A Poole
Biographic Data
| ID | 32185 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Poole |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Poole |
| SIGNATURE | POOLE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Education University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5948-0705 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 88 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Discursive sleights of hand
Mapping cosmopolitan nationalism in educational research
Beyond the bling
Internationally-facing’ schooling in China
Teacher education for global competence in the ‘post-global’ era
Accountability with Chinese characteristics
Host National Teachers’ Perceptions of Foreign Educators
The paper explores the perceptions of host national teachers in China’s international school sector, focusing on their views of expatriate teachers. It addresses two main research questions: how do host national teachers perceive the professional status and ability of foreign teachers working in internationalised schools, and what do these perceptions tell us about China’s international school sector in an era of education regulation? The study u…
Navigating the tensions between international schooling and national goals of education
Bricolage as Method
This article presents an intertwined performance of being, feeling, and knowing, and critically examines two bodies' identity formations, subjectivities, and desired becomings within the context of migration. Through the praxis of betweener talk, we shed light on the lived experiences of two cross-border teachers in their adopted countries (China and Australia) and how they have responded to their particular situatedness. This betweener talk offe…
Geographies of Affective Knowledge
This article examines the inner experiences of two (im)migrant bodies, focusing on an Asian immigrant teacher and a British expatriate teacher across various temporal spaces. By addressing ordinary affect, the performative paradigm offers a space for writing marginal individuals into existence and preserving visceral experiences. Through 'betweener talk,' it produces geographies of affective knowledge and transformation over time. The ethical val…
We've Done Our Bit
In this article, we consider how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected migration experiences and decisions among transnationally mobile Western international school teachers in China. International school teachers are among the most numerous groups of Western 'expats' in the country, arriving from the beginning of China's 'Reform period'. Drawing on exploratory interviews with international school teachers, we examine experiences of precarious privi…
The social reality of working overseas in the ‘Chinese Internationalised School’
The number of international schools hit the 6,000-mark in 2012, and the 13,000-mark in 2022. In spite of continuous growth and diversity of provision, paradoxically some literature continues to paint a largely negative sociological imagination, associating the arena with micro-politics, high turnover, and increasing precarity. At the same time, the social reality of working in the arena remains under-reported and under-theorised. The largest numb…
The discursive (re)positioning of the foreign teacher
A tale of two performativities
There is growing evidence to support the normalisation of performativity. However, what has been less remarked on are the tensions that emerge when teachers seek to implement performative learning in a post-performative teaching context. This paper draws on interviews with 9 Chinese teachers undertaking Cambridge’s Professional Development Qualification (PDQ) within the context of private language schooling in China to nuance the notion of perfor…
The teacher as designer, scientist and technician
This paper utilises the concepts of “post-performativity” and “the post-performative teacher” to explore the private school context in China. It does this by drawing on in-depth interviews with Chinese language teachers and utilising metaphor analysis to highlight three recurring teacher identities that collectively constitute a post-performative teacher identity. The identities are teacher as designer, teacher as scientist, and teacher as techni…
Examining “precarious privilege” in international schooling
Although international school teachers have always been hired on short-term contracts (usually from two to three years in duration), there has been relatively little research examining this aspect of international schooling. Whilst short-term contracts may appear to be a positive feature of international schooling, particularly for younger teachers who are keen to be mobile, recent studies have begun to examine the short-term as a feature of prec…
Teachers in ‘international schools’ as an emerging field of inquiry
This review article identifies the trends and developments regarding teachers in international schools from 1998 until 2022. International school teachers as a group are worthy of study as the number of schools delivering a curriculum in English outside of an English-speaking nation has grown considerably in recent years. Amidst continuous statistical growth there has been major structural changes as the arena has attracted a local middle class a…
The internationally-facing school
This conceptual paper critically examines the evolving landscape of international schooling against a complex backdrop of competing globalisations, one of which is post-globalisation, which we frame in terms of a modality of globalisation. Post-globalisation and the post-global foreground renewed interest in the nation state and the relationship between the nation and the global. In so doing, this paper challenges the conventional use of the adje…
