest that the teacher's identities were shaped by the learning they experienced during professional development. However, following their return to teaching positions in mainland China, relations of power within their schools blocked the construction of their preferred teacher identities in practice. Suggestions are made for supporting the identity construction aims of teachers who undertake international professional development and implications for future research are considered.

Teacher attrition is a perennial problem in many countries around the globe. With attrition especially pronounced amongst early career teachers, efforts to retain and sustain these teachers have highlighted the importance of effective mentoring and support programs within schools. However, less is known about the perceptions and experiences of graduates of initial teacher education (ITE) programs who choose not to enter the teacher profession, therefore not benefiting from such mentoring and support, and subsequently being lost to the profession, potentially forever. Therefore, this paper reports on a qualitative case study that investigated the reasons why one group of graduates from an ITE program in Hong Kong chose not to teach. Using in-depth interviews and grounded in a theory of teacher identity construction, the results reveal how the participants struggled to construct their preferred professional identities, in particular during a teaching practicum, and the role this played in their decision not to enter the teaching profession. Implications for how teacher educators can better support preservice teachers as they struggle to construct their professional identities are considered and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This study examines the continuing professional development of one group of secondary school English language teachers who participated in a school-university partnership in Hong Kong. Grounded in a framework of teacher identity and using in-depth interviews conducted over the entire 12 month period of the partnership, the study explores the teacher's professional development experiences in terms of their negotiation of membership within and across multiple communities. Results suggest that the teachers' experienced professional development through partnership partly as identity conflict, as they negotiated recognition of the competencies they associated with the partnership within the different communities of teachers in which they participated. It is argued that such identity conflict can inhibit the opportunities for professional development that partnerships potentially offer teacher and schools and that a critical understanding of the contribution of partnerships to the professional development of teachers and other stakeholders within and beyond the partnership is necessary. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

The use of a particular language as medium of instruction (MOI) is a complex issue in multilingual and post-colonial contexts such as Hong Kong, on which teachers' voices are often neglected. To capture their voices, this paper reports on an interpretive inquiry of eight experienced Chinese teachers' professional experiences with a focus on their perceptions concerning the increasing use of Putonghua as MOI in Chinese classes in Hong Kong. Through a collaborative interpretative process, the study revealed a wide spectrum of perceptions including reservations and enthusiasm for the switch to Putonghua as MOI. The findings suggest that the participants' perceptions could be explained by references to shifting political, demographical conditions, the participants' experiences of curriculum reforms and their concerns with pedagogical conditions. The paper ends with a discussion for the study's implications for Chinese language teacher education in Hong Kong and elsewhere. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study into the teaching practice experiences of eight preservice English language teachers in Hong Kong. Using in-depth interviews, the preservice teachers' practicum experiences are explored in terms of their understandings of the requirements of their teacher education institution and their teaching placement school, their relations with full time teachers within their placement schools, as well as their own beliefs about the teaching and learning of the English language. A contribution of this study is to examine these experiences through the lens of teacher identity construction. Results indicated that participants constructed rigid divisions between different identity positions that they took on, resisted, and rejected during their teaching practice experiences, and that relations between these identity categories were often characterized by antagonism. It is argued that such antagonism may be detrimental to the preservice teachers during their practicum and as they move into full time teaching positions. How these divisions might be challenged is discussed and implications for future research are considered.

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study that examined the perspectives of one group of teacher educators and pre-service teachers about a teaching internship in Hong Kong. Reflecting recent interest in both a practice turn in pre-service teacher education as well as teacher identity construction, the study uses in-depth interviews to reveal how both teacher educators and pre-service teachers construct the meaning of a teaching internship. The results suggest that two discourses dominate such meanings: the discourse of integration and the discourse of separation. The study not only reveals the presence of these discourses but, moreover, considers how their interplay provides affordances for and constraints upon the capacity of pre-service teachers to construct their professional identities during the teaching internship. This exploration suggests that this interplay can lead to identity conflict for pre-service teachers. Implications for overcoming such conflict in ways that support the construction of pre-service teachers' professional identities are considered and suggestions for future comparative research discussed.

Educational-policy makers worldwide are concerned with finding effective strategies to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. The recruitment of second-career teachers has been seen as one means of fulfilling this aim. Against a background of calls to better understand SCTs, this article reports the results of a qualitative study investigating the experiences of six second-career teachers in Hong Kong. Based on a theoretical framework of teacher-identity construction, discourse analysis was used to explore the participants' perceptions of their professional development. In-depth interviews were conducted to gain detailed insights into how the teachers construct their identities-in-practice and identities-in-discourse within Hong Kong schools. The findings expose tensions between attempts the positioning of SCTs within dominant discourses as 'traditional' and 'conventional' teachers, for example, and the participants' self-positioning in practice as 'innovative' and 'risk-taking' teachers. Ways in SCT agency, and hence identity construction, can be facilitated through the introduction of the innovative pedagogical practices which many SCTs seek to pursue in Hong Kong schools are considered.

This article reports the results of a qualitative study investigating the experiences of five former English language teachers in Hong Kong during their initial years of full-time teaching and the reasons for their permanent departure from the profession. Guided by a theory of teacher identity construction, the study employed a discourse analytic approach to understand the participants' perceptions of their professional identity construction in discourse and practice. The results of in-depth interviews provide detailed descriptions of the ways in which the former teachers perceived the constraints and enablements to their professional identity construction within the context of their ultimate decision to leave the teaching profession. The findings problematise rigid divisions between different types of teachers and suggest the need to establish new spaces for identity construction that allow for the meshing of different teacher identities.