Microsoft Word - Han_Singh_1.doc 17 July 07.doc TO CITE THIS ARTICLE PLEASE INCLUDE ALL OF THE FOLLOWING DETAILS: Han Jinghe and Singh, Michael (2007) World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools: curriculum issues, transnational mobility and the Bologna Process Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools: curriculum issues, transnational mobility and the Bologna Process Jinghe Han Charles Sturt University Michael Singh University of Western Sydney Introduction Increasingly those involved in teacher education curricula in Britain, Australasia and North America are confronted by the challenge of what it means for English to be a transnational language. The term World English Speakers (WES) has emerged to name all the people’s of the world who now speak this language and lay claim to it as their own. This includes and extends beyond the native speakers of the language to those who have acquired it as a consequence of British or North American colonialism, or as a result of the post-Cold War expansion of English as the language of transnational trade, politics, communication, education, culture and labour movement. The recruitment of World English Speaking (WES) immigrants from Asian-Pacific nations as student-teachers represents a small but nonetheless significant contribution to solving the skills mismatch in the supply of teachers in some disciplines and localities in these countries (The Committee for the Review of Teaching and Teacher Education, 2003; Han, 2004). Simultaneously, the Bologna Process, which started in 1998 as an initiative to create a European Higher Education Area, is encouraging the transnational mobility of tertiary students and knowledge workers (Witte, 2004). While not formally addressed to date as part of the Bologna Process, the transnational mobility of students and graduates poses particular difficulties for nation-centred professions such as teaching. This is especially so given the role of nation-states in disciplining or otherwise controlling ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious differences through all levels of education. Through an exploration of the practicum experiences of WES student-teachers from Asian-Pacific countries this paper investigates some of the complexities transnational student and graduate (workers) mobility has for Australia. This is warranted given the Australian Government’s considerations of what the Bologna Process means for higher education policy and pedagogy (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2006). This paper draws on evidence from interviews with twenty (n=20) WES student-teachers from Asian-Pacific backgrounds; twelve (n=12) of their course lecturers (exclusively monolingual, Anglo-phone speakers of World English); and three groups of WES school teachers (n=15) who had migrated from similar places as the student-teachers and who were responsible for their in- school practicum supervision. It arises from a research project which investigated how teacher education assists and/or hinders WES student-teachers from Asia and Oceania in gaining access to the teaching profession (Han, 2006). Based on the analysis of the interview evidence, it is argued that the practicum contributes to the ‘metamorphosis’ of the multi- layered identities of these particular WES student-teachers, supplementing their already http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 66 existing many-sided sense of self. This paper analyses some of the tensions in the power relations this specific group of WES student-teachers confronted after they made the shift and moved into the Australian teacher education and school environments. It identifies three dimensions to the power relations affecting their process of metamorphosis: the societal disciplining of who they are; the societal control of who they are becoming, and the affects of their embodied power on their shifting identities. Using this baseline data, future research could provide for a comparative investigation of the experiences of immigrant WES student- teachers and Australian-born WES student-teachers in order to provide a more nuanced analysis. In the meantime, let us consider the Bologna Declaration (1999) which has set in train a process that began with aims specifically related to Europe, but has grown to global proportions. The Bologna Process as a policy reform mechanism Minimally, the Bologna Declaration was a proposal for creating a European system of easily readable comparable degrees; the establishment of a Europe-wide credit transfer system; the promotion of student and graduate mobility throughout Europe by removing obstacles to recognition of qualifications; the promotion of a cooperative approach within Europe to quality assurance, and the promotion of a European dimension to higher education (Wachter, 2004). The Prague 2001 ministerial meeting gave the Bologna Process a social dimension. European higher education was formed as a public good with a lifelong learning dimension to be provided to European citizens as part of the responsibility of nation-states. Ironically, for a supra-national economic organisation it was also given an anti-neo-liberal globalism orientation. In 2003, the Berlin Ministerial Meeting gave emphasis to reducing social and gender inequalities nationally and throughout Europe. Also at this time quality assurance procedures, structures, standards and guidelines came to the fore. Doctoral level studies were also integrated into the process of harmonising degree structures which is expected to see the implementation of the new tri-level Bachelor/Master/Doctoral structure throughout Europe by 2010. Wachter (2004, pp. 272, 273) observes that the Bologna Process was certainly not conceived as an outright neo-liberal agenda. … In Berlin, what had earlier been a vague and modestly-phrased anti-liberal undercurrent turned into a manifest anti- globalism attitude. … The insistence on the ‘academic values’ and repetition of the credo that higher education remain a ‘public good’ and a ‘public responsibility’ point in same direction. … a new social agenda with a partly anti-globalist undercurrent which is rapidly gaining ground. The Bologna Process represents an archetypal instance of an ambiguous and contradictory policy setting which cannot be studied within an aims-to-outcomes, nation-centred implementation process. A two-stage, top-down model cannot adequately capture what the Bologna Process is. The Process is not progressing in any distinguishable stages because different interpretations and contexts are blurring its phases, generating translations in what it is and transformations in its meaning (Witte, 2004). This is because like so much contemporary policy action in higher education it involves multiple actors operating at multiple (local/national/transnational) levels