Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education

ISSN: 1359-866X (Print) 1469-2945 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/capj20

Why some graduating teachers choose not to

teach: teacher attrition and the discourse-practice
gap in becoming a teacher

John Trent

To cite this article: John Trent (2019) Why some graduating teachers choose not to teach: teacher
attrition and the discourse-practice gap in becoming a teacher, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher
Education, 47:5, 554-570, DOI: 10.1080/1359866X.2018.1555791

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2018.1555791

Published online: 12 Dec 2018.

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ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION
2019, VOL. 47, NO. 5, 554–570
https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2018.1555791

ARTICLE

Why some graduating teachers choose not to teach: teacher

attrition and the discourse-practice gap in becoming a
teacher
John Trent
Department of English Language Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Teacher attrition is a perennial problem in many countries around Received 30 May 2018
the globe. With attrition especially pronounced amongst early Accepted 20 October 2018
career teachers, efforts to retain and sustain these teachers have KEYWORDS
highlighted the importance of effective mentoring and support Teacher attrition; teacher
programs within schools. However, less is known about the per- identity construction; early
ceptions and experiences of graduates of initial teacher education career teachers
(ITE) programs who choose not to enter the teacher profession,
therefore not benefiting from such mentoring and support, and
subsequently being lost to the profession, potentially forever.
Therefore, this paper reports on a qualitative case study that
investigated the reasons why one group of graduates from an
ITE program in Hong Kong chose not to teach. Using in-depth
interviews and grounded in a theory of teacher identity construc-
tion, the results reveal how the participants struggled to construct
their preferred professional identities, in particular during
a teaching practicum, and the role this played in their decision
not to enter the teaching profession. Implications for how teacher
educators can better support preservice teachers as they struggle
to construct their professional identities are considered and sug-
gestions for future research are discussed.

Introduction
Teacher attrition is regarded as a “perennial problem” in many countries (Craig, 2017).
Recent reports of “escalating rates” (Craig, 2017, p. 859) of attrition could reflect the
highly stressful nature of teaching, resulting in some teachers developing negative
attitudes to colleagues and students, a reduced capacity to deal with burn-out, and an
increased likelihood of exiting the profession. In Hong Kong, concern about teacher
attrition reflects the stress school-based teachers face from increasing workloads, school
closures, and challenges to teaching competency (Hue & Lau, 2015; Mann & Tang, 2012;
McInerney, Ganotice, King, Marsh, & Morin, 2015). In the case of Hong Kong’s English
language teachers, these pressures are likely to be exacerbated by frequent media
reports alleging that standards of English in the territory are falling (Trent, Gao, & Gu,
2014). Attrition rates around the globe are highest amongst early career teachers (ECTs).
Harfitt (2015) suggests that approximately 30–40% of teachers in Hong Kong leave the

CONTACT John Trent jtrent@ied.edu.hk The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong
© 2018 Australian Teacher Education Association
 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 555

profession within the first five years of teaching. In many countries efforts have therefore
been made to retain high quality beginning teachers through effective school-based
induction programs, administrative support, and the fostering of a sense of community
and commitment within schools (Harfitt, 2015; Ingersoll & Smith, 2004; McInerney et al.,
2015).
While these measures are potentially helpful for retaining and sustaining ECTs already
employed within the school system, much less is known about the perceptions and
experiences of individuals who, upon successfully completing an initial teacher educa-
tion (ITE) program, choose not to teach, therefore not benefiting from such initiatives
and being lost to the profession, possibly forever. Previous research suggests that
predictors of whether ITE graduates enter the teaching profession or not include initial
motivation for teaching, teacher education preparation, and employment opportunities.
Thus, Struyven and Vanthournout (2014) report five primary reasons for exit attrition:
“job satisfaction and relations with students”, “school management and support”, “work-
load”, “future prospects” and “relations with parents”. Rots, Aelterman, and Devos (2014)
conclude that job entry decision by teaching graduates is closely related to their
experiences in teacher education (p.291):
Through experiences in teacher education (particularly field experiences), student teachers’
conceptions of the teaching profession and of themselves as teachers are challenged.

