Professional knowledge landscapes, three Chinese women teachers' enculturation and acculturation processes in China and Canada

grantor: University of TorontoThis is a study of the identity formation and cultural transformation of three Chinese women teachers as they moved back and forth between Chinese and Canadian cultures. The three participants--Shiao, Wei, and I--were born in the late 1950s, experienced the Cultural Revolution, returned to university in the post-revolutionary period, emigrated to Canada, and studied for advanced degrees. During the collaborative research process we shared our intense feelings about what it means to be Chinese, and what it means to be Canadian. We worried most of all about what it means to be in-between and, therefore, neither Chinese nor Canadian. Part of the challenge in writing this thesis was to develop composite auto/biographical narrative methods to fictionalize characters, to switch backgrounds and voices, and to create a comprehensive interpretation of our experiences while maintaining narrative truth. Using these methods, I disrupted boundaries of temporality, space, voice, signature, and narrative unity. I used a fluid inquiry to develop a fluid language to represent fluid storied experiences. The most important finding of the thesis is how the various participants were awakened and began to question their identities as a result of undergoing dramatic upheavals, displacements, and societal changes. Consideration of identity dilemmas led me to rethink the notion of culture and, specifically, first and second culture, enculturation (learning a first culture), acculturation (learning a second culture), and cultural transformation. In order to represent the fragmented sense of bilingual and bicultural identity described in the thesis, I explored the metaphor of landscape to give a sense of shifting and changing perspectives over time and space. Though my study focused on Chinese women, it has significance for understanding identity formation and cultural transformation in general, as well as for offering insights into the interface between different cultures and ethnic groups. The study also opens up possibilities to understand the implicit and complicated acculturation and enculturation experiences of immigrants with school age children, and to make theoretical contributions to, and implications for, teacher education, immigrant education and policy making.Ph.D