INTERNATIONAL PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ PRACTICUM EXPERIENCES IN THE U.S.: ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE STUDIES By Jihea Kang A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education—Doctor of Philosophy 2017   ABSTRACT INTERNATIONAL PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ PRACTICUM EXPERIENCES IN THE U.S.: ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE STUDIES By Jihea Kang Many colleges around the world have been undergoing demographic shifts under the influence of globalization. The population of international students continues to grow dramatically. As such increasing number of international students has been enrolling U.S colleges. Teacher education is not an exception. However, international teacher candidates’ experiences and backgrounds are not always validated in their teacher education program. This means that teacher candidates need to learn to articulate what they may need as well as what they could bring to the program and their future classroom. Likewise, teacher educators need to find ways to support those teachers’ academic and professional learning. Few studies examined how these teacher candidates experience their learning to teach particularly during their practicum. Also, little is known how they position themselves, or are positioned by others in communities of teaching practice in relation to their social identities, including race/ethnicity, cultures, language, and gender. This study focuses on a Chinese, Chinese-Korean, and Korean female teacher candidates’ practicum experiences in the U.S. Using an ethnographic case approach, this study examines the transnational narratives of the three women and investigates ways in which their practicum experiences gives opportunities them to promote their professional learning and growth, by asking the following questions:  (1) What did motivate three international pre-service teachers to study abroad and major education? How do their desires of gaining capital (e.g., social, cultural, economic) and belonging to an imagined community impact their transnational educational   migration?; (2) How do the participants navigate internship spaces and professional relationships?; and (3) How do the participants make sense of diversity in the U.S. contexts? By emphasizing the ways in which these candidates navigate their practicum drawing on their social identities, this study argues not only for the acknowledgement of the multiple identities that international teacher candidates bring to the classroom, but also for a counterspace where multifaceted identities are enacted and their counter-stories are heard. This study also suggests recommendations for teacher educators and practicum stakeholders to empower international teacher candidates. Ultimately, it demonstrates that teacher educators and teacher preparation programs need to provide a reflective and transformative (counter-) space for all teachers candidates. Copyright by JIHEA KANG 2017   To my parents and family   v   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I was able to have overcome challenges and enjoy this journey with the support, help, and encouragement of numerous people. I would like to thank my advisors, Dr. Cheryl Rosaen and Dr. Terry Flennaugh, whose persistent feedback and support have been quintessential throughout my Ph.D. journey. I would like to acknowledge my dissertation committee members, Drs. Alyssa Dunn, Guofang Li, Seungho Moon, Django Paris, and Carrie Symons. They offered me with insights, encouragements, and giving spirit to continue to research and write. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Dr. Lynn Pain for her support and mentorship. Further, I would be deeply thankful to my participants in this study – Ling, Eunju and Mei. I am greatly indebted to their willingness to share their stories. I would like to thank my family and friends. My parents, Ilgoo Kang and Sunja Son, and my brother, Jiho Kang, in South Korea have provided me support and encouragement during my personal, academic, professional endeavors. Their unwavering belief, inspirations, and support made me who I am. I could not have finish my graduate school works and overcome challenging moments without my friends, Abe, Amber, Eunjeong, Gerado, Sangah, Shinyoung, Veronica, Wei, and many more at graduate school. Thank you to each and every one of you for the shared laughter, tears, memories, and above all, persistent encouragement and support. I would like to extend my gratitude to my husband, Rohan Maddamsetti, who has provided tremendous support for me to be able to survive and thrive throughout this journey.   vi   TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................1 Working Definition of Terms .........................................................................................................4 Practicum experience ...........................................................................................................4 Field instructor .....................................................................................................................4 Learning to teach .................................................................................................................5 Problematizing the Racialized Terms ..............................................................................................5 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW .........................................................................................8 Overview .........................................................................................................................................8 Transnational Migration.................................................................................................................11 Transnational Educational Migration ...........................................................................................14 Transnational educational migration and imagined communities ....................................14 Transnational educational migration and gaining capital ..................................................17 Im/migrant Teachers’ Experiences ................................................................................................19 Racialized Experiences of Im/migration Teachers ........................................................................22 CHAPTER III RESEARCH DESIGN ...........................................................................................25 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................25 Methods .........................................................................................................................................25 Research Contexts ..........................................................................................................................25 The teacher education program .........................................................................................25 Participants’ practicum contexts .......................................................................................28 Participant Selection and Participant Profile .................................................................................30 Ling ....................................................................................................................................31 Eunju .................................................................................................................................32 Mei .....................................................................................................................................33 Researcher Positionality.................................................................................................................35 Data Sources .................................................................................................................................37 Semi-structured interviews ................................................................................................40 Participants’ reflective journals .........................................................................................43 Teaching artifacts ...............................................................................................................43 Participant observation and field note................................................................................44 Data Translation .............................................................................................................................44 Data Analysis .................................................................................................................................45 Ongoing analysis................................................................................................................45 Within- and cross- case analysis ........................................................................................47 Within-case analysis ..............................................................................................48 Cross-case analysis ................................................................................................48   vii   CHAPTER IV TRANSNATIONAL NARRATIVES ..................................................................50 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................50 Reasons to Study Education in a U.S. Teacher Preparation Program ...........................................52 Inevitable Marginalization: “Floating Lives” and “Translation”...................................................58 Ling’s “floating lives”........................................................................................................58 Eunju’s living and learning through “translation” .............................................................59 Summary .......................................................................................................................................61 CHAPTER V MAKING SENSE OF DIVERSITY IN A U.S. CONTEXT..................................63 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................63 A Single Categorical Analysis of Views on Race and Racism ......................................................65 Prior knowledge and beliefs in issues of race and racism .................................................65 Understanding racism and racial connotation regarding “model minority” Asians .........67 Ling’s narratives on conforming and debunking model minority stereotype ....................72 Intersectional Analysis of Social Identities....................................................................................78 Intersections between race and language ...........................................................................78 Mei’s narratives .................................................................................................................85 Race/ethnicity and language ..................................................................................85 Influence of internalized racialization ...................................................................91 Ling’s narratives ................................................................................................................93 Ling’s shifting understanding ................................................................................93 Summary ........................................................................................................................................98 CHAPTER VII NEGOTIATING RELATIONSHIP AND CLASSROOM SPACE .................101 Introduction .................................................................................................................................101 Classroom Context, Strategies in Negotiating Knowledge and Spaces .......................................103 Ling’s Case: Embracing of Chinese and Western Strategies ......................................................104 Ling’s classroom contexts ...............................................................................................104 Ling’s assumptions on teaching .......................................................................................105 Combination of Chinese and western strategies ..............................................................107 Mei’s Case: Showing and Exploring Resistance as a Strategy ....................................................110 Mie’s classroom contexts ................................................................................................110 Active resistance in addressing tensions ..........................................................................110 Eunju’s Case: Critical Thoughts on Different Educational Contexts ..........................................114 Eunju’s classroom contexts .............................................................................................114 Eunju’s critical thoughts .................................................................................................115 Romanticizing “Asian” Educational Contexts .............................................................................118 Summary ......................................................................................................................................119 CHAPTER VIII DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND CONCLUSION ..............................124 Revisiting Transnational Educational Migration: Capital and Mobility......................................125 Bourdieu’s capital ............................................................................................................125 Imagined community and mobility ..................................................................................128 Metaphorical conceptualization about marginalization ...................................................133 Professional growth and agency during the internship ....................................................134 Implications..................................................................................................................................140   viii   Implications for international teacher candidates ...........................................................140 Implications for teacher educators ...................................................................................143 Limitations and Future Research Directions................................................................................150 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................151 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................153   ix   LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Research context ..............................................................................................................26 Table 2. Profiles of the three teacher candidates ...........................................................................30 Table 3. Research design matrix ....................................................................................................37 Table 4. Summary of data sources .................................................................................................38 Table 5. Sample interview questions of the semi-structured interview .........................................42 Table 6. Preliminary data codes applied to generated data ............................................................46 Table 7. Different forms of capital and privileges in their host and home country .......................56   x   LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Theoretical perspectives .................................................................................................11   xi   CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION During the internship I learned a lot about myself, and how society works, especially how this society treats you based on your color and language. You have to find support and fight for your place as an international student teacher. In my home country, I always felt privileged with what I had and comfortable with my own people. Here, in this urban school, I never feel that way. I feel so powerless. Even these poor little people don’t respect you. I feel like from the poor Third World country and being here as a migrant worker (Transcript of Interview with Mei, February, 8th, 2015). The number of international students in the U.S. has been consistently increasing. Especially East Asian students, such as from China or Korea, have consistently been the largest number of international students in English speaking countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Australia. These students also have received increasing attention in the field of higher education (e.g., Lee & Rice, 2007). Among many goals, higher admission rates of international students indicate that higher education institutions hope to prepare their domestic students to live and work harmoniously in more diverse and global contexts (Houshmand, Spanierman, & Tafarodi, 2014). However, regardless of the aims of intercultural exchange and globalism, increasing recruitment and enrollment of international college students are not always accompanied by a consideration of their cultural backgrounds and by strong support of their educational experiences after enrollment. In the field of teacher education, as Johnson and Golombek (2002) have noted, nonnative English speaking teachers (NNEST), such as international teacher candidates, face challenges not necessarily shared by other professionals. Non-native speaking (NNES) student teachers have to cope with challenges, such as linguistic competence and cultural socialization in U.S. schooling contexts (Shin, 2008; Park, 2014; Santoro, 2009). East Asian teacher candidates, for example, may feel particular cultural conflicts and tensions. In East Asia, the role of the   1   teacher, based on Confucianism, has been to convey wisdom and knowledge as well as familial or communal norms such as filial piety, both in and outside school (Nguyen, 2009; 2012). While East Asian culture views that a teacher represents deep reverence, discipline, and order, U.S. society has not necessarily given comparable respect or deserved status with financial rewards to teachers (Nguyen, 2009; Park, 2014). It is also important to acknowledge that discourses of racialization and marginalization encountered by NNESTs should not overlook the existence of other forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) they have accumulated in their home country. As Mei’s comments above illustrate, her educational journey intersects her privileged life in her home country with the marginalization encountered during her internship. In fact, studies on transnational identities illustrate that many individuals grapple with making sense of their cultures, communities, homes, and responsibilities (Rhee & Subreenduth, 2006; Rhee, 2006). Then, how did Mei perceive and embrace the contradictory and conflicting identities? In other words, she was perceived both as a privileged Asian woman who could afford to travel to the U.S. and study for an advanced degree and a foreign woman of color whose accent and body often speak louder and faster. When her social identity and body, marked as Asian are read as incongruent and contrasting in the U.S. context, how did she engage in discourses to validate her Asianness? During her internship, how did she navigate her practicum experiences? The current study examines three East Asian women’s journey of transnational educational migration, which illustrates the intersection of racialization, privilege, and professional growth during their learning to teach in a U.S. teacher education program. Ling, Eunju, and Mei came to the U.S. with various forms of capital that they had accumulated in their home country. Yet, for example, Mei, an upper-middle class Chinese woman with Korean   2   heritage, narrated stories of the linguistic and racial marginalization in her home country. Ling accounted stories of being a low-middle class student while her parents sold a car for her education. The three women perceived themselves as being privileged and marginalized in educational and professional contexts. Further, their linguistic and racial identity as Asian women with accents in the U.S. appeared to contribute to their racialization that may have led to forms of disempowerment during the internship as illustrated in Mei’s case above. In this sense, the narratives of these three women in this study are not simply stories of marginalized Others, but they are (counter-) stories of how they navigate and resist their racialzed, genderized, and classed identities to exercise agency in a professional setting. Thus, the study examines the transnational narratives of the three women and investigates ways in which their field experiences gave opportunities for the interns to develop their professional growth, asking the following questions:     1. What do motivate three international pre-service teachers to study education? a. How do their desires of gaining capital (e.g., social, cultural, economic) and belonging to an imagined community impact their transnational educational migration? 2. How do the participants navigate internship spaces and professional relationships? 3. How do the participants make sense of diversity in the U.S. contexts? To this end, the analysis focuses on the forms of racialization the participants encountered in negotiating and (re-) constructing their cultural and professional identities during the internship in order to examine how the privilege and racialization play out in their educational experiences and teaching practice. In the literature review, I examine the studies of transnational migration, NNESTs’ professional growth and, if any, racialization, which have been extensively discussed by other   3   scholars (e.g., Diniz de Figueiredo, 2011; Park, 2014). I also address the perspectives on Model Minority and micro-aggressions with respect to their understanding of diversity. Finally, I problematize the terms, “NNESTs,” “sojourner” or “international” students due to its limited illustration of my participants’ experiences. I argue that my participants should not be lumped together as another group (e.g., international students, women, sojourner, NNEST, etc.) as a category of analysis. Working Definitions of Terms Practicum experience The literature uses “internship,” “student teaching practicum,” “practice of teaching,” or “clinical teaching” interchangeably, to refer to the period when teacher education programs require students to observe and learn from experienced teachers’ teaching, to join all school activities, and to practice guided lead teaching. In this research, the terms, “practicum,” “field experiences,” “internship,” or “student teaching” are interchangeably used. The field experiences/ student teaching offer students an opportunity to integrate the knowledge they acquired through different coursework. Practicum experience assists teacher candidates to develop and refine their teaching skills and competencies for their professional career. The methods section provides more detailed background information related to the practicum that the current three participants have been engaged in. Field instructor “Field instructor” refers to doctoral students from the university who work in collaboration with the cooperating teachers at the interns’ practicum placement school; they mediate the relationship among cooperating teachers, teacher candidates, and the education program of the university. While the field instructors do not directly support the intern’s   4   coursework, they are responsible for supporting the interns in terms of teaching and getting them familiar to the placement. For example, field instructors have a brief conference after the informal/formal observations of intern’s teaching. Field instructors also regularly hold seminars to share the interns’ experiences of teaching and learning as student teachers. Learning to teach In this study, the phrase, “learning to teach” refers to four broad themes: 1) learning to think like a teacher, 2) learning to know like a teacher, 3) learning to feel like a teacher and 4) learning to act like a teacher (Feiman-Nemser, 2001; 2003). Firstly, learning to think like a teacher requires critically examining their existing predispositions and beliefs in order to reflect and adjust one’s teaching practice (Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). Second, learning to know like a teacher emphasizes not only deep knowledge of subject matter, but also understandings about how students’ social identity markers (e.g., culture, language, race/ethnicity, class, etc.) affect their learning. To feel like a teacher means that teacher candidates understand how teaching and learning to teach are intricately connected to personal work, engaging their emotional and multiple identities (Bullough Jr, 2002). Finally, learning to teach in this study refers to a set of skills, strategies, and pedagogical stances in order to establish classroom routines and make teaching manageable. Problematizing the Racialized Terms In this study, I use the acronym NNEST to describe the teachers whose first language is not English and who have spent most of their lives in their home countries where English is not an official or second language. Due to the lack of generally accepted alternative terms, NNEST has been used in order to illustrate a comprehensive understanding of these teachers (e.g., Duchensne & Stitou, 2010). I acknowledge that using the term NNEST implicates the possibility   5   of essentializing the group of NNEST from a deficit perspective. Rather, the present study calls for accurate and empowering term(s). After all, my participants may be perceived as: international students, im/migrant teachers, NNESTs, ELL college students, Asian women, sojourners, etc. All these labels refer in overlapping fashion to some degree, and yet they are not synonyms. Most of international student do come from a linguistic background that is different from Standard American English in the U.S., but not all ELL college students are international students. Not all sojourner college students are international students, nor are all international students sojourners (some of them become a first generation of an immigrant). International students are not necessarily immigrants, but possibly migrants or sojourners who might plan to go back to their home country, or decide to stay in the U.S. Perhaps the common thread among these terms is that there is a sense of not necessarily being permanent. They are not necessarily deeply attached to the place or community and they could readily move or be relocated (Hamann, 2001). They appear to have strategically positioned themselves on the borders of multiple cultures and languages. This dual sense of borderland belonging, and ambivalent attachments to different cultures can be aligned with transnational identities as well. As Duany (2008) explored the transnational identities among Dominicans in New York City, he noted that im/migrants and sojourners belong to multiple communities with fluid and hybrid identities – their identities are not necessarily grounded on national or territorial boundaries, but on their subjective affiliations. Related to this study and the relationship with my participants, I had to keep asking myself and my participants throughout the study whether it is possible to group all of these teacher candidates collectively based on the different cultural identifications, languages, class backgrounds, and relationships to their home country, heritage language, and the U.S. Or is it   6   another way of thinking about, and writing about an ethnocentric and essentialized group of people? My participants stated that they were Chinese, Korean, or Korean decent with Chinese background. Each participant had complicated and different modes of their identities. Perhaps, the study actually may have to be named without a certain common cultural and ethnic category, except for the fact that all the women of color in the study were marked involuntarily and voluntarily by the names of Korea, China, and the U.S. Overall, through the narratives of these three women, I intend to take a critical stance on racialized terms and also aim to illustrate the sociocultural contexts where they learned to teach and became a teacher. Thus, I argue that this study consists of each participant’s singular and their collective voice(s) in different nuance.   7   CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW Overview This chapter reviews the literature on transnational migration, im/migrant teachers’ experiences and issues of agency. To be specific, it includes NNES teacher candidates’ racialized experiences in professional contexts in a globalization era. This literature review situates the present study and frames its questions and contributions in the current scholarly literature. To be specific, this chapter addresses the discussion over perspectives on non-native English speaking (NNES) teacher candidates' understanding of their professional growth. Further, the review of literature examines their racialized experiences, with particular reference to the K-12 educational setting in the U.S. as well as other English-speaking countries such as Canada and Australia. More importantly, similar to transnational experiences of immigrant teachers in Englishspeaking countries, international students’ transnational educational migration and mobility have been a significant aspect in studies of transnational migration over the last twenty years (Pham & Tran, 2015). Gaining intercultural, economic, or social capital is often identified as key factors that motivate those student migrations to come to “developed” countries and engage in learning. At the same time, fostering intercultural awareness for domestic and international students is often cited to be the major issue in those western developed countries (e.g., the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc.). However, such an approach to understanding the intercultural adjustment process of international students, including international pre-service teachers, does not fully explore the complexities of learning to teach and teaching practices (e.g., Soong, 2015). Research on the field experiences and teaching practices (e.g., service learning, teaching practicum, internship) of those international pre-serive teachers (e.g., Sabar, 2004) have raised   8   concerns about their unique struggles and challenges encountered by those teacher candidates. These broadly include: cultural and linguistic barriers, difficulty in building professional relationships, and lack of additional resources and preparation time, and racialized experiences such as lingucism or racism (e.g., Nguyen, 2014). In particular, studies of racial discrimination and micro-aggressions faced by NNES international students illustrate that many experience less-than-friendly campus and classroom environments may interrupt their educational experiences. From a neo-racism perspective (Lee & Rice, 2007), this contemporary form of direct and indirect racism positions international students as "Other" and "Outsider," in contrast to the view that discriminatory and prejudicial remarks, attitudes, and behaviors are attributed to cultural differences rather than essentially race by itself. The questions remain: a) How do these international students as student teachers in their professional setting make sense of their transnational migration and inevitable marginalization (e.g., linguicism and racism); and b) how do they enact professional agency and develop a sense of professional growth? Diniz de Figueiredo (2011) noted the native speaker fallacy, that pervasive native English speakers are better teachers, and its impact on institutional policies, employment, and practices (see also Canagarajah, 1999). Based on a survey with 19 open-ended questions which addressed teachers’ concerns prior to coming to the U.S., their experiences at school, and the role of language, eight Brazilian teachers of ESL working in public elementary and middle schools in the Southeast of the U.S. responded to the survey. The findings illustrate that NNESTs feel to some extent a sense of insecurity and they find teaching intimidating due to the pervasive concept that the native speaker in English language teaching is more authentic. Nevertheless, the findings also illuminates that the teachers’ professional identities go beyond authority and knowledge of language, but there are other qualities to develop their professional identities, such   9   as the rapport with students/parents/colleagues, and various language backgrounds. He demonstrated that examining how NNESTs working in K-12 schools in the U.S. perceive their professional growth with regard to the school environment, its norms, their colleagues, their administrators, and their students and their families helps us understand multiple NNEST identities, and also how their compound identities are affected by the sociocultural contexts that shape their teaching practice. As Diniz de Figueiredo (2011) noted, however, the teachers’ agency and self-assurance are still in constant tension and conflict with the prevalent notion of English speaking native teachers’ superiority. It is significant that the current research aligns with the arguments that the discourse around issues of native vs. non-native teachers should move beyond addressing the linguistic features (e.g. speaking skills) of the teachers (Kubota & Lin, 2006; 2010). Rather, social, ethnic/racial, and cultural contexts should be considered to examine NNESTs’ professional identities. Thus, the current study seeks a deeper understanding of NNES student teachers’ own perceptions and understandings of their professional growth throughout the field experience year, as well as their racialized experiences and the impact of those experiences on their professional growth in U.S. school contexts. NNES student teachers’ their field experience and their racialized experiences are the major themes of this study. I suggest that this can be examined through critical reflection on their teaching practice, and through inquiry into their personal and professional experiences in relation to contextual influences, such as their cooperating teachers, students, or colleagues. These understandings have the potential to reinforce the sense of agency and ownership of the profession that increases over time and through experiences. Based on the argument above and research questions, this section has three main parts (see figure 1.). In the first part, I review the meanings of transnational migration. To be specific,   10   I examine how social and individuals’ imaginations and desires to belong to “imagined community” promoted transnational migration and influenced the possible selves and identities. Further, I examine NNESTs’ experiences, drawing on relevant studies in the field of teacher education and also in the TESOL area, in order to provide the conceptualizations of NNES. I also review studies of NNESTs’ experiences. Thirdly, the literature review focuses on the challenges of NNESTs regarding their racialized experiences. Transnatioanal   Educational   Migration   Navigating   internship   Making  sense  of   diversity  in  the  U.S.   school  contexts   Individual  &   social  imagined   community   Building   professional   relationships   Racialized   experieces   Social,  cultura,   economic  capital   Issues  of   legitimacy  and   agency   Im/migrant   teachers'   experiences   Figure 1. Theoretical perspectives Transnational Migration There have been always debates and discussions in the U.S. concerning im/migrants’ experiences. These conversations have continued through acknowledging patterns of assimilation, acculturation, and integration that vary and depend on im/migrants’ home country, sociocultural, economic, and political contexts of their sending and receiving communities (Brittain, 2002; Inda & Rosaldo, 2008; Waters & Jimenez, 2005). Transnational migration studies emerged as an inherently interdisciplinary field such as sociology or anthropology that added another perspective to these conversations. For example,   11   Inda and Rosaldo (2008) argued that transnational migration has never been a one-way simplistic process of assimilating into a melting pot or a multicultural salad bowl, but rather focusing on ways in which those migrants are concurrently embedded in multiple sites and contexts of the transnational social fields to varying extents (Inda & Rosaldo, 2008). Scholars further illustrated how transnational migrants and their descendants take part in socio-economic, political, cultural, religious, and familial processes across national borders while they become part of the places where they stay or settle (Schiller, Basch & Blanc‐Szanton, 1992). Trans-migrants is a conception of the “new migrants” defined in contrast to a conventional description of immigrants who may have been permanently uprooted from their home country setting having to “adapt” to new circumstance in host societies (Tsing, 1993; 2011). To develop a better understanding of the transnational process, many scholars attempted to define the terminology of transnationalism. Under this definition, im/migrants’ lives cut across national/state boundaries and bring the two or multiple societies into a hybrid social field (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997). As Jones (1992) noted, however, it is not those im/migrants alone who attempt to bring two or multiple societies together. He noted that the so-called globalized world has also been bounded together by a global capitalism driven by economics and it has operated to create the transnational migration phenomenon. There are also some important conditions that most literature addresses concerning transnationalism and transnational migration. The first condition is that the im/migrants maintain connections to their home country, and that families tend to stay functional across national/state boundaries. The second condition is that many transnational migrants do not and/or may not be able to establish permanent residency in the host country. However, it is not clear under those   12   conditions of transnational migration how many people stay for how long in the host country, and how many people return to live in their country of origin. Another important theme, beyond addressing diverse conditions of transnational migration that appears in most of the literature is that the transnational migrants want upward socio-economic mobility. Transnational migrants who are willing to migrate and work in Western cities are doing so in order to improve their status in their home country (e.g., Schiller, Basch, & Blanc, 1995). Yet, not all transnational migrants with financial means and social capital pursue the transnational migration. For example, Fong (2011) followed the experiences of young Chinese students in countries such as Ireland, Australia, the USA, Canada, Singapore, Britain and Japan. Through exhaustive ethnographic data, Fong examined the reasons that students decided to study abroad and what happened to their lives before and after studying abroad. To her surprise, these were not predominantly stories of affluent cadres' children hoping for global success. Rather, the majority of Fong's transnational Chinese were young people who had not done well enough to attend a Chinese university or who were dissatisfied with their current employment. They were more common stories of single children whose parents' modest incomes and assets were totally invested in their educational journey, with the hope of repayment if successful. Related to this notion of the status in their home country (as well as in the host country), a significant aspect of “making it” in host societies also includes social and cultural aspects of their situation. Sociocultural aspects in their lived