Situated in China and under the context of curriculum reform, this project is an effort to combine long-time separate research streams in language teaching and learning studies: the history-in-person perspective (Holland & Lave, 2001) and the discourse analysis perspective (Cazden, 1988). Informed by the concepts of…

To reclaim Indigenous epistemologies and Indigenous ways of producing knowledge (e.g., Shahjahan, 2005b; Smith, 2013), I use a series of vignettes, short biographical reflections, photographic narratives, poetry, journal entries, and memoir to explore what curriculum as embodied lived experiences (e.g., Au et al., 2016; Gonzales, 2015; He, 2003)…

Textbook development plays an important role in teacher development and educational reforms. Although research has examined how textbook creation may afford teacher identity (re)formation, attention has rarely been given to how this process informs leadership identity construction, especially in times of educational change when leaders often serve…

This study conceptualises teacher attrition as a dynamic process of identity construction and interpretation in shifting professional knowledge landscapes, which attunes to both individual and contextual milieus. From this perspective, this narrative inquiry describes the attrition experiences of two Chinese beginning teachers after two years of…

The image of backbone teachers has long informed the modern-era Chinese educational system. Backbone teachers play leadership and modeling roles in school-based groups of teachers focusing on research, lesson planning, and grade development. China's New Basic Education (NBE) reform, which differs from previous Chinese reforms, aims to…

Since the restoration of the "Gaokao" (College Entrance Examination) in 1977 and the nationwide higher education expansion that started in 1998, millions of rural students have enrolled in urban universities. Though Chinese rural students' educational trajectories have received extensive attention, their subjective experiences in the…

The present study explores the role of writing in undergraduate education students' learning experiences in the United States. It focuses on how writing about previously significant experiences in the forms of narratives and journal entries transforms international education students' perceptions and identities and provides them with the space for…

P-12 (pre-school -- grade 12) international schools educate increasing numbers of local and expatriate students, who make up a growing proportion of tertiary (university level) international students. Using the transnational social fields framework, this phenomenological study focused on the experiences of 19 students from international schools in…

Since 2015, China has established a 'Group Form of Educational Aid for Tibet' programme to dispatch ethnic Han majority teachers from inland cities to teach in Tibetan schools for a short period of time. Through the programme, the state aims to offer the gift of educational development to this highland area with a concentrated Tibetan minority…

Special class secondary school physics teachers represent outstanding secondary school physics teachers in China. This paper analyzes the personal life histories of 13 outstanding secondary school physics teachers. We coded and analyzed the sample materials and summarized the laws of professional development of outstanding secondary school physics…

To investigate the narrative development of Chinese-speaking children aged 3--6 years, 80 children were prompted to tell personal stories. High point analysis was used and both narrative components and overall narrative patterns were analyzed. In terms of narrative components, Chinese children were more skillful in using complicating action,…

Drawing on a broader study that focused on understanding rural college students for equity and personal growth in higher education, this paper presents Ying's story of learning and living as a female college student from rural China. Adopting the thinking tools of habitus and reflexivity, the paper aims to understand the constraints Ying has gone…

In this memoir, I accounted several episodes of my childhood of a middle class family in early 1990s in a Chinese urban city. Two major discourses permeated my account: the nationalism and socialism discourse and the upward social mobility discourse. While my family and I cherish the comfort and joy of everyday life enjoyed in the era of…

Considering the broad context that there is a growing number of international students seeking English teacher education in the Western TEOSL programs and the majority of them will eventually go back to their own countries to teach, these international TESOL trainees face the challenge of integrating two different language education systems.…

Some authors argue that access to elite universities can bring about a 'habitus transformation' for working-class students, however in this paper, based on a three-year life history study, it is suggested that the transformative effects of the elite university experience come about in relation to and constrained by the working-class habitus.…