Session Information
28 SES 10, Sociologies of Mobile Students and Teachers
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper discusses the increasingly important phenomenon of 'brain circulation' in the global teaching profession. For most countries it is a two-way process. We discuss the growing importance of immigrant teachers in Western countries and emigrant teachers who speak English in the global English language market. The paper draws on survey and interview data of 230 immigrant teachers in Australia and 70 emigrant teachers to reveal the personal, institutional and structural processes nationally and internationally that shape global teacher mobility. The paper identifies key drivers such as family, lifestyle, classroom experience, travel, opportunities for advancement, discipline, linguistic skills, taxation rates, cultural factors, institutional frameworks and policy support.
The paper critically evaluates the usefulness of Bourdieu's theory of reconversion arguing that immigrant teachers professional capital is undervalued and in many cases lacking any recognition at all. Many immigrant teachers start at the bottom again and as Bourdieu argued, their conversion is downward. While a useful framework it fails to provide an alternative way of constructing a pathway out of this dilemma beyond providing teachers with local knowledge and Western pedagogical methods. We argue that some of the issues related to the under-utilisation of mobile teachers knowledge and experience is located in their own capacities to critique the very systems that would have them labelled inadequate. While immigrant teachers in the West are most disadvantaged by these processes, this study also found that emigrant teachers educated in Western countries lacked support while abroad, also suffered forms of racism, albiet mediated by their English language capacitites, and were at risk of being underpaid and suffering poor working conditions.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Akar, E. Ö. (2011). Professional Experiences of Turkish and Moroccan Teachers in Dutch Secondary Schools. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1(15), 10. Andersson, Per, & Guo, Shibao. (2009). Governing Through Non/Recognition: the Missing 'R' in the PLAR for Immigrant Professionals in Canada and Sweden. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 28(4), 423-437. Appleton, S, Sives, A, & Morgan, W. J. (2006). The Impact of International Teacher Migration on Schooling in Developing Countries - the Case of Southern Africa. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 4(1), 121-142. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste Oxfordshire: Routledge. Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol. (2004). Rochford, UK: Ministers of Education. Ragnarsdóttir, H. (2010). Internationally Educated Teachers And Student Teachers In Iceland: Two Qualitative Studies. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 100, 1-31. Robertson, Susan L. (2006). Brain Drain, Brain Gain and Brain Circulation. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 4(1), 1-5. Robertson, S.L. (2012). ‘Placing’ Teachers in Global Governance Agendas. Comparative Education Review, 56(3). Walsh, Susan, & Brigham, Susan. (2007). Internationally Educated Teachers and Teacher Education Programs in Canada: Current Practices. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Mount Saint Vincent University.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.