engaging in the formulation, reformulation and implementation of policy according to their differing perceptions, conceptions and experiences. Even so, the Bologna Process might come to be regarded as the single largest reform of European higher education since the eleventh century when the University of Bologna was established. Initially, the administrative moves made under the Bologna Process were to bring http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 67 greater transnational consistency in degree structures, credit transfer arrangements and quality assurance systems across an estimated 4,000 higher education institutions throughout Europe. The harmonisation of approaches to higher education across Europe aims to facilitate the movement of increasingly mobile transnational knowledge workers. The expectation is that this will increase the transnational mobility among European students and graduates as well as secure an increased share of the international student market through recruitment outside that continent. The European Higher Education Ministers are also concerned about competition in international education from non-European sources, such as Australasia and North America. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Bologna Process is bringing about some consistency and portability across Europe’s higher education systems, but is also influencing other countries across the world to do likewise. It is this competitive challenge that is of most concern to the Australian Government and its higher education system. In the discussion paper, The Bologna Process and Australia: The Next Steps (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2006), the Australian Government acknowledged that its higher education ranked among the world’s best; had developed a strong dialogue with some Asian countries on education; and that its European student enrolments had doubled in the last decade. However, whether these current strengths are powerful enough to deal with matters concerning students’ transnational mobility and their graduate employability in the transnational labour market invites further investigation. Moreover, it is likely that the Australian Government will use the Bologna Process, as it has been by European Governments to achieve its own particular national goals. For instance, The Next Steps policy text highlights the Australian Higher Education system’s ‘lack’ of an accepted or uniform national system of credits which is characterised as a weakness that makes transnational credit transfer more difficult for students. This suggests the possibility of an outcomes-driven, competency-based driver of further reforms to the Australian higher education system. The Next Steps policy text illustrates opportunities the Australian Higher Education system has in choosing to align with the Bologna Process. Specifically, clarification of qualification recognition standards and effective credit transfer systems promises to help students and graduates move easily between Australian and European universities. Likewise, the compatibility of Australia’s quality assurance arrangements is expected to increase the confidence of European institutions and employers in Australian qualifications and make the quality framework more transparent. These opportunities also pose challenges for further reforming Australia’s Higher Education system. Consider for a moment the following questions. How might qualifications and their recognition be made more consistent? Whose higher education will provide the criteria for judging the consistency of Australian qualifications? And in terms of the focus of this paper, how will this make transnational students’ and graduates varieties of the English language as well as their nationally-grounded education, recognised, transferable and assured? Australia accepted an invitation to audit the 2007 Bologna Process Ministerial Meeting because of its worries about the risk of not being aligned with the Process. If hurdles from different systems and structures do exist, this could decrease student and graduate mobility, and therefore decrease Australia’s attractiveness in the transnational education and labour markets. As with any serious curriculum issue, the Bologna Process has stimulated contestation over modes of accreditation, the criteria for judging quality and benchmarking procedures. Noting British universities engagement in ‘lobbying and subterranean warfare’ around these matters, Neave (2005, p. 19) observes that each nation-centred higher education system is struggling to have its http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 68 particular version of normative instruments, their home-grown definitions of conditions regulating and making more ‘readable’ the qualifications and conditions accompanying cross-frontier student traffic … accepted as European standard practice. It is important to distinguish between the ideology of neo-liberal globalism with its particular political projects such as corporate management, and the contemporary transitions in the social, cultural, economic and historical processes of globalisation. In other words, it is not possible for the Bologna Process to occur without European nation-states thinking carefully about their centuries old transnational connections, including those that are beyond Europe. This sees them working out how to marry their commitment to the European Higher Education Area with the global competition and cooperation in which higher education worldwide is now necessarily involved (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2006). This is especially so for former imperial powers such as Britain which has a strong transnational trade in education. Neo-liberal globalism pulls in the direction of state regulated quasi-market forces, while transnational cooperation favours social justice. For instance, Neave (2005, p. 20) argues that Britain faces a struggle to restore social justice as a prominent part of the current agenda, by contrast with the obsessive concentration on achieving efficiency, cost saving and performance plus the setting in place of monitory bodies and agencies. Neo-liberal globalism is not a totalising force; there are political projects. For those British universities which are overwhelming white, male and Anglo-phone, Dow (2006) found that the Bologna Process promotes self-interested, national defensiveness. This was evident in insular responses to distant horizons, their sense of complacent superiority, and their neo- colonial paternalism with respect to the English language. Thus, with respect to British universities, Dow (2006, p. 10) concluded: There is an automatic, in-built and dangerously myopic assumption that the world is an English-speaking, mono-cultural whole, that our degrees are already internationally acceptable; some