The draw of hometown: understanding rural teachers’ mobility in Southwest China

ABSTRACT

This two-year study explores the sociocultural factors for the mobility decisions and trajectories of 7 rural teachers in southwest China. It finds that those who teach outside their home regions tend to make efforts to return to their hometown in order to gain a sense of belonging, in addition to pursuing better working and living conditions. Several factors, such as lack of a sense of belonging, linking personal success to their family, and filial piety to their parents, motivate these teachers to make decisions to return to their hometown. In their hometown areas, their selection of final destination is also linked with their concern to bring glory and benefits to their family and community. Their tendency to take family and community into consideration is intrinsically linked to the Chinese cultural sense of self or personhood. These findings imply that emotional attachment and identity construction of individual teachers should be taken into consideration to recruit and retain teachers in schools in impoverished rural regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher mobility
• mobility decision
• hometown attachment
• teacher’s identity construction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [grant number 16BMZ062].

Notes on contributors

Yanling Wang

Yanling Wang is a professor in School of Education and Management, Yunnan Normal University. She got her Ph. D from East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, and was a visiting scholar at Peking University and Columbia University. Her research interests include teacher education, comparative education and curriculum studies.

Xiangming Chen

Xiangming Chen is a professor in Graduate School of Education, Peking University. She is also serving as distinguished researcher of Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Education, East China Normal University.She got her Ph. D from Harvard University. Her research interests include teacher education, curriculum studies and research methodology. She is the author of many books and articles on qualitative research and teacher research.