experiences deserve closer attention. Jones (1992) outlined four key-premises that are central to conceptualizing transnationalism: 1) the social boundaries of action are almost always subject to change, 2) lived lives of transnational migrants are intricately linked to the conditions of global capitalism, 3) compelling narratives of transnational migrants drive us to (re)conceptualize the notions of nationalism,   13   class, ethnicity, and race, and 4) the discussion of transnationalism is grounded in the daily lived experiences of people and they draw upon different identity constructs with multiple group affiliation and membership. However, critiques argued that there are ambiguous definitions, including, global, and international, and transnational (e.g., Sassen, 1998). Some argued that transnationalism is too dichotomized to describe different forms of transnationalism that differ from migrants’ relations to assimilation and adjustment (e.g., Kearny, 1995). Alternative terms were also proposed in response, such as translocalism, bilocalism, and trans-state activity (Waldinger & Fitzgerald, 2004). Others asked about the scope and significance of this transnational phenomena, raising questions that too many claims have been based on case studies, especially those of Latina/o American and Caribbean migrants, who have had an intricate socio-historical relationship to the U.S. (e.g., Dahinden, 2005). In sum, many scholars in the field of sociology and anthropology have been actively examining varying conditions and issues of transnational migration around the world. Likewise, diverse forms of migration are critical and contesting issues in education today. In the field of education, topics of transnational migrants (e.g., Waters, 2005) and international college students (e.g., Kim & Kim, 2010) have led to a rich body of studies examining topics ranging from systematic inequities and injustice that many transnational migrant students and international students encounter (e.g., Suarez-Orozco, 2001). Transnationalism is particularly salient for im/migrant youth who create social imaginations what Appadurai (1996, p. 31) calls the “constructed landscape of collective aspirations” of lives in the U.S. and in their home country. Transnational Educational Migration Transnational educational migration and imagined communities. Imagined communities refer to groups of people with whom one is willing to connect through the   14   imagination although it might not be instantaneously tangible or accessible (Kanno & Norton, 2003). This may include one’s own workplaces, educational institutions, and religious groups. However, according to Anderson (2006), they are not the only communities with which one is affiliated. He argued that individuals imagine themselves bonding with other individuals across cultural and linguistic borders. This notion of imagined community has been widely conceptualized in various fields, but there are some common themes (Soong, 2015). Appadurai (1996) noted that “The world we live in today is characterized by a new role for the imagination on social life...The image, the imagined, the imagery. These are all terms that direct us to something critical and new in global cultural processes: the imagination as a social practice...the imagination has become an organized field of social practices, a form of work...and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined fields of possibility. This unleashing of the imagination links the play of pastiche to the terror and coercion of states and their competitors. The imagination is now central to all forms of agency, is itself a social fact, and is the key component of the new global order (p.31).” Studying this aspect of possibility through imagined community in the lives of transnational educational migrants may also provide possibilities and suggestions for both educational and social change. First, imagined communities play a pivotal role to expand one’s range of possible selves. On the one hand, it may compel learners to seek certain kinds of educational opportunities and engagement that they might otherwise not pursue. This is illustrated by Soong’s example (2015) of migrant teachers from India, Japan, or Israel and their choosing to study education in Australia, as well as Robertson et al.’s case studies (2000) of international students’ desires to seek higher education in the U.S. and their efforts to familiarize themselves with new cultural   15   practices. On the other hand, imagined communities may also create socially imagined identities that can shape one’s learning experiences. Secondly, as Anderson (2006) argued that print capitalism which means that standardizing print languages and connections across the same languages promoted a notion of nationalism, in a similar way, in this day and age, mass media and technological advances promotes individuals what is possible to re/imagine. Thirdly, although imagination can be limited at personal level, it is fundamentally related to social ideologies and hegemonies (Aappdurai, 1996). One could argue that it is precisely due to transnational migrants’ relatively privileged position promoted their actual transnational educational migration as many transnational families (e.g., Park & Bae, 2009) who were willing to go to English countries for their children’s sociolinguistic capital. Similarly, international students in higher education also play a critical role in constructing and maintaining in this imagined developed world community given that they want to gain various forms of privileges through the transnational migration. For instance, in Rhee’s study (2006), transnational narratives of Korean women in U.S. higher education setting illustrated intricate power relationships between the U.S. and Korea and its influential roles for motivating transnational educational migrations of those women to the U.S. higher education. However, the participants in Rhee’s study (2006) demonstrated that how they had strategically and ambivalently “explored, altered, and confirmed” their choices of studying in U.S. higher educational contexts through re/imagining, negotiating, and distancing the particular identifications and histories. In a similar vein, Fong (2011) also argued that those transnational educational migrants’ notions and desires towards the developed countries are not necessarily a form of reversed Orientalism that eroticizes the Western and developed world. While analyzing Chinese students’   16   concepts of Waiguo [“foreign countries” in Chinese] and their desires to study abroad, she argued that transnational educational migration is based on recognition of transnational migrants, including her participants, that the ways in which their home country is aligned with (or not) cultures, political systems, economics, and laws of different developed countries. Similarly, Sassen (1998) argued that large cities in developed countries with transnational educational migrants have a tendency to construct and produce denationalized elite groups who are willing to share affinities with other transnational elite in globalized cities of other countries than with the non-elite groups in their own home countries. Thus, those developed countries’ denationalized elite group, whom many transnational educational migrants hope to join, have formed an imagined community of developed countries. As Gruzd, Wellman, and Takhteyev (2011) demonstrated, social media such as Twitter or Facebook, has constructed the basis of interconnected personal community and a sense of community beyond nation-states boundaries. Likewise, Sun (2002) also illustrated how technological advancements promoted social imaginations towards developed world and this social imagination even in small villages in China is reflected in many Chinese students’ transnational imagination and migration since the early 1990s. In brief, these studies demonstrate that experiences of transnational educational migrants, as the participants in this study, must be understood not only in relation to one’s investment in gaining certain sets of privileges, but also in relation to their investment and willingness in imagining “possible” selves and worlds (Kanno, & Norton, 2003). Transnational educational migration and gaining capital. Studies indicate that many students imagine transnational educational migration as a way to help them maintain, or transform their social class (Fong, 2011). On the one hand, transnational educational migration is   17   linked to a means to (re)produce social class (e.g., Tran, 2015). For example, studies of transnational educational migration phenomena from China (e.g., Fong, 2011), Vietnam (e.g., Cao & Tran, 2014), and Korea (Kim, 2011), many middle-class families use their financial capital for their children’s education to maintain their socio-economic status in a highly competitive society. In this sense, many middle-class families and their children view gaining foreign educational credentials through study abroad as an investment for professional opportunities. On the other hand, studies point out that it is a myth that all international students are middle-class with financial means (Fong, 2011). Studies suggest that increasing students from low socio-economic class families have been pursuing transnational educational migrations (Tran, 2014). For those who are privileged, gaining cultural experiences through transnational educational migration is not their purpose; rather, gaining economic and social capital in the country of migration. In other words, many of these students imagine transnational educational migration as a way to help them transform their social class. To understand how social class and different forms of capital shape transnational educational migration, Bourdieu’s (1990) notion of capital is useful. According to Bourdieu’s theory of social practice, various contesting social fields construct society and characterize difference forms capitals. Those capitals manifest accumulated forms of resources, traits, behaviors, skills, and knowledge. Individuals’ accrued capitals originate from certain value system related to particular fields (Tran, 2015). To be specific, Bourdieu proposed three essential forms of capital: the economic, the social and the cultural. In Bourdieu’s terms, economic capital refers to the access to material and financial resources (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Social capital is connected to the social advantages in relation to social memberships,   18   networks and relationships. Finally, cultural capital refers to understanding the skills, knowledge, titles, and sensibilities that people share and possess. This notion of cultural capital includes, the embodied (e.g., language competence), the institutionalized (e.g., educational backgrounds), and the objectified (including books and networks) (Bourdieu, 1986; Soong, 2012). Economic capital is understood as the financial means and resources that the participants and their family possess and invest in education for study abroad. Various forms of cultural capital refer to their language competence (and desire for gaining language competence), foreign credentials (e.g., U.S. college degrees; U.S. teacher certification), work experiences and cultural sensibilities. Social capital refers to the social status of their family in their home country and consequential positional advantage that they might have access to. Symbolic capital refers to the ways in which various forms of capital are perceived in a corresponding social structure, such as the prestige or status value attached to certain competencies, values, and/or places of learning and teaching. The current study use the notions of capital to examine the ways in which forms of capital are desired and (re-) shaped through transnational educational migration. Im/migrant Teachers’ Experiences In relation to NNESTs’ teaching practices, a great deal of research has been conducted in the field of TESOL (teaching English for speakers of other languages) and second language teacher education (e.g., Trent & Lim, 2010; Varghese et al., 2005). The studies regarding NNESTs’ experiences conducted in the field of TESOL include important themes, such as NNES student teacher professional growth (Farrell, 2003, 2006); nativism (Kubota, 2014; Liggett, 2009, 2014; Yoon, 2012) and imagined communities, and social change (Norton & Toohey, 2011). While addressing issues of the first year language teaching of English language teachers as NNES, Farrell (2003; 2006) argues that language teacher educators need to provide a transitional   19   time for pre-service teachers in classroom. Although the context is situated in Singapore, it is enlightening how the first year NNES student teachers handled challenging situations such as conflicts and tensions between learning to teach and also learning to become a teacher. Further, the predominant preference for native English speaking teachers for ESL/ELL students, known as nativism, (Kubota, 2014; Liggett, 2009, 2014), demonstrates the significance of examining the intersectional relation between language and race, not only in the sphere of TESOL, but also in teacher education programs. The student teachers, as the current participants who are affiliated with both the university and their field placement (i.e., K-12 schools), may encounter tensions and different expectations. In second language acquisition (SLA) theoretical perspectives, imagined community (Norton & Toohey, 2011) means that language learners have imagined identities about who they might be and they belong to certain imagined communities as they learn a language. Such communities may include cultural communities. Extending these imagined communities, Norton and Toohey (2011) argued that an awareness of language learners’ imagined communities and also imagined identities impact learners’ investment in language learning, but also NNESTs’ capacity to construct such learning activities and moments that learners may want to engage with. Although the notion of imagined community is derived from the SLA and TESOL fields, this may also be applied to the transnational educational migration. Furthermore, NNESTs’ professional growth is intrinsically related to sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts. The expanding body of literature has examined key factors and stakeholders contributing to NNESTs’ professional growth and negotiations surrounded by sociocultural contexts: contextual factors such as working conditions and setting and agency (Gao, 2010) and also conflicts and interactions within an individuals’ multiple identities (Tsui, 2007).   20   At the same time, one is often associated with other positions that they do not necessarily claim or value. When NNESTs’ teaching practice is constantly positioned and negotiated in power dynamics, that means that NNESTs’ postionality of professional legitimacy may be marginalized, given the native fallacy or native speaker myth. In many sociocultural and political contexts, NNESTs are often racialized and positioned as less capable professionals than native English-speaking teachers (Diniz de Figueiredo, 2011). Although many studies of NNESTs seek ways to empower them (Llurda, 2005), it needs to be clear how this goal can be achieved through their professional development opportunities (Golombek & Jordan, 2005). Kubota and Lin (2006, 2009) have also addressed issues of the racialization of non-native status. According to them, the construction of native English speaker has dominated as a norm of the linguistic model for students, especially for ELL/ESL/EFL students. This myth of the English native speaker affects employment and the students’ perceptions and views of how the ideal teacher learns English. However, as Kubota and Lin (2006) and Kubota (2014) pointed out, these discussions about nativism among English speakers address only partial aspects of linguistics, such as accent and non/standard English, without necessarily examining the racialization of NNESTs and their racial/ethnic identity. Focusing on NNESTs’ teaching practice is significant when seeking a diverse teaching force for teaching for diversity and diverse students. While acknowledging the voices and racialized experiences of people of color who are native English speakers, it is equally important to question a dichotomy that racializes NNESTs who are not necessarily immigrants (i.e., no citizenship) and those who are culturally/linguistically marginalized foreign residents in the U.S. (e.g. foreign-born international teachers). Cho (2010) pointed out that the experiences and views on what it means to become a teacher are stories and predominant discourse told by the dominant group of teachers, who are   21   white, middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian, and American domestic born. Drawing on counter-narratives from critical race theory perspectives and methodology (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002), she used counter-stories and narratives told by immigrant teachers from India, Egypt, China, and Syria who have been otherized, in order to bring complexity to the dominant notion of who can be a teacher. The counter-stories of immigrant teachers in Canada illustrate the ways in which those immigrant student teachers bring and use cultural and linguistic capital for success in an inequitable system. In sum, studies on im/migrant teachers’ teaching practice allow us to understand teachers’ agency and changes in their teaching practice. The review of empirical studies indicates that the field of teacher education is still looking for better ways of understanding diverse preservice teachers’ teaching practice that reveal the complexity and richness of interaction, as well as the challenges between teachers with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and sociocultural contexts. Racialized Experiences of Im/migrant Teachers The notion and construction of race is often implicitly and explicitly related to issues of culture, power, and identity. In recent years, the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), and also the field of teacher education, have acknowledged that understanding the concepts of race, racialization, and racism is inevitable, because those are urgent topics for how to address discourses of realization that influence classroom practices and student/teacher/researchers’ sense of self and identity. Included in a special topic issue on “Race and Language” in TESOL Quarterly (Kubota & Lin, 2006), several studies have addressed various inquires into second language education related to race as a way to examine power,   22   subjectivity, social justice, and education equity. Cultural difference is often embedded in discussions of race and racism. Diniz de Figueiredo (2011) referred to the recent case of Arizona state, where non-native English speaking teachers with thick accents were asked to be removed from ELL classrooms with students who are still in a stage of learning English. In this case, their teachers’ teaching and its authority and expertise seem to be dependent on their native English speaking status. While Diniz de Figueiredo (2011) addressed specific issues in relation to NNESTs’ identities, such as teachers’ concerns prior to arrival, how initial challenges were overcome, and their experiences in establishing authority and creating a positive self-image in relation to the school community, the findings of his study suggest that they still need to have other capacities, such as their bi- or multilingual skills, empathy, and ability to relate to the culture of students and parents. Those are informative for challenging assumptions about restrictive and discriminatory employment policies, such as in Arizona, against teachers with accents. However, the current empirical research still shows that the native fallacy about non-native speakers of English is widely present in the contexts of K-12 education in the U.S. What this means is that there is a fierce tension between im/migrant teachers’ teaching and legitimacy (Cho, 2010; Dunn, 2013; Pavlenko, 2003). For instance, Duchensne and Stitou (2010) conducted case studies of how immigrant teachers who face challenges in the Canadian classroom context are undergoing a shift from their previous conception of teaching in their home country, and a transformation, including “questioning their initial conceptions and adopting new conceptions that are better suited to Canadian education policies and contexts” (p. 6). In other words, the NNESTs’ teaching practice is in constant tension and conflict with the ideological assumptions and racialization of NNES, and the teaching practices of native speaker.   23   The NNESTs’ racialized experiences and challenges can be examined in three areas: institutional/systemic, social, and cultural. Phillion (2003) used the three analytical lenses of systemic, social, and general to do research on the racialized experiences of five immigrant women of color while they were seeking their teaching certification in a Canadian institute and employment. Pillion (2003) illustrated that NNES immigrant teachers of color often encounter three levels of challenges to their professional integration: systemic (e.g. systemic barriers to gain teaching certificate), social (e.g. a lack of acceptance in the teaching community), and general (e.g. prejudice against English with accents). In order to address those tensions and conflicts, there is a need to engage in a deeper understanding of how NNESTs position themselves in a professional setting as well as how they make sense of their positions by others. These concerns resonate with other studies on the challenges and professional agency of international NNES teacher in pursuing professional (re) positioning.   24   CHAPTER III RESEARCH DESIGN Methodology The study is grounded in case studies (Yin, 2013) with the use of ethnographic perspectives. Educational researchers have adopted ethnographic views and techniques as a way of understanding sociocultural contexts of teaching and learning environments (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011). This study adopts an ethnographic perspective in order to portray the sociocultural contexts of the participants’ internship site while highlighting each individual’s unique privileges and challenges that shaped their choice during their internship. The study also adopts a case-study perspective with using “thick and critical descriptions” in specific contexts and with intensive and concrete details in hopes that making noticeable and meaningful the intricacy of what is not usually visible (LeCompte & Schensul, 2010). Yet, it is not an effort to make generalization about a certain group of teacher candidates. Rather, it is an effort to gain understanding and knowledge to build cases. The current study aims to deepen understandings of teacher candidates’ multiple identities, to identify critical moments of professional growth, and find plausible interpretations (Zembylas, 2003). Methods Research Contexts The teacher education program. The teacher education program at a large Midwestern University is a five-year program, which teacher candidates usually enter in their junior year and they take courses where field experience at schools. Teacher candidates take a series of contentfocused methods courses, such as literacy, math, and social studies, from the senior year through the intern year (see Table 1).   25   Table 1. Research context Year Semes ter TE progra m K-12 school -based learnin g Secondary - Senior (4th year) Fall Spring Secondary -Internship (5th year) Fall Spring Methods course seminar I Methods course seminar II Methods course seminar III *Observation (4th/week) *Observation (4th/week) *Observation *Co-planning & coteaching (2 single lessons) *Co-planning & co-teaching (2 single lessons & one 3-day lesson plan) Methods course seminar IV *Lead teaching (10 weeks) *Teaching 1 focus class *2 guided lead teaching (2 weeks/each) Year Semes ter TE progra m Elementary - Senior (4th year) Fall Spring Elementary - Internship (5th year) Fall Spring Methods course seminar (Two courses: Literacy & Math) Methods course seminar (Two courses: Social Studies & Science) Methods course -major subject areas: Literacy & Math K-12 school -based learnin g *Observation *Gradually teaching at least two weeks for each subject *Observation *Gradually teaching at least two weeks for each subject *Observation *Guided lead teaching: Coplanning & Coteaching a literacy and math unit Methods course - major subject areas: Social Studies & Science * Transition into lead teaching: Taking on one subject (e.g. social studies, science) per week until teaching all subjects *Lead teaching: teaching all subjects Teacher candidates are placed in a K-12 school in the beginning of their senior year, while mainly classrooms and assisting in-service teachers. In their internship year, they are   26   placed in a different school, and so most candidates have an opportunity to work with two different cooperating teachers in two different school contexts across the two years. The program is designed to immerse teacher candidates gradually in working in K-12 schools, through their senior year and their internship period. Teacher candidates observe at least four hours per week at their school placement during their senior year, and they teach between two to five lessons in each semester. During their 5th year internship, student teachers in secondary level placements work as a full-time intern, from Monday to Thursday; on Fridays they take methods courses during the guided lead teaching and full lead teaching timeframes. Student teachers at the elementary level, work from Monday to Friday, except Thursday, when they take university courses related to their internship. Guided lead teaching is when the student teacher and their cooperating teachers co-teach after co-planning. After having a transitional time phase to prepare for lead teaching, the student teacher teaches by himself/herself during the lead teaching phases. Mentor teachers still observe their mentee’s teaching and give them feedback. This teacher education program’s intent is to regulate the teaching load of the interns in order to support the teacher candidates to learn to teach effectively by engagement with the learning cycle: planning, teaching, assessment, and reflection. While secondary level student teachers choose one class timeframe, and they teach the focus class throughout the internship year, student teachers in elementary level teach math and literacy for two weeks each in fall semester and science and social studies for two weeks each in spring semester. They also continue to teach math and literacy in spring as they negotiate with their cooperating teacher. The secondary level interns teach one more class in addition to their   27   focus class during the first two-week period of guided lead teaching, and then they teach two more classes during the second guided lead teaching period in the fall semester. The elementary level interns co-teach language arts and math units that are developed in university method courses in the fall semester, but the student teachers and their cooperating teachers also co-plan their class (i.e. guided lead teaching). In the spring semester, the student teachers have a transition into lead teaching, by taking on one subject area (either social studies or science). The university course instructors and their peers support the teacher candidates in their planning, teaching, and assessment through the appropriate assignments and discussion through the methods courses during the internship year. Participants’ practicum contexts. The participants work in three different schools as student teachers. Three cities, Green City, Lake City, and Great City, where the three schools are located, are geographically adjacent to one another, but each city is different in terms of its socio-economic conditions and student demographics. Green City is an urban area, with a large African American population. Mei has been working as an intern at Alpha Elementary School in Green City. Green City is among the top ten medium-sized metropolitan areas in the U.S. for immigration and refugee settlement, according to the 2010s census. It has a large state university and it provides a source of volunteers for many of educational programs and also immigrant/refugee centers. Alpha Elementary School is one of the six magnet schools in Green City that offers students’ families a choice to apply to the schools. Alpha elementary school’s current enrollment is 279, of which 39.1% are White students, 25.5 % are African American students, and 22.2% are Latino/a students. 85.3% of students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. Mei is expected to teach the common core curriculum for 4th graders.   28   Beta High School is located in a suburban area of Lake City where Eunju has been working as an intern teacher. Lake City is located on the shore of a lake in the state, and its beaches are nationally famous in the U.S. The city has several recreational areas and campgrounds, so that people can enjoy boating, sailing, fishing, biking, and etc. According to the 2010 census, the predominant population of the city is White. Beta High School is located in the suburban area of the city. Beta High School is a public high school with a large number of students. It also provides for students taking Advanced Placement (AP) course work and exams. The AP participation rate at Beta High School was about 43 percent this 2014 school year. Among 1,816 students in the 2014 school year, Beta High School had 91% White students, 4% Latino/a students, 2% Asian students, and 1% African American students. Eunju has been teaching math classes following the Common Core Curriculum. Ling has been working as an intern at Gamma Elementary School in a suburban area of Great City. Great City is one of the largest cities in the western part of the state. It also has one of the biggest furniture-manufacturing companies in the U.S. According to the 2010 census, the racial makeup of the city is 64.6 percent of White, 20.9 percent of African Americans, 15.6 percent of Latino/as, and 1.9 percent of Asians. Gamma Elementary School is a well funded and high performing public school located in a suburban area of the city. As of the 2014 school year, Gamma Elementary School had 454 students. It had 79.5% White, 11.2 %, 26% African American students, and 8% Latino/a student population. Ling has been teaching 4th graders while using a common core curriculum for students. Public schools in all three cities have established partnerships with some universities around the area, and they take interns. Each intern may have been working in racially and socio-economically different contexts of their   29   university; however, they have had opportunities to see university course instructors and peers at professional development workshops and courses. Participant Selection and Participant Profile The current research has three participants. I was interested in finding participants who identify themselves as foreign-born non-native English speaking teacher candidates, and who also had started their teaching internship. They are all interns who enrolled in a university teacher education program, meaning that they are working as full time teachers while studying. After I received IRB approval from the university and the department, I sought participants by sending emails to the coordinator of the internship program, asking whether there are any international teacher candidates in their internship year. One of my participants, Ling, was a former student of mine in a section of Reading and Responding Children’s Literature. Others were recruited and consented to participate in my research project. Over the year of their internship, we developed rapport and established relationships with each other that revolved around their field experiences and discussions about learning to teach and becoming a teacher as a teacher candidate with diverse educational, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. The following three participants were those who were willing to participate in this study (see Table 2). Table 2. Profiles of the three teacher candidates Teacher Candidates Nationality*Gender Ling Chinese*Female Eunju Korean*Female Language Mandarin Chinese (First) English (Second) Korean (First) English (Second) Major Specialization Elementary Education Math Secondary Education Math Mei Korean Chinese*Female Korean (First) Mandarin Chinese (Second) English (Third) Elementary Education Language Arts Internship placement Elementary School 3rd graders High School 9th graders Elementary School 4th graders   30   Table 2 (cont’d) School context Stage of program Suburban Elementary School Intern – 5th Year Suburban High School Intern – 5th Year Urban Elementary School Intern – 5th Year Ling. Ling is a twenty-two year old female Chinese teacher candidate, working as an intern at an elementary school in a suburban area. She majored in elementary education, and her specialization is math. Her students are 4th graders. She wants to pursue a job in the U.S., and she also wants to study further in graduate school. She originally grew up with her parents as a single child in a small town in Southern China. She illustrated her childhood and her friends with lots of colorful experiences and with exploration of the beautiful nature of her hometown. Ling’s family worked for the local broadcasting company and made commercials. According to Ling, her family’s social economic status has gotten better since her late middle school years. She was able to travel to Europe when she was attending high school in China, and also her parents could afford to help her attend college in the U.S. While traveling in European countries, she was inspired to experience more culturally and linguistically different places, such as North America. Also, her English teacher in high school, who happened to be from the Midwestern United States, encouraged her to apply to American colleges. She decided to come to the U.S. to pursue a bachelor’s degree. She came to the U.S. for the first time four years ago, at the age of eighteen. However, she was not aware of how the teaching job was perceived in the U.S. context. During her freshman year, she made sure to be connected with the Chinese student community at the college, because she felt safe and comfortable with people who understood her cultural background. She took ESL classes in her first year. Starting from the second year, she took academic courses. Ling, however, came to acknowledge the difficulty in interacting with American domestic students because their way of socializing (e.g. drinking at the bar) was not   31   something she enjoyed. Also, the topics of their conversions needed some cultural background knowledge that she was not familiar with. She also illustrated her feelings of not belonging to the spaces here in the U.S. She also had a challenging time adjusting herself to the American academic environment, which is heavily discussion-based and requires oral language proficiency and shared cultural understandings. Ling was almost always the only international student in her class, and she felt her classmates treated her as invisible. Ling decided to take more initiative in order to be vocal in class, and to “choose” people who were more open-minded and understanding to get their support in class. Her specialization in math education created higher expectations from her instructors and peers in math-related courses. Outside of the academia, she volunteered to tutor and work with international students. She worked at the international center for undergraduates, and she won outstanding-international-student awards from her college, and also from the state, in her senior year. Eunju. Eunju is a twenty-two year old female Korean teacher candidate. She majored in secondary education, specializing in teaching math. She is working with mostly 9th graders at a high school in a suburban area. She wants to get a job in the U.S., and also to study further in graduate school after building her teaching career. Eunju was born and raised in a suburban city of South Korea with an upper-middle class family. She traveled to Australia with her family during middle school, and loved nature and kangaroos in Australia. She wanted to pursue her high school education in Australia. However, because her family acquaintances have lived in a Midwestern city in the U.S., her parents wanted her to study in their city in the U.S. when she told her parents that she wanted to study further in an English-speaking high school.   32   She came to the Christian high school in the Midwest City all by herself when she was a 9th grader. According to Eunju, she felt very frustrating by not being able to have any casual conversations, even though she understood pretty well. She intentionally made friends with native speaking domestic students to practice English, and to get to know American culture better. She wanted to become a teacher because teachers in her life are influential people. She chose to enter the teacher education program in that Midwest state where she went to high school, because she was told the program is considered excellent across the U.S. Eunju did not feel like she was struggling too much like other international students, since she started her high school in the U.S. She also had quite a few very close American friends from her high school who were also attending the same university with Eunju. She reported that she kept an intentional distance from Korean students, both in her high school and also in her college. She believed that the reason she decided to study in the U.S. was because she wants to have a better command of English and to learn more about U.S. culture. However, both in her senior year in her high school and in college, she found that the people that she could fully relate to and “comfort [her] soul” were Koreans, according to Eunju. Mei. Mei is a twenty-three year old female Chinese teacher candidate. Her major is elementary education, and she specialized in language arts. She has been working with 4th graders in an urban elementary school. She wants to stay in the U.S. and work, but her fiancé wants to go back to China. So she decided to go back to China, and she plans to work at an international elementary school in China. She is a quarter Korean (her grand father is a Korean who went to China during the Korean war), and her family is upper middle class in China. Because her grand mother and also her mother are Korean immigrants (from North Korea to China during a turbulent colonized and   33   war period in Korea), she identifies herself as a “Korean who happens to live with Chinese culture and language.” Even though she does not speak fluent Korean, she fully understands Korean from growing up with her Korean heritage family in China. Her family has a food-related business between Korea and China. Her parents now live in South Korea. Her mother wanted her to study in the U.S. for a better education. She came to the U.S. to get a better education, and she started to study business as her major due to her parents’ expectations. During her sophomore year, she realized that she did not enjoy studying business that much, but she loved interacting with children. She also recognized that her college has a great education program, and so she changed her major to elementary education. She described herself as a very introverted person, and discussion-based American classrooms are often intimidating to her. When I met her at first, I was told she wanted to quit her internship in the beginning of the internship year. One of her course instructors introduced her to me, suggesting that perhaps she could talk about things she had been struggling with. At the time of the first interview, she was struggling with her notion of respect for teachers, which appeared to be somewhat different from her 4th grade students and her cooperating teacher in an urban elementary school. She believed that teachers in the Chinese school context are the figure of the authority and people deeply revere them in class and outside of the school. However, as her students made judgmental comments on her English, proficiency she was frustrated with communicating with her students. Also, according to Mei, it was unfamiliar to her the way her cooperating teacher communicates with her students in a casual way, as sometimes they appear to be buddies.   