Be(com)ing an academic other
Placing myself as a rejected doctoral student (2010–2022), this paper examines the emergent nature of identity formation across time and space. While presenting a layered account of my lived experience in seeking pathways of pursuing doctoral study, each reading experience leads me to produce my identity(ies) and situated knowledge(s) as an outsider. To illustrate the complexity of one's lived experience, I choose to present my work in an unconve…
International education in transition
The burgeoning and transitioning field of private 'non-traditional' English-medium international schooling increasingly involves local schools delivering a Western-oriented curriculum to local children. This is especially evident in mainland China, which since 2019 has housed the most international schools. We present here a qualitative investigation of a Chinese senior school delivering an Australian curriculum. Informed by semi-structured inter…
Academics without publications are just like imperial concubines without sons’
Whilst the extant literature on the publish-or-perish culture in the West is plentiful, there remains surprisingly little scholarship exploring the ways managerialist policies have become integral to local identities, work and life in Chinese universities. We address this gap by taking China's endeavour to become first in the global higher education field as an entry point and reflecting on our lived experiences as early career researchers (ECRs)…
Nationalising the international in China
Recent policy changes to the regulation of international schooling for Chinese nationals in China have seen restrictions on curriculum, admissions and ownership. While there is evidence of the impact of these changes at the institutional level, it is not clear how recent regulation has impacted the actors at the phenomenological level. In order to address this gap, we situate recent regulation within the concept of cosmopolitan nationalism, which…
The transnational university pathway of the emergent ‘global middle class
The dialogical self and the multiplicity of I-positions
The internationalisation of education poses local challenges for training pre-service teachers to navigate new and unfamiliar education contexts. For Chinese language teachers in Australia and beyond, undertaking initial teacher training has been informed by China's wider agenda regarding the worldwide promotion of Chinese language. Building upon Dialogical self theory, this paper adopts traditions from autoethnography to unpack a Chinese novice …
Diluting, decoupling, and dovetailing
A major development in recent years concerning the growth of ‘private English-speaking international schooling’ has been the transition from a ‘traditional’ mode of activity towards a ‘non-traditional’ context. This is especially the case in Asia, where the majority of international schools now reside. Moreover, we find that in Mainland China two-thirds of the (approximately) 900 schools that might be thought of as international schools are now p…
Decoupling Chinese internationalised schools from normative constructions of the international school
There is still debate regarding what constitutes an international school and how it should be defined. Pearce (2013) sums this up nicely when he writes that international schools are ‘self-consciou
Escaping the Fire for the Frying-Pan? British Teachers Entering International Schooling
The arena of ‘English-Speaking International Schooling’ continues to grow, reaching almost 12,000 schools in 2020. The growing teaching arena attracts 30,000 new entrants each year and continues to be dominated by British-trained teachers. Little is actually known about the motives or subsequent experiences of this body. However, the narrative about this ‘brain-drain’ tends to be negative and condescending, referring to teachers ‘fleeing’ Britain…
Developing the notion of teaching in ‘International Schools’ as precarious
This paper is a response to a recently published article in this journal entitled ‘Precarious privilege: personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers’ by Rey, Bolay, and Gez (2020 Rey, J., M. Bolay, and Y. N. Gez. 2020. “Precarious Privilege: Personal Debt, Lifestyle Aspirations and Mobility Among International School Teachers.” Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–13. doi:10.1080/14767724.2020.173219…
Be(com)ing an academic other
Placing myself as a rejected doctoral student (2010–2022), this paper examines the emergent nature of identity formation across time and space. While presenting a layered account of my lived experience in seeking pathways of pursuing doctoral study, each reading experience leads me to produce my identity(ies) and situated knowledge(s) as an outsider. To illustrate the complexity of one's lived experience, I choose to present my work in an unconve…
Nationalising the international in China
Recent policy changes to the regulation of international schooling for Chinese nationals in China have seen restrictions on curriculum, admissions and ownership. While there is evidence of the impact of these changes at the institutional level, it is not clear how recent regulation has impacted the actors at the phenomenological level. In order to address this gap, we situate recent regulation within the concept of cosmopolitan nationalism, which…