of our students may disagree. Neo-liberal globalism is not the only focus of concern for Australian teacher educators; they too struggle with the legacy of White Australia politics. It is in this context that this paper points to some of the disagreements that World English Speaking student-teachers, specifically immigrants from Asian-Pacific nations, have with regards to the nation-centred teacher education programs of Australia. Among the curriculum challenges these particular translational student-teachers confronted were those framed around their racial or ethnic ‘differences’, especially their speaking of English and their educational cultures. Institutions are ‘the humanly devised constraints that shape human action’ (North cited in Witte, 2004, p. 409). Their formal or structural constraints include laws, political regulations, and economic rules as much as curriculum policies. The informal or cultural constraints of education institutions include the behavioural norms, standards of conduct, values and shared societal traditions governing the enactment of the curriculum in practice. Together these formal and informal constraints form an institutional fabric that give substance to and shape the curriculum. However, the term ‘constraint’ may direct our thinking only to the restrictive functions of the curriculum. It may be better to talk the curriculum’s regulatory and cultural ‘features’ in recognition of its enabling and constraining capacities. The curriculum fabric of any national higher education system contains formal regulatory and informal cultural http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 69 features. Hardt and Negri’s (2000) three dimensional view of power provides a useful tool for analysing these informal cultural features, the focus of this paper. The notion of ‘disciplinary society’ refers to the exercise of society’s discipline via diffuse networks of power to produce and regulate taken-for-granted ways of enacting the curriculum. The concept of ‘societal control’ refers to the surveillance effected through the mechanisms for monitoring the curriculum used variously by the state, the media and through acts of consumption. ‘Biopower’ is the self-controls enacted by individuals on their minds and bodies’ curriculum engagements as a result of internalising these other forms of power. The societal disciplining of WES student-teachers’ knowledge, ethnicity, language and culture The internationalisation of higher education through policy settings such as the Bologna Process involves more than removing formal curriculum limitations on degree structures, the credit transfer system and recognition of qualifications (Wachter, 2004). This paper uses these policy settings to raise questions about the informal cultural features associated with differences in ethnic, language, educational cultures and background knowledge that may inhibit or enable transnational mobility. How might these policy settings deal with the informal features of teacher education curricula that arise when students cross frontiers and they themselves are not ‘readable’ in the new education environment or meet the imaginings of Australia’s teaching practices? Looking ethnically different made these particular WES student-teachers less authoritative. Rosh was an immigrant student-teacher from Fiji. She experienced professional isolation due to the racial attitudes of Australian school students. They doubted that she was a qualified teacher of Australian geography because she was from another country. The appearance of these WES immigrant student-teachers marked them as ‘other’ in the dominating Anglo-phone Australian multi-culture (Santoro, Kamler and Reid, 2001, p. 200). A small linguistic or cultural mistake could cause these student-teachers to lose the curriculum authority they automatically expected to have as pre-service school teachers. They felt that they were expected to be more accurate in their teaching than their Anglo-Australian peers. The school students put these WES student-teachers to the test before accepting them. The ‘outing’ of them as ‘coloured’ teachers was a challenge that both the WES teachers and student-teachers we interviewed came across in their efforts to be accepted as ‘Australian teachers’. In this embryonic stage of becoming ‘Australian teachers’ they learned the need to change their ‘form’ and ‘habits’ to do so. Thus, how to address the readability of nation- centred professions in the internationalisation of higher education incited or invited by the Bologna Process is an important question. Any use of the English language by these WES student-teachers that was deemed incorrect made them an easy ‘target’ for the school students to ‘shoot.’ For these WES student-teachers, language inaccuracy opened them to marginalisation. This made them feel excluded from the curriculum authority of schooling. Despite English being a transnational language, it is a powerful means of place-based inclusion into or exclusion from one’s social positioning as a teacher (Valdes, 1999, p. 47). Despite being a native speaker, it was not easy for ‘Eliza Dolittle’ to completely change her East London Cockney English to the ‘received English pronunciation’ authorised by the upper classes. That she sometimes lapsed back into this Cockney English suggests that identities are fluid and multiple. Despite this liquidity she bounced up against hard edges during the very long time it took her to shift. A summary of the evidence from the interviews with two WES student-teachers (S) and a teacher educator (L) is presented in Table 1. It highlights the challenges the Australian teacher education curriculum as enacted through the practicum caused these particular WES student-teachers. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 70 All were aware of the reconfiguration occurring in the WES student-teachers’ identities, but more could say exactly where it would lead them or Australian education. TABLE 1 SCHOOL STUDENTS AS AGENTS OF SOCIETAL DISCIPLINE Data sources Issues Theme Pattern Rosh (S) students not believe Rosh could teach Australian geography; because she from another country stereotype: ‘Other’ people not qualified teachers in Australia ethnicity and power Kihi (S) teachers coloured, have to know the subjects better; small mistake could ‘out’ them; have to be careful coloured people are easily ‘out’ colour and power Marie (L) kids made fun of WES student- teachers’ accent World English speakers’ disadvantage World English One reason these WES student-teachers were challenged in their teaching was their linguistic ‘difference’ from the Anglo-Australian teachers who spoke Australian English, one relatively powerful variety of World English. In the school students’ eyes, they spoke differently, and looked different, and therefore it was assumed that their curriculum knowledge might be not appropriate for Australian students. The student-teachers acquired strategies to overcome this challenge, gain confidence in their teaching and make the shifts to become ‘Australian teachers.’ However, this raises the issue of whether Australia can be as complacent in its engagement with the Bologna Process as the UK given its distinctive variety of World English maybe less competitive (Dow, 2006). The guilty pleasure derived from such complacency may drive some curriculum innovations. These WES student-teachers’ practicum classes might be taken as sites representing a ‘disciplinary society’ whereby Australian society’s disciplinary power is exercised through a ‘diffuse network, producing and regulating customs, habits, and productive practices’ (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 23). In this instance, this societal discipline or behaviour management operated in these schools through a dispersed set of connections linking school teachers, school students and teacher-educators in governing the behaviour and identity (re)formation of these WES student-teachers. Together these agents had differing capacities for shaping and governing the practicum of these WES student-teachers. These curricula experiences taught them the need to develop a nationally-grounded workplace identity, rather than the transnational professionalism assumed by the Bologna Process. Schools are typically thought of as disciplinary institutions where school students learn to obey its rules and regulations. However, the evidence indicates that these WES student- teachers could not draw on this disciplinary power in the same way or to the degree that the Anglo-phone Australian school teachers did. The latter had this curriculum power at their disposal for them to ensure that the school students obeyed the rules in their classes. However, the school students found ‘reasons’ not to obey the rules to which the particular WES student-teachers appealed. The students’ resistance to their exercise of disciplinary power was framed by its own logic. Because these WES student-teachers were ethnically different; their skin colours were different and their Englishes were different, the school students refused to give them the curriculum power or authority to discipline them. In this way these WES student-teachers felt they were excluded from the disciplinary power of this nation-centred institution and profession. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 71 Societal controls for affecting identity shifts With the globalisation of the Bologna Process, the efforts of policy makers in Australia are directed to considering the rules and regulations governing the transfer of credit and the recognition of qualifications (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2006). The increased opportunities for transnational student and graduate mobility are due to these processes of internationalising higher education which involve redressing the formal constraints on transnational flows of certain types of labour. These transnational knowledge workers also have to make the effort to change to better engage the informed cultural features by adjusting their identities to their new education or work environment. They learn to make the effort to transfer themselves from being a teacher embodying their home country’s educational culture to becoming ‘Australian teachers’ so as to be part of its educational culture. In this way they make themselves more readable as ‘Australian teachers’, albeit without necessarily achieving the transnational harmonisation of their multi-layered identities the Bologna Process implies. During the practicum the WES student-teachers we interviewed learned to establish rapport in the new environment with their school colleagues, the school children and teaching itself. These negotiations in this new context saw these WES student-teachers experience the process of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’ (see Table 2). Their identities concerns were more about whether they could really become ‘Australian teachers,’ how they might enact teaching and how they might re-present themselves as ‘Australian teachers’. They were more concerned about who they were becoming rather than ‘who they are’ or ‘where they came from’ (Hall, 1996, p. 4). Understandably, their identities were fractured in this process of transformation. These WES student-teachers struggled to develop and take-up their identity as ‘Australian teachers.’ They assumed that being prospective teachers, they would be respected for the occupation itself. The Chinese idiom ‘zun shi zhong jiao’ means respecting teachers and valuing education. In Chinese philosophy, teachers expect to be automatically respected, while in Australia even the Prime Minister has to win the respect of citizens to be elected (Remennick, 2002, p. 109). The students’ conduct shocked these WES student-teachers. They ignored teachers’ directions, openly engaged in conversations during their teachers’ explanations and answered back. For instance, Arun found it was difficult to teach when he had no taken-for-granted authority in the class because the students kept talking and did not listen to him. He thought learning was possible only when the students were well disciplined and expressed their intention or desire to learn. Like others, he placed more importance on behaviour management than academic work (Carr & Klassen, 1997, p. 69). Kaza, a WES supervising teacher who had migrated from Fiji explained to the student-teachers why the school students had no motivation for learning, in the following rather questionable terms: Some kids here don’t really value education. 30% kids are absolutely not interested in anything. Their attitude towards learning is totally negative. I teach science here and kids don’t see modern technology as relating to science. They don’t value science as a subject. They often ask, ‘Why should we learn this? We are not going to use it.’ There are so many options for them. In our country, if you don’t work, you don’t get food. Here they can go to the Centre-link and get better money than we do (T: Kaza). Kaza’s opinion was that some students in Australia did not see to value the official curriculum, especially knowledge which they could not see as being of immediate, short-term use. Although open to questioning, Kaza attributed the negative attitude these students had towards education to their many other life options. For them, a good education was not the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 72 only means for gaining a decent life. However, in developing countries such as China, India, Fiji and Sri Lanka education is a very important and highly competitive channel for achieving socio-economic mobility. It is a basic means to change or make a better life for ordinary people. Parents expect their children study hard so they can successfully compete for the few university places, because this means a good job after graduation as well as ‘guang zong yao zu’, that is bringing honour to one’s ancestors. Therefore, for many students in these countries learning more and getting good marks are the essential tasks for themselves, teachers and parents. For these student-teachers this did not seem to be the case in Australia. Har, another WES supervising teacher who had also migrated after military coups in Fiji indicated the shifts she made in her identity to become a successful ‘Australian teacher.’ Rather surprisingly, these included learning to tolerate low expectations of students’ behaviours and academic performance: It took me five years to change. I feel I am a much better teacher now. I got my Year 10. It is a horrible class. I am happy with them too. Some of the girls are racist. The boys don’t listen to me. They haven’t done much work for the whole year, but I am tolerant with them. I have made them feel better about themselves. Yes, a little bit work is fine. If they give me 10%, I am happy, and I keep trying to encourage them. I am not telling them you can’t do anything in the class. Good positive relationship is very important for any teacher (T: Har). Har’s new identity was constructed through negotiating her power relations with the school students. After five years’ experience, Har had shifted to tolerating the horribly low socio- academic achievement of her students. She started to tolerate them doing ‘little work’, being happy instead to encourage them rather than always making negative comments. Ironically, she was now confident in herself as a good ‘Australian teacher.’ Similarly, Jagi learned to compromise his sense of himself as a teacher, and lowered his expectations for students’ learning outcomes. This he saw as being part of forming his new identity as an ‘Australian teacher’: ‘Student management’ is about how actually you were going to cooperate with students who don’t want to learn anything. They don’t listen to you. As a teacher you got to begin where they are and bring them up. You cannot use your criteria from your background to expect them. You cannot say, ‘You are in Year 11, you don’t know how to do this and how to do that.’ … You give in some and they learn something (T: Jagi). Jagi, a transnational knowledge worker from India did not stabilise his identity around an unchanging oneness nor did he experience cultural belongingness in this new environment. Instead, slowly he learned to ‘give in’ part of his teacherly ‘self’ by giving in on his formerly high expectations about students’ learning. This made it possible for him to cope with students who did not engage with schooling and lacked the motivation to learn. However, his ‘giving in’ indicated an internal struggle which he experienced as transmogrification. These tendencies towards lowered expectations of students’ socio-academic performance raise concerns if they recur across WES immigrant teachers working in low socio-economic schools across Australia. Learning to accept rather than mitigate or mediate the school students’ alienation, disaffection or disengagement from schooling was a way these WES student-teachers adjusted to their context and formed a sense of themselves as ‘Australian teachers.’ Har started her journey with shock. She cried, thinking of herself a bad teacher and became angry http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 73 with her students’ misbehaviour. After five years of teaching practice, she could give a little smile at the same behaviour by her students. Her identity did not remain the same across time. She learned the self-control necessary to concealing one ‘self’ by showing another workplace identity, a questionable one of an ‘Australian teacher’ as tolerating low socio-academic performance by students (Hall, 1996, p. 4). By doing this, she acquired an additional layer for her identities. Her little smile showed her adjustment to what the ‘Fijian teacher’ in her regarded as unacceptable. The shift from being angry to smiling was a yet another step that paralleled Ovid’s metamorphosis. There was another dimension to becoming an ‘Australian teacher’. Here it is worth considering for a moment the test of Professional English Assessment for Teachers (PEAT) (Institute of Languages UNSW, n.d.) which was introduced in 1991 by the then New South Wales (NSW) Department of School Education (DSE). Overseas educated teachers from language backgrounds other than English whose teaching qualifications have been recognised by the Department as commensurate with Australian qualifications are also required to demonstrate their English language proficiency. The goal of PEAT is to determine the level of the candidate’s English proficiency. It is not a test of their curriculum competence but an assessment of their English language skills within the context of school education. The level attained in each component of PEAT is designed to determine whether the candidate’s English proficiency is of a standard which would enable him/her to teach and interact effectively and confidently in a NSW school. In effect, PEAT sets the criteria to measure the identity transformation of WES teachers from overseas in terms of their capacity to read, listen, write and speak a dialect akin to Australian English. Asho considered the test ‘good’ and ‘reasonable’ and thought ‘everybody should be doing’ it. For her it measured whether WES teachers arriving from abroad used English in ‘the way the majority population is talking, the way they speak, and the way they act.’ In effect the test measures their success at making themselves more like an ‘Australian teacher.’ That Asho was happy to change herself in this new environment suggests that identities may be adopted and discarded, albeit not quite as easily as a change of costume (Bauman, 1996, p. 23). A summary of the evidence from the interviews with WES student-teachers (S) and WES teachers (T) is presented in Table 2. It reveals the metamorphosis these WES student-teachers experienced in their shift from being different to finding a teacherly identity within Australian schools and its education culture, with which they could make a living. Unequal images of education battled in their minds and bodies for precedence. The Bologna Process is changing the formal limitations on the transnational readability of degrees (Witte, 2004). Beyond this the students and graduates, the carriers of these qualification face the informal constraints of nationally-grounded education cultures which require that they change themselves to adjust to the new environment. The particular WES student-teachers in this study (Han, 2006) were not sure where they belonged; how to place themselves within the various Australian patterns of professional teaching behaviours; or whether this placement was right and proper. The guidance these WES student-teachers received from their university lecturers and supervising teachers provided useful directions for becoming ‘Australian teachers.’ In the practicum, the student-teachers had to juggle what to keep and what to give up in the curriculum work that formed, informed and transformed their teaching strategies and identities. Although they assumed their identity as teachers was solid and stable, the problems they encountered during the practicum meant they had to keep their options open: ‘Modernity was built in steel and concrete; post-modernity, in bio- degradable plastic’ (Bauman, 1996, p. 18). These student-teachers tried to resituate their steely sense of themselves by happily accepting Australian English and Australian education culture of Australian teachers, which for some meant downgrading, if not degrading their http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 74 expectations for students’ learning. Their shift to lower expectations about students’ socio- academic performance is troubling. TABLE 2 METAMORPHOSIS THROUGH THE SOCIETAL CONTROL OF DIFFERENCE Data sources Issues Theme Pattern Ron (S) hard to teach when the students talked and did not listen; their minds somewhere else; no intention of learning behaviour and academic work discipline/ behaviour management Kaza (T) 1. not value education, not interested, attitude towards learning negative, many options vs 2. don’t work, don’t get food learning motivation and life, life-driven or interest-driven motivation Har (T) five years’ experience, happy with horrible class, from unendurable to endurable with students’ low performance new identity change Jagi (T) to be a teacher in Australia, learned to lower down expectations to appropriate students compromising oneself, give in part of the old self change Har (T) from crying and thinking of herself a bad teacher, being angry with naughty children to smiling changing response to same students’ behaviour change Jagi (T) WES teachers have to change & learn, come to close to what acceptable not to find identity but to lose it & become unidentified change Asho (T) PEAT test very good and reasonable; to pass the test, have to perceive, talk and act the way the majority people speak and act subaltern identity change During the practicum the school students’ behaviour and academic performance confronted these WES student-teachers and might be explained in terms of Hardt and Negri’s (2000, p. 24) concept of ‘society of control’. In contrast to the disciplinary power operating within schools, this form of power arises outside schools and extends well within them. Such societal control is exercised in relation to these WES student-teachers through mechanisms that directly organise people’s brains and bodies, for example the surveillance activities of welfare systems, information networks and consumer monitoring. In this instance their students did not have the expected self-motivation or apparent academic capacity for engagement in deep learning. To some degree their students’ vitality and creativity seem to have been sapped by the dependency on instantaneous gratification that Australia’s welfare system, mass media and consumer culture has created. This societal control is characterised by an intense and generalised system of disciplinary norms that the students internalised, shaping their day-to-day practices of schooling. The embodied power of WES student-teachers’ education culture The Bologna Process aims to achieve formal credit transfer for studies undertaken in one European country in all others. This raises interesting questions (Singh and Han, 2007). In Australian teacher education should the prior knowledge, formal or otherwise, that WES student-teachers from overseas have of education be a source of such credit? Should the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 75 possible curriculum knowledge they have remain unrecognised? Are they required to engage in a one-way learning process whereby they change to meet the new environment? Is the possible curriculum knowledge they acquired in their former homeland credit worthy? If so, how might their possible knowledge of curriculum be translated for use in their teaching in Australia? Does Australian education want, need or require transnational curriculum knowledge that lies outside Europe and North America? These WES student-teachers had acquired knowledge of education in their homeland about test-driven, text-based teaching/learning strategies. Their impression of Australian school classes was ‘active learning’ and student-centredness. While these WES student- teachers appreciated the student-centred classes, most were scared of students being so active in class. Worrying about their own English language proficiency provided them with an excuse for their quietness in university lectures and tutorials. One reason these WES student- teachers did not talk in class was their habit of being quiet in class. Their tongues shied away from Australian English. The Chinese idiom ‘xi guan cheng zi ran’ means once you form a habit, it comes naturally to you. Mei was used to sitting and listening. As she said, students did not do presentations in school in Malaysia. She had acquired that habit through her own schooling. The requirement of doing presentations in front of a class in Australia not only challenged her English language performance but also her habituated sense of what it meant to be a student. Guli shared a similar experience with Mei. Guli’s ‘awkwardness’ and ‘uncomfortableness’ was due in part to language barriers, but more so because of the experiential knowledge he had acquired of test-driven, text-based teaching and learning through years of schooling in China. In his educational philosophy, students could learn more if they listened more to their teachers. The traditional Chinese philosophy of ‘modesty’ says, using more of one’s ears (listening) and less of one’s mouth (talking) enables students to quickly improve their learning. This philosophy found deep roots in the WES student-teachers who were of Asian background. This might be a source of their apparent ‘passive learning’ and lack of interaction with peers and their teachers in class. These particular WES student-teachers emphasised the transmission of curriculum content at the expense of learning how to learn, or engaging in the development of meta-learning strategies. The process of learning focused on teaching students to be passive receptors of other people’s knowledge, socially constructed in the form of unquestionable facts and moral truths. It has been argued that this curriculum seemingly works against higher order critical and creative thought, creating people unable to produce