Negotiating Legitimacy: Chinese Language Teachers’ Identity Formation in Culturally Stratified International Schools in Hong Kong

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 3:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Bourdieu and Teacherly Dispositions

Abstract

This study investigates how Chinese language teachers negotiate professional identity across five culturally distinct international schools in Hong Kong. Anchored in Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, it examines how habitus, doxa, and symbolic capital shape teachers’ legitimacy, recognition, and agency. Based on narrative interviews with 24 teachers, the thematic analysis reveals varied adaptation strategies, including hybrid pedagogies, moral reframing, and discursive alignment. Institutional culture and leadership structure influenced the extent to which teachers felt affirmed or marginal. While some schools enabled habitus alignment through co-teaching and inclusive leadership, others tacitly favored Western norms. The study illustrates that teacher agency emerges relationally within structured fields, pointing to the role of institutional conditions in supporting culturally grounded professionalism.

Author

• Warangkana Lin, I-Shou University