The internationally-facing school
This conceptual paper critically examines the evolving landscape of international schooling against a complex backdrop of competing globalisations, one of which is post-globalisation, which we frame in terms of a modality of globalisation. Post-globalisation and the post-global foreground renewed interest in the nation state and the relationship between the nation and the global. In so doing, this paper challenges the conventional use of the adje…
International education in transition
The burgeoning and transitioning field of private 'non-traditional' English-medium international schooling increasingly involves local schools delivering a Western-oriented curriculum to local children. This is especially evident in mainland China, which since 2019 has housed the most international schools. We present here a qualitative investigation of a Chinese senior school delivering an Australian curriculum. Informed by semi-structured inter…
Academics without publications are just like imperial concubines without sons’
Whilst the extant literature on the publish-or-perish culture in the West is plentiful, there remains surprisingly little scholarship exploring the ways managerialist policies have become integral to local identities, work and life in Chinese universities. We address this gap by taking China's endeavour to become first in the global higher education field as an entry point and reflecting on our lived experiences as early career researchers (ECRs)…
From recalcitrance to rapprochement
Previous work on working-class academics has highlighted recurring themes, such as micro-aggressions, imposter syndrome, liminality, exclusion, invisibility and habitus. These themes have been encapsulated in a number of metaphors, such as ‘the ghost’ and ‘the phantom-limb’, both of which connote absence, silence and marginalisation. Whilst these metaphors vividly describe the lived experiences of working-class academics, it is necessary to make …
We're Away From Everything
This paper reports on an emerging type of international school, which we refer to as the Chinese internationalized school. This school caters to Chinese citizens and aspires to offer a fusion of national and international curricula. The majority of internationalized schools in China are to be found in large metropolitan centers. Accordingly, the literature has focused on relatively affluent urban centers, such as Shanghai, Suzhou, and Beijing. Ho…
Host National Teachers’ Perceptions of Foreign Educators
The paper explores the perceptions of host national teachers in China’s international school sector, focusing on their views of expatriate teachers. It addresses two main research questions: how do host national teachers perceive the professional status and ability of foreign teachers working in internationalised schools, and what do these perceptions tell us about China’s international school sector in an era of education regulation? The study u…
Precarious privilege in the time of pandemic
Although the impact of the global COVID‐19 pandemic in terms of school closure and the sudden shift to online learning has started to be explored, little has so far been written about the impact on teachers. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on the first author's autoethnographic experiences of working in the growing body of ‘non‐traditional’ international schooling in Shanghai, China, during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020. T…
Bricolage as Method
This article presents an intertwined performance of being, feeling, and knowing, and critically examines two bodies' identity formations, subjectivities, and desired becomings within the context of migration. Through the praxis of betweener talk, we shed light on the lived experiences of two cross-border teachers in their adopted countries (China and Australia) and how they have responded to their particular situatedness. This betweener talk offe…
Geographies of Affective Knowledge
This article examines the inner experiences of two (im)migrant bodies, focusing on an Asian immigrant teacher and a British expatriate teacher across various temporal spaces. By addressing ordinary affect, the performative paradigm offers a space for writing marginal individuals into existence and preserving visceral experiences. Through 'betweener talk,' it produces geographies of affective knowledge and transformation over time. The ethical val…
Pursuing and playing the academic game
Whilst the impact of the ‘publish or perish’ adage has received considerable attention from academics in the West, it remains under-researched in non-Western contexts, such as China. We address this gap by examining our lived experiences of navigating Chinese academia and academic publishing in the form of a duoethnographic collaborative self-study. We utilise the concept of precarious privilege in order to tease out a third space between publish…
The Utilization of Trace Chemical Composition to Correlate British Post‐medieval Pottery With European Kiln Site Materials
S This study uses X‐ray fluorescent analysis to compare the trace chemical composition of seventeen pottery sherds excavated from sites in Britain with the trace analyses of twenty four sherds from continental sources. Results indicate that certain elements, notably zirconium, titanium, rubidium, and strontium show little variation within a particular sherd and are consistent among samples from the same source. Certain other elements appear to sh…
Teacher education for global competence in the ‘post-global’ era