34   Researcher Positionality As Subreenduth and Rhee (2010) noted, most qualitative research is a messy endeavor between the professional responsibility and personal attachment with the researched. The boundary between personal/professional, friend/research participant, field/home, and researcher/researched is at times blurred. As I became more involved in this research, I began to realize how I was constantly moving in and out of not just one kind of identity threshold, but also various thresholds. The nature of I, as a researcher, between insider and outsider of the related identity markers of the participants remained a site of tension between “objective and subjective locations of self” (Subreenduth & Rhee, 2010, p. 335). Similarly, Segall (2001) illustrated tensions around ethnographic researcher’s positionality between being there, which refers to be “in the field,” and being here, meaning “being in the academy.” His discussion was a powerful reiteration that it was important for me to understand my multiple subjectivities in order to understand, recognize, and relate to my participants’ particular subjectivities. The approach to the current case studies is built upon this ethnographic perspective as both being here writing the paper and also being there with my participants. As a Korean woman, teacher educator, and researcher, I situate myself as a researcher and also the researched in this study. I barely wrote my autobiographic narrative and yet, I was able to see my realities were overlapped with narratives of the participants without inserting my personal experiences. The blurring line between the researcher and researched occurred not through the very action of explicit writing about my experiences in this paper, but through encountering and reencountering my realities in the narratives of the researched, my participants. As a “foreign-born” “international” graduate student researcher without U.S. citizenship, I often felt uneasy to claim typical Asian/Korean experiences in the U.S. Due to my friends and   35   community in the U.S., I feel more affiliated with both international Asian student groups and Asian-American communities. At the same time, because of my educational privileges in the U.S. and Canada, I found that I maneuvered U.S. cultural and social settings more easily than some Asian/Korean international students or Asian/Korean immigrants did. My political stance on anti-racism often make me feel more at home with people of color than Korean international students or immigrants who are usually indifferent to the issues of race, as their priority is to get a degree or make a living. And yet, whenever the dominant urgent issue of (anti-) racism is framed mainly as acquiring equal rights and access for every citizen who has been historically marginalized citizen in the U.S., I feel displaced again. In other words, thanks to my privilege, I was able to geographically relocate myself to be educated in the U.S. higher education that upholds dominance of knowledge; however, I continue to encounter diasporic and discursive Korea in the U.S. As complexities of my own educational journey, my participants’ narratives of leaving home country to be educated in the U.S. reveal both its privilege and its inevitable marginalization. In this sense, the question I kept asking myself, as a researcher and the researched, was not what I/we are, but how I/we had enacted multiple cultural identities, how our different privileges and marginalization can account for experiences and choices in a location where power is still unequal (Rhee, 2010). Nonetheless, this study does not aim at critiquing my participants. Rather, I intended to raise awareness and responsibilities of both teacher candidates, as my participants, and teacher educators through this study. Lather (1986; 1993) provides insights into ensuring validity in conducting value-added research including (1) triangulation of methods, data sources, and theories; (2) researchers’ reflexive subjectivity, which is a documentation of how researchers’ assumptions may have affected the analysis of the data; (3) face validity that emphasizes the   36   rapport with the participants; and (4) catalytic validity that focuses on participants’ transformative action and consicentization. My researcher positionality aforementioned reflects my reflexive subjectivity. In order to increase the face validity of my study, I made sure to address my personal biases by engaging in member checking with my participants, or sharing my thoughts and feelings with my advisor, committee members, and the participants. However, at the time of the study, I acknowledge that there was my lack of attention to catalytic validity that may lead participants’ change of awareness and attitudes towards the notion of diversity. I was uncertain about sharing, or not sharing my value-added comments with my participants. During the study, I decided not to make any political statements, but to listen to what they had to say and document them. Thus, the data that indicate the catalytic validity was minimal. Data Sources I collected data from multiple sources for this study. Detailed research design matrix of the study is provided in Table 3, and the summary of the data sources is in Table 4. Table 3. Research design matrix Research Questions: What do I need to know? Why do I need to know this? (1) What do motivate three international pre-service teachers to study education? a. How do their desires of gaining capital (e.g., social, cultural, economic) and belonging to an imagined community impact their transnational educational migration? To gain an insight into teacher candidates’ learning in a teacher preparation program and how it connects to their professional growth and teaching practice. (2) How do the participants navigate internship spaces and   To gain insight into how their negotiation and navigation 37 What data sources would answer the research questions? 1. Reflection journals 2. Semi-structured interviews 1. Reflection journals 2. Teaching artifacts 3. Semi-structured Table 3  (cont’d) professional relationships? (3) How do the participants make sense of diversity in the U.S. contexts?   impact their teaching practice 4. interviews & observations and field notes To understand how their understanding surface the challenges and strategies of their teaching practice in diverse contexts 1. Reflection journals 2. Teaching artifacts 3. Semi-structured interviews 4. Observations and field notes Table 4. Summary of data sources Data sources Context Format of data collected & description Interviews Bi-weekly interviews Data for all interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed. Exit interviews   Dates Frequency and sampling (collecting all, or a portion) Fall semester I conducted 2014 and 12 interviews Spring semester in through 2013 fall 2014 and (September spring 2015. 2014 ~ Early May 2015) Mid May and Early June 2015 38 I conducted two exit interviews at the end of their practicum, May 2015.   Table 4 (cont’d) Follow-up interviews (Total 2 interviews) Reflection journals   By-weekly reflections were emailed to me at the end of each semester (December 2014, May 2015). Teaching artifacts Various subject units they used during their lead teaching Field notes Bi-weekly school visit for observations July and August 2015 Participants kept their bi-weekly reflections on their teaching practice and critical incidents at practicum school. The format was handwritten or digital journals. Participants designed several subject unit plans during their 10 – week lead teaching. Participants’ teaching practice and interactions at practicum school. 39 I conducted two followup interviews after their practicum and what experiences they highlighted as significant in their learning and growth during the practicum. Fall semester 2014: August 2014 to December 2014 I collected all their reflection journals from both the fall Spring semester 2014 and 2015: January spring 2015. 2015 to May 2015 Spring semester I collected 2015: May five of their 2015 self-chosen lesson plans and teaching reflections they considered representative of their teaching and learning. Fall semester I documented 2014 and their Spring semester interactions, 2015 teaching, and important incidents.   Table 4 (cont’d) Formal conferences Mid-term and final assessment meeting during each semester; documented the comments and interactions among the participant, their field instructor and mentor teacher. Fall semester 2014: October and December 2014 Spring semester 2015: February and May 2015 Semi-structured interviews. The total number of 16 interviews began in September 2014 and continued till May 2015 for 9 months. Two follow-up interviews were conducted in July and August 2015. Each interview was audio-recorded. Each semi-structured interview ranged from 60 to 90 minutes. Further, I observed 12 formal teaching lessons of each participant. Each lesson lasted about 40 to 45 min. The interview questions were focused to investigate the critical moments and meaningfulness of personal and professional growth during the internship. Interviews were audio-recorded, with supplementary field notes. In order to keep examining the meaningfulness and critical moments of their professional growth during the internship, the meetings and conferences with key stakeholders of the internship (e.g., field instructor, mentor teacher, parents, university course instructor, etc.) were observed. These observations were focused on capturing any conflicting moments or tensions, such as how a field instructor mediated the situation when the participant dropped her internship in the middle of the first semester, and how the intern explained the reason why she wanted to quit her internship at that moment.   40   The crucial part of the interview was set up around the notions of various forms of capitals, their version of (imagined) community, sense of belonging to community(ies), marginalized experiences, professional agency, and strategies of navigating the space. For each concept, I draw on several indicators from the literature. The indicators were: • Various of forms of capital: social, economic, cultural and symbolic forms of capital they had accumulated in their home country as well as desire to attain in the U.S. • Imagined community: motivations to study abroad and major education, sense of belongingness to communities (e.g., professional community, racial/ethnic community, U.S. community, etc.) • Marginalized experiences: micro-aggressions in internship contexts and college classrooms, making sense of their racialized experiences and professional dispositions in relation to their race, language, and gender • Professional agency: the internship learning environment, professional knowledge, professional relationships and communication skills • Strategies of navigating the space: participants’ frame of reference about the role of their cultural and educational backgrounds, choices that participants make in their teaching practices These indicators were translated into specific interview questions. Table 5 illustrates each notion with its indicators and example interview questions for each indicator. Follow-up interview data in August 2015 included reflections on their internship experiences as well as the school and students in their current job after the internship, if any, and their future plans. The visits and interviews were recorded using audio records, or field notes, as appropriate.   41   During the final phase was a member-checking period as I analyzed and wrote the data. Since I have been keeping in touch with each participant, the participants were asked to confirm the findings. During exchanges at café and via email, phone, or skype, I shared findings and ask participants for their feedback. Table 5. Sample interview questions of the semi-structured interview Concepts Various of forms of capita Indicators o Social capital • o Economic capital • o Cultural capital • o Symbolic capital • Imagined community o Motivations to study abroad and major education o Sense of belongingness to communities Marginalized experiences o Microaggressions o Making sense of their o racialized experiences o Professional dispositions in   • Sample interview questions How are experiences of studying abroad in English-speaking countries received in your home country? How do you support your tuition and living expenses for your study? Besides from earning a degree in the U.S., what would you like to achieve and enjoy by living and studying here? How do you think your degree in education in a U.S. college and having study abroad experiences extend your opportunities in future either in your home country or in the U.S.? What motivated you to study in a U.S. college and especially major education? Have you participated in any community service and/or activities during your program or staying in the U.S.? Please describe. (e.g., professional community, racial/ethnic community, U.S. community, etc.) • Have you experienced any discrimination either in internship contexts and college classrooms? Please be specific about the incident or case you encountered. • How did you come to terms with these experiences, if any?   • Given your experiences with prejudice and discrimination, however minor they can be, have you considered its • 42   Table 5 (cont’d) relation to their race, language, and gender Strategies of navigating the space influence on your teaching and interactions with other people, including your students during your internship? Please be specific with examples. • What does it mean to be an “Asian” teacher in your classroom • How do you understand the role of authority as a teacher ad gaining respect in classrooms? • How did your educational and schooling experiences in your home country shape and influence your learning to teacher in the U.S.? o Participants’ frame of reference about the role of their cultural and educational backgrounds o Choices that participants make in their teaching practices • When you encounter pushbacks from your students (e.g., misbehaviors), what kind of specific instructions and methods do you use for your effective teaching practice? Please be specific with examples? Participants’ reflection journals. The participants were required to write a bi-weekly journal reflection as part of their internship experience and shared it with their field instructors and course instructors, who read them and gave them feedback as a form of support. Those reflections involved a wide range of topics during their practicum, including concerns in their teaching practice or students, critical incidents, and hopes. These reflections allowed me to examine the participants’ learning and growth across their practicum year. I collected all their reflection journals at the end of each semester. Teaching artifacts. The participants were asked to select five lesson plans and written reflections on their lesson plans that they believe to be representative of their teaching practice. The analysis of these lesson plans and written reflections provided me with evidence on how what aspects of teaching they had struggled and how they had navigated such challenges.   43   Particularly, their written reflection allowed me to see their beliefs and strategies of becoming a teacher during their lead-teaching period. Participant observation and field notes. I visited each participant’s internship school site was conducted on a bi-weekly basis during the school year to examine how they engaged in teaching practice, observations, and social interactions. Also, I observed 4 formal conferences (mid-term, final term for each semester, each ranged from 30 to 50 minutes) where internship stakeholders (mentor teacher and field instructor) discussed the participants’ internship progress and assessment. This was to capture a broad picture of the participant’s life at internship school. The school visits for the observation were to be planned according to the intern’s convenient time and also field instructor’s visiting days where there was a debriefing, or Mid-/end of-the semester assessment sessions. Further, my ethnographic field notes and interviews about their teaching practice was also data sources that had been generated through teacher candidates’ guided engagement in the teaching cycle, such as planning, teaching, assessment, and reflection. Teacher candidates generated various artifacts around the teaching cycle, while they respond to their teaching through reviewing their oral/written reports or videos. A series of interviews were also conducted with teacher candidates based on the teacher candidate’s teaching report or video. The written reflections on their teaching, based on their teaching reflections and statements through the university related courses, were included as well. Data Translation While transcribing data, I will need to translate the interviews with one Korean participant, which I conducted in the Korean language, into English. All the translations will be verified for the accuracy and completeness of my translation, and of my interpretation of my   44   analysis based on cultural perspectives, by other Korean colleagues. The Korean participant will also have an opportunity to take a look at her interview transcriptions for member checking and verification. Data Analysis On-going analysis. On-going data analysis helped me to be focused on progressive analysis without being necessarily repetitious in the overwhelming volume of the data that needs to be processed and analyzed (Yin, 2013). My key data analysis throughout the study has been based on grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014). The analysis involved categorizing major codes and themes that emerged from the oral data (e.g., interviews, conversations at school, and teaching videos) and written data (e.g., participants’ papers, journals, written feedback of course instructors and field instructors, and my field notes). The analysis process has involved multiple listening and readings of the data in order to identify reoccurring themes that address the central research questions of the current study. This analysis began with data collection and continued long after data collection. As grounded theorists reiterated (Charmaz, 2014), one distinguished aspect of grounded theory from most of general qualitative research is that grounded theory openly allows the phenomena of research interests, questions, and theoretical frameworks to shift as the research progresses. This does not mean that I attempted to abandon the initial theory and research questions I entered the field with. Rather, I acknowledge that I attempted to discover, understand, and interpret what was happening in the research context in accordance with inductive nature of ethnographic grounded theory. To be specific, I transcribed and analyzed interviews, field notes, recordings of teaching practice, and other written materials. Analysis was facilitated by excel sheet and also the   45   software program NVivo, which allowed coding categories to be added or changed as they emerge from the data. I provide examples of initially emerged themes (see Table 6). I also closely examined preliminary analysis in the field notes, which included my initial impressions in the field, reactions and interpretations of the data, questions I had after the interviews and observations, comparisons with previous data, and comparisons within and across the three cases. This analysis process also involved writing narratives of interpretations and questions that were helpful in clarifying my thoughts, questions, and interpretations. For example, in classroom observations of Mei’s guided teaching (November, 13, 2014) in social studies, I wrote: Is teaching the U.S. history and geography challenging to Mei? Does it impact on her professional growth? How and why? What about math and science subject? What did she seem to consider bolstering her content knowledge as well as pedagogical aspects? How does she intellectually and emotionally related to her students and teaching practice? In following observations and interviews, I paid attention to her responses and comments on teaching challenging subject areas to her (e.g., language arts and social studies) and gained the classroom observations that she did try to keep a distance in teaching those subject areas, and from time to time asked her mentor teachers to observe her teaching for detailed feedback on how she could improve her teaching practices. Therefore, Mei’s moves appeared to be an important piece of data in categorizing the strategies of navigating internship classroom space. Table 6. Preliminary data codes applied to generated data Focused aspects Transnational narratives § § § § Navigating internship space   § Interpretive/descriptive codes Making sense of imagined community, as floating and translation Solidarity to their racial/ethnic community in the U.S. Gaining access to their imagined community with their accumulated and desired capitals The perception of teaching occupation in their home country and in the U.S. Intercultural and transnational identities across the borders 46   Table 6 (cont’d) § § § § § § § Challenges and tensions over the internship § § § § § § (e.g., language, race, gender, and class) Discipline in cultural context Culturally-embedded expectations as a teacher Their frame of notion of teacher authority Their sense of gaining “respect” as a teacher Teaching their cultural and linguistic background Asking in-depth feedback from their mentor teacher and/or field instructor Intersection of privilege and contesting racialization Privileged backgrounds and accumulated sociocultural capitals Intersection of race and language Intersection of race and gender Intersection of race, language, and gender Teacher authenticity and legitimacy   Further, I analyzed data while consciously seeking triangulation among data sources that reflected the participants’ cultural backgrounds that might be embedded and enacted in their teaching practice, tensions, and conflicts during the internship, and the participants’ understanding of diversity and racialization in the U.S. context. I investigated my participants’ transnational narratives intersected with their privilege and racialized experiences, and how they make sense of their individual and professional identities through their internship. I also draw on the previous research and conceptual framework (i.e., racialized experiences of international teacher candidate) as I developed categories and themes. As analysis progressed, categories within the research questions and conceptual framework were multilayered and interconnected. Within-case and cross-case analysis. The data were also analyzed within-case and cross-case. For both approaches, following qualitative case study approach (Merriam, 1998; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Stake, 1995), the data were analyzed through a process of data reduction, display, and conclusion drawing and verification. Within-case analysis. I developed a matrix for displaying and analyzing the data of each case systematically. The thematic indicators that guided the semi-structured interviews were   47   exhibited the rows of the matrix. The columns illustrated the data from the interviews, field notes based on the intern’s teaching practice observations, and various artifacts with representative quotes and/or artifact from the data sources. Data entry and analysis for each case consisted of several processes. While I listen to the audio-recorded interviews, their narratives were transcribed and important narratives related to the theme were summarized and entered in the matrix under categories of thematic indicator (e.g., Professional relationships and communication skills). Representative quotes from interviews and written reflective artifacts were added when appropriate. Similarly, the field notes based on teaching observations and conferences among the intern, mentor teacher and field instructor were also analyzed. As the participants often elaborated on specific teaching practices, which were related to their professional challenges, growth, and strategies, the related data were examined thoroughly through data entry matrix. To be able to draw conclusions, for each participant case, interpretative and analytic vignette was drawn from the matrices. A vignette was illustrated with exemplary quotes from both interviews and artifacts. Cross-case analysis. For the cross-analysis, I developed another matrix to display the data of all three participants systematically together. The participants were exhibited in the rows of the matrix and the concepts of thematic indicators. The vignettes were divided into subthemes (e.g., Transnational narratives; Strategies of navigating internship space; Signs of professional teacher agency and professional growth; Challenges and tensions over the internship) and entered in the cells of the matrix. After that, each of the themes was examined separately, the teachers with a similar finding regarding the concept being grouped and similarities and differences both within and across these participants identified. Finally, I   48   examined contrasting and comparing the participants with regard to all concepts of the relations between the concepts.   49   Chapter IV TRANSNATIONAL NARRATIVES Introduction This chapter identifies and analyses the nuanced narratives on transnational educational migration. All the transnational participants in this study were students and women who were born in China or South Korea. I use the term, transnational in the broadest sense to refer to people who cross national and cultural borders between two or multiple countries, including “sojourners,” who voluntarily travel to a new cultural context for a limited period of time for work or for study, but intend to return to their home country for permanent residence after a certain period of staying abroad. They may be “immigrants,” who intend to permanently live in a country other than the one they were born in, and also “tourists,” who enjoys sightseeing and yet intend to return to their home country. I intentionally do not distinguish between the different sorts of transnational individuals in the current study. Because at the time of the study their intentions about when or whether to return to their home country (or even to go abroad again after returning to their home country) seemed to be uncertain and changing depending on their circumstances. Thus it seemed to be impossible for them or me to know whether they could be defined as sojourners, immigrants, or tourists. Ling, for example, entered the U.S. on a tourist visa and then started to study on a student visa. She was considering gaining an immigration visa and permanent residency. Mei, on the other hand, was considering returning to her home country for permanent residency. She was also the first college student in her family and all of my participants were pioneers for their transnational educational migration without any established familial connections or roadmaps to their journey to the U.S. At some point, they struggled to find and define the meaning and   50   purpose of their quest for this transnational migration. Other times, they appeared to be torn between their desires to return to their home country following established paths of becoming a teacher in their country of origin. They also showed their desire to carve out new paths toward flexible career experiences of working in both their home country and the U.S. I explore the complexity of their paths through three women’s transnational narratives by asking following questions: 1) Why did the participants choose to study abroad and major education in the U.S.; and 2) What were the privileges that the participants accumulated in their home country and inevitable marginalization as they were living as transnational educational migrants in the U.S.? In the first finding section, I illustrate what motivated them to study abroad and major education. I use Bordieu’s (1986) notion of capital to highlight various forms of privileges and desires to gain more capital through transnational educational mobility (e.g., study abroad; studying education). In this chapter, I aim to provide a nuanced picture to understand and interpret their transnational lives in the host country. In understanding transnational identities and the communities where those identities are enacted, the metaphor of “imagined communities” (Anderson, 2006) was useful to emphasize how their motivations to study abroad and desires may be influenced by this desire to be willing to invest themselves to find ways (e.g., gaining linguistic and cultural capital in a developed country) to perceive themselves as belonging to “the imagined community.” Despite their capital that made it affordable and possible to come to study abroad in the U.S. and desire to belong to this imagined community, the participants illustrate inevitable marginalization. To be specific, the participants used metaphors, such as “floating life” and living and learning through and in-between cultural and linguistic “translation” in order to describe their inexorably marginalized state despite their privileges and capitals that they had   51   accumulated from their home country. I do emphasize, however, that they are not representative of all international female students or international pre-service teachers’ transnational educational migration experiences. I seek to demonstrate how the cases illuminate transnational educational migration that is connected to a sense of belonging to the imagined community and desires to gain forms of capitals. Reasons to Study Education in a U.S. Teacher Preparation Program Bourdieu’s (1986) notion of capital explains that it is the individual who guides how s/he responds to their surroundings. Capital is not only contextually situated, but also it has values when it is perceived as such (Park, 2015). In other words, all kinds of capital can be considered as “symbolic” as Bourdieu conceptualizes capital, he (1986) noted that: …as “cultural capital” which can be convertible, on certain conditions, into “economic capital” and may be institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications; and as “social capital,” made up of social obligations (“connections”), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of a title of mobility (p. 245). As Bourdieu explains, various forms of capital go beyond tangible resources, such as monetary, to non-monetary means, including intangible social and cultural resources. It should be noted that Bourdieu’s forms of various capitals play out in the intersection of their study abroad and choosing a major. Ling, for example, came to the U.S. at the age of eighteen and decided to major in education and become a teacher after taking different undergraduate program courses: American colleges give more freedom to students to choose their major and they allow students to flexibly change their major. I tried a couple of course in business program, economics, and math. But I found myself really liking teacher education program courses. I mean most of my Chinese friends major business or engineering. I felt a little lonely in the beginning. But I found that people in this program are friendlier and the courses are interesting, practical.   52   Similar to Eunju’s perception of “freedom” at school was a strong motivation to study abroad, Ling was also motivated to study abroad and actively choose her major with this “freedom” at college. Ling did not choose a major that may particularly qualify her higher-paying jobs as most her friends. Rather, she chose her major based on her interest and passion. She told me this “freedom” of choosing her own major is based on her privilege (i.e., economic capital). However, she told me that she was not actually aware of how the teaching job was poorly perceived in the U.S. context (i.e., symbolic capital) compared to the perception of teaching in China and how public education contexts can vary depending on the context: I assumed that the U.S. education is better and the best. Isn’t that why so many people come here to study? After majoring education, though, I learned lots of issues of public schools in America. Teachers are not as highly respected nor paid well as those teachers in China. I am sort of jealous of those American students who are free from high-pressure exams and study schedule and they are free from sleep-deprivation unlike my educational experiences in China. But I am not always jealous of American teachers in public schools with that lower paycheck and social status compared to teachers in China. However, she wanted to gain capitals through her educational mobility such as cultural capital (e.g., having a higher education degree and being certified as an elementary school teacher in the U.S.) and symbolic capital (e.g., respectful teaching jobs). However, as the interview data above illustrates that she was “not always jealous of American teachers in public schools with that lower paycheck and social status compare to teachers in China,” she appeared to be informed about the subjectivities of social and cultural capitals in different contexts. What was interesting in Ling’s case in choosing her major in education as well as studying abroad appeared to be influenced by her friends and teachers who encouraged them to study abroad and study education. For example, Ling’s English teacher in high school, who happened to be from the Midwestern United States, appeared to inspire her to study abroad and supported her to gain access to information and procedures of applying to American colleges.   53   Despite Ling’s ambition and access to resources to U.S. college applications, her parents were reluctant to send their only child and daughter to a foreign country and they were not sure about their capability to pay for Ling’s education in the U.S.: Things got better since middle school. I mean, BETTER [with her emphasis]. My family was and is not still affluent or anything like that. My friends, or any people I know who study abroad in the U.S. has relatively better financial situations than my family in China. Also, China has one child policy. I am the one and only precious daughter to my parents. Of course, they were hesitant and worried a lot at first. As Ling mentioned one child policy in China can be also seen as a strong indicator for many Chinese parents to be willing to invest their child’s education as future (e.g., Waters, 2005). While Ling identified herself as low middle class in her home country, she seemed to perceive herself gaining higher sociocultural capital by studying education and being certified in the U.S. Similar to Ling’s case, Eunju was also able to gain higher social, economic, cultural, and symbolic capitals in her home country through her educational migration in the U.S. What was most interesting in Eunju’s motivations in studying abroad and majoring in education is Eunju’s strong desire to maintain her symbolic capital by pursuing studying education. To be specific, Eunju explicitly mentioned social phenomena in South Korea that emphasizes name values of certain undergraduate universities in order to be successful in South Korea society: I know that no matter which foreign credential you have, even it is a Harvard Graduate School Ph.D., for many Koreans, an undergraduate degree in certain prestigious universities does matter. You know, Hakbul (undergraduate degree and its influence throughout the rest of one’s life) is like a Scarlet Letter. You can’t change them. Transferring into one of those schools does not even count. You can be Jingol (pure-bred, and loyal person) with that degree. I know I don’t want to deal with it. Actually, who wants to deal with it? I heard that it is less discriminatory in terms of getting a job as a teacher than trying to get a job at companies in Korea. That’s partly why I study education. I would study education even if I had to go to a college in South Korea. As Eunju mentioned that undergraduate degree as a “Scarlet Letter,” it is often perceived as a label or used as upward social mobility ladder for many Koreans (Kim, 2010). Indeed,   54   socio-historically, it has been controversial that undergraduate degree has been creating discriminatory screening process for entering certain companies or promotion. Being aware of this symbolic capital, Eunju wanted to have a better position with the U.S. undergraduate credential. However, she knew that she would not be as competitive as those with a prestigious Korean university credential. As she mentioned that getting a teaching job can be “less discriminatory” than getting a job at any companies with the U.S. undergraduate degree, she appeared to consider both possibilities of going back to Korea to teach or staying in the U.S. while teaching. Either way, Eunju wanted to use her education degree and certification as a symbolic capital that does not get in her way to get a job. However, it did not appear that she always wanted to become a teacher since she was little. She stated that how “naively” she wanted to major in English or American literature when she was a middle school student before coming to the U.S.: I wanted to study English or American literature in the U.S. I naively thought that it sounds more authentic and makes sense. Going to America and studying its origin and literature. But then, I did not realize that choosing those qualitative fields would mean and assume that I have to have background knowledge about history, humanities, and even religion, which I barely know. I took one English lit class in my freshman year and then I realize that there is no way I would make it in that department. Majoring education still needs some new knowledge and my background knowledge and experiences in South Korea do not really count in studying education in America. But if you study and major secondary Math, you don’t have learn as much in new knowledge and skills as those humanities majors, or even social studies folks. In choosing a major, Eunju seemed to consider the studies that qualify her in a stable job both in the U.S. and Korea, but also in a field that is not too demanding in terms of language, historical or cultural repertoire in the U.S. Also, she did not appear to choose major in areas such as accounting or engineering that helps her to get a high-paying job. Although it is debatable whether majoring education requires less “background knowledge about history, humanities, and [r]eligion” as Eunju mentioned above, her perception of studying second level math education   55   seemed to her to be less work than her initial consideration of studying English or American literature. Similar to Eunju, Mei also reported that she did not necessarily feel pressured to choose a particular major due to her financial circumstances or parents’ expectation. She told me that: Doing math or learning math always give me such a headache or make me sleepy. But most of my friends here study accounting, economics, or business. I started to major in business. But I couldn’t put up with dealing with those detailed and repetitive math problem sets. I enjoy being more creative and something artsy. But then there is no way my parents would support me to study art or something like that. It would be to risky investment for them. Or even for me. Where would I find a job with an art degree? And so I chose to study education. I liked kids – until I started to do my internship. Studying education gave me a breathing room from all the numbers and math. You can also have a job after the graduation. It’s an easier and safe choice for my parents and me. Her economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capitals appeared to be transferable between China and the U.S. Yet, she did not want to take a risk of loosing those capitals, by saying while studying art “Where would I find a job with an art degree?” She initially tried to pursue popular major among her friends (e.g., economics, business). She wanted to go “an easier and safe choice” for herself and parents such as studying education. She also mentioned that English is an important socio-cultural capital both in China and Korea and she minored TESOL to demonstrate her competitiveness. Table 7. Different forms of capital and privileges in their host and home country Ling   Social The study abroad and US residency is highly regarded [home country] Economic • Dependent on parents’ financial support to live and study in the U.S. [host country] • Not able to afford and buy things unnecessary or luxurious (e.g., 56 Cultural • Improved English proficiency • Certified as an elementary school teacher with an emphasis on math • Being well accepted by a • Symbolic Higher status as student overseas who is certified as an elementary school teacher in the U.S. even though teaching profession in the U.S. is not   Table 7 (cont’d) Eunju current technological gadgets) • • Mei • mentor teacher and local faculty to teach Chinese to the domestic students Dependent on parents’ financial support to live and study in the U.S. [host country] Afford to afford things luxurious [e.g., buying a new fashionable handbag] Able to travel more often • • • • highly regarded [host country] • Teaching profession in her home country is highly esteemed Improved English proficiency Certified as an secondary school teacher with an emphasis on math Improved English Certified as an elementary school teacher with an emphasis on language arts and TESOL The participants in this study who were capable of mobilize their economic and cultural capitals (e.g.,  Dependent on parents’ financial support to live and study in the U.S.) in order to enhance their professional positioning in their imagined communities, and accordingly their future social positioning (see Table 7). As the participants mentioned that they mostly would have higher status as student overseas who is certified as an elementary school teacher in the U.S. even though teaching profession in the U.S. is not highly regarded. Each of them explicitly stated how study abroad in the U.S. can and would mobilize both career opportunity and potential financial advantage in future. In this sense, their privileged access to valued capitals had been manifested into intersected and integrated forms of cultural and economic capitals.   