The authors go on to argue for the importance of relations between student teachers and
mentors during the teaching practicum in shaping ITE graduates’ decision to enter the
teaching profession. The significance of preservice teacher education in the career decisions
of these graduates is also noted by Hong (2010), who calls for teacher educators to
challenge the preexisting beliefs about teaching and self that teacher candidates bring
into preservice teacher education programs: “This challenge will make preservice teachers’
implicit beliefs explicit, thus increasing the opportunity to confront conflict and inadequacy
of their beliefs” (p. 1541).
The studies by Struyven and Vanthournout (2014) and Rots et al. (2014) are based on
large-scale surveys and, as noted by the former, there is now a need for complementary
qualitative interviews that explore what lies beneath graduates’ motives for attrition.
This, then, is the rationale for the current study. Grounded in a theory of teacher identity
construction, the current paper reports the result of a study that explored the percep-
tions and experiences of six individuals who had all successfully completed an ITE
program at a university in Hong Kong but subsequently decided not to enter the
teaching profession. The paper begins by describing a framework of investigating
teacher identity construction (TIC) which is then used to understand why the partici-
pants choose not to enter the teacher profession. Suggestions for supporting and
sustaining the identity construction efforts of ITE candidates are then explored and
implications for future research are considered.

Investigating language teacher identity

Research suggests that the decision of an individual to leave the teaching profession is
closely tied to the construction of his or her identity as a teacher (Hong, 2010). Identity refers
to “our understanding of who we are and of who we think other people are. . .it also
556 J. TRENT

encompasses other people’s understanding of themselves and others (which includes us)”
(Danielewicz, 2001, p. 10). According to Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, and Johnson (2005),
a comprehensive understanding of TIC requires attention to both identity-in-discourse and
identity-in-practice. Identity-in-practice encompasses identity construction through con-
crete practices and tasks, whereas “identity-in- discourse” recognizes that “identity is con-
structed, maintained and negotiated to a significant extent through language and
discourse” (p. 23). Thus, Barkhuizen (2017) points out that identity is “something (teachers)
do or perform” (p. 6), as well as being “constructed discursively in social interaction” (p. 8).

The construction of identity-in-discourse

Identity reflects the influence of discourses, which are “frameworks for thought and
action that groups of individuals draw upon in order to speak and interact with one
another in meaningful ways” (Miller Marsh, 2002, p. 456). To investigate the discursive
construction of professional identities, I drew upon the framework suggested by
Fairclough (2003), who argues that people’s commitments are “an important part of
how they identify themselves” (p. 164). The commitments made by an author are
assessed in terms of modality and evaluation. Fairclough (2003) defined modality as
commitment to truth, obligation, and necessity, displayed in the use of modal verbs
such as “should” and “must” and modal adverbs such as “probably” and “possibly.”
Evaluation involves an individual’s commitment to that which is believed to be desir-
able, and is expressed in terms of the binaries of “good” and “bad,” for example.

The construction of identity-in-practice

To operationalize TIC in practice, this aspect of TIC, this study employs Wenger’s (1998)
framework, which conceptualizes identity in terms of three modes of belonging:
engagement, imagination, and alignment. Through engagement, individuals establish
and maintain joint enterprises and negotiate meanings as well as establish relations with
others. Imagination, enables individuals to create images of the world across time and
space by extrapolating their own experiences. Finally, alignment coordinates an indivi-
dual’s activities with broader structures and enterprises, allowing the identity of an
organization, for instance, to become part of the identity of an individual.

The contested construction of identity

It has been argued that this potential for struggle and conflict in identity construction is
undertheorized within Wenger’s framework (Barton & Tusting, 2005). In contrast, Laclau
and Mouffe’s (1985) discursive theory of identity considers how multiple discourses
compete to assign different meanings to identities. According to Laclau and Mouffe
(1985), discourses, and thereby identities, are fluid rather than fixed, which opens the
potential for agency in TIC: “one discourse can never establish itself so firmly that it
becomes the only discourse that structures the social” (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 41).
Based upon this framework, data collection and analysis was guided by the following
research question:
 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 557

How did the TIC experiences of six former preservice English language teachers in Hong Kong
shape their decision not to enter the teaching profession following their graduation from an ITE
program?

