Navigating the complex landscape of cross-epistemic climates: migrant Chinese language teachers’ belief changes about knowledge and learning

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the impact that the experience of living and teaching in the United Kingdom (UK) had on the belief development of three native Chinese language teachers. The study used a multifaceted approach to analyse the teachers as social beings and their belief development beyond the confines of the classroom. The analysis is based on data derived from an innovative methodological tool, a metaphorical drawing task, combined with narrative inquiry and interviews to elicit implicit beliefs. The findings show that the teachers’ various social roles as parents, members of clubs, participants in professional communities and observers of the broader social-political system in the UK, as well as the classroom environment, all contributed to changes in their beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning. Implications for classroom practice and teacher development are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Constructivism
• epistemic climate
• teachers’ beliefs
• teaching Chinese
• teaching abroad

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jiaqi Guo

Jiaqi Guo is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and has taught Chinese at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College, London South Bank University and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Her research interests include teacher cognition, second language learning in an instructed setting, interlanguage development, learner corpus, textbook design and curriculum development.

Yongcan Liu

Yongcan Liu is Reader in Applied Linguistics and Languages Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and Convener of Cambridge Research in Community Language Education Network, a university-school-community partnership specialising in community language education. His research interests lie in multilingualism and language heritage, community language education and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of mind.