57   Although teaching job may not be highly respected as those in their home country, from the participants’ perspectives, educational migration and transnational mobility, and teaching position appeared to be accessible with gaining the social, cultural, and economic forms of capitals. This demonstrates how social class can be reproduced and perpetuated through this transnational educational migration and mobility. Further, another aspect of desire for gaining various forms of capital is embedded in how students imagine and try to realize their plan to “become” the kind of professional or person who “belong to” their imagined community. While through strategically and resourcefully drawing on transnational educational migration and mobility, this mobility, thus, involves not just gaining more capitals, but also the imagining and actualization of “becoming” and “belonging” (e.g., Tran, 2016). Inevitable Marginalization: “Floating Lives” and “Translation” Ling’s “floating lives” In portraying their marginalized status, Ling frequently mentioned during the interview her status as a “floating seed without any firm roots on the ground.” Ling’s sentiment of displacement and dislocation as a transnational migrant were persistent through out the interview data and during her internship period. She told me that: Things are very uncertain since I have been living in the U.S. all by myself. This conditions of floating (piao) used to make me feel super anxious about everything. Now I often found myself joking with my Chinese friends who study abroad, “are you getting use to this floating?” The answer, at least for me, is yes. If you think about everything is just transient and passing by, as long as I enjoy this floating life, I feel more hopeful. Ling often described her sojourning status and attending to college in a foreign country as in a status of “floating” as the interview illustrates. This notion of floating seemed to be associated with meanings of instability, uncertainty and impermanence. Prior to her internship, she also   58   used a metaphor for her status as a plant without roots, easily blown away. While she described her status as a plant whose root to be cut off and all up in the air: I am trying to build and plant new roots in fresh new soil. In order to find a new soil, I feel like this internship process has been finding my own feet on the ground. If I can’t do it, there seems to be no way that I can connect… connect with other people and adapt to new culture. Issues of feeling grounded despite the status of floating seemed to be Ling’s constant inner struggle. Ling appeared to enjoy this status while trying to find her “own feet on the ground” through “connect[ion] with other people during her internship experience. Indeed, this metaphor is quite well documented in describing Chinese immigrants’ experiences. According to Mitchell (2003), the term, “floating population” (liudong renkou) has become a semi-official name to describe rural-to-urban migrants in China and Chinese government and scholars have used it. Historically, the poem about by Tang dynasty poet Li Bai is also well known. Further, the film, “Floating Life” that is about and by immigrant from Hong Kong in Australia also resonated with experiences of many Chinese diaspora and South Asian migrants (Fong, 2011). Eunju’s living and learning through “translation” Eunju also stated several times during the internship that her life as a student teacher is a constant process of living and learning through “linguistic and cultural translation that something is sometimes lost in translation.” Eunju elaborated what she meant by saying: My living status as a foreigner or international student is almost always in-between that needs to be understood through my second language or body language. I feel like something is always lost in these translations. I am trying so hard to be myself as a student or student-teacher, but I feel confused many times and uncertain how much and what exactly to share and translate. There are things that too ambiguous to translate or non-translatable.   59   She also mentioned her transitional time between a college student and student-teacher during the internship as a form of translating herself, cultural norms and professional roles and expectations: If you think about being able to speak English for the first time, you think of Korean words or phrases, make sentences in Korea, and then you slowly speak English word by word, phrase by phrase, and finally sentence by sentence. I feel like this internship process is a process of learning the basic vocabularies and phrases to make my own professional sentences. As any other literal or figurative translation, you have to know certain established common rules. But as a beginner, it is so hard to translate the whole sentence into English or my own language, Korean. I feel like I am both a Korean student and American teacher. Eunju used this metaphor of “translation” not only for describing her daily life in interpreting cultural and linguistic meanings, but also her lived experiences during the internship as “a process of learning of the basic vocabularies and phrases to make my own professional sentences.” She also noted her in-between status both as a student and a teacher as well as a Korean student and American teacher as an interpreter who has to translate. In sum, as Ling illustrated above about her uncertain and unbounded status as “floating,” Eunju appeared to be also uncertain about this gradual process that something is lost between the linguistic and cultural translation. Summary Ling and Mei came to a U.S. College as international students when they were eighteen years old. Eunju came to the U.S. high school as an exchange student at the age of fourteen years old and she decided to study further in the U.S. By re/telling and presenting the narratives of those transnational women in teacher education program in a U.S. college, I demonstrate the presence of transnational students in U.S. education contexts is not simply phenomena of global migration, but many people strategically use transnational migration and education and engage in   60   “flexible citizenship” (Ong, 2006) in pursuit of work, residence, (re)producing their class, and/or investment for the future. Overall, I focused on participants’ transnational narratives that describe experiences of studying abroad and majoring education. Despite the diversity of values, views, personalities, socio-economic status, and educational backgrounds among my participants in my study, they had commonalities when it comes to their motivations for and experiences of studying abroad and studying education. Despite the diversity of histories, cultures, socio-economic circumstances among China and Korea where my participants came from, these countries are also part of the developed countries and operated by the global capitalistic and neoliberal systems. As Fong (2011) noted, a freedom and option to choose one’s majors and classes in U.S. colleges appear to be the incentives to study abroad for many transnational students. And yet, once they start to study in a college, they find that they still have to consider their primary background knowledge and how well they would be likely to be competitive to land a job in high-paying and well-respected fields in their home country or the U.S.My participants were privileged in a way that they were able to consider and choose a particular major depending on how much they would enjoy it. Despite the fact that acquiring quantitative knowledge and related fields such as engineering, economics, business, accounting, and computer programing may give them advantages in the job market both in their home country and the U.S., they chose to study education and wanted to become a teacher. Nonetheless, as the metaphors of “floating” and “translation” used by Ling and Eunju used to describe their marginalized status, they also encountered inevitable racialization, isolation and loneliness. Despite their privileged backgrounds such as socioeconomic status and   61   access to applications to U.S. colleges, the way they encountered their (imagined) educational and cultural experiences in the U.S. began to shift and evolve. Their stories might not be something entirely new given that the findings in this chapter resonate with other transnational migration narratives (e.g., Soong, 2013; 2015; Tran, 2016). Now the question is how can we look at these narratives and phenomena in such a way to contextualize and describe what is taking place in their process of learning to teach in their teacher education program and their internship? The next chapter pays a close attention to participants’ experiences and narratives of learning to teach in different internship sites with racially, culturally, and socio-economically diverse contexts as well as their growing sense of professional agency   62   CHAPTER V MAKING SENSE OF DIVERSITY IN THE U.S. CONTEXT Introduction While observing a mismatch between majority number of white, middle-class, monocultural and monolingual teachers and increasing number of students with diverse backgrounds, Sleeter (2001) has observed that these teachers lack knowledge and experiences of interacting and working with individuals different from cultural, linguistic, and racial/ethnic backgrounds than their own. To better prepare those candidates for teaching students with diverse backgrounds, most teacher education programs have made explicit efforts to implement various types of diversity-infused courses and/or experiences. However, studies on the effectiveness of varied types of diversity-infused courses have shown mixed results. Studies found that some diversity-infused courses and experiences have apparently influenced pre-service teachers’ attitudes and beliefs, while other studies have had little or almost no impact (e.g., Sleeter, 2001). Other studies noted that this contradictory findings are results of various personal predispositions of pre-service teachers given that each teacher candidate brings his/her own attitudes, beliefs, values, dispositions, and experiences and s/he will understand and interpret one’s teacher education courses through these various “filters” (Rosaen, 2003). This filter shaped and influenced by teacher candidates’ experiences, beliefs, culture, values, and cognitive abilities is, therefore, foundational for their thinking, actions and actions. Although teacher candidates may not be aware that they possess such disposition or that their dispositions critically affect their teaching practices, all teacher candidates possess these dispositions. The teachers’ disposition comprises more than just knowledge and skills. Therefore, teacher dispositions involve both the   63   inclinations of teachers’ use of knowledge, skills and awareness in eliciting knowledge when particular understandings and skills are appropriate and necessary. While in many cases, diversity-infused courses are taught and approached from a various survey standpoints due to pre-service teachers’ lack of cultural awareness and illiteracy. ,For example, Ukpokodu (2004) noted that those courses may also provide generalization about cultural groups that generates reinforcing stereotypes, misconceptions, and prejudices that preservice teachers already held about diverse students. This is not to discount the value of diversity-infused courses. In fact, critical multicultural education and diversity-infused courses, if done properly, can be a hopeful and humanizing approach for achieving equity and social justice through education for diverse students. How might diversity-infused courses and field experiences affect enabling teacher candidates to develop their critical awareness and deepen their understanding of diverse students? Furthermore, on a national level, the number of teachers with diverse backgrounds is decreasing, while the number of culturally and linguistically diverse students continues to increase. The goals of this chapter are to: (1) examine how their knowledge and beliefs influence on their sense making of issues of diversity, especially in relation to issues of race and racism in the U.S., (2) investigate how the participants conceptualize their social identities (e.g., language, gender, etc.) to demonstrate how they both respond to and create their transnational lived experiences, and (3) identify the impact of internship school contexts and teacher preparation on working with diverse students and address whether their attitudes and beliefs toward cultural and linguistic diversity change through divergent experiences across time and contexts. In this chapter, I demonstrate how this opportunity of field experience and reflection upon their   64   experience initiates from incremental changes to transformation in their teaching philosophies and practices for diverse students. As the participants described their perspectives, beliefs, knowledge and dispositions on teaching for diversity through their multiple social identities, they situated their perspectives and identities in single categories of analysis while other times they used intersectionality in examining their views and teaching practices. According to Delgado and Stefancic (2012), single categorical analysis focuses on one social identity such as race, ethnicity or gender. Intersectionality analysis, on the other hand, views multiple identities as interconnected and influenced by social structure and society. While single categorical analyses may pay attention to their privilege or oppression, intersectional analyses reveal how the participants navigate and negotiate their social identities and teaching practices, which are intersected with concurrent privilege and oppression. Both analysis demonstrate how the participants negotiated their multiple identities and teaching practices in their internship school context. According to Kohli (2009), this critical and conscious awareness of teachers of color is highly likely to help teachers create teaching and learning environments that potentially benefit students with diverse backgrounds. A Single Categorical Analysis of Views on Race and Racism Prior knowledge and beliefs in issues of race and racism. The participants did not seem to be able to articulate clearly about the notion of race that has been constructed in the U.S. context prior to coming to the U.S. Mei told me that: It was not so much about race, but more about nationality, legal citizenship, and language as a Korean immigrant in China. Without trying too much to distinguish between the Korean and the Chinese, it is just obvious for me to feel and see the differences and tensions in between those two cultures and languages. I guess I overlooked the fact that we, Koreans and Chinese, can be just perceived as “Asians” in America and related stereotypes about being an Asian. But that single category of Asian does not really   65   include or apply to me. My ethnic or racial identification, which is partly Korean and Chinese, may not be necessarily the same as that of other Chinese or Korean students. But I do know for a fact that there is this perception of power in society depending on the extent to which you are separated from your culture and/or assimilated in to dominant culture. In Mei’s case, the social categories of differences were more “nationality, legal citizenship, and language” as living “between [t]wo cultures and languages” in China. Mei mentioned that she “overlooked” the homogeneous notion about Asians in the U.S., and yet she was also acutely aware that crossing any physical, cultural, or national borders as immigrant or educational migrant, means that she must negotiate power relations and dynamics of her heritage and ethnicity/race by saying, “I do know for a fact that there is this perception of power in society depending on the extent to which you are separated from your culture and/or assimilated into dominant culture.” She also noted her awareness that oppression and prejudice exist within racial/ethnic groups that may not have any essentialized ethnic/racial identity as a solitary social identity, stating her identification as partly Korean and Chinese. All participants mentioned that they were vaguely aware of tensions around race and racism based on different phenotypes and skin color through media. Yet, they seemed to be more acutely aware which social identity markers and categories of differences may position someone in a higher power position or not after studying and living in the U.S. Eunju, for example, expressed: In Korea, people may be discriminated based on socio-economic class – who has more or less money and then some sort of power dynamics. Perhaps, educational backgrounds, too, impact their position of power. You know, in Korean society, it is important which school you went to and whom you have for the networking. I think in the U.S., above all these things in Korea, there is one more layer for the power struggle. Race. I didn’t really think about this before coming to the states. I just saw movies and most of the important people [in movies] were white. I just thought it’s natural. Americans? Of course, white people. But after taking some courses and experiencing some prejudice, I think I got to think more about this thing, race and racism.   66   In an excerpt above, Eunju expressed her understanding there is assumed hierarchical social structure across the Korean and the U.S. society based on socio-economic status and class. According to Eunju, whereas people in upper class with better educational backgrounds have advantage in general in Korea, the U.S. has “one more layer,” such as race to privilege a certain group of people. She did not seem to question so much about the fact that dominant Americans in a power position are often illustrated as being white by describing that she thought “it’s natural.” In Eunju’s case, she had started to be informed about the issues around race and racism through her college courses and she seemed to begin to understand race, racism, and her own racialized experiences. Eunju shared her experiences of taking diversity-related courses and recounted that: It is still hard for me to clearly explain the definition of race except one’s skin color. But I learned a lot from diversity related courses about how ignorant I was about race and racism in the U.S. as well as in the school contexts. In Korea, there are definitely tensions across different regions and class. But in the U.S., there seems to be intense tensions across the race. I also started to realize perhaps my experiences may have to do with my race and culture. Eunju appeared to be informed through taking diversity related courses about the inequality and inequity issues around race and racism in the U.S. While she was referring back to the prevalent tensions in different regions and class, she seemed to understand issues of race and racism based on social differences and inequality. Understanding racism and racial connotation regarding “model minority” Asians. As participants were trying to make sense of the notion of race and racism, they appeared to notice how they might be perceived in the U.S. While my participants illustrated common racial stereotypes about Asians, model minority issues came up. However, one of the prominent responses that all participants expressed was that being a model minority as Asians in the U.S.   67   was a “positive” one compared to the overtly negative prejudice directed at other people of color such as African Americans or Latino/as. Eunju mentioned that this model minority stereotype sometimes would be likely to be in conflict with her Asian international students who are struggling with their academic problems due to the language and culture: As math major, I can tell from my experiences that American people have this stereotype like Asians are smart at math. I mean it may be true, but if they see my GPA in math class, I am just an average. I do think it [model minority stereotype] is more positive than others. It’s nice when people automatically assume you are smart. But it’s not completely based on the truth. Also, like me, many international students also go through language barriers and prejudice… I mean, okay, we might have economic means to come here to stay, but that does not mean we don’t have any academic issues or people misunderstand our intentions. Eunju ’s response describes that model minority images of Asian students in general deny the existence of different academic achievements among Asian students. With conflicting messages of being perceived as smart due to the model minority stereotype and feeling inferior due to their language barrier, Eunju appeared to believe that both racial stereotype and linguistic prejudice silence the real issues or accomplishments of international students. However, during the followup interview after the internship Eunju reported that: I think I was able to get through the internship despite the challenges and also get a job pretty quickly because I am an Asian and teach math. I did not particularly like that idea of “model minority”, but I think many people in reality buy that. If my major were not math, but social studies or English, I am pretty suspicious that I would be able to get a job like this immediately, or there may be even less chance to get a job. I feel like I can be successful [as a math teacher] as long as I meet this sort of expectation. Eunju expressed her understanding how she was able to get a job, as a math teacher based on her race and racial perception, not necessarily her credential or capacity. As Eunju’s understanding and desire to meeting expectations as a model minority, the participants’ response to racialization (e.g., minimizing, reinforcement, or internalization) is not uncommon among the responses of   68   other immigrant groups who decisively chose to overlook their racialized experiences (Lee, 2015). Ling also shared her observation of her best friend, Ellie, a Taiwanese American, who has been academically successful: Ellie’s family has a big Sushi restaurant in this town. They work so hard and they are financially successful. Ellie also works so hard and she is a scholarship girl. Ellie told me white people respect her family and all, but even she and her family always feel like they keep a distance from them. At least Ellie has her family here in the states and she has a green card speaking perfect English. The only thing Ellie shared in common with me is Chinese language and Chinese cultural values. I don’t think Ellie picked up American things to be accepted by white people here. Oh, one more common thing, both of us always work so hard. Perhaps people would think it’s like Chinese thing, working our ass off [laugh]. It is not clear that Ellie or her family wanted to be close to the dominant group of white people after their immigration, but according to Ling, her friend, Ellie, and Ellie’s family were keenly aware that white people would never think their family as part of their group as Ling described. Ellie’s stories appeared to confirm Ling’s opinions about the positionality of Asian Americans in the U.S. and model minority stereotype. Ling believed that Ellie and she became best friends through shared Chinese language and cultural values such as working hard, but she suggested that not many white Americans would completely understand why many Chinese folks work so hard. She jokingly put it as a “Chinese thing.” Ling was also acutely aware that she encountered barriers due to her ethnicity and race, but also as an international student with sojourner status, she had to deal with loneliness, non-citizenship status, and language issues by stating, “At least Ellie has her family here in the states and she has a green card speaking perfect English.” In the above excerpt, Ling showed her understanding of the positionality of Asian Americans and racial hierarchy based on her observation of Ellie’s family and their limit to participating in the dominant community, or forming a Chinese immigrant community where Ling and Ellie lived.   69   However, interestingly enough, Ling was the one who firmly believed that the model minority stereotype is a positive notion and also she also expressed the importance of talking like native speakers without accents to become a good teacher. When the participants were asked whether the issues of diversity should be explicitly address in classroom, Eunju and Mei did acknowledge the significance of addressing issues of diversity in the classroom with students regardless of their race or age. On the other hand, Ling expressed hesitant attitudes toward explicitly addressing issues of diversity in her classroom or with other teachers at her internship school. Her explanation was students, including her 3rd grader students, would be too young to understand these issues and also some of them, such as her African American and South Asian American student, would be too sensitive to talk about it. Ling’s somewhat strong resistance to address issues of diversity, or working in an urban school in her future teaching career was persistent over the internship. Ling’s position seemed to be aligned with agreeing with constructing model minority myth from dominant perspectives. However, she also told me that many diversity-infused courses were missed opportunities for her to learn about her and her cultural and linguistic groups in the U.S. She also mentioned that: Some instructors take top-down approach in teaching these diversity and social justice courses. While taking those courses, I felt like that instructors were telling me “this is the U.S. history, values, and beliefs that you need to know and internalize for your commitment for diversity and social justice.” But, what about MY [emphasized] experiences and voices? Even when some of the topics related to language issues, it was either the class put me into the spot asking my experiences, which was very uncomfortable, or brushing off the topic. I got the impression we, Asians, are not really considered as minority in those courses. Ling was also keenly aware that due to this perceived educational success of Asians in the U.S. (Ong, 2006), they have often been excluded altogether from educational issues or racial discourses in her diversity-infused courses. Even when it appeared to be believed there is no   70   need to address their educational needs or issues, by asking “But, what about MY [emphasized] experiences and voices?” she also demonstrated that she wanted to be included and represented, rather than being categorized and treated as a single and homogeneous racial group. Ling also noted her active learning and participation in class by saying: I may not be fluent in speaking English as other native students in class, but I have been always trying to fully participate in class. With encouragement and support from my peers and instructors, I have been more brave and active in my learning and critical thinking. Ling’s comments above would resonate with the studies that debunk culturist account of reticent Asian versus Western ‘styles of learning and knowing’ (van Oorschot, 2014). Therefore, Ling’s attitudes and actions illustrate her strategies to challenge the way “Othering” discourses about Asian students’ reticence and passivity. The implicit assumption of Ling’s that active class participation exhibits critical thinking also supports the arguments that reticent learners in class are uncritical students who process ideas without challenge. However, Eunju challenged this connection, arguing that this active participation does not always link to critical thinking. Eunju told me that: I understand people can assume that I don’t think when I don’t talk about my opinions or I am not interested in participating in discussions when I don't talk. But there are students, like me, that ‘having discussions’ or ‘speaking up’ is not necessarily for us to understand or process knowledge critically. Most of the U.S. educational contexts support certain forms of participants! Eunju noted the students who tend to engage in classroom discussions only in minimum, but they may critically engage in their learning. According to Eunju, seemingly certain forms of ‘passivity’ in class can be forms of active negotiation process. It can be quite easier to assume Asian students are reticent and passive learners than to explain why some Asian learners can be quieter than others. The impact of cultural attributes to explain some of the observations can be exaggerated as disregarding the causes or views of perceived reticence and passivity.   71   In sum, Ling, Eunju, and Mei demonstrated that single category analysis of race/ethnicity within their transnational experiences allowed them to examine their privileges and/or oppressions, which, in turn may affect their teaching practices and interactions with their students, parents, and colleagues. While Eunju and Mei acknowledged both positive and negative aspect of essentialized racial identity as model minority in the U.S., Ling appeared to want to use this model minority stereotype as her motivations for success as a math teacher. In following section, I illustrate and analyze Ling’s attitudes toward teaching diversity and her understanding of urban contexts and students of color. I believe her stance reflected these students’ invisible positions at Ling’s school, which included predominantly white students in a suburban area, and Ling’s own invisible position at the school, and Ling’s respective stance towards students of color. Ling’s narratives on conforming and debunking model minority stereotype. While I addressed the importance of cultural backgrounds of the students in their schooling and educational experiences, I opened a conversation with Ling where she seemed to overlook the structural barriers faced by many students who are culturally, racially, and linguistically marginalized in the U.S. Ling did not agree with this view of systematic obstacles based on race or language. Because she had been fiercely fighting for her voice to earn respect from others, including her students, their parents, and her mentor teacher, Ling appeared to believe that her strategy could be applied to everyone who had to deal with racial hierarchy of the U.S. society. She reported that: Maybe it is difficult because of the cultural difference and language issues. But not race, I think. I don’t think college or schools intentionally discriminate foreign students of color or immigrant students. You have to speak up for yourself and you do not let others to give you unequal treatments. It’s just American culture that you have to be really   72   assertive to get what you want. I understand that some people are jealous of Asians’ success here. But they have to consider how hard workers we are. You have to protect and fight for what you want whether you are Chinese, Latino, black, or whomever. You can’t just sit and complain. It all depends on your hard work, not from others’ discrimination. She appeared to think of barriers based on one’s racial or linguistic backgrounds in the U.S. that people can and should overcome. She kept emphasizing choice and hard work as a decisive factor for success as a teacher or an individual in the U.S. as she illustrated in her remark, “You can’t just sit and complain. It all depends on your hard work, not from others’ discrimination.” Further, her mentor teacher and she discussed about how Ling could include her Chinese cultural and linguistic background in teaching practices, as a way to show, claim, protect, and fight for her voice and space in the U.S. Having explicit discussions with her mentor teacher in advance, Ling made it part of her curriculum in different subject areas. When I asked her whether she believed there is a correlation among race, cultural value, and success in society across the Chinese and the U.S. context, she responded: People [in the U.S.] seemed to judge international students here because they look so spoiled driving expensive cars and so on. But I think American people should respect why these people [Chinese] are able to make lots of money. They work so hard with insanely strong work ethics and strong integrity on their work! It is the same with those who are good at math. Chinese students are drilled to practice the problem sets over and over. They work so hard and of course, their score is higher [than those students in the U.S.] Ling seemed to hold onto her belief that the “success” of Asians in the U.S. or even successful/rich people in China proved that students from all races regardless of their backgrounds could accomplish success if they have “insanely strong work ethics and strong integrity on their work.” Further, Ling also compared her positionality as a Chinese international student to Asian Americans:   73   People [in the U.S.] just do not like us because we are foreigners and they [Americans] think we are invading their school, higher education, their local economy, and even their country. It is like some Americans do not like Asian Americans because most of Asian Americans are so smart and they are so successful. Americans are scared of those successful Asian Americans and I think they also fear that we [Asian/Chinese international students] are going to take the place of Americans, you know. When I asked Ling to clarify what she means by “Americans” in terms of race or socio-economic status, interestingly, she said: “Americans” are White people with blond hair and blue eyes. But those who are more jealous of Asian Americans or rich international Chinese students are less powerful people like poor black or poor working class white people, you know. They are jealous of us, but we look to have less power than them. Like many of my friends [international Chinese students] told me that although they have more money than those people, they feel like even those people [poor black or working-class white folks] talk down us or look down us a lot of times. We are easy for them to vent their frustrations in this society, I guess. In that sense, I think we [international Asian students] are similar to those Asian Americans. Ling had noticed during her service learning that many students of color, especially, African Americans did seem to experience academic difficulties. Ling interpreted the situation as her confirmation based on essentialized race/ethnicity groups. It appeared to mean to her that Asians care deeply about their education and they want to be and they are good students while other students of color did not do their best or care about education: Some parents of the students during my service learning in an urban school sometimes did not want to send their kids to school because they believe the school does not teach anything valuable. Can you believe it? When they visited the school, I was shocked to see all those tattoos and piercings as parents, you know. I was also able to see they expressed direct hostility toward me or other teachers at school. My best friend, Ellie and you kept telling me that it would be beneficial for me to work with students with diverse backgrounds in urban contexts. Listen, I entirely agree with you all. But do I want to put myself into those situations that students make fun of Asian accent and ridiculing Asian names? Nope. I would not do such a thing to myself. Some students like Urban Cohort, are willing to work with them in urban schools, right? I just admire their willingness. Because Ling seemed to be prejudiced about her previous service learning students’ parents, I asked Ling whether she knew anyone personally or talked to them about their thoughts   74   or beliefs in their children’s education. Ling reported that although she did not know any parents personally, she knew from other teachers that many students of color at the school struggled academically. Ling’s attitudes toward students of color and their parents demonstrate how socioeconomic status, class, and racial hierarchy in society influenced her stereotypes and attitudes towards others. After her service learning experience in her sophomore year, she also came up with a new “American name” while trying to protect herself from further ridicule or mispronunciation of her Chinese name by her classmates, instructors, or her own students. Ling kept going by her American name until the internship and she seemed to want to go by the English name as long as she stays in the U.S. Ling was not the only one among my participants who wanted to have Anglicized version of their name. For example, Eunju and Mei also made their English type name and wanted to be called by a shortened form of their name. When they were asked the reasons, they replied it is simply because they were tired of having people mispronounce their name and also some of them, such as their domestic peers, making fun of their name. However, Ling explicitly talked about how she felt more included in the U.S. when people easily pronounce her name rather than silencing her cultural identity. Ling expressed that: Simply put, I feel more included and make my life easier. Let’s say, you have to order coffee at Starbucks – I don’t know exactly why, but people always ask your name. I tried to name my Chinese name and I saw they were struggling even to write it down. It is just one of the examples I have to deal with every single day. I started to go by any English name in ordering coffee – One day, I am Jane; another day, I am Rachel. In coursework, most of the instructors are having hard time to pronounce my name and some of them don’t even try