Main description:

This book discusses issues related to teachers' identities and life choices when globalisation and localisation are enmeshed. It examines how competing cultural traditions and contexts acted as resources or/and constraints in framing teachers' identities and their negotiations in the family and the work domains according to their gender positioning, their roles in the family such as husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, son and daughter and roles in the school such as principal, senior teacher or regular teacher. Contrary to an essentialist approach to identity and culture, teachers' stories show that their identities and life choices were hardly free choices; but were often part and parcel of the culture and contexts in which they were embedded.

Teachers' identities are found to be fluid, complex, hybrid and multifaceted. Using Hong Kong as a case study, this book provides not only traces of the continuity and changes of Confucian self and cardinal relationships but also a glimpse of how educational reform as neo-capitalist discourses in the workplace interacts with Confucian cultural traditions creating new hybrid practices (problems or possibilities or both) in the school and in the daily lives of teachers.

Contents:

1.Introduction: 1.1 Overview of the book 1.2 Positioning of the book 1.3 My personal biography 1.4 Why this book? 1.5 The organisation of the book

2.Hybridities, border crossing and yin-yang : 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Identities and life choices 2.3 The non-Western self 2.4 Teachers' identities 2.5 Globalisation 2.6 Globalisation as hybridisation 2.7 Chinese yin-yang concept 2.8 Conclusion

3.Methodology: 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Hybrid methodology 3.3 Narrative and identities 3.4 Individual and group interviews to study personal and structural changes 3.5 Subjects of the study 3.6 Researchers' roles and relationships 3.7 Conclusion

4.Dialectics of the Chinese culture: Continuities and changes in the Confucian order: 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Confucian order 4.3 Dialectics of Chinese culture 4.4 Continuities and changes in contemporary self and cardinal relationships: Life stories 4.5 Discussion 4.6 Conclusion

5.Evolving hybrid femininities (yin) and masculinities (yang) : 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Chinese linguistics and gender order 5.3 Hybridities 5.4 Taoist concept of yin-yang 5.5 Female teachers' hybrid gender identities 5.6 Male teachers' hybrid gender identities 5.7 Discussion 5.8 Conclusion

6.Intergenerational issues concerning primary school teachers : 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Border crossing 6.3 On-going negotiations and multifaceted identities 6.4 Teachers' narratives 6.5 Discussion 6.6 Conclusion

7.Teachers' professional identities and career choices when education reforms meet with Confucian cultural heritage in education : 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Education reforms in the "East meets West" context in Hong Kong 7.3 English teaching and learning 7.4 Liberal studies teaching and learning 7.5 Discussion 7.6 Conclusion

8.Mid-life secondary female teachers' identities, work and work-life interface : 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Theoretical perspective 8.3 Specific examples of work-life negotiations 8.4 Gender equity issues related to teachers' identities and life choices 8.5 Conclusion

9. Struggling with gender borders: Implications for gender equity for the next generation : 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Struggling with gender borders - teachers' narratives of uncomfortable hybrids 9.3 Production and re-production of gender stereotypes in schools 9.4 Conclusion

10.Conclusion