The study
Participants
Six participants agreed to take part in the study. All were born and educated in Hong Kong,
spoke Cantonese as their mother tongue, and had successfully completed the same five-
year undergraduate initial teacher education (ITE) program at a university in Hong Kong. The
aim of the ITE program is to prepare graduates for teaching English in primary or secondary
schools in Hong Kong. Candidates are required to enroll in courses in English language
teaching, general education and language enhancement. In addition, during their final year
of study all students complete a field experience (teaching practicum) semester, in which
they are provided opportunities to practice teaching in local schools. Background informa-
tion about the participants is summarized in Table 1.
The sampling strategy used contained both a purposive and convenience element
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Having obtained clearance from the university Ethical Review
Board, a purposive approach was adopted in that I invited participants to join the study
who had completed an undergraduate Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) program, majored
in teaching English as a second or other language, and who had decided not to take up
either a full-time or part-time teaching post following graduation. Sampling also had
a convenience element. As a teacher educator in Hong Kong, I had previously taught
each of the participants during their ITE program and had maintained contact, and
therefore aware of their career decisions, since graduation.

Data collection and analysis

Each participant took part in a semi-structured interview, which ranged from approxi-
mately 55–80 minutes and was audiotaped and transcribed. Interview questions
explored topics which included the participant’s perceptions of teachers and teaching
in Hong Kong, experiences of learning the English language in Hong Kong schools,
motivations for entering an ITE program, any critical incidents which occurred during
their ITE program – in particular their experiences of a teaching practicum – reasons for
not entering the teaching profession following graduation and future career plans.

Table 1. Participant’s biographical information.

Year of gradua- Teaching specialization (Primary school
Name Gender tion from B. Ed teaching/Secondary school teaching Current occupation
Sally F 2015 Primary Airline hostess
Becky F 2016 Primary Sales consultant
Brian M 2015 Secondary Telemarketing
Jack M 2011 Primary Administration officer
Larry M 2012 Secondary Public relations/event organizer
Sherry F 2016 Secondary Customer services officer
558 J. TRENT

Data analysis was based on the conceptual framework described in the previous
section to understand how participants constructed their professional identities in
discourse and in practice. The following excerpt from the data set illustrates this
approach to data analysis:

I really wanted to become a teacher because I thought my character was suitable for teaching;
I considered myself a very caring sort of person, which I thought teachers should be. . .but in the
FE (field experience) school the main concern was just disciplining students, and I thought this
is a really cruel way to be a teacher, I hated it, so, sadly, that image of a nice, caring teacher,
unfortunately, it just melted away.

This participant frames her initial desire to enter the teaching profession in terms of
a discourse in which it is taken for granted that teachers are “caring”. Indeed, the strength
of her opening personal declaration of intent leaves little doubt about her commitment to
truth about taking on the identity teacher (“I really wanted to become a teacher”), her
alignment with this discourse (“I thought all teachers should be (caring)”) and her self-
positioning as fulfilling this criteria: “I thought my character was suitable for teaching”.
Turning to TIC in practice, the choice of the term “but” signals that the construction of her
alignment with this discourse, and hence her ability to construct the identity of a “caring
teacher” was challenged during her participation in a teaching practicum. Linguistically, the
use of expressions such as “cruel” and “I hated it” couch this experience of TIC in explicitly
negative terms. Indeed, invoking the power of imagination in TIC, she is able to look beyond
her day-to-day engagement in teaching to, despondently, position the professional identity
she prioritizes (“a nice caring teacher”) as unattainable: “unfortunately, it just melted away”.

Results
Constructing identities-in-discourse
The discourse of the teacher as a force for change
Within the discourse of “the teacher as a force for change”, commitment to altering the ways
in which students and teachers have traditionally engaged in the practices and activities of
ELT in Hong Kong schools is regarded as a critical requirement for those who take on the
identity “teacher”. The necessity for such change is legitimized through reference to
participant’s past, often negative, experiences of learning the English language in local
Hong Kong schools. The features of this discourse are illustrated below.

Excerpt one

It was very, very important to all of us trainee teachers that we could be a force for change in
terms of the attitudes of HK students about learning English. . .when I was at school, it (English
language) was a terrible subject to do, a very heavy burden for all Hong Kong kids, so when
I decided, surprisingly, to become a teacher I wanted to change this culture, this thinking that
English is just another boring subject to memorize vocabulary and grammar and that’s all there
is to learning English, so boring, and it’s definitely like that in many Hong Kong schools. . .I
wanted that to change by doing more interactive activities in class, using task-based
approaches, so students would take an active role in class. . .now they (students) are just so
passive. (Sally)
 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 559

The commitment of the participants to changing the ways in which they and their
Hong Kong learners engage in ELT practices and activities is underscored by the
strength of the modality deployed. Sally, for instance, argues that achieving change is
“very, very important” for her identity as a “trainee teacher”. Indeed, so certain is Sally
about the role such change plays in the construction of all ITE candidates’ professional
identities that she claims the right to speak on their behalf, maintaining that achieving
change was essential for “all of us trainee teachers”. This necessity for change is justified
partly by the negative evaluations she offers of contemporary methods of teaching in
Hong Kong using terms such as “heavy burden” and “boring”.

