Drawing on insights from Communities of Practice and critical discourse theory, this study investigates how teacher identities are discursively constructed in course of teacher education and under the influence of social structure. The participants were seven Hong Kong and nine mainland Chinese pre-service teachers. Two focus group interviews and in-depth individual interviews with each of the participants were employed. The study revealed that the identity formation of these participants is enacted individually, mediated by the immediate contextual factors, shaped by their socio-economic backgrounds and constructed with reference to social discourses on teachers and teaching profession. This article discusses the sociocultural factors behind the differences and generates implications for present teacher education practice and future research.

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This paper investigates the identity construction and language practice of a group of mainland Chinese immigrant students studying at a secondary school in Hong Kong, and explores the underlying reasons for, as well as the individual and group identities derived from, those language choices and practices. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the immigrant students and through observations in the school context, which focused on their views and attitudes concerning Putonghua maintenance, Cantonese and English learning and their perceptions of language ideologies in the school context. The marginalised position of Putonghua and its non-use in and out of classrooms reflects the social distinctions or language hierarchies found in the local school context. To resist the marginalised practice in the school context, the immigrant students employ their cultural and linguistic resources to establish and maintain Putonghua-speaking social networks and to imagine a proficient multilingual identity within the broader social context. The findings suggest that immigrant students should raise their awareness of language ideologies in the school context and recognise existing contradictions and discontinuities. It is also suggested that language ideologies could be incorporated into teachers' professional development.

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English as a medium of instruction (EMI), as a major agenda of language policy and planning and characterizing internationalization of higher education, has been increasingly adopted in global contexts. EMI teachers’ language and teaching practices in situated classroom contexts and the possible pedagogical challenges they encounter have not gained sufficient research attention in relation to the expansion of EMI. This qualitative study explored the experiences of nine EMI teachers from different disciplines in Chinese universities through investigating their linguistic and pedagogical practices in EMI teaching, the challenges they encounter, and how they co-ordinate semiotic resources with the affordance of the EMI context. The findings suggested that the teachers a) achieved professional development when developing different teaching materials for and perspectives on the same phenomenon to facilitate the understanding of students from various backgrounds; b) co-ordinated semiotic resources with an affordance of the EMI context to facilitate teaching, with the understanding that language is not merely language, but also a factor influencing knowledge construction, a lens for interpreting knowledge, and a part of the event or issue; and, c) attempted to integrate content/language in learning, despite lacking CLIL-related professional training. The implications for language policy and EMI programme development are discussed.