https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0005-1302
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ABSTRACT
Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in the field of international schools, and a concurrent rise in the number of young Anglo-Saxon teachers overseas. Such mobile teaching careers have largely been presented in terms of emphasising exploration, travel and lifestyle-related migration. While acknowledging such factors, we also draw attention to financial constraints, and in particular, to the challenge of personal debts, which weighs heavily over many Anglo-Saxon teachers. We therefore discuss international teachers’ mobile trajectory in terms of a balancing act of negotiation between lifestyle and financial factors and point to a strategic trade-off between the two. Moreover, by emphasising the neglected aspect of indebtedness, we argue that, while a key point of appeal for such teachers’ participation in the international school sector lies in the ostensible participation in the carefree, privileged environment of lifestyle migration that would have been out of reach for them otherwise, in reality, such horizons of opulence are limited, as teachers are locked into a precarious system that offers little protection and is highly unpredictable. In this context, the accumulation of professional experience provides only a limited pathway for assuming control over one’s future destiny/destination – be it professional, geographic, or financial – and at times may even backfire.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 First among which is the International Baccalaureate (IB), which is the most widely employed curriculum in international schools.
2 By 'international education', we refer to the educational sector of international schools, which provides international or English-speaking curricula throughout the world. The history and ambiguities of the concept are explored in Section 2.
3 While this is rarely the principal motivation for entering the field of international education, experienced international teachers often refer to their attachment to the ideals, values and pedagogies in international education, in particular when teaching an international curriculum.
4 For example, one industry survey claims that 47% of international teachers chose to teach abroad in order to travel (Deady Citation2017).
5 This research has been supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (ref. number 161231).
6 We visited 28 schools in total, six of which were selected for longer periods of immersion. We also conducted narrative interviews centered on international teachers’ personal, professional and geographical trajectories.
7 The interviews were centered on international teachers’ personal, professional and mobility trajectories.
8 57% of the teachers we interviewed had been trained in an Anglo-Saxon country (Great Britain 29%; USA 20%; Canada 6%; Ireland 3%). The other teachers had been trained in France (14%), Switzerland (14%), Germany, Spain, Kenya, Turkey and Israel (less than 3% each).
9 We thank Noémie Kumar and Camille Poursac for their assistance in interview transcription and coding.
10 59% of the teachers we interviewed were teaching in Switzerland at some point in their career. As a secondary research site, Nairobi allowed us to contrast our findings: the ratio of teachers who had been teaching in Nairobi within our general interview sample is 21%. While we do acknowledge the fact that teacher’s profile and trajectories in both sites may differ, the purpose of this article is not to compare the situation of international teachers in the two countries, but rather to the contrast between trajectories of teachers who are often trained and recruited within the same circuit.
11 21% of the teachers we interviewed were met in recruitment fairs or schools in these three cities.
12 At the time, we conducted the interviews, our interlocutors were teaching either presently or formerly in, among other places, Singapore, China, Thailand, the USA, Canada, Kenya, Uganda, Kuwait, Switzerland, Qatar, Tanzania, Malta, Spain, UAE, and the UK.
13 Other curricula, such as the International Primary Curriculum (IPC), the UK International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), or the American curriculum, are also being used.
14 Data from the International School Consultancy Research (https://www.iscresearch.com). Accessed 16 January 2019.
15 According to an industry report (Deady Citation2017), teachers in international schools originate primarily from the USA and the UK, as well as Ireland, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. This trend does not appear to be shifting, and the continuous expansion of the industry implies an increasing need for such teachers. In 2017, Deady estimated the growth of the industry to be such that it will require some 150,000 more workers within the next five years.
16 This typology draws on teachers’ first engagement in the field of international education, yet acknowledges that teachers may shift categories along their professional trajectory.
17 We borrow the category of adventurer from the literature on young African migrants (see Bredeloup Citation2008), for whom mobility is perceived as a pathway towards a more open lifestyle within the context of self-accomplishment.
18 Two-year contracts offer a convenient time frame that offers schools sufficient return on their investment while allowing flexibility in hiring and renewing contracts in accordance with shifting needs. As one experienced teacher explained
‘in every international School I’ve ever seen it’s always two [years … and if] you ask the directors, the answer to that is that the amount they have to invest in a teacher coming to them, for the visas and this, and that they don’t want the teachers coming and going, so it’s better.’
19 As Zaloom (Citation2018, 240) argues in the American context, ‘regimes of foresight gain traction by endorsing future calculation as a moral project. From the postwar period onward, US financial policies have shaped an ethics anchored in projecting futures and ordering household economies around these forecasts’.
21 This applies to 74% of the teachers we interviewed. Yet, it is noteworthy that for some teachers, financial considerations are not central to explaining their mobile professional trajectory. This is notably the case among expatriate teachers, whose primary concern include the possibility of contributing to their children’s educational environment, or who engage in teaching as a way to distract them from boredom and loneliness in a context of expatriation. Thus, Charlène, an expat French teacher in Nairobi, states that
well, the financial aspect is interesting, but it is hardly our main motivation. (…) If you look at my trajectory, for me, financial gains are not always there. What I earned in the USA was insignificant; it only helped paying for the nanny, that’s it. In Tunisia, it was somehow satisfactory. But then, next year I am going to earn even less.
22 While the question of student debt did not come up among teachers trained in continental Europe (France, Switzerland, Germany or Spain), other financial issues discussed in this article, such as the absence of pension plans, where repeatedly mentioned.
23 By contrast, expatriate teachers never mentioned this financial constraint when explaining how they became to teach in international schools. We assume that the absence of such reference is due to the privileged condition of expatriate teachers, whose spouses work in multinational corporations.
24 For example, we noted the presence of financial institutions in a teaching job fair. One company offered ‘financial health check’ that considered teachers’ indebtedness and proposed ‘financial planning’ including investment plans to provide additional incomes and establish a horizon for retirement.
25 Importantly, international teaching positions do not normally consider a retirement plan, leaving teachers to use their own discretion and creativity to ensure a viable future for themselves. This porousness has opened a nieche for financial coaching for international teachers, as demonstrated by Andrew Hallam’s (2011) book ‘Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School.’ Claudia, an experienced American teacher who attended Hallam’s fly-in workshop at her high-end international school in Nairobi, explained the challenge for international teachers, who must assume full responsibility over their financial planning—past, present, and future:
‘if you teach in the States you have a pension; once you’re overseas we have to do all on our own. We don’t have a pension anymore, so you need to be saving so that you can still retire, basically.’
26 www.teachaway.com/recruitement. Accessed 7 January 2019.
27 This choice remains multifaceted, balancing considerations ranging from school reputation to local labour market or migration policies. Yet, the fundamental engagement with how to balance between lifestyle and financial considerations cut across our interviewees, and especially those from Anglo-Saxon backgrounds.