World English Speaking students' cosmopolitan experiences : learning to be an Australian teacher

With the skills mismatch of teachers in Australia, one tendency is to recruit more teachers from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds to teach science, mathematics and technology classes and to work in hard-to-staff schools. This chapter arises from a study which investigated issues concerning the retention of World English Speaking (WES) student-teachers of immigrant backgrounds. The aim of the research project was to engage WES student-teachers (n=20), teacher educators (n=12) and WES school teachers (n=15) in the identification of the factors that assist and/or hinder the retention of WES student-teachers in university-based initial teacher education programs. This paper focuses on identifying and elaborating what contradictory experiences and challenges these WES student-teachers confronted in becoming “Australian teachers.” Methodologically this paper provides an initial foray into efforts to redo critical ethnography in the light of the Hartsuyker (2007) inquiry’s call for sound research in teacher education. Conceptually the research project, from which this chapter is drawn, has capitalised on resources from Nussbaum and Cohen’s (1996) education cosmopolitanism. It is limited to presenting the WES student-teachers’ perspectives, offering their voices as a way of providing a more holistic ethnographic picture of the identity formation process with which teacher education is struggling