The Utilization of Trace Chemical Composition to Correlate British Post‐medieval Pottery With European Kiln Site Materials
S This study uses X‐ray fluorescent analysis to compare the trace chemical composition of seventeen pottery sherds excavated from sites in Britain with the trace analyses of twenty four sherds from continental sources. Results indicate that certain elements, notably zirconium, titanium, rubidium, and strontium show little variation within a particular sherd and are consistent among samples from the same source. Certain other elements appear to sh…
Possibilities-within-Constraints
Funds of Knowledge 2.0
Resituating Funds of Identity Within Contemporary Interpretations of Perezhivanie
There is still a tendency for researchers and teachers using a Funds of Identity approach for social justice purposes to exclude negative emotions and experiences from the classroom. This article addresses this issue by situating Funds of Identity within contemporary interpretations of perezhivanie to theorize what we call existential funds of identity, which we present as an enrichment of the Funds of Identity approach. The findings from a case …
Making sense of evidence
Many have argued that the development of evidence-based policing (EBP) depends on those in law enforcement agencies receiving appropriate training in research methodologies and data analysis. Despite this, there are few detailed accounts of such training and its delivery. This paper describes and evaluates the contribution of training workshops for police officers and staff in driving forward EBP. The workshops, developed based on a model used in…
Decoupling Chinese internationalised schools from normative constructions of the international school
There is still debate regarding what constitutes an international school and how it should be defined. Pearce (2013) sums this up nicely when he writes that international schools are ‘self-consciou
Constructing International School Teacher Identity from Lived Experience
This paper responds to Bailey and Cooker’s (2019) paper entitled ‘Exploring Teacher Identity in International Schools: Key Concepts for Research’ in which the authors offer a typology of international school teachers based on interviews with non-qualified teachers. This paper builds upon the typology of international school teachers by offering a framework for researching international school teacher identity. The framework is illustrated by inte…
Re-theorising the funds of identity concept from the perspective of subjectivity
This paper is a theoretical response to recent developments in the funds of identity literature which has seen the introduction of two interconnected concepts, ‘dark funds of identity’ and ‘existential funds of identity’. While these recent concepts may expand the canvas from which researchers draw in developing interventionist approaches for minoritised students, they nevertheless polarise positive and negative emotions and experiences which is …
Developing the notion of teaching in ‘International Schools’ as precarious
This paper is a response to a recently published article in this journal entitled ‘Precarious privilege: personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers’ by Rey, Bolay, and Gez (2020 Rey, J., M. Bolay, and Y. N. Gez. 2020. “Precarious Privilege: Personal Debt, Lifestyle Aspirations and Mobility Among International School Teachers.” Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–13. doi:10.1080/14767724.2020.173219…
Escaping the Fire for the Frying-Pan? British Teachers Entering International Schooling
The arena of ‘English-Speaking International Schooling’ continues to grow, reaching almost 12,000 schools in 2020. The growing teaching arena attracts 30,000 new entrants each year and continues to be dominated by British-trained teachers. Little is actually known about the motives or subsequent experiences of this body. However, the narrative about this ‘brain-drain’ tends to be negative and condescending, referring to teachers ‘fleeing’ Britain…
‘The gap between the ideal and the reality’
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a critical element in successful educational systems, teacher quality, organisational effectiveness and student outcomes (Borg 2015). However, what has
Beyond the tyranny of the typology
This paper critically surveys four typologies that have been used to identify and understand international school teachers. The critique highlights two main limitations with the typologies. The first, ontological in nature, is that reifying teachers as a type does not capture the complexity of lived experience. The second, ethico-political in nature, is that labelling marginalises the teacher in the research process. Research is done on, rather t…
Pursuing and playing the academic game
Whilst the impact of the ‘publish or perish’ adage has received considerable attention from academics in the West, it remains under-researched in non-Western contexts, such as China. We address this gap by examining our lived experiences of navigating Chinese academia and academic publishing in the form of a duoethnographic collaborative self-study. We utilise the concept of precarious privilege in order to tease out a third space between publish…
Precarious privilege in the time of pandemic
Although the impact of the global COVID‐19 pandemic in terms of school closure and the sudden shift to online learning has started to be explored, little has so far been written about the impact on teachers. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on the first author's autoethnographic experiences of working in the growing body of ‘non‐traditional’ international schooling in Shanghai, China, during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020. T…
