Rediscovering identity: a more generous reality for Hong Kong pre-service non-native English teacher communicators participating in an immersion program at two Australian universities

Abstract

[Abstract]: Identity and images of self that non native English speaking teachers have of themselves often separate teaching from language and is premised on technical communication expertise with English language. However, there remains a capacity for their identity and images of self to change and reflect a counter discourse because identity is something that ‘each age and society recreates…over historical, social, intellectual and political processes that take place as a contest involving individuals and institutions’ (Said, 1995). This paper reports on research that critically examines ways in which Hong Kong pre-service teachers undertaking an immersion attachment at two Australian universities, have through collective and individual processes of making, remaking and negotiating their identity, begun processes that allow them to conceive of themselves as other than what constitutes efficiency in language learning and communication. It reveals how they draw on continuing links with their locations as they rediscover and reconstitute their identity beyond the binary division of self and the other. It further reveals much about an ongoing dilemma encountered in similar instructional settings where international non native speakers of English enrol. This dilemma relates to charting a course that favours a counter narrative avoiding the divisions of humanity into ‘us’ and ‘them’ and is premised on discovering a more generative and generous reality in teaching and learning.