Centering Gender in Female Teachers’ International Exchange and Intercultural Pedagogical Transfer

• In Event: Using discourse and ethnographic methods in gender-focused comparative and international education research

Proposal

Using discourse analyses teachers’ reflective journals, interviews, and policy documents, this presentation centers gender within female Emirati teachers’ negotiation of culture and pedagogy through their participation in an international exchange program in Vietnam. Gender is centered in this study as a lens into teacher participants’ negotiation of professional learning and transfer in intercultural professional development experiences. I argue that these processes are interdependent, requiring that teachers’ interrogate gender in context to their own identities and culture/s and the culture of their host country to enable contextualization and transfer following the exchange.

I use teachers’ reflective journals, interviews and policy document analysis as the sources of evidence in this study. Twenty Emirati teachers participated in the weeklong international exchange program in spring 2018 and completed daily reflective journals as a program requirement. Of the twenty participants, fourteen identify as women. Participants were invited to use both words and drawings in their responses to the daily prompts. Journals were translated from Arabic to English for the purpose of analysis; simultaneous translation was provided during 15 semi-structured interviews with program stakeholders. I situate teachers’ narrative reflections and interviews within the policy discourses reflected in national and international policy guidance so as to contextualize participants’ experiences in the program. My findings suggest that international exchange programs can enable female Emirati teachers’ critical engagement with gender in policy and practice, and support their professional resilience and leadership in girls’ schools in the UAE. Following discussion of the study’s conceptual and empirical aims and outcomes, the presentation then explores the application of ethnographic methods in policy discourse analysis as a context for methodological analysis and reflection.

Author

• Emily W. Anderson, Florida International University