to remember it. During the service learning, I saw some kids making fun of my Chinese name. At first I felt so offended and then I felt sad. It’s important for me to keep the meaning of my Chinese name; but in America, name can be your brand to market yourself. And so I created my English name on my own.   75   Ling did not appear to loose any emotional attachment to her Chinese name, but she seemed to start to notice her English name would let her feel more “included” and make her life “easier.” She even mentioned the aspect of marketing herself through her English name in the U.S. If one argues the general standards of a “high-achieving” student based on her GPA, other extracurricular activities, and awards at her department, out of all three participants, Ling was one of the most accomplished. Perhaps due to the external validation based on her hard work and efforts, Ling appeared to want to maintain a strong belief that Asians in the U.S. are model minorities. Moreover, her notion did not appear to be seriously challenged in her class or by her peers or instructors. She reported that: I mostly feel distant when the coursework addressed issues of diversity and marginalized experiences of minority students through education. I remember most of them were African Americans or Hispanic students’ cases. They don’t really talk about Asian students because we know that they work hard no matter what. While Ling made thorough efforts against stereotypes of silent or passive Asian female students both at the college classrooms and internship school, Ling also showed her being receptive of the dominant group’s perspectives on ‘positive’ aspect of model minority stereotypes. She seemed to believe that she would gain acceptance once she overcame language barriers and dominant cultural norms even though it would be limited. Ling asserted that Asians have been able to be successful due to their insanely strong work ethic, the values on education, and integrity about their work. She attributed the success of Asians in general and the academic success of Asians (especially East Asians) to their respective cultural values, and she attributed the underachievement and being unsuccessful of other marginalized groups to their respective cultural values and work ethics. Interviews with Ling persistently showed that she understood and interpreted race through the ethnicity paradigm. As noted briefly in critiques of the ethnicity paradigm, this view   76   on race along with ethnicity denies the structural and systematic obstacles to achievement (Omi & Winant, 2004). In a critique of the ethnicity-equals-race paradigm, Omi and Winant (2004) noted, Everything is mediated through ‘“norms’” internal to the group. If Chicanos don’t do well in school, this cannot even hypothetically be due to low-quality education; it has instead to do with Chicano values. After all, Jews and Japanese Americans did well in inferior schools, so why can’t other groups? Ongoing processes of discrimination, shifts in the prevailing economic climate, the development of sophisticated racial ideology of “conservative egalitarianism” in other words, all the concrete sociopolitical dynamics within racial phenomena operate in the U.S. are ignored in this approach (p. 22). Ling believed that many of the problems encountered by racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. were because of cultural mismatch and differences between at home and school. The ELL (English language learner)/ESL (English learner as a second language) teacher, Sara, in Ling’s internship school also believed that most of the ESL/ELL students’ problems were due to the cultural gap between Asians and non-Asians. As Sara described Ling, who is the only Asian teacher at the school, as a cultural interpreter for Chinese/Asian students at Ling’s school, teachers and the principal wanted to consult issues faced by Asian immigrant students at the school with Ling. In sum, Ling’s focus on her racial/ethnic identification as model minority in the U.S. reveals the ways in which she and other Asian Americans have been historically, politically and culturally shaped and influenced by dominant racial discourse promoted by media and society. On the one hand, Ling demonstrated her efforts of debunking any passivity or silence imposed on her academic identity as a student or professional identity as a teacher while actively voicing her opinions and her own agency in choosing her teaching materials and unit lesson plans. However, while internalizing racial/ethnic stereotypes of model minority, she also revealed her problematic attitudes and prejudice towards her students of color. Her stances on privileges and   77   oppressions among and within ethnic/racial groups of color, however, demonstrated shifts and changes over her internship, as it will be described in a section of her reflections on diversity and teaching practices at the end of this chapter. The next section addressed the participants’ intersected multiple social identities and its influence on their teaching practices and interactions with their students in their internship context. Intersectional Analysis of Social Identities As research has shown (e.g., Pavlenko, 2003), teachers’ social identities are intersected regarding multiple cultural, linguistic, racial/ethnic, class, and/or gender backgrounds. This section focus on how the participants inhabit intersected social identities related to privilege, marginalization, and oppression through their intertwined multiple social identities (Park, 2015). In this section, first, I demonstrate how the participants situated the intersectionality of their identities in terms of race and language as contexts in learning to teach and teach their students. Secondly, I paid attention to Mei’s narratives about her multiple social identities as she negotiated her multiple identities as both sites of oppression and sites of agency for her learning to teach and teaching practices over the internship. Intersections between race and language. Studies have well documented about an unequal power among student teachers, mentor teacher, or other internship stakeholders may create a dissonance that undermines the opportunity of successful teaching practice for the interns during their internship. Studies (e.g., Cho, 2010, Park, 2015) also pointed out that student teachers with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds tend to encounter a variety of challenges ranging from feelings of sociocultural and professional alienation to limited access to legitimacy based on their race and ethnicity (e.g. Subedi, 2008). Out of any racialized experiences as a student teacher, my participants noted one of their major concerns about   78   teaching is related to their perceived English accents and language proficiency. As many NNESTs in research, my participants also expressed they often found themselves being frustrated and they ended up constantly questioning their accented English and professional legitimacy as a teacher (e.g., Mawhinney & Xu, 1997; Zhang & Zhan, 2014). In particular, their intersected identity of race and language appeared to affect their perceived teaching performance and their own perception of professional identity. Ling, for example, reported the difficulty of using effective language for discipline when students misbehave or using more student-age (i.e., 3rd graders) friendly language. She illustrated one incident that when she wanted to create an uplifting classroom mood used friendly tone of voice for her students in the beginning of the semester, a couple of her students giggled to one another and “talked gibberish with mimicry Chinese tone of voice.” Ling appeared to be more concerned about her Chinese accents when she wanted to discipline her students or compliment them. Ling also expressed her frustration about not being able to use “perfect” English whenever she wanted to talk: Well, in the beginning, they looked at me like why are you even trying to teach? You don’t really speak perfect English. And then Mrs. B [her mentor teacher] told to the teachers, saying that you need to respect her English is her second language and also she goes, you must be very talented to speak two languages. That will be very hard. --- just a little movement like that – students are like.. oh yeah, that will be really hard and they understand. The fact that I am not hiding that [a Non-native English speaking teacher] and I accept that… it is okay. I am learning just as much as you are learning. Ling’s opinion about the teacher is that they, especially for the younger people, should use “the perfect” English because students listen to the teacher and learn from them. She reported she had been feeling sorry for her students because she could not contribute to their language or literacy development due to her imperfect English. However, her mentor teacher made sure she was not discouraged due to her language. Ling’s mentor teacher also set the tone from the beginning of   79   the semester by talking to the class about how smart and hard-working it would be for people to speak to more than one language and students should respect Ling and learn from her. Ling also approached the language as a learner and made sure to tell her students that she is still learning and everyone can jump in when they want to volunteer to help with a read-aloud, look up words in the dictionary for a clear explanation during the class, or help to pronounce certain words clearly. Ling reported that she could not completely shake off her insecure feelings about teaching in her second language in English-speaking contexts, and yet with understanding and empathy from her mentor teacher and her students, she told me that she felt more at ease with speaking with “Chinese tone of voice and accents.” In Mei’s case, the perceived illegitimacy of a teacher with an accent was salient in her experiences throughout her internship: English is not my first language and I did not grow up here. Now I am teaching here in U.S. elementary school. If I were an elementary school student, and I see one teacher who is from Africa and don’t speak Chinese so well, what would I do? I sit there and imagine my situation as a student – what would I do as a student if I see that sort of the teacher? I would do the same thing [disrespect the teacher]. I understand the students’ perspectives better. Mei’s narrative illustrates that her incisive awareness that English language proficiency and the U.S. cultural knowledge is critical for a teaching job in the U.S. Further, she used an analogy of non-native English speaking teachers as teachers from Africa in China which may be marked culturally, racially, and linguistically unqualified, limited, and deficient for a qualified teaching position in the U.S. She understood why her students sometimes were being disrespectful towards her such as a case that some of her students directly saying to her, “I don’t understand you.” Mei reported that she understood this as a sign of disrespect. I was curious about the reason why she used the analogy of an African teacher in China who does not speak Chinese, rather than another analogy of a White teacher in China who speaks English, but not Chinese   80   Mandarin. I briefly shared my thoughts with Mei that the term, African can be as offensive as the homogeneous term as in Asians in the U.S. given that there is no culturally and linguistically united or salient African nation. When asked what made her think of an African teacher in a vulnerable positionality, Mei reluctantly responded: I don’t know…Probably because I saw most of native-English teachers in China are white. And many schools actually prefer to employ white teachers as a native speaking English teacher, you know. There are tons of those white expats in China. I think they are just fine without speaking any Chinese. Because they speak English and people respect that language! But a person of color would be perceived as…I don’t know…less than? Even if he or she speaks fluent English, I guess. Mei’s comments above strikingly illustrate how racialized discourses around who should and can be an ideal English language teacher may have affected Mei’s identity constructions as a student and teacher. When Mei as an English language learning student internalized an ideal English native speaker as white with a series of social privileges (e.g. native-speaker privilege, White privilege, middle-class privilege, American privilege, etc.) and perceived a person of color as a deficient speaker, it is not so surprising that Mei, as a teacher, often perceived herself from deficit perspectives. As with Mei and Ling’s case, it is not uncommon that non-native English-speaking teachers often feel marginalized by their language (e.g., Lippi-Green, 1997), wanting to speak Standard English, which is the so-called dominant variety of English with unaccented form. And yet, this dominant variety of spoken English is not always equally available to all individuals, including non-native English speaking teachers. Therefore, it constrains NNES teacher candidates from gaining legitimacy as a teacher to access and participate in a community of teaching practice where Standard English is privileged and is illustrated as normality.   81   Unlike Mei and Ling, while Eunju was also concerned about her students’ response to her accented English in the beginning, she reported in the beginning of spring semester that things got much better because her students got familiar with her accent and tone: At first students or their parents complained my accents to my mentor teacher or even to the principal behind my back. I was so pissed at first, but then I tried to understand their perspectives and where it was coming from. I recorded my teaching and watched how I talk to see it is really incomprehensible. I found I talk a little fast and now I try to talk slowly and clearly. I also asked students to pronounce some of Korean words – I was told it is difficult to pronounce some Korean words for them, but I told them it is not completely incomprehensible to me just because they speak Korean words with English accents. I told them it goes the same with me speaking English with Korean accents. Some of the students told me they got familiar with my accents now and understand me better! Now I do not try to beat myself up so much because I also know some students those who may have lower grade want to find excuses like my accents. Rather than positioning herself as a student teacher with a heavy Korean accent and powerless, Eunju was actively negotiating her identities through interacting with her students and also her mentor teacher. By demonstrating that accent may not be much of an issue to understand and communicate with her students, Eunju appeared to gain more empathy from her students and also feel empowered. One persistent topic was their non-standard English with Asian accents and certain sounds that many Asians have hard time pronouncing (e.g., [r], or [l] sound for Koreans). Eunju appeared to be embarrassed and found part of her identity (i.e., language with an accent) a public joke outside the classroom. As Eunju noted, even though teachers can earn respect from her students by making efforts and letting them be familiar with her accents, strangers outside her classroom may perceive her as “being incomprehensible.”. Eunju expressed her frustration with her instructor in a college coursework over the internship. According to Eunju, her circle of friends understood her difficulty, and they did not have problems with communicating with Eunju. In most of her college courses, Eunju did not report challenges in terms of reading or   82   speaking. And yet, she felt frustrated with one instructor in a math method coursework who emphasized the importance of teaching math with Standard English language that marked her academic writing as not adequate to teach students: I assumed my English speaking and writing is just fine. I came to the U.S. when I was 16 years old and it has been 8 years to live and study in the states. But then, I kept hearing from my instructor if I am sure of becoming a teacher because my English may not be adequate to teach students. I thought I unpacked enough how I would teach students in my lesson plan and reflective journal. She kept asking me I needed to check my grammar. I met Dr. Smith [who worked for proofreading and improvement of students’ academic writing] and also some folks in writing center to check my grammar. But still, she gave me comments, “I don’t understand what you wrote. Check your grammar.” It’s my math teaching method course, but I am sometimes confused whether I’m in English class. Eunju’s course instructor appeared to send an overt message to Eunju that she cannot be a teacher due to her imperfect language. While Eunju described her instructor as a “typical White lady with upper middle class background who is from mid-West, never really had direct interactions with people of color,” may have prejudice about her presence in teacher education department. While Eunju was also hesitant about her assumptions about her instructor, she reported she was struggling with how to address and deal with the relationship at her coursework. Given that it is a required course in her department and the instructor was teaching the whole internship year, she tried to delay her internship or change taking her methods course in another university. It was of little avail in terms of practicality and so Eunju reluctantly stayed in her internship and took the course. Either explicitly, such as a case of her instructor, or implicitly, Eunju reported it is a familiar message that she had been told that teachers are supposed to speak Standard English for students. This assumption of the native English speaker might be true and English with accents might limit one’s success as a teacher. However, it is important to note that each participant chose a slightly different stance on this perspective of speaking Standard English as a teacher.   83   Getting back to Eunju’s case, she reported that her parents in South Korea and her Korean community friends in the U.S. had encouraged her that she had to work harder in order to prove she is a “good student” at the end and just ignore those who made belittling comments based on her race or language. She reported: My parents and my friends are like, “just work harder. Prove yourself you are such a hard worker and get through the class. You are almost done [with the internship].” I don’t think that will really do to change the instructor’s perspectives on international students like me. But at some point [during the internship], I started to have a strong urge to step up. Like being initiative and outspoken, rather than being quiet and passive. As a way of being spoken and outspoken in class, I have been trying to participate more in class discussions and ask more questions to the instructor. But still, I feel like I am sort of ignored by her [the instructor] because of my language, accents, and a lack of cultural knowledge about the states. My support group is my mentor teacher and friends. I am getting along pretty well with my mentor teacher and my peers in the course works. I would not say I started to ignore the instructor’s perspectives, but I think I got to be able to keep a distance from the instructor’s harsh feedback or a little being dismissive on my thoughts and backgrounds. Eunju seemed to be more inspired to take more “initiative and [be] outspoken,” rather than being receptive of the perceived racialization from her instructor. Eunju appeared to gradually learn to strategize how she can demonstrate her agency and assertiveness by scheduling frequent meetings with her instructor and talking through her struggles in speaking and writing as a second language speaker. On the other hand, Mei seemed to have chosen not to be outspoken against the racialization that marks her accented English as inferior: I had instructors who care about students’ learning like writing academic paper. That really helped me to improve writing paper. I had to do academic progress report last year. Every week, I went to the office and report, and address the issues that I have been struggling with academically. I had to address this with instructors and revise the paper, but I did not get any mean feedback from any of them. They were willing to help me. Service learning and internship has been helpful to learn – in terms of language and culture. University and department are kind of like a green house. It’s warm and fuzzy and they protect you. At real schools, there were a lot of things I didn’t know. Like how to talk to other people. They are mostly nice. But still, you have to push yourself to survive as an international student. You can’t be like, “oh my god, I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” It’s just a lot of stress, but I learned a lot about myself, and how society works, and also, how society treats you based on your color and language. You have to find   84   support and fight for your place as an international student…You feel like from the poor country and being there. But then again, I don’t want to fight too much. I don’t feel like it’s something I can fight and win. Sometimes I feel like I am going through really long tunnel by crawling till finding a light or something. While Mei illustrated her learning experiences in the department and at the university as “a green house” where she feel protected and supported, she said her service learning and internship taught her racialization based on her language and accents. Even though she felt like “going through really long tunnel by crawling till finding a light or something,” she did not want to fight too much against it. She seemed to feel powerless in the face of the racialization and also did not appear to know how to resist. I would argue that her decision not to fight so hard against the racialization and racism is based on her understanding of her perceived position in the department, university, and even her internship placement. In other words, she understood that she did not have such power as a sojourner and newcomer to the U.S. It might be useful to address how and why her views came while situating her multiple social identities. Mei’s narratives The interview data persistently showed that her views were heavily based on her social identities intertwined with race, class, language and gender while living as an immigrant student in China, Korean heritage speaker, and international “Asian” female student in the U.S. The next section addresses her complicated multiple social identities and impact of her internalized marginalization on interacting with students and teaching practice. Race/ethnicity and language. Throughout her six years of living in the U.S., Mei identified herself as a “foreigner living” in the U.S. as she often felt in South Korea, as well. She stated simply, “I am a guest here in America, or there, in Korea. Uninvited one. I don’t really feel belonged.” In a dominant white English-speaking American culture, her perceived English proficiency, racialized appearance, her cultural preference such as food or communication styles   85   seemed to remind Mei that she was not and would not be one of the dominant (white) Americans. Mei mentioned that constant reminder of her negated identity, being a nonAmerican, also pushed her to think about what her Korean or Chinese identity meant to her: At first I wanted to continue to live here. It is just hard to imagine myself getting a job here and getting along with people in this city. Maybe it can be better in a place with a huge China town. But still, I don’t feel that I am a traditional Chinese. She was rarely able to imagine her continued sojourn in the U.S., but she also did not appear to think she would fit in Chinese community in the U.S. due to her Korean heritage. Reluctantly, she related her lived experiences and circumstances to Chinese immigrants and racially and culturally marginalized groups in the U.S. She mostly attributed her “foreignness” to the U.S. dominant sociocultural norms: I met Chinese immigrants who are still struggling with English and American culture. I thought if I have no English problem or I look like white, I would tell a different story. But I guess it would not make much of a difference. Dealing with white people is part of life here. Just like black or Hispanic people, I look different, I speak accented English, and I eat different things. Furthermore, Mei did not reveal in the beginning stage of the interviews (first two months of the study) that she was a Chinese with Korean heritage (Joseon-jok in Korean, Hangul in Chinese). After we started to build trust through the multiple conversations and interviews, she shared her heritage language and identity as a Korean in China: My great grand parents were Korean immigrants in China, Hangul, and so as the rest of my family in China. I still have relatives in Korea. My parents still speak Korean at home and I grew up speaking Korea at home. Korean language is the root of my identity. Mei illustrated her protectiveness of her cultural identity based on Korean family heritage and language. And yet, her perception of a positive Korean cultural identity seemed challenged by attending to a predominantly Chinese populated school. She appeared to recognize the social   86   stigma and discrimination against Korean heritage immigrants in China and started to feel embarrassed and ashamed of her Korean heritage since her middle school years: Ever since I went to a middle school with predominantly Chinese kids, it became more complicated. I started to categorize myself as Chinese rather than Korean. Korean became just my home language and I do not want to look like a “foreigner” or poor “immigrant” in China. I started to have a strong urge to hide me being Korean in China and I still have been hiding my Korean identity from many Chinese friends. Only some of my real close Chinese friends know I am from Korean immigrant family. I know I speak Korean with very strong accents like North Korean or something. I do know Korean people would want to talk to me in Korean and I don’t want them to find me speaking with this weird accent. My school language and socialization language is more Chinese. Mei also stated that there are derogatory terms about Koreans in the Chinese community, and also another derogatory term about the Chinese in the Korean community. While she revealed the tensions and conflicts between the Korean and Chinese communities, her “strong urge” to hide her Korean identity seems to imply her wants and desire for cultural inculcation into the dominant Chinese culture that is different from Korean culture to some extent. Similar to Eunju who tried to understand issues of inequality and inequity based on her experiences and observations in her home country, Mei also accounted for her experiences in China and how those experiences could be similar to the U.S. For example, Mei told me that she was aware of the tensions and support from different cultural communities growing as a Korean immigrant in China. While observing similar patterns of support and tensions within and across Asian communities in America, she did seem to relatively feel comfortable to face racialization and linguicism in the U.S. compared to the interview data from Ling or Eunju who expressed frustrations and disappointment. Mei expressed that: I knew already as a fact that the same cultural communities help one another out, like Korean immigrant communities are enormously important to survive in China. But I realized it’s the same in America. It’s just so obvious to see sometimes and also it’s very subtle other times. Examples? Like Chinese community here is very tight knitted and in the name of Asians Asian American community is pretty active at MSU as well. They are basically supporting one another and valuing our own cultural presence through those   87   communities. But it does not mean I feel so comfortable everywhere in America. I can literally feel people sometimes stare at me when I am speaking English with Chinese accent. Mei did not look surprised to observe people in the same communities support each other. She also noticed that some of the tensions and cooperation across the communities can be very “obvious to see sometimes and also it’s very subtle other times.” Although she stated that she expected to experience this kind of “obvious” or “subtle” discriminations in the U.S., she expressed her irritation being perceived as a “foreigner or tourist” by saying: Some of the clerks in the store do not even bother to approach to you when you don’t look nice and do speak Chinese in public. I intentionally try to wear nice clothes and speak English in public. Even then, people treat you as a foreigner or tourist. She also mentioned that at least she tried to dress nice and tidy and so people did not easily dismiss her. What was interesting was that Mei knew that if people of color, including Asian Americans and Asian international students, speak, act, and dress like their middle-class white peers, they, including herself, would not be accepted as one of the dominant groups in the U.S., by saying “even then people treat you as a foreigner or tourist.” Interestingly, she also talked about the “bamboo ceiling” for Asian Americans, that limits their social mobility even if they prove themselves, make lots of money, and earn respect from dominant Americans. She told me that: Ever since I lived in the states, my experiences and observations tend to emphasize my stereotypes about a certain racial group. I kinda saw from movies many poor people are people of color and Asians are described as being really smart and sometimes really stingy and money-hungry for success in the U.S. as immigrants. I think they are not completely true, but it is based on the reality and truth. I mean, there are white working class, but still many poor people in this urban part of the city are colored people. Lots of Chinese immigrants, I know here, are striving to make and save more money. They [Chinese immigrants she knew] deeply care about their kids’ education. But we all know it’s not like we can be an influential politician or president. I heard Asians in America have a bamboo ceiling.   88   Cotter et al. (2001) explained that the glass ceiling as a metaphor that refers to the “artificial barriers to the advancement of women and minorities.” It is an invisible barrier based on systematic and organizational discrimination that prevents women and minorities for climbing and rising up the social ladder, in spite of their qualifications (p, 143). Similarly, the “bamboo ceiling” refers to barriers to advancement for Asian Americans. Despite increased visibility on prestigious college campus and in elite professions. Asian Americans are rarely seen in highraking positions. Yet, Asian Americans are perceived to be model minorities who tend to be overly competitive, hard working, educated, intelligent, and ambitious. Despite this perception, Asian Americans do suffer from racialized discrimination, which is different from those suffered by other marginalized groups (Fong, 2011). They are perceived to be competitive, and yet deficient social skills with lack of leadership quality (Lee, 2015). As a Chinese with Korean heritage in the U.S., Mei also appeared to perceive those seemingly positive and negative stereotypes has contributed to why Asian Americans are not adequately represented in leadership or executive level positions. She seemed to believe these stereotypes also affected her being treated and feeling like “a foreigner or tourist.” The terms, the “glass ceiling” and “bamboo ceiling,” may not be sufficient to address to describe the barriers Mei faced given that her gender and language backgrounds are subjected to a diverse set of assumptions and stereotypes. Rather, her racialized experiences appeared to be on the basis of her unique position and multiple categories of intersected identities. Her linguistic, racial/ethnic identity appeared to be Chinese cultural, heritage, and interest until towards the end of her internship when she started to talk in Korean during the interview and introduced herself as a Korean heritage immigrant in China. Many studies identified that   89   Korean immigrant families in the U.S. often emphasize the primal conceptualization of Korean ethnicity and race being united by the common ancestry and blood (e.g., Lew, 2006). Mei illustrated more complicated positionality both among her home country, China, her cultural communities in Korea, as well as her “communities of interest” (Lee, 2015) in Chinese international group in the U.S. Lee (2015) noted that ethnic and racial identity can be roughly categorized between those who argue the ethnic/racial groups are communities or culture and those who claim that those groups are communities of interest. She also seemed to be hyper aware that this cultural and linguistic solidarity among Koreans can serve as a protective shelter for Korean immigrants against racism in China or the U.S., but also it may play a role to exclude non-Koreans. While attending a mainstream Chinese private school as a Korean immigrant, she told me that she hid that she was a Korean heritage speaker. Knowing and internalizing an atmosphere where linguicism (i.e., language discrimination) was functionally parallel to racial discrimination in both China and Korea, she did not appear to have had changed her longstanding belief that choosing one mainstream ethnic/racial category in society would be convenient for her to find her community and place. Mei reported that she had been preoccupied with the notion of ‘accented’ language either speaking in Korean with a thick North Korean accent, speaking Chinese Mandarin with her Korean accent, or speaking English with her Chinese accent. As the finding suggested, she wanted to pass with her perceived privilege as an upper-middle class Asian international college student in the U.S., she also clearly demonstrated how color or accents of language can position people as being dominant/non-dominant, native/non-native, standard/non-standard, ideal or unacceptable.   90   Mei, unfortunately, did not appear to have had opportunities to discuss how language can provide and has provided the acceptable camouflage, substance for racism, and other forms of social and class prejudice. While I was lamenting that we could have had in-depth conversations in Korean about what accented Korean/Chinese/English means and its impact on her learning to teach, Mei simply mentioned “I would be so embarrassed speaking Korean with this thick North Korean accents with you. Even now, I am a little embarrassed.” It seemed Mei’s Korean heritage culture and language played a role in her exclusion through a Chinese mainstream educational experiences. However, despite this awareness of the socio-culturally and politically constructed tensions between race and language, Mei did appear to internalize this deficit narrative on herself and her students with diverse backgrounds. She also mentioned, that “there is a dignity in silence” while illustrating why she did not want to be outspoken about her racialized experiences or prejudice imposed on her. She illustrated: At the end of day, I have been enjoying living here in the states. I don't want to be perceived as being aggressive or a trouble-maker by talking about how I feel marginalized or mistreated by other people. If you look around, there are always people who suffer more than you do… I want to choose my fight. More importantly, I think there is a dignity in silence related to these issues.. More often than not, it is better to be silent than speaking up. Influence of internalized racialization. Even though Mei had been living only five years in the U.S. and her observations about racial hierarchy and racism in the U.S. were limited, she appeared to hold onto stereotypical ideas about how “colored people” were struggling and Asian immigrants were trying hard to make it in the U.S. She appeared to believe that the model minority stereotype was a proof that Asians, including Koreans and Chinese, were hard workers; Asians cared about education more than any other people; and also they were expected to be intellectually superior to other marginalized groups of people of color (e.g., African Americans).   