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Reflexivity and cross-cultural education: a Foucauldian framework for becoming an ethical teacher-researcher

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Abstract

The global forces shaping international education requires us to explore how transnational pre-service teachers navigate new and unfamiliar education contexts. Within studies of transnational pre-service teacher education, the voice of the Chinese diaspora remains largely on the periphery. This article aims to redress this paucity by applying Foucault’s fourfold ethical framework to demonstrate how one Chinese teacher’s reflexivity can contribute to the construction of an ‘ethical self’ in Australia. Data were drawn from a teacher-researcher’s journal entries and analytic memos documenting self-reflective practices in the course of both teaching and research. The article seeks to adumbrate the ways in which reflexivity—as an ongoing and dynamic process—can work as an intercultural space for developing professionalism and enhancing quality in practitioner research. This work is important if we are to re-imagine teacher education as part of a wider social justice agenda through respecting the experiences and voices of ‘others.’ Integral to the analysis is promoting the two-way flow of cultural knowledge, particularly those from the Asian diaspora whose voices are often denied in relation to the global dynamics of knowledge production.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at East China Normal University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Wen Xu

  2. School of Education, The University of Queensland, Office 510, Social Sciences Building 24, Campbell Road, St. Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Garth Stahl

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  1. Wen Xu
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Correspondence to Wen Xu.

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Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee at Western Sydney University, Australia.

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Xu, W., Stahl, G. Reflexivity and cross-cultural education: a Foucauldian framework for becoming an ethical teacher-researcher. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 23, 417–425 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-021-09723-8

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