Abstract
This chapter presents research findings of a study that investigates the experiences of teachers who were assigned to work in unfamiliar school environments in order to enhance the educational quality of a county that was attached to a major Chinese metropolis. As part of a national initiative to redistribute human resources across the school system, a teacher rotation system was established to implement a policy for educational equality. This study focuses on issues arising from the cross-school endeavor that challenged the capabilities and resilience of teachers serving in the rotation program. Guided by two sets of theoretical concepts—teacher leadership and Sen’s capability perspective—the study explores several dimensions of the work of urban teachers working in rural areas, including problems related to family separation, life-style adjustment, teaching and learning, teacher leadership, and structural weaknesses of the rotation program. Data gathered from interviews with eighteen teachers informed the bulk of the views presented in this chapter. The teachers’ account of their experiences in enacting the role of “experienced newcomers” delineates their trials and tribulations of becoming a professional who uphold teaching as “work of the conscience”.
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Notes
- 1.
As a concept, the evolution of “teacher leadership” has benefited from the development of a typology for “educational leadership”. The classification of educational leadership by traits and functions has yielded a variety of types: managerial leadership for the functions, duties and behaviors of leaders within the structure of organizations; instructional leadership for the attributes and endeavors of leaders who pay special attention to teaching and learning and to the ways that they relate to student achievement; transformational leadership for the capacity and actions of leaders who exert their influence that changes the organizational structure of the school substantially and deeply; and distributed leadership for the ideas and actions of stakeholders who take the initiative to exert their influence from below.
- 2.
For example, an award-winning rural Language teacher who was assigned to teach in one of the primary schools in town was confronted by parental scepticism when she first started her teaching there. After she called the parents individually to introduce herself and had received cool responses from some of the parents, she sensed that there was a lack of parental trust in her ability because she was originally “from the mountainous region”. At the first meeting with the parents at the recipient school, she deemed it necessary to underline her past duties, such as Language teacher and class supervisor, as well as her past achievements, such as several important teaching awards (including an “outstanding teacher” award given by the metropolitan authorities). The account of duties and awards was given through a power-point presentation. She claimed that the parents were impressed, and she was able to emerge from the shadow of parental scepticism (Int12-Prim-Rural-Lang).
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Acknowledgements
The research and writing of this chapter was supported by a Ministry of Education research project in the humanities and social sciences entitled, “A study on the approach, mechanisms, and effectiveness of principal and teacher mobility in the context of construction for urban-rural integration” (14JJD880001), and by the International Joint Research Project of Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University (ICER202002). The authors gratefully acknowledged the support of the International Center for Teacher Studies and Development at Beijing Normal University and the Teacher Studies and Development Project at the Education University of Hong Kong.
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Lo, L.N.K., Zhong, Y., Ye, J., Zhou, S. (2021). Rotating for Quality and Equality: A Study on Teachers as Borrowed Talents. In: Zhu, X., Song, H. (eds) Envisioning Teaching and Learning of Teachers for Excellence and Equity in Education. Perspectives on Rethinking and Reforming Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2802-3_13
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