The discourse of the teacher as kind and caring

The discourse of “the teacher as kind and caring” frames the teacher as an individual
who has the best interests of each and every child at heart, who nurtures their students’
growth and development as both language learners and as people writ large, and who
provide an environment in which children feel safe and protected. Excerpts two and
three capture how this discourse shaped the efforts of the participants to construct
professional teacher identities:

Excerpt two

Is teaching a caring profession? Is it the most caring profession? Yes, surely it is! It’s one of the
reasons I decided to do a teaching course and become a teacher. (Becky)

Excerpt three

Being there for children, it’s what teaching should be about; because if you care then children
will feel safe and calm and they will look up to teachers as role models. (Sherry)

These participants express an absolute commitment to an inextricable link between the

characteristics of kindness and caring and the construction of their professional iden-
tities as teachers. Sherry, for example identifies caring for children as “what teaching
should be about”. The overwhelming strength of commitment to truth in this link
between caring, kindness and teacher identity is also illustrated by Becky, who, using
the linguistic device of a rhetorical question to associate caring with the professional
identity of all teachers, resolutely answers in the affirmative: “Yes, surely it is!”.
The case for caring and kindness as crucial components of TIC is established through
a series of benefits, for both students and teachers, which are thought to result from
such teacher traits. In the case of students, it is suggested that through caring and
kindness, teachers can ensure students feel “safe and calm, where these are implicitly
seen to be desirable states for all students. For teachers, the supposed benefits include
their positioning in ways that are thought to be advantageous; students, for instance,
will “look up to” teachers, positioning them as “role models”.

The discourse of the teacher as developing and improving

From within the discourse of “the teacher as developing and improving” the need for all
teachers to be continually acquiring new skills and competencies and challenging their
performance as teachers is an essential element of TIC, as illustrated below:
560 J. TRENT

Excerpt four

As a teacher, I would always want to challenge myself. . .can I give students the knowledge they
need? Can I always be improving as a teacher? Can I be the best possible teacher that I can be?
Can I really inspire my students to love learning the (English) language? I wanted to answer
those questions when I started my course (Larry)

Larry’s commitment to the crucial role that “challenge” plays in his TIC is marked by
a highly modalized statement of belief: “As a teacher, I would always want to challenge
myself”. He operationalizes the term “challenge” through a series of rhetorical questions,
a linguistic strategy which associates this challenge with giving the needed knowledge
and inspiration to students. The choice of the terms “best” and “improving” lend an
implicit positive evaluation to this goal of TIC, where it is taken for granted that
improvement and being “the best possible teacher” are appropriate goals for teachers.

The discourse of the teacher as relevant

From the perspective of the discourse of “the teacher as relevant”, teachers are posi-
tioned as being able to fulfill the learning needs of students and are thus seen by
students as adding value to their language learning experiences, as seen below:

Excerpt five

I really wanted what I did (in the classroom) to be valued by the students, that they could see
that I was meeting their needs, that what I was teaching was relevant to them and they always
felt that they got something valuable from my classes and from me, gaining some knowledge
that they didn’t have before I was their teacher. (Sally)

This excerpts opens with strongly modalized statements of belief (“I really wanted”) in
which Sally seeks to self-position herself as a “relevant” teacher, which is endorsed
through several positive assessments of this identity. For instance, the expression
“students. . .gaining knowledge” presents a positive evaluation of her wish to be
a “relevant” teacher. In this case, it is assumed that being valued by learners, as well
as learners gaining knowledge they did not previously possess, are both desirable
consequences of her realization of this professional identity.

The discourse of the teacher as committed and dedicated

The discourse of teachers as committed and dedicated positions the decision to enter
the teaching profession as a long term commitment; teaching is a profession that
a teacher is very likely to remain within throughout their entire working lives:

Excerpt six

I definitely took this (teaching) as being my long term career. . ..that I must stick with teaching
throughout my life, even if I didn’t like some of the things that happened, teaching was
a commitment for my whole career. . ..I think you have to have that commitment, it’s essential
to be a great teacher. (Sally)

Use of the term “definitely” has the effect of unambiguously representing the identity
“teacher” as a “long term” commitment. Sally forcefully argues that this long term commitment
 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 561

is essential to achieving the status of “great teacher”, where the term “great” explicitly signals
the desirability of such dedication.

