Pre-service English teachers’ perceptions of newly arrived children from Mainland China

Abstract

The research reported here investigated pre-service English language teachers' perceptions of newly arrived immigrant children from Mainland China in Hong Kong. Seventeen participants, who had at least 10 weeks of experience working with these immigrant children during teaching practicum, participated in focus group discussions and shared their perceptions. The data analysis revealed that the participants widely perceived these children as deficit and consider them a serious professional challenge. Further examination of the data helped reveal media, life and teaching practicum experiences with immigrant children as crucial sources that contributed to the formation of these perceptions. The findings call for teacher education programmes to involve pre-service teachers in critical engagement with the mass media and their own experiences so that they can address the deficit model applied by teachers to immigrant children.

A critical review of international research into pre-service teachers’ beliefs and practices when teaching migrant learners

“…As Cushner and Mahon's (2002) focus on the importance of teachers' engagement with diversity implies, particularly for those trainees from non-migrant backgrounds who cannot realistically empathise with migrants from experience, a short teacher practicum cannot be more than one part of a much longer term, perhaps even lifelong, commitment to developing as a culturally responsive educator. Critical self-reflection was a skill that often appeared to be mentioned as complementing empathy in the articles in this review (see, for example, Chan and Gao, 2014;Morita-Mullaney and Stallings, 2018), and is often cited as part of culturally relevant (teacher) education (Aronson and Laughter, 2016;Ladson-Billings, 1995). Scorgie (2010: 699) highlights that critical self-reflection involves transformation, including the 'disorienting dilemma' that requires learners to 'confront and evaluate their underlying beliefs and assumptions using both personal reflection and reflective discourse with others', leading to empathy.…”

“…Scholarship on teacher beliefs makes a strong case for the links between beliefs, identities and practice (Ashton, 2014;Pajares, 1992), not least when it comes to teacher beliefs about diversity, influenced by teachers' backgrounds, experiences and identities, and how these beliefs manifest themselves in how a teacher behaves in diverse classrooms (Osler and Starkey, 2010;Pohan, 1996;Rodríguez-Izquierdo et al, 2020;Silverman, 2010). Studies in this area highlight not only the risk of negative or stereotypical beliefs among student teachers detrimentally impacting on learners (Chan and Gao, 2014), but also the value of exploring the underlying, contextually based influences on teachers' identities, as well as their biographies in terms of migration (Haim and Tannenbaum, 2022), which, it has been argued, should be discussed within teacher education programmes (Cochran-Smith, 2003;Devine, 2005). Inevitably, then, the role of teacher education in developing and influencing teachers' beliefs is a focus in scholarship, identifying teacher educators as holding the potential to help or hinder student teachers to develop through their openness towards learning (Ell et al, 2017), and highlighting the importance of the teacher practicum experience, in-school mentoring and opportunities for critical reflection on teaching practice (Gay and Howard, 2000).…”

“…Therefore, it was unsurprising to discover that the research articles reported a mixture of attitudes held by pre-service teachers towards migrant learners. Chan and Gao (2014) explored the views of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong towards 'newcomer' children from mainland China. In their study, student teachers expressed a range of views on teaching such children, with the majority viewing them from a 'deficit' standpoint and as presenting 'a serious professional challenge' (Chan and Gao, 2014: 140).…”