91   Struck by Mei’s phrase, “colored people,” I was compelled to dig more about how, then, she interacted with students in her internship site where the majority of the students were “colored people.” By internalizing this model minority stereotype with a positive connotation, Mei appeared to explicitly stereotype her students of color as academically underachieving and being lazy and therefore failing to help themselves and make it. Mei comments: They are just so slow to follow the lesson. Especially, math, you know. After a couple of months later of the internship, I kinda stopped writing lesson plan. My math method course instructor and field instructor kept pushing me to write lesson plans though. But then, I was like, what is the point of the lesson plan and flow if students don’t want to think? Sometimes I wonder they [her students who are predominantly African American students] literally don’t want to think. While being hesitant how to respond to these comments from Mei during the interview, Mei appeared to exhibit very low empathy towards those her students of color. Mei’s expectations of her students’ academic capacity appeared to be relatively low as well. It is hard to say she did not make any efforts to motivate them to be interested in learning; however, she had difficulties challenging her assumptions and prejudice towards marginalized students and their racialized experiences. At the same time, when being asked about addressing the issues of diversity during the conference with her mentor teacher and field instructor towards the end of the first semester of the internship, Mei responded positively that: We, teachers, should be able to address issues of diversity. Either it’s race, disability, language, sexuality, or what not. It is just that you should be careful about the audience – the students’ age and parents’ response, I think. But I believe it’s important to address valuing differences and advocate for students’ access and right for their education. Mei did not appear to acknowledge her contradictory remarks between her deficit perspectives on students’ academic capacity and her beliefs that every teacher should be able to address the issues of diversity in their classroom in order to advocate for students’ equitable access to their   92   education. It is important to understand the impact of her culturally deficit perspectives on her teaching practice in an urban elementary school. As Alsup (2010) noted, “diversity mantra” infused courses in teacher education programs deeply affected many teacher candidates to be able to articulate the significance of diversity, access, and power in the field of education. And yet, as we can see above, the chasm between Mei’s private conversation with me about her students and her public opinion was vast. To summarize, in this section, I attempted to strike a delicate balance through my interpretations of Mei’s racial identities bounded in and intersected with gender, class, and linguistic backgrounds. In so doing, I tried to avoid “othering” her voice or to “speak for” her positionality while telling her stories with authority to her “under-articulated” narratives. Rather, I see it as my responsibility to portray participants’ ways of being and knowing who are also able describe such (counter-) stories from perspectives of social (in)justice. Ling’s narratives Previous section addressed the participants’ social identities through single and intersectional analysis. While Mei demonstrated her multifaceted identities in terms of race/ethnicity, language, gender, and class, her narratives indicated that she internalized the racialized discourses and did not have opportunities to challenge her assumptions on herself or her students. In this section, Ling’s narratives reveal that she had opportunities to raise her awareness on those identity markers of students over the internship. Accordingly, Ling demonstrated that she gradually changed her assumptions on social identity markers of her students. Ling’s shifting understandings. The conversations with Mary Anne describe the tensions and racialization Ling encountered based on language as my field notes below illustrate:   93   Mary Anne (field instructor whom I worked with) and I were observing Ling’s teaching social studies. Ling was using the map of China she drew for her students in order to teach geography and natural resources of China. She also used a short video clip about the overview of the vastness of China. While taking notes on Ling’s teaching, Mary Anne murmured, “Oh, Ling is such a visual learner. She always makes arty, crafty things for her students and shows video clips. As an ESL herself, it would be easier for her to teach visually. She doesn’t have to talk.” Mary Anne’s comments on Ling’ teaching style was striking to me with her assumptions about the learning/teaching style of Ling as a NNEST. I had to ask Mary Anne what she meant. When Mary Anne and I met to discuss her lesson after Ling’s social studies class that day, I asked both Ling about her being a visual learner as an ESL, “Mary Anne mentioned that Ling, as an ESL, you are a visual learner and so you use lots of visuals in your teaching. Ling, what do you think about that?” Ling blushed her face and mumbled, “Yeah, perhaps I am (a visual learner as an ESL).” Mary Anne went on to state, “Well, I don’t really expect ESL students or non-native English speaking teachers, like Ling, would articulate well in English. I don’t expect you (Ling or me) speaking sophisticated and nuanced English. Visuals will do well in your (Ling’s) teaching. By the way, have you read the book “American English Idiom” I gave you, Ling? It must be really helpful for you to understand some of the words your students use in class.” (Field notes on January 18th, 2015). Mary Anne clearly stated her low expectations about language proficiency (e.g., “[lack of] sophisticated and nuanced English”) of ESL students or NNEST, such as Ling. Mary Anne continued to make an assumption that due to Ling’s language barrier, Ling utilized more visual materials for her teaching and learning. Mary Anne seemed to be intentionally helpful to hand out her book of American English Idiom to Ling. And yet, Mary Anne appeared to intentionally or unintentionally racialize Ling’s learning and teaching style based on Ling’s language proficiency. In this conversation, Ling did not explicitly disagree with Mary Anne’s comments, but she blushed and seemed to be embarrassed. This may related to her personality that she did not feel that she should challenge someone like a field instructor who had authority over her. However, as Lin and Kubota (2009) pointed out, racialization produces and legitimates differences among social groups based on their perceived sociocultural markers (e.g. Ling as a NNES), and biological characteristics (Ling as an Asian woman). Due to the dynamic and sociohistorically situated nature of racialization and racial formation, racialization and racial situation   94   may be always shifting. Lin and Kubota (2009) noted that “[r]acialization per se does not necessarily lead to racism, partly because the agent involved in the process of racialization is not always the socially powerful or dominant group. For instance, a minority and subordinate group can racialize themselves to construct their own identity in positive terms for the purpose of resistance (e.g., the strategic essentialism discussed by postcolonial critics).” In a similar vein, Ling did not always agree with her perceived racialization encountered in the U.S., nor did she deny the racialization the U.S. intertwined with her privilege as an Asian college student majoring elementary education and math. It is worthwhile to examine how she described her evolving understandings on cultures, languages, and identities towards the end of the semester. Compared to other interns, Ling brought in and shared her Chinese cultural perspectives and language. Her classroom was permeated with the Chinese cultural artifacts that she did share as a class activity with her students. For instance, Ling created multiple bulletin boards and decorations for the halls and teachers’ lounge with her students’ artifacts. Some of her works were about teaching the abacus in math class and Chinese calligraphy for language arts collaboration and her special Friday project. Ling also was able to work with both immigrant Chinese students and American born Chinese students at school through the parental meeting and other teachers seeking advice about their students from Ling. In her reflection on understanding students’ backgrounds and its importance as a teacher, Ling told me that: I had one Chinese student who was in my language arts collaboration class with Ms. Brown. I introduced a brief history of Chinese calligraphy and we were to do calligraphy activity with the tools that I personally brought from China last summer. As soon as I saw this Chinese boy, I immediately thought he knew this already and would be intrigued. But over the class activity, he looked so bored and did not really actively participated in what we were supposed to do. I was kind of shocked. I explained to him this is one of the fundamental Chinese cultural sprit-integrated activities. I mean he does not seem to experience much about culturally special feature at school, esp. related to Chinese one. He looked so indifferent. He simply stated, “so what? I am an American.” Other students started to stare at us. I felt a little embarrassed and hurried to change the topic. But this is   95   exactly why we need to include more cultural activities to the curriculum related to the students’ cultural backgrounds. I mean, it’s up to his parents’ expectations raising him in America, but I think he’s losing his cultural roots. To Ling, it appeared that was a certain ‘culturally special feature’ of Chinese culture that she felt compelled to teach for her American-born Chinese student through calligraphy activities. She categorized her American-born Chinese identities immediately as ‘Chinese’ in spite of the student’s resistance to Ling’s imposed Chinese identity. Although Ling’s intensions seemed to raise the American-born Chinese student’s Chinese cultural roots and support her to learn better Chinese, Ling also appeared to struggle to grasp her Chinese heritage language student’s multiple and hybrid identities constructed through complex transnational and immigrant social worlds. Ling appeared to believe that her choice of teaching materials such as Chinese traditional holidays and fairy tales would raise their cultural roots and recognize her Chinese heritage students’ identities as Chinese. However, it seemed to be related to Ling’s own wishes for her American-born Chinese student, who in actuality claimed that she wanted to identify himself just as an ‘American.’ Rather than following through the reasons why that student wanted to claim her solely ‘American’ identity, Ling looked confused and sad as if the student lost his heritage connection and attachment to Chinese ‘culture.’ Ling’s perception of her second-generation Chinese student as simply ‘Chinese’ purely based on racial and ethnic category illustrates that Ling’s views on culture was to some extent romanticized and monolithic (Cho, 2014). Taking a racial and ethnic absolutist position means that there is an essential component of a certain culture, race, and ethnicity among the racially and ethnically defined groups. As illustrated in Ling’s excerpt, her perceptions and understanding of her cultural identity and social history as being “Chinese” had not been challenged and never comprised any ambiguous   96   elements, conflicts, or contradictions until she came to the U.S. and encounter these discursive “Asian-ness,” or “Chinese.” Troubled by her approach to teaching ‘culture’ with traditional holidays, festivals, food, or partial facts of history, I had tried to challenge Ling’s static understandings of ‘home,’ ‘statenation,’ and ‘communities’ bounded by shared values and socio-historical experiences during the conversations and interviews over their internship. For instance, I posed questions on Ling’s argument by saying that “Perhaps your American-born Chinese student’s claim came from her alienated experiences by native English speaking teachers and peers whose language and cultural ideologies are all students should learn so-called standard English, ‘dominant American standards,’ accordingly.” Ling showed her resistance against taking a critical stance on touristic approaches towards teaching “culture” at first. Through my constant probes on her teaching “Chinese culture” and ongoing critical reflections on her learning to teach and teaching practices, however, Ling appeared to gradually recognize what could be problematic in such an approach and demonstrated her changing awareness of culture, language, and identity issues towards the end of the internship. Ling’s narratives below illustrates her evolving views: I used to see teaching culture, like Chinese culture, as incorporating artifacts, arts, and other material objects of Chinese community – traditional holidays, food, music, geography, history, or clothes. I mean, those things can represent fundamental values and culture in China. But interacting with other racially/ethnically different ELL students in my internship placement, Chinese immigrant families, and American-born Chinese students, I started to realize that it is actually dangerous to generalize any culture from simplistic perspectives. There are many ethnic groups in China. I can imagine they would hold diverse ‘Chinese’ cultural perspectives and values. It’s just not simple to define one ‘Chinese’ culture or any culture. This realization is important for me because now I can prevent myself from generalizing my students’ heritage culture or language or even developing stereotypes based on their heritage cultures.   97   Ling at first argued for the importance of ‘celebrating’ diversity among different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups of students at school. However, this celebratory approach to culture, language, and identities, as Kostogriz and Steinberg (1997, cited in Cho, 2014, p. 190) noted, “fails to see the power-grounded relationships among identity construction, cultural representations and struggles over resources.” As Kostogriz and Steinberg (1997) argued, the power dominance and oppression related to students’ cultures and identities can not be simplified or underestimated through a simplistic approach to embracing cultural diversity in classrooms. Indeed, teachers’ critical awareness on diversity is critical with reconsidering power relations in understanding cultural complexity. In other words, Ling seemed to realize that she needed to go beyond her mentor teacher’s encouragement of the celebratory approach of ‘artifacts of food and festivals’ to multicultural education. Ling argued for the importance of critical multicultural awareness as a Chinese speaker and NNES student teacher. At the same time, Ling’s narratives also indicate that challenges and tensions in her classroom did not always allow her to be reflective on her experiences or the shifting and conflicting nature of her teacher identity construction related to her educational, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds as well as those of her students. Summary In this chapter, Ling, Eunju, and Mei showed that making sense of diversity in a U.S. context was a major and specific challenge not only over the internship but also over their time in the U.S. in general. Among many facets of diversity, this chapter focused on how each participant got to raise their awareness about race and racism before and after coming to the U.S. As studies on micro-aggressions encountered by international college students (Kim & Kim, 2010) noted, the finding suggested that their own racialized experiences both on campus and in   98   their professional setting seemed to affect what it meant for my participants to be perceived as an Asian, Chinese, or Korean in the U.S. However, they demonstrated that there is no single “Asian,” “Korean,” or “Chinese” international college student experience, culture, identity, or perspective. While Ling appeared to embrace the model minority achievement ideology and expressed pro-American Dream attitudes, Eunju and Mei showed their ambivalence about so-called American Dream. Ling and Eunju showed that they were able to accomplish model minority success to some extent (e.g. getting a job as a math teacher, proving they are star in math class), Mei struggled to pass her college courses and at some point wanted to drop her internship experience. They also showed varied understandings of race and racism and different responses to the model minority stereotype. In particular, I paid close attention to how Ling showed her strong belief that if Asians achieve model minority success, she and other Asians could overcome racism and gain greater acceptance in dominant mainstream U.S. Society. This is consistent with studies describing archetypal immigrants who are generally optimistic about the quality of their lives in the U.S. and also their search of economic and educational accomplish in the U.S. (e.g. Suarez-Orozco, Suarez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2009). However, I also illustrated how Ling’s perspectives had been shifted through her teaching about her cultural and linguistic backgrounds; she realized that superficial inclusion of certain dimensions of culture (e.g., food, holidays, etc.) and sprinkle over her unit plan would not be enough. Furthermore, Ling demonstrated her realizations that her approaches to teaching language and culture could be simplistic and reduce students’ multiple identities as her experiences with a Chinese American student during her internship. On contrast, while Mei illustrate how her multiple identities based on race/ethnicity, language, and gender are multilayered through her insightful narratives, she appeared to   99   internalize dominant discourses on her marginalized status in society in terms of her social identity markers. It was hard to say either she intentionally missed opportunities to challenge her assumptions, or she did not have opportunities or someone who could address her perspectives based on internalized racialization and its impact on teaching practice. Overall, the findings showed that my participants’ understandings and responses towards making sense of diversity of their own and their students were informed by their field experiences in U.S. contexts with complex influences of their own social identities. In addition, pre-service teachers’ internship site contexts shape those racial/ethnic and linguistic “minority” student teachers’ experiences and responses to learning to teach, their understandings of diversity, their perception of where they are positioned and position themselves in a broader society (e.g., Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2001).   100   CHAPTER VII NEGOTIATING RELATIONSHIP AND CLASSROOM SPACE Introduction In the light of research that document the challenges of many novice teachers, studies have found that many teachers often are influenced by their prior educational experiences as well as their predispositions based on a set of values, beliefs, knowledge and commitment. In a similar vain, research on im/migrant teachers and international pre-service teachers found that teachers respond to, perform and convey their teaching and expectations through culturally embedded experiences (e.g., Llurda, 2006). Existing research has focused on challenges in implementing culturally appropriate and responsive pedagogy (e.g., Dunn 2013; 2016), and teachers’ racialized experiences based on their race, language, and gender (Subedi, 2008). Specifically, with more Chinese language teachers in the U.S., there is growing research interest in Chinese language teachers’ experiences in U.S. contexts. One of the significant findings from these studies is that many Chinese language teachers often struggle with culturally embedded differences and expectations in their teaching, including communicating with U.S. parents and classroom management. Specifically, Zhou and Li (2015) addressed what sorts of challenges Chinese language teachers face in a U.S. context, and how they adjust and adopt strategies in cross-cultural contexts where teachers do not necessarily share the same language or cultural backgrounds with their students. One of the challenges faced in classroom management, for instance, is the teachers’ culturally embedded expectation of “respect.” According to Zhou and Li (2015), based on hierarchical Confucianism, respect in the classroom means that students respect teachers as an authority figure such as being obedient without talking back, and also respect their peers such as not arguing with one another. The Chinese language teachers’   101   description of American students in their study illustrate that they can be “critical of authority, argumentative, and sometimes defiant” while Chinese students would rather avoid any confrontation with teachers (p. 21). In relation to these culturally embedded expectations and challenges, Zhou and Li (2015) indicate the significance of nuanced cultural expectations in teaching practices and understanding students’ behavior in cross-cultural contexts and how Chinese language teacher education program should be context-specific and ensure those teachers learn to adjust and adopt better classroom management skills and teaching practices that are aligned with their students’ needs and culture. Further, in light of these challenges that many im/migrant teachers encounter, research also have sought ways to prepare these im/migrant teachers for their teaching profession. Many studies have focused on what those im/migrant teachers learn to teach in host school contexts and/or teacher education program. In this context, the increasing number of teacher candidates and teachers from various non-Western, and especially Asian, countries into Western educational settings have received great attention. Some have highlighted these im/migrant teachers’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds in shaping these students’ responses to and negotiations of their knowledge and teaching practices. Others have drawn attention to the ways in which Western mainstream educational contexts and institutions are agents in perpetuating Eurocentric hegemony (e.g. Eurocentric curriculum knowledge, race-neutral stance, mainstream Christian traditions, meritocratic values, etc.). Taking into account the observations and teaching experiences of the participants in my study, it is my aim in this chapter to draw attention to the way a heterogeneous group of international teacher candidates themselves critically engage in teaching practices during their internship. In other words, the key question is not what they learn to teach and manage the   102   classroom, but how they respond to and negotiate their learning processes. In doing so, I seek to move away from deficit perspectives on any racialized categories (e.g., international students, NNESTs, etc.) that may portray them as lacking in critical thinking or active engagement in learning and teaching, towards an agency-centered approach that empower them as active agents in unpacking and negotiating their experiences (van Oorschot, 2014). While addressing challenges in their classroom, in particular, by “respect,” the participants mentioned three aspects: a) gaining respect from their students as an authority (e.g., not talking back, or doing homework); b) gaining respect from their students’ parents; and c) sharing respect with their classmates. In this chapter, I describe each participant’s physical classroom space in their internship site and various strategies they employ in negotiating knowledge and spaces. Classroom Context, Strategies in Negotiating Knowledge and Spaces The classroom context of each participant was equipped with different resources for students and teachers dependent on the school funding and contexts. Then, I illustrate visible strategies each participant used to negotiate knowledge and spaces in addressing their challenges (e.g., misbehavior of students and teaching model of a mentor teacher). All of them had been educated in the U.S. teacher education program and had opportunities to observe and interact with the teachers, classrooms, and students in U.S. school contexts through their service learning experiences. For example, Ling and Mei in this study, as many teacher candidates in the U.S., wanted to seek the learning and working environments that they felt familiar and less challenging through service learning experiences while Eunju had opportunities to confront her assumptions about challenging learning and teaching environment. To all the participants, the “familiar” or “normal” school environment was school environment with resources and support, such as well   103   funded, committed teachers, and well-established relationship between teachers and parents. They described less familiar school environment as a vague term, “urban contexts/schools” either they observed through service learning, learned, or imagined, where students and teachers are struggling without much of support or resources. It is important to note that all the participants understood in theory the importance of the teachers’ role and commitment for struggling students and supporting them. Yet, through service learning experiences, Ling was visibly resistant about working in urban contexts and Mei was hesitant. Ling actively chose to work in a suburban school with her interests and familiarity. Eunju got to be open-minded and willing to work in urban school contexts. Eunju certainly sought a sense of familiarity by going to the city she went to high school. Yet, she showed her excitement about working with students with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Mei was placed in an urban elementary school and she was hesitant to face potentially “painful” realities of challenging school contexts or teaching environments. It is worthwhile examining how they navigated the space, negotiate, and strategize while learning to teach during their internship. Therefore, it is worthwhile to examine how they navigate the professional relationships and negotiate challenges in diverse settings during their practicum. Ling’s Case: Embracing of Chinese and Western Strategies Ling’s classroom contexts. Ling’s classroom was a spacious room with broad windows and a lot of wall space. The room also had a separate restroom for students inside the classroom. In one corner, there were piles of note pads for students and the teacher with several boxes of extra pencils and crayons. Ling posted some of students’ learning artifacts on the wall, including her language arts class activity, students’ painting after reading the Chinese-English bilingual picture book, Voices in the Park. On another sidewall, there was a space for displaying students’   104   birthday and their family members’ pictures. Whenever Ling included her Chinese linguistic study and activities around cultural events, she posted her students’ work around the wall and invited her students’ parents to visit and see their child’s work. Because Ling’s school did not pressure to teachers to follow the common core curriculum for the text, it appeared teachers, including Ling, had more room to design and include their own curriculum. The desks and chairs were arranged for mostly students’ group work when I mostly sat during my observation. From time to time, the students’ desks were facing the teacher’s blackboard when the teacher was giving a lecture. Majority of students were white and there was one African American male student, two Latina and one Latino, and one Asian male student in Ling’s class. Ling’s assumptions on teaching. Ling reported that she assumed that teachers would “naturally” have authority and get respected by his or her students. She attributed her understanding of respect and authority for teachers to her own schooling experiences as a “good student” in one of the interviews, “I have been always an attentive, respectful, and polite student – a good student that every teacher loves.” In Chinese classroom contexts, a “good” student seemed to mean obeying a teacher’s authority and following classroom norms. Ling was also very cautious about discussing any conflicts with her mentor teacher, field instructor, or other service learning experiences related to personal issues, expressing her anxiety not to bring up any confrontations in interviews with me. When Ling’s field instructor made racializing remarks on her being an NNEST and assumptions of all ELL being visual learners despite the fact that not all English language learners or NNESTs are visual learners, Ling responded to this remark by blushing and not talking back. Ling seemed to think the stakeholders held authority over her.   105   In this sense, not surprisingly, Ling seemed to be greatly appreciative when her students were respectful to her and one another in her classroom. When students behaved and they were being respectful, she told md that she felt being in control of the classroom management and successful as a teacher: I really appreciate that some of the students are very respectful for each other – that’s coming from their family backgrounds. Like they always ask to other students, “can we do this?” Things like that or “Are we ready to move on?” The students want to make sure they are all in the same page. Other school [her experience in another school] kids were like “my turn, my turn” From the excerpt above, what is interesting and possibly problematic is that she attributed students’ learning habit and respectful behavior is heavily based on “students’ family backgrounds.” Ling’s perspectives appeared to be grounded that family and parents play a critical role for their children to learn to respect the elder and teachers. Although this view may cut across diverse cultures, Ling pointed out that her values in learning and teaching is fundamentally grounded in Confucianism despite her teacher education background in the U.S. From this Confucianism view, the parents and family are often supposed to take the blame when their children act out or misbehave (Lee, 1998). While it is understandable that Ling’s perspectives on understanding her students’ (mis-, or well-) behaviors originated from her own set of Confucian cultural values, she did not appear to understand that this perspective is highly likely to contribute to culturally deficit perspectives on her students’ family and parents. Also, because Ling was used to being in a school environment as a student and as a teacher where there are less tensions and conflicts with relation to parents’ support and students’ behavior, it is also not surprising to observe her sense of resistance to work in “urban contexts” where she perceived to be lacking in necessary support from parents or school.   106   Combination of Chinese and western strategies. With relation to her service learning experience in a Montessori elementary school, she appeared to be the teacher who appreciated student-centered and hands-on activities and employed active student participation in leading her class. She reported that her teaching practices (e.g., activities and instructions) had been greatly influenced by student-centered approach. She often demonstrated in her lead-teaching using many small group works. She also used a very straightforward and specific instruction style for students to follow her easily as well as allowed rooms for students to participate in and pace during activities and discussions. For example, in teaching one math unit, she organized several small groups of students with different math level (e.g., similar level students working together as a group). She sat down with lower level students for longer time to interact with them individually and give them more attention. She explicitly mentioned that she never personally experienced this student-centered math learning in her K-12 experiences in China, rather it was sitting-down and listening to her teacher’s lecture about solving problem sets. According to Ling, her teacher education program in the U.S. as well as observations and service learning acutely affected her ways of implementing activities and instructions. She also mentioned that her teaching style is not just because she was teaching in the U.S. for American students, but because her teaching philosophy is based on student-centered approach regardless of specific cultural and national contexts. However, she also expressed that her prior educational experiences in China also tremendously impacted on her views on teaching, especially, the content area for students. She wanted to emphasize to her students that one of important roles of teachers is delivering content knowledge. Ling pursued providing students with meaningful content knowledge. Ling expressed how she felt more liberated and creative in the U.S. system that allows more room for   107   respecting students’ individual and also group activity in comparison with test-oriented teaching and learning in China. Yet, she wanted to balance process-oriented (i.e., the U.S. strategies) and product-oriented (i.e., Chinese styles). She reported that: China – it’s more about passing the score and the level of the students can get. The U.S. is getting similar now. However, the U.S. education never really pushes the kids. I think I can always push the kids to work harder. I start to think that if the kids have too much freedom, they don’t learn and grow. So… Chinese system taught me, academically, we need to push the kids to work harder. And then, in the U.S. discussionbased, it’s more about how you can become a human being. We [Chinese] don’t really teach students to solve life-issue problem. How you can live your life? How can you solve the fights with your friends? If you want to reach your goal, how would you do that? In China, teachers always design step-by-step goals for you, you can just follow the teacher. But here, it’s more like that if you want to play with another friend, and he doesn’t want to play with you, how would you solve the problem? If you heard your friends saying mean words to you, how would you solve the problem, you can’t just go to the teacher. In U.S., it’s more about behaving and becoming as a human being. And being nice and considerable. Being able to put myself into other’s perspectives – social wise, I learned a lot from the U.S. and academic wise, from China. I think this sort of independent in the U.S. classroom goes the same with the teachers. We have more freedom than those in China. It is certainly hard to generalize all the U.S. teachers prefer and comprehensively use processoriented strategies whereas all Chinese teachers adopt product-oriented styles in their teaching. However, at least, in Ling’s case, she appeared to have a distinctive idea about what it is like Western (e.g., “freedom” with process-oriented problem-solving skills) and Chinese (e.g., teacher as a guide who “always design step-by-step goals” for students). While explaining her twofold teaching philosophy, she drew T-chart to compare and contrast the Chinese and Western teaching style. Furthermore, Instead of using “I” as teacher, herself, she used “we/us” over and over the interview. Her use of “we” is interesting give that it can be interpreted as her way of valuing collective interests in a Confucian context (e.g., Huebner, 2008). This means that she used ‘we/us’ as a Chinese teacher with K-12 experiences in China and a teacher who has been educated in U.S. teacher education program and works in a U.S. elementary school. This also can   108   mean that she wanted to be included in dominant discourse of experiences of the U.S. teachers by saying “We have more freedom than those in China.” Thus, by employing selectively her preferred strategies in teaching from her K-12 educational background in China and teacher education background in the U.S., she appeared to want to position herself as someone who knows both the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese and the U.S. educational context and maximize the strength from both contexts in her teaching. While she acknowledged the drawback in both contexts, as illustrated above, she appreciated process-oriented learning, such as “solving-the-problem-oriented learning,” in the U.S. and also academically rigorous approach in China. She acknowledged that she was able to have this flexibility and creativity due to her mentor teacher’s persistent support and the school district context where teachers do not have to worry so much about meeting certain standardized test results of students. Thus, compared to other participants, Ling had strong autonomy regarding creating her own curriculum especially math subject. She also implemented her lesson plans as interesting as they could be without always considering the mandated curriculum or test results of the class. Ling told me that teachers are more capable under supportive environments like her internship site because: Students are and they can be more independent – the leaders and the teachers are more facilitator – I am not giving the answers – I am just letting them know the steps to reach the goals. However, while Ling’s case shows contrastive picture with Mei who seemed to spend more time following the school curriculum and fulfilling the standardize test preparation for the students, Ling’s freedom and employment of diverse strategies of navigating spaces and teaching practices should take into account of her internship placement. That said, Ling’s internship placement was a well-funded suburban school where teachers appeared to have more rooms for creating their   109   curriculum and implement their own units, rather than being pressured for standardized test results by the school board or district. Mei’s Case: Showing and Exploring Resistance as a Strategy Mei’s classroom context. Mei’s 4th grader classroom was on the second floor of the end of school building. Inside the classroom there was a ferret as a classroom pet and there were posters about the U.S. history. On the other side of the wall, there were posters about historically well-known African American figures and their contribution to the U.S. This may reflect the demographics of her students. The majority of her students were African American students. On the back corner, there was a small bookshelf with piles of worn out picture books and chapters. Unlike Ling’s classroom, there was no restroom inside the classroom, nor piles of classroom supplies for students and teachers. All the students’ desks and chairs faced up to the teacher’s desk. Students rearranged desks and chairs only occasionally when there were some group activities. The majority of Mei’s students were African Americans, one Indian male student, and four Latino/a students. Mei’s mentor teacher also identified herself as a white female. Active resistance in addressing tensions. Mei described her mentor teacher’s modeling of teaching and ways of addressing students’ misbehaviors did not match her learning or teaching styles. She elaborated on the tensions she experienced explicitly regarding her mentor teachers’ discipline style: I feel like I am in my elementary school classroom in China with a supper strict disciplinarian teacher. My goal in my internship was to learn how to implement studentcentered approaches. But also, my goal is not to become too dependent on my mentor teachers’ way of teaching, but keep up my own teaching stance and philosophy. But this [her way of showing agency] is sometimes too difficult and slow. Here, Mei contrasted what she wanted to learn and implement more during the internship with what she felt and experienced in real internship with her mentor teacher’s modeling. Mei’s   110   mentor teacher showed to Mei and her own students that in the very beginning of the school year that teachers can and should discipline the students even though it may mean yelling at them and shaming them. Even though Mei believed that the teachers should be firm and strict in the beginning and then they can become nicer as they establish the authority, it was somewhat shocking to Mei that her mentor teachers explicitly suggested to do so. As the semester went on, Mei showed the chasm between what she was supposed to and what she preferred to teach in a different way: when asked in a mentor teacher-field instructor conference, she characterized her mentor teacher’s modeling for teaching as “structured” and “firm.” She also gradually demonstrated to emulate her mentor teacher’s teaching style. However, in private conversations and interviews with me, Mei expressed her resistance: I feel like I am following along my mentor teachers’ teaching style to meet the program’s requirements. The mentor teacher has been teaching over 20 years – she will hold on to her own teaching style however I suggest and am willing to my own ways. But there is something that I can learn from her – I like her very structured and succinct assignment instructions for her students. I often feel terrible when she scolds our students, but just because I tell her not to do so, she would not change. It’s better to look for ways to combine my preference with my mentor teachers’ demands and expectations. In this interview, Mei stressed that her students needed be provided a detailed description and instructions of how they are expected to meet their learning goals. She appeared to reach her conclusion of addressing tensions with her mentor teacher is to combine her critical analysis and resistance of her mentor teacher’s strict discipline style and thoroughly planned teaching style. Even if “discipline” might reminded her of feeling “terrible” for her students in negative ways of labeling students, Mei did not want to show her active resistance in the beginning with her mentor teacher. Also, Mei reported her observations in the beginning of the semester that students seemed to pay more attentions to what she and her mentor teacher were strict.   