their own knowledge, to innovate or engage rapid social change (Kalantzis, Cope, Noble and Poynting, 1990, p. 34). Given that the habit of ‘passive learning’ is seemingly deep-rooted in some Asian education cultures it was not surprising that some of these WES student-teachers brought such pedagogies to their practicum in Australian schools: I have a friend who is from Syria. He was a school teacher in Syria. In Syria, when the teacher speaks, the students shut up. That is the culture there. But here it is not the same. You find they have more equality, and the culture is different here. There is more interaction in class. He couldn’t get connectivity with the kids. He expected that every time he had to yell at them to be quiet. He couldn’t get them to work because he couldn’t get connection with them. He wasn’t prepared to change and he thinks his teaching methodology is good but it doesn’t work here (S: Arun). Arun’s example showed the conflict between the ‘passive learning’ method used by his WES friend and the ‘active learning’ of students in Australia. This student-teacher was accustomed http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 76 to the teaching methods he used in Syria and so employed the same teaching practices in Australia. However, while his methods did not work during the practicum, he could not envisage making any changes because these teaching strategies were ‘gen shen di gu’ for him, that is deeply rooted or solidly ingrained in his thinking. However, some of these WES student-teachers were happy to accept student-centred teaching. Comparing the two teaching and learning experiences, Rohini valued Australia education as excellent. However, she still thought education in Sri Lanka was good because the students there could learn more and achieve at a higher level. Suni indicated that she too valued Australia education but still kept a positive attitude toward the education in her home country: In Fiji, when the teacher goes into the class, the kids are very quiet and very attentive. They don’t talk around or move around. But it is not so here. In Fiji, the principal and the teachers work hard to make sure the kid get good marks. People give top priority to education. Everything comes to the next. But here we have to see the children are really learning, not only for the purpose of the exam. I wouldn’t say the one that is in Fiji is relevant, but the requirement is there. That is how I was educated. Here the education is preparing children for life (S: Suni). Suni appreciated the hard work Fijian principals and teachers put into making sure students achieve good marks; whether this is the same as deep learning is open to further investigation. She appreciated the quietness and attentiveness of Fijian students. She did not give much weight to the informed features of Australia’s education culture. The interview evidence that emerged in relation to the affects of differences in education cultures on these WES student- teachers’ teaching/learning is summarised in Table 3. The differentiated identities borne of their life-histories are key parts of the (re)construction of educational realities. TABLE 3 THE EMBODIED POWER OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN TEACHING Data sources Issues Theme Pattern Guli (S) 1. quiet in large classes, listening to learn vs 2. active presenters: awkward & uncomfortable Education philosophy awkward & uncomfortable Jean (S) 1. sit & listen to the teacher vs 2. doing presentations in English to peers: scary habit – habitus scary Ron (S) 1. teacher talk, students shut up vs 2. teacher-student equality, more interaction in class 3. not ready for change deep-rooted thinking stereotype ready for change? Rohini (S) 1. kids have opportunity to express vs 2. follow teachers’ methods, teachers’ material 3. value Australian education vs 4. Sri Lanka higher level value both teaching methods which is better? Suni (S) 1. test-driven teaching vs 2. teaching for real learning attitudes towards educations silence? Through its encouragement of transnational student and graduate mobility the Bologna Process involves removing formal limitations through reforms to degree structures, credit transfer and recognition of qualifications (Wachter, 2004). There are also informal features of education cultures that this Process does not appear to acknowledge. The national grounding http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 77 of education cultures see transnational teachers and student-teachers bringing this knowledge to their teaching career in Australia. In the education cultures from where these particular student-teachers came, teachers are a powerful presence before their students and are the controller of the class. However, in Australian schools the curriculum work of teachers seems markedly different. Their different background knowledge of education, schooling and teaching has to be confronted and reworked via the hidden curriculum through which they become ‘Australian teachers’. The curriculum work of these particular WES student-teachers were regulated by what they have internalised about schooling, teaching/ learning and teacher/student relationships through their own experiential learning overseas. This might usefully be explained by Hardt and Negri’s (2000, p. 24) concept of ‘biopower’. In schools, the students are disciplined by their teachers but this disciplinarity is not necessarily effective. Schools can impose disciplinary power on the students, but whether this power takes effect also depends on the students. Generally, the relation between the use of disciplinary power and the students is contradictory. But once the disciplinary power has seeped into an individual’s body and mind, it becomes part of that individual’s identity. In this way disciplinary power becomes biopower, controlling the individual’s consciousness and body. It is the societal control exercised through media and other modern technologies that makes possible the transformation of disciplinary power into biopower (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 24). These student-teachers followed the practices of teaching they learnt in their former homeland. They interpreted their experiences in these schools using this frame of reference. Having absorbed the power that directed their experiences as students and teachers overseas, they sought to rearticulate these Australian in school settings. In this sense biopower had achieved some degree of command over their curriculum work and imaginings as teachers. It was expressed as an integral, vital function in their everyday embrace of the curriculum and what it means to be a teacher. Through their practicum these student-teachers themselves reactivated this biopower of their own accord. Although no longer obligated to the models of teaching and learning that existed in their homeland, they remained objects of its power. This biopower was thoroughly imbued in their sense of teaching and learning, administering their curriculum endeavours. Along with societal discipline and control, this biopower was also a stake in the production and reproduction of these WES student-teachers as ‘Australian school teachers.’ Conclusion Europe’s Bologna Process has direct implications for the acceptance of teacher education awards and the transnational mobility of student-teachers and graduate teachers from countries in Latin America, North America, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. It has important implications for the success and reputation of teacher education providers in serving domestic, immigrant and international students from many countries. As a contribution to this work, this paper has focused on some of the challenges in teacher education associated with the already existing transnational mobility of students. It found that these WES student- teachers confronted challenges around their racial or ethnic ‘differences’, identity shifts and their educational multi-cultures. This paper has addressed the tensions these WES student- teachers confronted in the Australian teaching environment. The hidden curriculum driving the process of metamorphosis in their identities was explained by using Hardt and Negri’s (2000) multi-dimensional conceptualisation of power: ‘disciplinary society’, ‘society of control’ and ‘biopower.’ Given this context, considerations about future developments in the transnational developments in teacher education might usefully benefit from reflecting on the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 78 Bologna Process as it moves from ‘out there’ to find expression in, and responses through local teacher education curricula ‘here and there.’ References Department of Education, Science and Training (2006). The Bologna Process and Australia: Next Steps. (Canberra): Australian Government. Bauman, Z. (1996), From pilgrim to tourist: A short history of identity. In S. Hall and P. Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (pp. 18-36). London: Sage. Carr, P. & Klassen, T. (1997). Different perceptions of race in education: Racial minority and white teachers. Canadian Journal of Education. 22 (1), 67-81. The Committee for the Review of Teaching and Teacher Education (Dow, K., Chair) (2003a). Australia’s Teachers: Australia’s Future, Advancing Innovation, Science, Technology and Mathematics, Agenda for Action. Canberra: Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training. Dow, E. (2006). Britannia meets Bologna: Still making waves? Perspective. 10 (1), 9-14. Hall, S. (1996). Introduction: Who needs ‘identity’? In S. Hall and P. Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (pp. 1-17). London: Sage. Han, J. (2004). Teacher shortages, bilingual teachers and the mobility of transnational knowledge workers. Melbourne Studies in Education. 45 (2), 99-112. Han, J. (2006). The retention of ‘World English Speaking’ student-teachers: A cultural studies perspective on teacher shortages in the context of the mobility of transnational knowledge workers (A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Western Sydney). Hardt, M & Negri, A. (2001). Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Institute of Languages UNSW (n.d.). PEAT – Professional English Assessment for Teachers: Information for Candidates and Exemplar. Sydney: University of New South Wales. Kalantzis, M., Cope, B., Noble, G. & Poynting, S. (1990). Cultures of Schooling: Pedagogies for Cultural Difference and Social Access. London: The Falmer Press. Neave, G. (2005). The supermarketed university: Reform, visions and ambiguity in British higher education. Perspective. 9 (1), 17-22. Remennick, L. (2002). Survival of the fittest: Russian immigrant teachers speak about their professional adjustment in Israel. International Migration. 40 (1), 99 – 121. Santoro, N., Kamler, B. and Reid, J. (2001). Teachers talking difference: Teacher education and the poetics of anti-racism. Teaching Education. 12 (2), 191-212. Singh, M. & Han, J. (in press, 2007). Transnational mobility and World English Speaking student-teachers: Bologna’s interruption of absences in teacher education. In Phelan, A. and Sumsion, J. (ed.) Provoking Absences: Critical Readings in Teacher Education. Rotterdam (The Netherlands): Sense Publishers. Valdes, G. (1999). Non-native English speakers: Language bigotry in English mainstream classrooms. ADDL Bulletin. 31 (1), 43-48. Wachter, B. (2004). The Bologna Process: Developments and prospects. European Journal of Education. 39 (3), 265-273. Witte, J. (2004). The introduction of two-tiered study structures in the context of the Bologna Process: A theoretical framework for an international comparative study of change in higher education systems. Higher Education Policy. 17, 405-425. Authors Jinghe Han is a lecturer in English language and literacy education at Charles Sturt University. She is currently investigating Australian, Chinese and European perceptions, conceptions and experiences of the Bologna Process. This arises from her study of issues http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Jinghe Han & Michael Singh: World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers’ experiences of schools Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 79 relating to the retention of World English Speaking student-teachers from overseas to meet the skills mismatch of teachers throughout Australia. Her research publications include explorations of the mobility of transnational knowledge workers (Melbourne Studies in Education), global English and the loss of language communities (Mosaic), and vocational education in China (VOCAL). In 2006 she was the elected post-graduate student representative on the Executive of the Australian Association for Research in Education. Email: jhan@csu.edu.au Michael Singh is Professor of Education, Centre for Educational Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia. He has recently studied the initial development of Queensland’s multi-level, large scale education and training reforms to the senior phase of learning, and is investigating the globalisation of higher education through the Bologna Process. He is currently investigating strategies for making ‘robust hope’ practical through undertaking research into innovation in international, regional and urban education, comparative cultural studies and meta-language learning strategies. His most recent book, Globalizing Education (edited with M. Apple and J. Kenway), explores the local/global connectedness evident in policies and pedagogies governing education and its reform. Email: m.j.singh@uws.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:jhan@csu.edu.au mailto:singh@uws.edu.au