Complexities of Teacher Knowledge in Cross-Cultural School Contexts: Coming to a Cross-Cultural Comparative Narrative Approach

Abstract

In this chapter, we outline the research presented by each of the contributors, who used narrative inquiry approaches that were grounded in long-term research, to examine teacher experiences of cross-cultural teaching. The authors write about cross-cultural experiences that cross temporal, spatial, and social-personal dimensions. Woven into teaching and learning experiences set across time and context were interactions with colleagues, peers, and community members that offered insight into rationale for pedagogical decisions about ways in which practices and curricular materials may be mismatched or well aligned, or unfolded with tension in their current professional contexts. This crossing of time, context, and across social-personal interactions added complexity in ways that highlight the need for research methodologies that support examination of experience that unfolded across time, space, and social-personal dimensions. The authors elaborate upon ways in which a narrative inquiry approached provided a theoretical foundation to highlight complexities and reveal nuances of cross-cultural teacher experiences. The cross-cultural features in these chapters, whereby teachers cross cultural boundaries when they assumed teaching positions in communities culturally different from those in which they themselves were educated and certified. We argue for the need for cross-cultural comparative narrative inquiry approach, that help to reveal complexities of these cross-cultural teaching and learning as a fitting research approach to document and to analyze complexities underlying and informing understanding of teacher knowledge in cross-cultural teaching contexts.

Citation

Chan, E. and Ross, V. (2023), "Complexities of Teacher Knowledge in Cross-Cultural School Contexts: Coming to a Cross-Cultural Comparative Narrative Approach", Chan, E. and Ross, V. (Ed.) Smudging Composition Lines of Identity and Teacher Knowledge (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 46), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 191-204. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720230000046010