111   According to Mei, discipline is a major issue that almost every teacher faces in her school either in China or the U.S. Mei illustrated she tried to be nice and soft-spoken to the students at first. Nonetheless, she realized that students tried to keep pushing the boundary to the point of disrupting the class. She tried to be nice to the students and she felt like some of her students took advantage of her being nice. After expressing her frustration towards the end of the first internship semester (e.g., leaving her backpack in her coursework classroom and storming out), she characterized this outburst of frustration as the first outlet to express her resistance and tensions: After that incident, during the conference with my mentor teacher and field instructor, they started to ask me to elaborate on any tensions and exhausting incident or feelings at school. I expressed that from time to time I don't feel like I am take seriously. I also told them not only for students, but also teachers like me from China or Korea, need culturally relevant pedagogy for communicating with my students and mentor teacher. Here, Mei explained that her mentor teacher and field instructor understood her resistance as part of understanding the context where Mei’s resistance emerged from using regular conversations through the conferences. Mei also expressed her appreciation that they understood her resistance as interactive and potentially constructive one, rather than as personal and destructive one. When her resistance was openly and dialogically addressed in ways which her agency of her learning process during the internship, she started to openly illustrate her resistance came from not being able to relating to her students using pedagogies (e.g., culturally relevant pedagogy) that her teacher education program taught. She called for alternative pedagogies for teachers like her from China or Korea, meaning from a Confucian cultural context, in order to explore teaching as well as further benefit students’ learning and accomplishment. While struggling to understand how she could implement culturally relevant pedagogies for her students, she told me that it would be easier for her to focus on her role of teacher as an   112   authority who transmit and translate one’s pedagogical content knowledge of certain specific subject areas. At the same time, she employed her mentor teachers’ repertoire of classroom management techniques to manage classroom discipline and students’ misbehaviors. For instance, she asked students to sit in lines looking at the black board with the teacher’s seat being behind the classroom to supervise and observe the students. Based on her observation about that is a “problematic” and “troublesome” student, she regularly changed the seat arrangement. While constantly contrasting the difference between her own and her mentor teachers’ understanding of learning and teaching, Mei gradually explored ways in which she could related to her mentor teacher’s expectations and goals of internship. To be specific, she reported that one of the most useful strategies is establishing rules, giving clear and firm warnings/choices, using reward system, implementing for students to learn the consequences of their behaviors. In doing so, she told me that she could avoid possible uncertainties of her students’ behaviors or missing any learning goals for unit lesson plan. That said, Mei appeared to assume her agency and actually seemed to be empowered as a result of her expressing resistance and reflections on what she could do and make the situations better. Nonetheless, regardless of her preparations for structured instructions for teaching, Mei reported that on a regular basis, over the internship, she struggled with some of the students’ disruption of their instruction with their questions, comments, and/or personal needs. These often seemed to be unrelated to the lesson or instruction. Mei shared her experience about a student’ abrupt question whether she had a partner or not in the middle of the class: Of course it [teaching context] is so different from China. It’s more about obeying the teacher rather than interrupting and having discussions. We don’t do that – everything is just listening. Here you have to interact with kids and open the discussion. My mentor teacher is more like a Chinese style– she was like, “I can’t handle the noise level when the kids do the group work.” In China, the kids are more obedient. The parents want to let the teacher do whatever and respect the teachers. Here, the parents are so different. The   113   parents come to school and complain. They don’t even pay attention to the teacher…I am not paid and I am just an assistant to them. I hope I don’t sound too whiny or anything like that.. I just wish I could use some support outside the classroom. I don't really know how to ask more for the parental support. In a form of reflections on improving communication skills with parents, I just wrote my reflection note as short as possible. I struggled to answer detailed questions about my learning process. From above excerpt, on the one hand, Mei explained that it is hard to generalize that all the American teachers use discussion-based western learning given that her mentor teacher employed more lecture-based teaching style. Although she did not explicitly express her rejection on this teaching practice, she expressed her need to support from her parents, or “some [form of] support outside the classroom.” Her resistance became evident not by what she said or behavior; but rather by what she did not say or write in her reflection note as she reported her reflection notes were short. Despite her need for exploring situated pedagogies and learning to communicate with her students’ parents, her inner tensions and needs appeared to be invisible and did not meet opportunities to be properly addressed during her internship. Eunju’s Case: Critical Thoughts on Different Educational Contexts Eunju’s classroom contexts. Eunju’s classroom was located on the third floor of the building. The math classrooms were categorized as ‘math pods’ and these math pod classrooms were placed at the corner of the third floor. Inside the classroom, there were posters on the wall that showed students’ progress and quiz results (e.g. pass or fail), and signs of classroom rules. On the front wall of the room, there was a big smart screen and computer where Eunju and her mentor teacher could demonstrate easily how to solve certain sets of math problems. The student desks were arranged in three rows. Eunju told me that she frequently changed the settings of the students depending of the classroom dynamics and the flow of their attention. At the back corner, there was a small bookshelf and closet for Eunju and her mentor teacher to use.   114   Eunju’s critical thoughts. Eunju told me that she initially struggled to understand the reasons why her students did not do homework or review material before the class. Eunju talked during the interview in December that she and her mentor teacher talked about students’ general attitude towards homework and study: I assumed almost all students would go home right after the class and surely do their homework. Many students come to the class without doing their homework and my mentor teacher suggested me to do their homework or practice at least 10 minutes in class. My mentor teacher explained that students are busy with their work outside school such as part time jobs or baby-sitting their siblings, etc. Perhaps it’s related to my schooling experiences. Most of the time, my classmates and I did our homework before going to the next class. There is a different notion of homework in the U.S. and Korea. Doing homework is the least work students are supposed to do before coming to the class and a proof that they are prepared for the lesson. When I was sharing that I, a Korean, did not always do my homework and sometimes lied to my parents that I did my homework in order to watch TV or play with my friends, Eunju seemed to start to think about what motivated and made her do her homework almost all the time. Eunju mentioned that it came as almost a cultural shock to her when she had to give her students in-class homework time or students who did not do homework came to the class without qualms: In Korea, teachers can force the students to do things, but you can’t do that here in the U.S. so that students do not always respect the teachers. If I grew up here, I would think this is natural, but I tend to keep comparing things here to those in Korea. As the excerpt illustrated above, Eunju understood one of the big differences between educational setting in Korea and the U.S. are whether the parents and teachers can really push their children and students. Eunju told me that based on her limited observations and experiences in cross-cultural contexts in Korea and the U.S., it appeared that some students in the U.S. have more leeway to do their own things whereas many Korean students are under pressure due to the university entrance exam. The word, “natural” is also frequently shown across the participants when they described something that they would feel comfortable in their home country or they   115   could imagine to be comfortable if they had grown up in the U.S. In Eunju’s case above, it took some time for her to get used to the independence and autonomy of her students’ behavior in class. Given that Eunju went to high school in the U.S. and she may have had an insider’s perspectives of those students, I also asked her whether it is something she witnessed before as a teenager in the U.S high school. She told me that: I guess, as a teacher, I want to be more demanding. The expectations are totally different when you stand up in front of the class and when you idly sit back in your chair as a student. Besides, I have at least 12 years of K-6 experiences in Korea and 3 years of high school experiences in the U.S. When I think of teaching, my mind automatically and unconsciously think of teachers in Korea. I consciously try to remember what teachers in the U.S. were like, but still. Here, it is not surprising that her early educational experiences and socialization in Korea appeared to deeply affect how she had conceptualized and understood learning and learning to teach. Eunju emphasized that her upper-middle class status in Korea may have limited her perspectives and observations on parental support and students’ study habit and attitudes for education. However, she reported her observations of addressing students’ different study habits that often seemed to be forced upon by their parents in Korea while her students in a U.S. public school seemed to have more freedom and choices for their study. Eunju also illustrated that many parents, including her own, fully supported their children’s study and education. Eunju shared teaching students in Korea who did advanced studies and advanced studies (e.g., 4th graders studying 7th graders’ math and science) under their parent’s pressure. However, Eunju did not expect her students in the U.S. to do so and yet she wanted them to review things or at least do their homework. Despite her teaching philosophy that teachers should hold higher expectations for their students, Eunju reported that she had tried to lower her expectations about students’ test results or turning in assignments; otherwise, she reported that she was not doing good enough for her students given some poor test results of her students. She also mentioned social mobility   116   through education both in Korea and the U.S. Given her insider position in Korea, she narrated her observations in Korea: Perhaps the quality of education is different depending on the family socio-economic class across any culture. But still, parents’ stance on education is just so different from Korea. Korean parents are willing to end up being in debt for their kids’ education. The poorer you are in Korea, the more education is the only ticket to get out. Here, sometimes parents don’t seem to want their children to be educated so that their kids don’t leave the family. More importantly, getting a good score is not enough in terms of “education” in the U.S. You can prove yourself in other ways. The meaning of fulfillment as a teacher has changed since I started to work here. I used to be happy when students get A whereas I am happy when students just do their homework. I start to see getting A or full score does not always mean you are a “good” student. There should be many different ways to describe “successful” and “good” students in the U.S. while Korean education has limited definitions. As illustrated, while Eunju started to compare and contrast different expectations and pressure in educational settings in Korea and the U.S., she took a critical stance on what it means to be a “successful” and “good” student depending on educational contexts. She noted that successful students may share common grounds across cultures (e.g., good G.P.A., great social relationships at school), but she also emphasized how certain educational context might impose certain notions of successful or good student. Based on her observations and experiences, Eunju noted that Korean educational contexts may limit the meaning of a successful education and student to a certain score based on the test or advanced study. While Eunju appeared to believe that many parents in Korea were more supportive to their children’s education, believing education can give them a social mobility, she did not appear to believe that it is a positive social phenomena. Eunju acknowledged the fierce competition among students and parents for “better” education and also shared her critical perspective on this issue. Eunju highlighted she reminded herself of this critical perspective on different educational contexts and used it as a strategy to negotiate her teaching practices and spaces in the internship.   117   Romanticizing “Asian” Educational Contexts Ling illustrated above that her views on discipline in the classroom, teacher authority, and respect for teachers can be profoundly based on Confucianism in East Asian and East Asian educational contexts that emphasize obedience to the elders, including teachers and people in a higher position with knowledge and experiences (Moon, 2010). Indeed, a great number of studies on East Asian teachers’ experiences illustrate the culturally embedded values of the Confucianism in education in teaching and learning (e.g. Zhou & Li, 2015). However, it should be noted that this view on respect and obedience in classroom, enthusiasm for education in East Asia appear to have been romanticizing and masking the reality in diverse contexts in East Asia. In a similar vein, Eunju demonstrated her critical stance on romanticizing educational contexts in her home country, Korea. When I asked Eunju about her inclination about teaching at a public high school in South Korea, she described at length about serious issues that many teachers at public schools in South Korea have been encountering: Teaching at public high school in South Korea? Are you kidding? I don’t know it is going to be any easier just because I teach at high school in South Korea. Okay, maybe there would be no such racial discrimination, but still. Even though I have to teach in South Korea, I would never teach in public high schools. Both teachers and students experience brutal pressure on college entrance exam. As I personally experienced at my middle school, I did my study with my private tutor and I often slept through the normal class at school. I was not alone with sleeping through the class. Other kids did even their private tutoring or private institution homework during the class when the teacher [at public school] was teaching. What is worse, as you know, parents tended to be more disrespectful for those teachers in public schools. The private education does matter for both students and parents because parents invest more money for whatever forms of private education and kids believe the teachers in private sectors are more capable than those in public schools. Respect for teachers? I don’t know much about elementary schools, but public high school teachers in the U.S. seem to gain more respect and authority than those in South Korea in general. Eunju seemed to think South Korea might not explicitly discriminate against teachers based on teachers’ backgrounds. However, Eunju argued against romanticizing the notion of respect and   118   discipline at public high schools in South Korea given the “brutal pressure on college entrance exam”. The private education, often referred to as “shadow education” (Lee & Shouse, 2011) in various forms (e.g. Hakwon, the so-called “cram schools”) in South Korea is common and it has become a major educational and social policy issue in South Korea and East Asia. This rapid growth of private tutoring and institution service has been criticized for a source of students’ low engagement in school as Eunju described her experience of “sleeping through class,” placing a hefty financial burden on family, and also contributing to overall educational inequity (Park & Bae, 2009). Eunju’s accounts illustrates that the romanticized descriptions of respect for teachers and discipline in East Asian educational context. More importantly, her critical thoughts demonstrate clearly that non-Western students can be ‘uncritical’ to knowledge and experiences in a “Western” setting. To recapitulate, the participants brought their cultural and educational backgrounds and understandings to their internship and consciously and critically compared and contrasted their own educational backgrounds, those contexts in their home country, and their internship site. In doing so, they were able to navigate and negotiate knowledge (or lack thereof), spaces of the internship site, communities, and college courses. These negotiation processes and strategies were also by no means smooth or unchallenged. While these strategies I illustrated in this chapter are analytically distinct by each participant, I should note that they may overlap in their teaching practices, and each participant might have oscillated between several strategies and negotiation over their internship. Summary Ling, Eunju, and Mei expressed challenges of navigating and negotiating classroom spaces, such as classroom management, based on their cultural expectation of respect and   119   authority. As previous studies have documented in depth about how many teacher candidates tend to pursue familiarity based on their cultural and educational backgrounds, my participants’ cultural expectations and also their K-12 educational backgrounds in their home country seemed to affect and shape how they understood and handled those challenges. These findings are consistent with previous studies on how international ‘foreign-born’ international in-service teachers and immigrant teachers enact their cultural expectations and how these expectations play a significant role in their teaching practice and interaction with students (e.g. Dunn, 2011; Gao, 2010; Zhou & Li, 2015). With relation to my participants’ East Asian cultural backgrounds (i.e., China and Korea), their expectations for students were respecting the elder (including their teachers), and having good study habits such as doing and reviewing homework before and after the class. As many studies on East Asian teachers’ expectations and challenges in the U.S. pointed out, these values may be contradicted by many of the U.S. classrooms that may emphasize student-centered space with respecting students’ self-expressions and choices (e.g. Gao, 2010). While the findings in this study illustrate that my participants in the beginning of their internship were struggling with their culturally rooted expectations, each participant demonstrated different ways to address their challenges in their classroom. In Ling’s case, with a strong support from her mentor teacher, she was able to include her cultural and linguistic backgrounds in curriculum and instructions. Also, she seemed to embrace student-centered and independent learning styles. She employed many small group works based on students’ level of achievement and also used a very straightforward and specific instruction style in her teaching practice. What was interesting in Ling’s case was that her expectation as a teacher was not only grounded in her cultural background, but also her learning experiences as a   120   ‘good and obedient’ student who may have a difficulty connecting with students with a lack of learning motivations or respect for the teachers. On the other hand, in Mei’s case, resistance was more visible: she often made comments how her own schooling experiences were different from the teacher education program’s understandings of learning and teaching (e.g., engaging students actively in their learning or using electronic teaching portfolio). However, her field instructor appeared to be able to take up her resistance as an entry point into a conversation or an explorative process. Mei’s field instructor asked her to write a weekly dialogue only between Mei and her field instructor and it was not to be evaluated. Mei’s case and support from her field instructor resonates with findings by Sannino (2010) that active engagement in resistance and exploration in a collaborative way can be of benefit and constructive for student teachers’ learning and teaching practices. Vermunt and Verloop (1999) also conceptualized student teachers’ discontent and resistance as “friction” or incompatible learning and teaching strategies. Bronkhorst et al. (2014) also viewed resistance as a form of friction that come from a mismatch between student teachers and their teaching and learning environment. However, her resistance was also implicit at other times: her resistance showed not so much by what she said or wrote, but more by what she did choose not to say or write. For example in her reflection notes about diversity-infused courses or teaching for social justice, the notes were fairly short. She appeared to struggle to answer the specific and detailed questions about her learning and teaching in relation to diversity and social justice. This has been described as also a type of resistance, terms “dis-identification” (Hodges, 1998), or “indicative of lack of engagement in the program’s philosophy” (Bronkhorst et al., 2014, p. 80).   121   In Eunju’s case, Eunju also had as great support and understanding from her mentor teacher as Ling. Eunju seemed to be struggling with her expectations towards her students based on her teaching experiences in Korea (e.g. their study habits), and she demonstrated an willingness to understand the reason why some of her students may need more time or support while getting to know her students. Unlike other participants, however, Eunju showed her deeper understanding on how ‘success’ as a ‘good’ student at school in different cultural contexts can be differently defined and understood. While both Ling and Mei showed their understanding of the respectful students and a teacher as an authority figure in classrooms is generalizable across East Asian culture based on Confucianism, Eunju demonstrated that she was wary of romanticized picture of “Asian/Korean” educational contexts addressing the changing complex reality in public schools in South Korea due to the private education system. In relation to Eunju’s point that who argues what is and should be ‘generally’ culturally grounded teaching practice and norms, Mei also reported that her mentor teacher’s style is more aligned with ‘Chinese learning style’ that emphasizes the authority of the teacher. Mei was actually struggling to find ways to connect with her students and find culturally responsive instructions and strategies for her students. Her mentor teacher who was a U.S.-born, native English speaking, traditionally trained white female teacher did not appear to be Mei’s role model for culturally responsive teaching. Those findings suggest that the participants appeared to navigate and negotiate the classroom space better by building cultural bridges to understanding the backgrounds and experiences of their students. Thus, the teachers’ understanding of culturally responsive teaching practice and also their willingness to adopt culturally responsive and sustaining strategies that are aligned with students’ needs and culture are significant. And yet, what is ‘culturally’ appropriate and generalizable practice should not be dichotomized as   122   either western or East Asian classroom teaching practice or management strategies. This finding reiterates the importance of teachers’ understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy and its implementation was and could be beneficial for those NNES international student teachers to address their classroom challenges in better ways and also to accomplish their teaching goals and meeting students’ needs that are aligned with cultures of their students and their own.   123   CHAPTER VIII DISCUSSION, IMPLICATION AND CONCLUSION This qualitative study examined transnational narratives of three international pre-service teachers from China and Korea. I employed ethnographic case study methods to maintain our established relationships inside their internship placement and also outside the school by continuing my participation in formal and informal conversations, and meeting with participants to share and understand their sense-making in teaching practices and issues of diversity in the U.S. school context. Specifically, I began this study with three overarching research questions: (1) What did motivate three international pre-service teachers to study abroad and major education? How do their desires of gaining capital (e.g., social, cultural, economic) and belonging to an imagined community impact their transnational educational migration?; (2) How do the participants navigate internship spaces and professional relationships?; and (3) How do the participants make sense of diversity in the U.S. contexts? This study yielded four major themes: (1) transnational educational migration, mobility and inevitable marginalization; (2) influence of multiple social identities of participants on understanding issues of diversity in the U.S.; (3) strategies in navigating professional relations during the internship from agency-centered perspectives. The first section is a further discussion of the major themes. The discussion is to elaborate on cross-case analysis through theoretical frameworks: (1) transnational educational migration and mobility through the lens of capital and imagined communities; (2) metaphorical conceptualization about inevitable marginalization; and (3) growth of professional agency. I then provide implications of the study, including suggestions for international pre-service teachers, teacher educators, practitioners in K-12 settings, as well as educators in higher institutions.   124   Revisiting Transnational Educational Migration: Capital and Mobility Bourdieu’s capital. As several studies demonstrated how the multiple forms of sociocultural and socio-economic capital accrued by students may affect their learning (e.g., Dika & Singh, 2002), the numerous forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986) accumulated by these three women through their lives before coming to the U.S. may have had influenced the ways they understood their experiences in particular lenses. Regarding varying forms of capital, they were able to gain admission to the competitive teacher education program with economic capital to apply to as well as complete and sustain their unfunded internship  or a professional opportunity. As my participants in my study illustrated, acquiring cultural capital (e.g., learning and improving English proficiency and learning different cultures) may often give an implicit message of attaining, or reproducing a certain status in their country of origin or host societies (Bourdieu, 1986; Park, 2015). Apparently, their transnational educational migration appeared to be driven by gaining upward social mobility in a global neoliberal system. They also hoped the experiences and credentials of the U.S. education would be transferable to their home country in terms of knowledge, connections, resources, and social and linguistic capital. This is a coherent finding from studies that illustrate how English-speaking countries have been often assumed to provide the transnational students with marketable language competence and proficiency with sociocultural capital (Shin, 2012) and, thus, those English-speaking countries have been often perceived as preferred places for transnational educational migration. However, such hegemony does not exist in a vacuum but reflects historical and current perceptions and beliefs situated in the media and larger society. As the participants pointed out, the notion of “Abroad” (i.e., Waiguo and Weiguk) in China and South Korea has been widely promoted through various materialistic or cultural products and this   125   notion is widely acknowledged instead of by its specific name (e.g. the U.S., U.K., Canada, etc.) This tendency to elide differences among different developed countries appeared to come partly from inadequate background knowledge about those countries and differences among them. This can be similar in a way, which Orientalist discourses partly stemmed from inadequate knowledge about non-Western/developed countries and the differences among them. However, I do not argue that the notion of Waiguo and Weiguk was not just a form of reverse Orientalism. Nor, I do not wish to generalize about “developed” “western” countries or differences among different countries. Some of the participants’ comments seemed like overgeneralizations or simplifications about their entire country, the U.S., or international preservice teachers based on a few experiences that they faced in particular settings with particular individuals in the country. I cannot tell how or how much their generalization or simplifications differ from other international perservice teachers’ experiences because I did not do that sort of study in various developed countries or even the states in the U.S. in this study. My goal is not to present fair and accurate accounts and generalizations about “what developed country, such as the U.S., is really like “ or “what international pre-service teachers’ transnational educational migration experiences are like.” But rather, I presented a portrait in chapter IV about how transnational educational migrant student teachers in my study subjectively imagined to belong to a developed country, experienced their interactions with academic/professional setting and how these subjective experiences influenced and transformed the way they thought about their home country, developed country, and their own hopes, goals and concerns about learning and learning to teach in U.S. contexts. Their narratives unfolded similar as well as different descriptions in terms of their class, educational, economic, and other privileged backgrounds and motivation. All of them desired   126   and gained social capital of studying abroad, which is highly regarded in their home country. While Ling appeared to feel financially pressured to study abroad, their middle to upper-middle class socio-economic status in their home country provided participants with certain opportunities such as gaining educational experiences, learning other languages, traveling to foreign countries for vacation, and etc. This stable socioeconomic status also seemed to affect my participants’ choice of major in my current study. They were also able to attain cultural capitals, such as improving English proficiency and being certified as a teacher in the U.S. By choosing to study education, they accomplished to gain respect and status as a future teacher, which is highly respected in their home country (i.e., social and cultural capital).   However, it should be noted that transnational migration trajectories do not seem to be solely determined by socioeconomic factors. Large-scale migration research and data may tend to assume that people make a decision of transnational migration with one’s reasonable and predictable rationale (Ong, 2006). Indeed, there is quantitative data analysis that illustrates the strong causality between the socioeconomic backgrounds and the transnational educational migration worldwide (e.g., Fong, 2011). Similarly, students with middle-class backgrounds, such as Eunju, seem to have more opportunities to study abroad. And yet, the relationship between socioeconomic status and study abroad does seem to be far from clear-cut. Ling, for example, perceived her socioeconomic status much lower than her peers among her circle of friends who decided to study abroad in the U.S. A certain socioeconomic status or motivation for gaining upward social mobility may not be the most significant factor for transnational migration decisions at an individual level. As illustrated, particular events (e.g., Ling’s traveling to Europe, Eunju’s experiences of being bullied at school) and idiosyncratic reactions (e.g. Mei’s desire to living abroad and interacting   127   with ‘foreigners’) seemed to lead them to do decide to study abroad rather than a belief that people with a certain socioeconomic status could or should study abroad and attend to a U.S. college. As Eunju and Mei illustrated, some of my participants were actually pleasantly surprised that they were able to study abroad as the first person in their family. In the end, those transnational educational migration decisions do not seem to be based on realistic and rational analysis of the costs and benefits of migration, but rather on subjective responses to events and imagination that appeared somewhat unexpected to those who experienced them. This is consistent with studies that have illustrated how many of the academically and socioeconomically average or even below average transnational students try hard to go studying abroad in order to attain cultural capital (Ryan, Erel, & D’Angelo, 2015). In terms of cultural capital, learning language and culture can be an important component of transnational educational migration and a resource for the construction of space and connections of transnational migrants. Imagined community and mobility. Different historical and political contexts of countries may represent different hegemonies of sociocultural and linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 19862). English-speaking developed countries (e.g., U.S., Canada, Britain, etc.) and the possibility of gaining linguistic and socio-cultural capitals that connect geographical space and transnational social space may also have served as an essential motivation for transnational migrants’ imagination and reality of the world (Park & Bae, 2009). This can be particularly the case for the participants in my study. Another of explaining the transnational educational migration is the extent to which people use education for a social mobility (i.e., gaining more capital). Many students, such as my participants in this study, left their home country in order to gain educational experiences and   128   credentials at English-speaking developed countries, such as the U.S. Experiences of some international students have gained attention in higher education contexts due to their significant meaning of global neoliberalism, circulating human capital, and subsequent im/migration (e.g., Levitt & Schiller, 2004; Rhee & Sagaria, 2004). In order to gain this social mobility, the participants mentioned the notion of “community” and “belongingness” multiple times during their internship. Within their interview data, there was an implicit notion of “they” who defines the terms and conditions of belonging and not belonging within their professional community at internship school or within an “American” community. While addressing this hegemony of transnationalism through the media worldwide and emergence of nationalism, Anderson (2006) argued that people were able to see themselves as part of an “imagined (political) community.” Anderson’s (2006) notion of the “imagined community” has been taken up and reworked in a number of different contexts and as a response to a complex network of contemporary issues and phenomena. It has been adapted, for instance, to feminist, literary and cultural studies (Huff, 2003), and particularly to English language teaching (e.g., Kanno & Norton, 2003). Kanno and Norton (2003) noted that imagined communities as “group of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of the imagination” (p. 241). Further, Fahey and Kenway (2010) argued that the relations among the nation-states, multiple identities and knowledge in transnational space is becoming increasingly complicated, to the degree that for many transnational migrants the physical and figurative notion of “home” is intricately linked to conceptualizations of constant transnational mobility. As a result, an imagined community may create a strong bond based on a shared language,   129   capitalism, and most importantly educational migrations among ambitious youth driven by an imagination of place, space, and language. Fong (2011) also suggested that the increasingly globalized nature of media, language, and educational migration that are available to the Chinese youth encouraged them to aspire to belong to such an imagined and developed world and community that consists of well-to-do, highly-educated, and well-connected people around the world, as Mei illustrated. Likewise, in my study, the strong desire to live in a foreign country was also a common thread among three participants among participants with different socioeconomic backgrounds. Building on the conceptualization of the “imagined community”, the findings in this study deepens our understandings of how the three women in this study perceived themselves as belonging to their global, multiple and imagined communities. Also their notion of community is also their “imagination” that functions to define the ways they could belong and define who community members are, or can be. Specifically, chapter IV addressed the ways each participant spoke about their motivations for study abroad in the U.S. and majoring education in a U.S. teacher education program inspired by possibility of belonging to a certain broader community. Specifically, all the participants described “the Western,” “developed countries,” and “America” several times where they want to belong to as a community. All participants illustrated that the kind of education that would and could have had qualified them for a certain work seemed to remain elusive due to the equally rapid inflation of foreign-country baccalaureate diplomas in their home country (Waters, 2015). Higher degrees such as masters’ or Ph.D. is required and better yet having a certain set of social connections is required for a better job in both my participants’ home country China or South Korea. In this sense, it is better to view the transnational narratives of my participants not as a direct reflection of dominant hegemonies of transnational migration, but as a process in   130   ways which such hegemonies are imagined, circulated, negotiated, and reconstructed while they had interacted with varying conditions and contexts of their transnational journey. In their interview data, notions of “Western,” “developed countries” and “America” were simply referred to their means of social mobility and desires to belonging to such community, and yet never clearly defined and remain confused and vague in my participants’ narratives. Although their motivations for study abroad clearly illustrate such longings and desires for the belongingness to such cosmopolitan community, it is hard to define ways they actually were able to belong within their internship school or teacher education program. In actuality, “they,” the international pre-service teachers in this study, appeared to remain apart from the school community. According to a field instructor I overheard, what was necessary was that “they” have to mix with others. Even as “we,” as a teacher educator and stakeholders in their internship, have the power to validate their experiences or certify them as a teacher or not, “their” lack of integration within the school community is a sympathetic, but can be worrying presence. On the one hand, perhaps my participants’ reference to the “West” demonstrates that they had been implicitly internalized orientalist perspectives. They are clearly aware that the “Western” developed countries, such as America,” has the power to create its own history, traditions of philosophy, imaginary, and even vocabulary to name one’s imagination and reality. Subedi (2008) also noted that contemporary Western society is represented as a “white” world where narratives of whiteness establish the terms and conditions through the ascription of the experiences and lives of those who are “not white.” In this case, we need to raise a question, “whose” imagination motivated their transnational educational migration.   