We're Away From Everything
This paper reports on an emerging type of international school, which we refer to as the Chinese internationalized school. This school caters to Chinese citizens and aspires to offer a fusion of national and international curricula. The majority of internationalized schools in China are to be found in large metropolitan centers. Accordingly, the literature has focused on relatively affluent urban centers, such as Shanghai, Suzhou, and Beijing. Ho…
Diluting, decoupling, and dovetailing
A major development in recent years concerning the growth of ‘private English-speaking international schooling’ has been the transition from a ‘traditional’ mode of activity towards a ‘non-traditional’ context. This is especially the case in Asia, where the majority of international schools now reside. Moreover, we find that in Mainland China two-thirds of the (approximately) 900 schools that might be thought of as international schools are now p…
International Schools in China and teacher turnover
The under-theorized arena of “English-speaking International Schooling” continues to grow and morph. The continuous growth seems paradoxical in light of the well-established view that the arena is an insecure and precarious working environment characterized by short-term contracts and subsequent high rates of annual turnover per school. We investigate this paradoxical situation in Asia Pacific, where a newer and large body of “Non-Traditional” mo…
From recalcitrance to rapprochement
Previous work on working-class academics has highlighted recurring themes, such as micro-aggressions, imposter syndrome, liminality, exclusion, invisibility and habitus. These themes have been encapsulated in a number of metaphors, such as ‘the ghost’ and ‘the phantom-limb’, both of which connote absence, silence and marginalisation. Whilst these metaphors vividly describe the lived experiences of working-class academics, it is necessary to make …
The social reality of working overseas in the ‘Chinese Internationalised School’
The number of international schools hit the 6,000-mark in 2012, and the 13,000-mark in 2022. In spite of continuous growth and diversity of provision, paradoxically some literature continues to paint a largely negative sociological imagination, associating the arena with micro-politics, high turnover, and increasing precarity. At the same time, the social reality of working in the arena remains under-reported and under-theorised. The largest numb…
The discursive (re)positioning of the foreign teacher
A tale of two performativities
There is growing evidence to support the normalisation of performativity. However, what has been less remarked on are the tensions that emerge when teachers seek to implement performative learning in a post-performative teaching context. This paper draws on interviews with 9 Chinese teachers undertaking Cambridge’s Professional Development Qualification (PDQ) within the context of private language schooling in China to nuance the notion of perfor…
The teacher as designer, scientist and technician
This paper utilises the concepts of “post-performativity” and “the post-performative teacher” to explore the private school context in China. It does this by drawing on in-depth interviews with Chinese language teachers and utilising metaphor analysis to highlight three recurring teacher identities that collectively constitute a post-performative teacher identity. The identities are teacher as designer, teacher as scientist, and teacher as techni…
Examining “precarious privilege” in international schooling
Although international school teachers have always been hired on short-term contracts (usually from two to three years in duration), there has been relatively little research examining this aspect of international schooling. Whilst short-term contracts may appear to be a positive feature of international schooling, particularly for younger teachers who are keen to be mobile, recent studies have begun to examine the short-term as a feature of prec…
Teachers in ‘international schools’ as an emerging field of inquiry
This review article identifies the trends and developments regarding teachers in international schools from 1998 until 2022. International school teachers as a group are worthy of study as the number of schools delivering a curriculum in English outside of an English-speaking nation has grown considerably in recent years. Amidst continuous statistical growth there has been major structural changes as the arena has attracted a local middle class a…
The internationally-facing school
This conceptual paper critically examines the evolving landscape of international schooling against a complex backdrop of competing globalisations, one of which is post-globalisation, which we frame in terms of a modality of globalisation. Post-globalisation and the post-global foreground renewed interest in the nation state and the relationship between the nation and the global. In so doing, this paper challenges the conventional use of the adje…
Sociology (36 works) · Political science (33 works) · Global Education and Multiculturalism (27 works) · Pedagogy (21 works) · Global Educational Policies and Reforms (19 works) · Psychology (18 works) · China (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · International Student and Expatriate Challenges (10 works)