Volume 2, Issue 2 August 2019, pp. 59–70 
Regular Articles
Negotiating intercultural spaces and teacher identity in an internationalised school in Shanghai
Adam Poole 
1
1 University of Nottingham, CHINA 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29140/ice.v2n2.128
Abstract
There is now a general acceptance that schools need to prepare students for the realities of a globalised world, which necessitates developing intercultural competence. Such an educational mandate is felt particularly keenly in internationalised schools, where the work of teaching and learning involves the negotiation of diverse cultural assumptions, practices, and identities on a daily basis. Whilst schools are in a position where they need to formulate some kind of understanding of what intercultural competence means and how it is expected to be developed with educational content and pedagogical practices, the notion of intercultural competence is perpetually contested. Critical scholars have critiqued the tendency for theorising on intercultural competence to adhere to "solid" notions of culture and assume that there is an end to the intercultural process at which point an individual will become interculturally competent (e.g., Dervin, 2016; Ferri, 2018). This paper, however, argues that it is important to understand the ways in which solid notions of culture surface in the lived experiences of teachers working in intercultural contexts. The paper draws on findings from a qualitative case study of international teachers' cross-cultural experiences in an international school in Shanghai, China to highlight the ways in which individuals draw on notions of solid culture as a resource for claiming an identity position in relation to dominant cultural practices in the local context.
Copyright
© Adam Poole
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Suggested citation
Poole, A. (2019). Negotiating intercultural spaces and teacher identity in an internationalised school in Shanghai. Intercultural Communication Education, 2(2), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.29140/ice.v2n2.128
Related Articles:
EFL learners’ peer negotiations and attitudes in mobile-assisted collaborative writing
Shiou-Wen Yeh, Cheng-Ting Chen
Language Education and Assessment Published: 30 April, 2019, Volume 2(1), 41–56. 
Interculturality as collaborative identity management in language education
Claudia Borghetti
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 30 April, 2019, Volume 2(1), 20–38.
Washback of ACTFL's Integrated Performance Assessment in an intensive summer language program at the tertiary level
Jason Martel
Language Education and Assessment Published: 31 August, 2019, Volume 2(2), 57–69.
Critical intercultural communication education: cultural analysis and pedagogical applications
Sofia A. Koutlaki, Zohreh R. Eslami
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 29 December, 2018, Volume 1(3), 100–109.
L2 motivation in ESP and EGP courses: An investigation of L2 motivational selves among learners of English in Saudi Arabia
Aser Nazzal K. Altalib
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics Published: 30 April, 2019, Volume 2(1), 1–16.
Advancing intercultural learning in world language education: Recent developments in pre-service teacher education in the U.S.
Paula Garrett-Rucks
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 29 December, 2018, Volume 1(3), 110–122.
An investigation of learners' use of CAN and COULD
Lauren Whitty
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics Published: 30 April, 2019, Volume 2(1), 32–46.
Integrating multimodal technologies with VARK strategies for learning and teaching EFL presentation: An investigation into learners' achievements and perceptions of the learning process
Yow-jyy Joyce Lee
Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics Published: 30 April, 2019, Volume 2(1), 17–31.
Teaching pragmatics: Nonnative-speaker teachers' knowledge, beliefs and reported practices
Christine Savvidou, Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 30 April, 2019, Volume 2(1), 39–58.
Factors affecting immigrants' host country language proficiency: Focusing on the differences between migrant workers and marriage-migrant women in South Korea
In Young Yang, Seongseog Park, Sungjun Lee, Byeonggon Min
Migration and Language Education Published: 30 April, 2020, Volume 1(1), 14–30.