Challenges Faced by Foreign-Born Chinese Math Teachers in U.S. High Schools: A Case Study

• In Event: Roundtable Session 7
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Teacher Development and Professional Identity: Epistemological, Emotional, and Cultural Dimensions of Practice

Proposal

Abstract
This study focuses on the pathway of a foreign-born teacher teaching in a high school in the United States, including the difficulties and efforts to adapt to the local culture. Through the interviews and participants’ working logs, the author of this study examined how cultural differences shape their difficulties and the improvement of being a secondary teacher in the US from the three areas, including stress and coping, culture learning, and social identification.
Keywords: international teachers, cultural shock, secondary education
Introduction
The U.S. faces short of teachers, especially in STEM subjects. This situation attracts a growing number of foreign-born teachers teaching in the U.S. Among 8.1 million teachers in the United States, approximately 857.200 are foreign-born (Furuya et al., 2019). To be certificated, most foreign-born teachers attend alternative teacher education programs to be certificated teacher and teaching in the U.S. However, because of the cultural differences and unfamiliarity with the educational systems, foreign-born teachers encounter difficulties, including engaging students’ learning, building relationships with students, setting classroom routines, etc.
Specifically, by implementing a case study, this study expects to provide the implications and insights for those with cultural and linguistic backgrounds, especially those with Eastern cultural backgrounds, interested in becoming k-12 teachers and teaching in the United States, informing the difficulties they may have teaching in the U.S., on the area of stress and coping, culture learning, and social identification. Another focus of the study is exploring the reasons that the foreign-born teachers’ difficulties in teaching U.S. With these two aims, this study develops the following two research questions:
1) What the difficulties that foreign-born teachers facing in teaching U.S. high schools and their changes over the years of teaching, focusing on the stress and coping, culture learning, and social identification.
2) Why the foreign-born teachers feel difficult in teaching U.S. high schools, focusing on the stress and coping, culture learning, and social identification?
Theoretical Framework
This study implements the culture shock theory by Zhou et al. (2019). They proposed that foreigners face three areas of culture shock, including stress and coping (behavioral), cultural learning (affective), and social identification (cognitive). For stress and coping, foreigners adjust their stress based on the following variables: the degree of life change, personability factors, and situational factors such as social support (Ward and Kennedy, 1992). Cultural learning indicates that when foreigners enter a new environment, they will differ in the length of residence in the host culture (Ward et al., 1998). International people may take time to adapt to a new culture and shape their cultural identity (Klineberg and Hull, 1979). The last component of culture shock, social identification, shows that foreigners may develop their justification of both their own and the new culture after a long time of familiarity with the new culture (Zhou et al., 2019).
Based on the above concepts of culture shock, we aim to examine the difficulties that foreign-born teachers are facing in terms of stress and coping, culture learning, and social identification. This cultural theory also contributes to the interpretation of the results of the study.
Methodology
Participant
This study has recruited five math teachers, including four female teachers and one male teacher. They all come from China, including two of them obtained the undergraduate in the U.S., and three of them obtained the master’s degrees in the U.S. This study presented the findings of only one teacher, because of the word limits, and will present more detailed findings during the conference.

Methods
This study uses a qualitative case method to examine the difficulties that international teachers’ adaptations to U.S. k-12 schools. A case study is situated within a specific context and aims to answer the situation or phenomenon (Sonday, Ramugondo, & Kathard, 2020). The author interviewed and reviewed the participant’s teaching logs in this study. The interview data has been coded, and several findings have been revealed. In this study, we presented the participants’ educational background, school population, citizenship, content area, years of teaching, and their stories in terms of stress and coping, culture learning, and social identification. All the names presented in this study are pseudonyms.
Additionally, we designed interview questions associated with the three areas, including stress and coping, culture learning, and social identification. Here are the partial questions that were used during the interview.
Stress and Coping 1. What’s the stress you have with the administrators?
2. What’s the difficulties you have over the years of teaching?
3. How did you overcome the difficulties over the years of teaching?
Culture Learning What’s the culture learning you have over the years of teaching?
Social Identification Are there any identities you hadn't thought of before, and why is that?



Results
Lucy obtained bachelor’s degree in China, and master and Ph.D. degree in the U.S. She obtained the teacher certificate from the alternative teacher education program in the last year of her Ph.D. program. Her high school’s population is Hispanic. She has four years of teaching in U.S. high schools.
Stress and Coping
Regarding stress and coping, Lucy mentioned her stress comes from the administrator, the inability to control the classrooms as her first year of teaching, and her unfamiliarity with the teaching subject.
Culture Learning
Meanwhile, for culture learning, Lucy described that she encountered cultural shock.
“The biggest challenge for my teaching was how lessons delivered differed between China and the United States. In China, I used teacher-directed instruction more often while implementing differentiated instruction for American students, including teacher-directed instruction, student-led activities, and independent learning”.
Social Identification
“Even though I had a good relationship with my students, they scored my 88 out of 100 this year for the relationship with them, I still feel isolated at this school because most teacher and students are Hispanic.”

Conclusions and Significances
This study provides several implications for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. First, this study presents foreign-born teachers’ strengths and challenges from a case study. Thus, we recommend policymakers consider their educational differences and culture differences when designing teacher education programs for foreign-born teachers.

Author

• Lu Guo, Sam Houston State University