131   On the other hand, they also narrated their awareness that they are “wanted” and “brought” for the financial benefits along with international and intercultural perspectives and experiences to a possibly monocultural and monolingual community in their program and university. However, Ling showed her fear that the internship school and mentor teachers would find her presence as a “burden.” Mei illustrated that her presence may make her mentor teacher and even her teacher education program “uncomfortable” as they may not be prepared for cultural and academic changes and inclusion to the curriculum, or program that she wanted and needed. Even though their transnational narratives illustrate their imagined community through their education and certification in the U.S., ironically, their presence and experiences still remain ambivalent and quite unknown to their professional community during the internship. There were tensions, ambivalence and contradictions of the participants’ imagined community and actual professional community during the internship and their program. The findings in this study, then, suggest significant directions for thinking about the ways which communities are defined and spoken by whom and the implications for understanding the impact of their presence on school and program communities. Despite discourses about multiculturalism, critical multiculturalism, and monoculturalism, the findings also suggest that how perspectives of commodification on im/migrant teachers, including international pre-service teachers, serve to reinforce “monologic imagination” rather than “dialogic imagination” (Beck, 2002). Beck (2002) emphasized this dialogic imagination, which “corresponds to the coexistence of rival ways of life in the individual experience which makes it matter of fate to compete, reflect, criticize, understand, and combine contradictory certainties” (p. 19, see also Arber, 2008, p. 399).   132   Metaphorical conceptualization about marginalization. As the metaphors of “floating” and “translation” used by Ling and Eunju suggest, they also encountered inevitable marginalization. Eunju’s metaphor, translations, captures challenges of making sense of her lives and making meaning. This translation was not simply a conversion of world or meaning to Eunju. Situated between multiple cultural, linguistic, and educational contexts (e.g., her home country and the U.S.), struggling to define her roles as a student and student teacher, and striving to integrate what she studied with how she wanted to practice teaching, Eunju appeared to force herself to be in the process of translation. While examining experiences of pre-service teachers in a secondary-level methods course during their internship, Cook-Sather (2001) also used the metaphor of “translation” to elucidate the process of preparing to teach. Her findings suggest that perservice teachers encounter challenges of making meaning from their experiences: to translate what it means to be a teacher as they translate themselves into teachers, and to translate the language they use with students as they interact with those students (p. 177). In her study, this translation specifically refers to the pre-service teachers’ process of learning to teach during their field experiences. In Kondo (1990)’s study, she also illustrated tensions between the familiar and the unknown through her experience conducting practicum in Japan, as a Japanese American. She specifically addressed the link between translating words and translating self. Kondo explained she felt as if “a living oxymoron” (p. 10) and causing a stressful situation as her hosts and she had to strain make sense of one another. Furthermore, many metaphorical lenses have been used to interpret the shift from student to teacher. However, few numbers of studies share stories of struggle (e.g., Zeichner, 2014).   133   Additionally, only few studies illustrate transnational narratives of teacher candidates with some notable exceptions. The metaphors of "floating" and "cultural and linguistic translation", used by Ling and Eunju respectively, highlight the tensions, in-betweeness, rootlessness, and messiness of transnational educational migration as well as at the heart of negotiation process of becoming teachers. The process of becoming a teacher and geographical and cultural relocation cannot be portrayed as fixed or dichotomous (Tran, 2015). Rather, it is concerned with the space between. The transnational narratives of Ling, Eunju and Mei, illustrate their lived and learning experiences had been always in-between and "floating" through complex "translation." Interactions and responses between spaces of learning, learning to teach, and teaching influenced how each participant navigated and negotiated their professional identities through personal and socio-cultural experiences. Their transnational narratives affirms that there are multiple positions and experiences defining teachers' backgrounds and cultures, offering various view points on learning to teach, teaching and racialized experiences. Ling situated herself as rootless 'floating' while Eunju situated herself in-between space uplon her schooling and educational experiences in Korea and the U.S. Such stories invite us to investigate how student teachers' transnational narratives transform and how different narratives "frame what can be said and what remains to be said" about their experiences (Phelan, 2007, p. 53, see also Sinner, 2010). Professional growth and agency during the internship. In the context of field experiences where pre-service teacher candidates learn to become teachers, this ‘transformative’ process has no terminal point. As Mei described her feeling safe and her assumptions of nativemyth in teaching challenged, in her TESOL coursework, she described this space and time as   134   quite transformative. Ling also began to revise deficit perspectives of her and re-position herself into an empowered position of a NNEST with the support of mentor teacher. Ling was able to embrace her cultural and linguistic identities and share those with her students over her teaching during the internship. Eunju also tended to focus on delivering content knowledge and the visible outcome of learning of her students in the beginning. By learning the importance of building trustworthy professional relationship with her students and mentor teacher, Eunju seemed to be able to imagine how her teaching could be aligned with her re-conceptualization of a “good” teacher or “good” teaching. Overall, confronting and overcoming their challenges during the internship, all the participants in this study demonstrated their sense of agency and advocacy. Thus, those demonstrations of agency are signs of their professional growth over their internship however incremental or invisible could they be. Further, participants demonstrated challenges as well as their strategies in navigating professional relationships and classroom. The findings of this study are congruent with previous research suggesting that practicum stakeholders’ support is quintessential for teacher candidates (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015) In Mei’s case, exercise of professional agency as a student teacher did never look smooth or at ease. It was constantly an ongoing process of interaction, identification, and negotiation. Mei showed her gradual resistance towards her mentor’s teaching model and interactions with her students and raised her concern and needs for pedagogy that is culturally relevant and sustaining to her students as well as herself. Ling negotiated her instructional strategies from student-centered views in order to invite all students to participate in their learning. Eunju examined her prior observations, experiences and assumptions as a learner and teacher cross-culturally. She took a critical stance that certain cultural and educational   135   should not be romanticized based on dominant cultural perspectives or the visible results of international standardized tests. The current study suggests not only the significance of the internship as an opportunity to expand the student teachers’ theoretical and practical horizons for their teaching profession, but also that it is necessary to guide teacher candidates to critically reflect on their implicit assumptions about teaching and learning to become a teacher in reference to their personal learning, teaching practices, and observations (Alsup, 2003). Beijaard et al. (2004) also noted that while earlier studies on professional growth is generally perceived as “a process of practical knowledge building characterized by an ongoing integration of what is individually and collectively seen as relevant to teaching,” (p. 123). Teacher candidates encounter multiple professional models in their teaching professional preparation. Many of those encounters and experiences can be contradictory. While observing the practices of their university professors, instructors, field instructors, practitioners at the internship placements, and other experiences, teacher candidates begin to construct a various range of repertoire of professional identities, both ideal or fearful, that might contribute to constructing their professional identities. Coursework before and during their internship provides some opportunities to grapple with and explore their professional identities. While university coursework provides regular and sustained professional opportunities for teacher candidates to imagine and explore their professional roles and also to receive feedback on their efforts, much of these explorations and feedback from their mentor teacher or colleagues may not occur in the ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ setting of their field placements. As a result, many candidates encounter and negotiate those tensions and contradictions in order to reconcile who they want to become with who they are expected to become in a particular internship context. I argue that key   136   stakeholders in the internship, such as a mentor teacher and teacher education program, could play a more critical role in supporting those NNES teacher candidates to navigate and explore these tensions and contradictions in (re)constructing and exploring their professional agency. Many studies illustrated more intentional and structured opportunities to observe, explore, experiment with, and assess their professional identities during their field experiences support novice teacher candidates in navigating and negotiating the gap from the university to classroom, and between the ideal and the real. In supporting those teacher candidates to adopt and adapt to new roles with professional agency over the internship, teacher education programs could give more professional opportunities to observe experienced teaching professionals who embody commitments promoted in the teacher education program and coursework in the university while successfully navigating the limitations in schools (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). Challenging deficit perspectives on the international, especially Asian, female student teachers, towards agency-centered approach (Canagarajah, 1999) I attempted to illustrate various types of strategies that the participants demonstrate as central to navigating their internship experiences and employing in negotiating spaces. Similar to those studies reported (e.g., Zhou & Li, 2015), the participants in this study understood the students’ perceived disrespectful behavior as “misbehavior” and responded to those by using strategies that were modeled by a mentor teacher, as initially shown in Mei’s case, or that of mixed strategies by home country and the U.S. teacher program, as demonstrated by Ling. Ling’s adaptive attitude and uses of combined strategies illustrate her sense of agency that she had learned to speak, act, and think a certain way to be perceived and accepted as a teacher in her classroom. Mei also demonstrated her sense of agency by resisting her mentor teacher’s deficit attitudes and perspectives in teaching in an urban context. She also called for the   137   necessity for a detailed and customized pedagogy for her to relate to and work with students with diverse backgrounds in urban contexts. Eunju also persuasively illustrated her critical thinking against stereotyping and romanticizing Asian educational contexts by assessing her own educational experiences and students’ cultural backgrounds in cross-cultural contexts. The findings in this study resonate with Ryan (2010)’s assertion that multiple aspects of the notions of the “Asian” learner or teacher based on Western academic hegemony should be challenged. As different strategies employed by each participant demonstrate, international students or Asian international pre-service teachers also should not be assessed on the basis of national category, but as separate and distinct individuals. Ling, Eunju, and Mei expressed being able to use and adopt skills and knowledge they learned during their internship in other contexts as well, for example when addressing issues of misbehaviors, when enacting culturally responsive pedagogy for their students with socially, economically, linguistically, or culturally different backgrounds. In this sense, they were able to facilitate and improve their intercultural attitudes, skills, and critical thinking through their field experiences. Again, this also challenges assumptions of a deficit of skills and knowledge as a NNES teacher in their employment opportunities. This also echoes with agency-centered approach towards students from other cultural and linguistic contexts that emphasizes international students and any potential teachers bring diverse academic practices and learning styles, which can serve as resources for students with diverse backgrounds (Aikman et al., 2016). However, often such views, processes of negotiation and teaching practices may not be valued or recognized within the U.S. educational classroom. In contrast to Ling who embraced enthusiastically in her teaching practices with the application of “constructivism,” “student-centered learning,” “active learning,” and “autonomous   138   learning,” based on her teacher education in the U.S. and service learning experiences, Mei exhibited between what she says she learned and believed (e.g. U.S. and Western models of student-centered approaches matching with their cultural and linguistic backgrounds) and what she actually initially practiced (based on her mentor teacher’s traditional teacher-centered approach). Before Mei showed her resistance towards her mentor teacher’s teaching style, Mei also was hesitant to actively show resistance, referring to her Confucian backgrounds. Particularly, Mei’s call for meaningful and effective culturally rooted pedagogy related to her Confucian cultural backgrounds illustrate adopting Western-based approaches to pedagogies do not always take cultural complexities of backgrounds of teachers into account. Indeed, as Nguyen et al. (2006) pointed out, societal stability is based on unequal power relationships between people with strong hierarchy rules according to Confucius (p. 5). This can be applied in the educational realm between the teacher-student or mentor teachers-interns’ relationships. Mei also demonstrated high uncertainty avoidance in her teaching while expressing feeling comfortable with structured teaching and learning. She initially avoided group activities given that students’ group activities cannot be always organized as well-structured tasks with all the details available for both a teacher and students. Mei often asked her field instructor and mentor teacher to provide tips or strategies of how to develop culturally responsive and appropriate pedagogies for her students even teachers like her with Confucian cultural backgrounds could use across different cultural contexts or disciplines. Many studies have attempted to answer the issues of how teachers can use culturally relevant and responsive strategies. Given that the term, cultural “relevance” does not fully explain the goals and strategies for re-affirming students’ “repertories of practice,”, Paris (2012) provided another conceptual lens and practice of culturally sustaining pedagogy, which offers   139   explicit goals of ensuring and supporting multilingualism and multiculturalism in practice as well as perspectives for students and teachers. However, there is still minimal research that attempts to tackle issues of culturally sustaining pedagogy in a way that present sufficient support for culturally and linguistically diverse teacher candidates. In chapter V, participants’ experiences of addressing issues of diversity as well as their multiple identities reiterate potential pedagogies for these international pre-service teachers enable their cultural backgrounds in relation to their diverse students. Overall, despite their encountering differences and challenges in classroom management and pedagogical concerns in the U.S. context, my participants generally were able to negotiate their spaces in creative and critical ways, by combining strategic ideas, concepts and experiences from their home country and the U.S. Thus, this study makes a contribution to the literature on empowering international preservice teachers’ teaching practices by providing an empirical analysis and examples that is more than a mere description of patterns of challenges of international teachers, in that it investigates negotiations and strategies of such teacher candidates to reveal the social and cultural means of their teaching practices, as noted by resonating studies (e.g., Soong, 2014). Implications Implications for international teacher candidates. The findings of the current study suggest primarily three practical recommendations for international teacher candidates majoring in teacher education or starting their internship: 1) establishing initiative and constructive relationships in professional contexts; 2) active learning and articulating questions, if any, about cultures, differences, and power dynamics; 3) finding resources and embracing pedagogical tools for teaching practices.   140   As Ling and Eunju demonstrated from the beginning of their internship, it is crucial for international teacher candidates to be able to take initiative to approach people in a professional context (e.g. course instructor, mentor teacher) and build constructive relationships. As the participants reported, having supportive faculty, staff, and administrators were enormously helpful for them to make sense of their challenges and get resources on time. For instance, when they were addressing their visa status, consulting with a more experienced coordinator in their program helped them to come up with a feasible approach. When they were facing students’ misbehavior and discipline issues, their mentor teachers’ advice or being heard appeared to relieve their pressure and stress. When they have challenges related to cultural differences and power dynamics, as the findings suggest, the teacher candidate should be able to articulate the problem at hand and actively approach to the problem. For example, when Mei started to recognize the problem of her culturally deficit perspectives on herself as well as her own students and understand the sociocultural contexts of the school and student communities, she was able to demonstrate deeper empathy and take a personalized approach to working with individual students rather than attempting to use stricter control over classroom management issues or students’ misbehaviors. Both Ling and Eunju, also, reported that the more they got to know students’ lives outside the school, the better for them to understand their life circumstances and use appropriate ways to approach issues or different methods to teach. Having opportunities to observe U.S. classrooms and experienced teachers’ teaching appeared to be helpful for all the participants to learn to teach. And yet, seeking out advice and feedback actively remains the teacher candidates’ job. Also, as the findings about their professional growth suggest, the teacher candidates should be given opportunities to reflect on   141   how their educational experiences in their home country might be reflected in their classrooms both as a student, and also possibly a tutor, as in Eunju’s case. Through critical reflection on the influence of their cultural and educational backgrounds on their teaching practices, they could find a better teaching style that works the best in their specific teaching setting. In relation to understanding students’ diverse backgrounds and making connections to them, as Mei often shared her challenges of understanding and implementing pedagogical tools for her students, it is significant for international teacher candidates to deeply understand culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse students’ needs and their lived experiences. Taking courses that are infused with these topics would be helpful for those candidates, but also it is both an instructor’s job and those students’ participations to be engaged in those topics in detail. In so doing, those international teacher candidates would be able to link their backgrounds to the U.S. contexts, and validate their experiences in discussions or assignments. This would also impact their understandings of current and future students’ backgrounds and teaching practices. The findings also suggest that those international teacher candidates had to address and deal with challenges related to racialization and professional biases against NNESTs in school contexts on a daily basis. And yet, as the participants noted that through those tensions and challenges, they were also able to deal with certain situations as well as appreciate their valuable opportunities for learning from challenges in their early professional life. They had to challenge their deficit discourses. For instance, internalized deficit views of themselves also affected the views of their own students. The candidates also found it challenging the tendency to focus on those teacher candidates’ integration and induction into the context-specific ways of teaching and working.   142   Eaves (2011) examined the “culturally different” learning styles in the intercultural higher education settings and the dangers of (mis)interpreting international students’ learning behaviors on the basis of generalization about how people from different cultural and educational backgrounds prefer to learn. This leads to implications for such cultural differences, misunderstandings, misconceptions, and the need for intensive qualitative study for learning and learning to teach in the internationalized higher educational contexts. Implications for teacher educators. It is significant for those international pre-service teachers to take initiative to enact their agency by approaching to the key stakeholders in their program and internship. Also, it is important for teacher educators to listen to and respond to their needs and wants, while providing opportunities for teacher candidates to recognize chances for agency. By including their experiences and voices simply in classroom syllabus or activities during their course work, those teacher candidates may be able to contemplate their cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds prior to the U.S. teacher education program and also their effectiveness as a teacher. These efforts by teacher educators can bolster those teacher candidates’ confidence in teaching. Thus, the implication is that teacher educators can design coursework and practicum experiences to provide support and opportunities to teacher candidates construct positive and productive narratives about their professional identities while encountering and resolving conflicts and dissonance in their teacher education programs and practicum. To be specific, teacher educators can open up in-class discussions and create assignments for reflections with conflicting theories of educations. Teacher candidates can be encouraged to take a professional stance on topics that will directly influence their teaching practice. From dissonance theoretical perspectives (e.g. Alsup, 2006; Segall, 2002), teacher candidates are   143   encouraged to share their reflections about their learning to teach or students’ learning experiences, perspectives on students’ engagements in the classroom, or critically reading theories and empirical studies related to these experiences. Then, they can be encouraged to use these experiences and perspectives as a starting point to analyze various discourses of teaching and learning to teach in the university coursework and the actual internship classroom. Teacher educators’ role in this process is to be open to teacher candidates’ understandings and interpretations that may or may not conflict with their own discourses. As evidenced in the current study with examples of Ling whose interpretation of diversity at some point was not addressing it, or Mei whose interpretation of her students and parents were culturally deficit, this is not an easy practice for teacher educators to implement in their coursework classroom or practicum placement. Nevertheless, when teacher educators and those teacher candidates work together openly and honestly, teacher candidates would be able to reflect on conflicts and tensions on their learning to teach and teaching practices as a critical component in developing narratives about their professional identities. In a follow-up interview with Eunju in August after her internship, for example, she reiterated the significance of feeling accomplishment, professional agency and confidence in her teaching practices as she continued to think about her teacher identity. In a similar vein, the teacher educators should be able to build constructive relationship with international teacher candidates to be heard, share their experiences It may take time to have shared experiences and build trust to bond a relationship with individual students. Granted, there are realistic logistics of university courses that have a short meeting period and limited interactions. Extending a longer period of time of meeting would create a bonded group of learners who are willing to engage in building a shared lived experiences of teaching in a   144   university setting. At the same time, all participants related that a caring and supportive community was critical in their university classroom in order to feel they belonged to that space and develop their sense of professional growth. As the participants often felt invisible in their classrooms and their voices were not valid, teacher educators need to create more opportunities for those teacher candidates to be heard, challenge their own beliefs as teacher candidates, as well as receive feedback that fosters positive and constructive professional identities. Ryan (2011) also encouraged a transcultural approach for international students’ culturally inclusive learning and teaching through university coursework and active in-class discussions. She noted that profound changes are: [r]equired at the level of curriculum and pedagogy that these shifts necessitate to not only deal with but also to take advantage of these trends are seldom recognized by university hierarchies. The changes that teachers have seen at the ‘chalk face’ in the make-up of their students are profound, and need to be explored carefully and fully to ensure that students are receiving education that will prepare them for their future work and life, including the increasing numbers of international students choosing the UK as their study destination (p. 632). Further, it is important teacher educators to be able to collaborate with school districts and schools in identifying and examining the selection criteria for mentor teachers and field instructors (e.g. qualifications, experiences, dispositions, commitment, etc.) in order to support better the professional development of teacher candidates in their internship and as future teachers. The participants in my study reported that they had very few people like them in their teacher education program as well as their internship placement and who were willing to advocate for them. This lack of role models from educators/practitioners in elementary and secondary public school contexts and the university faculty and staff can be factors for those teacher candidates to survive and thrive as learning to teach and become a teacher. It has been   145   well documented in a great deal of research how significant influence it is mentor teachers’ perspectives, beliefs, attitudes, values, socialization experiences and expectations of their mentees, including ‘minority’ teacher candidates. As the teaching force mobility around the world becomes more frequent and common through globalization, migrant and immigrant teaches are gradually becoming significant parts of the teaching force in diverse subject areas. In order to support those teachers to adapt themselves and thrive in living and teaching in different contexts, it is critical “to know what teachers already know” (Xu & Connelly, 2009, p. 222; cited in Sun, 2012, p. 766). Sun (2012) examined how an immigrant Chinese language teacher’s personal and practical knowledge is interconnected and influences their teaching secondary school language learning students. According to Sun (2012), we should be able to learn how immigrant teachers’ knowledge of teaching, that has been accumulated, developed, and affected in their home country’s culture, may contribute to their knowledge base and the “cognitive power” in their new teaching contexts. He argued that immigrant teachers’ awareness of cultural heritage had a significant impact on their personal and practical knowledge base and teaching practice. He goes further to claim that there should be further research done about cross-cultural studies on understanding teachers’ knowledge base in teaching practices across different cultural borders. My participants in this study also showed how perceived, ascribed, and essentialized identity as in “female teacher,” “Asian/Korean/Chinese,” and so on can disregard or overlook more complex and nuanced identities of them. As many studies noted teachers’ ethnic/race and cultural heritage may have a strong influence on shaping their teaching practice as well as their personal practical knowledge in teaching (e.g., Beijaard et al., 2004). However, it should not be assumed that the very “essential” background of those teachers with diverse backgrounds could   146   singularly or predictably have an influence on their teaching practice. As illustrated in the findings, such assumptions gave certain expectations in my participants’ school community that they were expected to be able to address issues that had to with Asian immigrant students or be an expert on all things about “Korean,” or “Chinese.” The simplified reduction of culture into one essentialized component also ignores how socio-economic status, social class, gender, educational background, and other subjectivities may influence how one performs, negotiate, and (re)construct one’s professional or ethnic/racial identities. The teachers’ cultural and racial backgrounds are and should be foregrounded in addressing how they are constructed as teaching professionals. However, as my participants mentioned, when they are “expected” to perform their professional identities through and based on their ethnicity and race, there is a risk that ‘culturally diverse’ teachers will be pigeonholed. As in Ling’s case, who was qualified to teach any subject areas as an elementary education certified teacher, she was expected and hired to teach on one subject, her “native” language, Chinese. In the case of Ling and other participants in this study reported here, those expectations placed on those diverse teachers raise concerns about the meaning of culturally relevant training for teachers and their work. Marx and Pennington (2003) argued that shared race and ethnicity between the teacher and students creates psychological bonds across their common experiences. There is a risk that those culturally and linguistically diverse teaches are perceived as the solution for the problems of ‘under-prepared’ or ‘inadequately prepared’ teachers who often struggle to work with culturally diverse students. Recruiting culturally diverse teachers or incorporating diverse cultural views into school curricula may be helpful for students with diverse backgrounds; however, as Santoro (2014) noted, “teaching for, and with cultural diversity is the concern of all   147   teachers who need to be better prepared, via initial teacher education and in-service professional development, to enhance education outcomes for all students” (p. 15). Myles et al. (2006) examined how immigrant teachers adapted themselves to the U.S. elementary classrooms. His findings suggested that teacher educators and practitioners should be able to 1) encourage them to draw links and connections between their past educational learning/teaching experiences/schemata and current teaching contexts; 2) encourage them to develop effective and culturally relevant/sustaining pedagogy based on their strengths as NNEST and their lived life experiences; and also to build and develop intercultural training seminar/workshops which are not only for teacher candidates, but also for mentor teachers and faculty liaisons, and other school/university staff in order to raise and foster an awareness and understanding of respective cultural orientations and areas of potential tensions and conflicts. Similarly, according to Howe and Xu (2013), transcultural teacher development across cultural and national borders, teachers’ professional knowledge is personally and socially constructed. Teachers’ ownership of their experiences and stories can be a source of empowerment of teachers. While examining challenges of indigenous and Asian teachers’ experiences in teaching, teacher educators and practitioners in school contexts should help to transform the contexts. It would be helpful for teacher educators and teacher candidates to employ counter-narratives and discourses in creating more inclusive space for identities and experiences of ethnic/racial and linguistic minority teachers. In the findings, Mei expressed that minority teachers can provide role models for minority students and need role models. On the one hand, as Mei’s wishes to become a role model as a “minority” teacher for her diverse students, the field of teacher education should consider extending the norms of cultures and race/ethnicity of teacher   148   candidates in teacher preparation programs. Further, teacher educators should address antiracism, racialization, and critical multiculturalism consistently and comprehensively. All of my participants explicitly articulated their own experiences of racializations with respect to their cultural, linguistic and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Simultaneously, cases of Ling and Mei demonstrate how their racial attitudes and prejudice move across borders through their transnational educational migration and teaching practice during their practicum. While Ling expressed her racial prejudice through “positive” self-stereotyping (e.g., model minority) and comparative prejudice against Other, Mei showed a form of internalized racism and resentment towards her students who are predominantly African American students. As Roth and Kim (2013) argue that “foreign-born” im/migrants often arrive with racial attitudes in a host country, the racial attitudes of Ling and Mei may have been formed even before their study abroad by their home society’s perceptions on how social identity markers, including race/ethnicity influence individuals’ interactions, or by racial representations in mass media. Although the current study’s focus is not the institutional and cultural racism and its role in teacher candidates’ teaching practice, Ling and Mei’s overt and subtle prejudice against “other” groups of students dependent on the context give an important perspective for teacher educators. Certainly, not all Asians would hold racism and anti-Black sentiments. In fact in Kim’s (2008) study, “Americanborn” Korean immigrants demonstrate their empathy towards African Americans’ racialized experiences and also expressed admiration towards African Americans’ position in political and cultural dynamics. In the same study, Kim (2008) argues that “Korean-born” Korean immigrants are more likely than other groups (e.g., “American-born” Koreans, or Whites) to voice their racial biases because they have a lack of understanding of history of civil rights struggle and share a sense of alienation from racial hierarchy in the U.S. However, I do not argue that pre   149   formed racial prejudice, such as Mei’s case based on her own oppression as ethnic and linguistic minority in China, is a necessary or sufficient factor for their racial attitudes to develop. Further, the findings are not to suggest that such racial prejudice, including anti-Black sentiment, is “worse” among Asian community. In other words, the stories of Ling and Mei are not simply of categorical “foreign-born” Asian international teacher candidates’ prejudice towards other racial/ethnic group. Rather, this study suggests that it is possible that their racial attitudes had been developed prior to their study abroad and their racialized experiences interactively had reinforced such prejudice. More importantly, while the existing studies demonstrate racialized experiences of many im/migrant teachers in teaching contexts of a host country, the current literature of im/migrant teachers says little about the reinforced racial ideology across national and cultural borders. As such, future research should examine the influence of pre-formed racial attitudes on international teacher candidates’ teaching practice in diverse contexts. Indeed, the cross-cultural and crossborder influences of racial hierarchy matter not only for international teacher candidates, but also diverse students who meet such teachers and learn from their views. Limitations and Future Research Directions Having three participants in one teacher preparation program limited the scope of this study. Thus, this study is not generalizable to the larger international and transnational teacher candidates’ experiences from diverse backgrounds in various teacher preparation programs. Further, the current study examines only East Asian female teacher candidates’ perceptions and experiences during their practicum. Another limitation of this study is a methodological one. My study examined the teacher candidates’ understanding of their professional growth and the notion   150   of diversity over one year. I am aware that was a fairly short period of time to deeply understand their learning to teach and professional growth to work with diverse students. That said, future research should consider diverse demographics of teacher candidates and methodological approaches. First, the future study could invite various transnational teacher candidates’ voice with respect to their social identities (e.g., race/ethnicity; gender; socioeconomic class; dis/ability, etc.) and their geographic locations to examine how their crossborder experiences and learning to teach are intersected and impact their teaching practice. Further, the future study could invite diverse practicum stakeholders to understand how they could unpack their own assumptions on one another and create an inclusive practicum environment for all teacher candidates. Additionally, a larger study could use mixed methods with both collecting quantitative and qualitative data from a larger group of international teacher candidates in one state or across the states. A survey study data combined with qualitative data on issues of transnational teacher candidates’ intercultural learning to teach may provide us with more comprehensive and deeper understandings of cross/trans-cultural field experiences. Conclusions The qualitative ethnographic case studies of three international teacher candidates have demonstrated their transnational educational migration journey, perceptions on issues of diversity in the U.S. and their impact on their teaching practice and professional growth during their practicum. Overall, my participants found that building relationships with various people and students over the internship important. At the same time, their cross-cultural understanding of school contexts, backgrounds of students, and institutional expectations improved their confidence in teaching and their experiences as a student teacher. Further, the participants’   151   experiences demonstrated the need for more specific orientations and training from both university and internship placement to bridge the cultural and linguistic gap they often faced. 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