Constructing identities-in-practice: engagement, imagination and alignment

The model of TIC presented above argued that engagement in the practices and
activities of a community is crucial to identity construction. However, as Wenger-
Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015, p.20) point out, engagement can represent a force
for dis-identification:
Some communities may welcome us, while others may reject us. The experience can be one of
painful marginalization or merely the chance to move on. Through it all, the journey shapes us
via experiences of both identification and dis-identification.

For each participant, engagement in the practices and activities of teaching, which occurred
primarily through participation in a teaching practicum, was associated with feelings of
“painful marginalization” and the subsequent decision to “move on” from a teaching career.
As shown below, TIC as marginalization occurred as the result of a series of challenges to
participant’s alignment with each of the discourses described above.

Engagement and alignment in TIC

This section describes several experiences and perspectives that the participants identi-
fied as crucial to their decision not to take up a teaching position following the
successful completion of their teacher education program. For example, Brian was
adamant that his practicum experience “opened his eyes” to the limited range of
teaching practices and activities that were validated by his practicum school and the
concomitant restrictions that were placed on his ability to construct his preferred
professional identity. In terms of the discursive construction of identity described
above, it was the realization of the limited potential that was available to him to
construct the repertoire of teaching competencies he aspired to achieve that challenged
his alignment with both the discourse of “the teacher as a force for change” and the
discourse of “the teacher as committed and dedicated” and, as he argued, made it “clear
that I had to get out (of teaching)”:
Excerpt seven

Brian: . . .so, I did my teaching practice (teaching practicum); it was that which
opened my eyes to negative things about teaching and from that time it
was clear that I had to get out.

Researcher: call you tell me about those negative things?

Brian: I felt absolutely cornered and trapped, as a teacher. . .I felt that I could never,
ever be myself, that I really had to be the type of teacher that the (practicum)
school wanted, demanded actually. . .which meant that I must be very quiet,
do what I’m told and I could see that the other teachers, experienced teachers
were like this also, not just because I’m a student teacher. . .they’re all like this!
So I wasn’t able to be a different type of teacher, or give my students the real
562 J. TRENT

me, as a teacher, anything I did that could in any way be seen as different
from what other teachers did was completely discouraged by the school. Their
management style was just to maintain the status quo. . ..and so I started to
question is teaching in the long term really for me. . ..I began to get frustrated
and to see teaching more as a short-term job. (Brian)

Brian’s initial statement is an unyielding rejection of his TIC experience within the
practicum school. In asserting that he “felt absolutely cornered and trapped”, his
uncompromising belief is that this experience of engagement in the practices and
activities of teaching denied him the opportunity to construct his preferred identity: “I
could never ever be myself”. He contrasts the type of teacher identity he places
a premium upon with the identity “that the school wanted”. In negotiating these
different possible identity positions, a perceived lack of agency is a striking feature of
Brian’s TIC. For instance, his recollection of taking on the identity assigned to him by the
school is prefaced by the phrase “I really had to. . .”, and illustrated by his self-positioning
as someone who “must be very quiet, do what I’m told”.
His explanation of the way in which such a lack of agency shaped his TIC is couched in
terms of a challenge to his alignment with the discourse of “the teacher as a force for
change”. Thus, the inability to become “a different type of teacher” is unmistakably
associated with the frustration of his aims for professional identity construction; he was
unable, as he put it, to give “students the real me”. His later resolute statement that doing
“anything different from other teachers was completely discouraged” is a categorical
assertion that the subversion of this discourse by the practicum school was absolute
and serves to further reinforce his stated frustration over the absence of agency in his TIC.
Brian’s final observation suggests that the subsequent failure to realize his vision of
teaching as long term career, as endorsed by the discourse of “the teacher as committed
and dedicated”, played a role in his decision not to pursue a teaching career.
Several participants argued that crucial to their decision to pursue a career outside
the teaching profession following graduation was being, as one suggested, an “eye-
witness” (Sally) to the “harsh behavior” of many teachers in their practicum school. Such
behavior challenged their alignment with the discourse of “the teacher as kind and
caring” and, as Sally recalls, was “a turning point” in her decision not to teach following
her graduation:
Excerpt eight

What I and may of my classmates quickly discovered in lots of schools was that being a teacher
(in Hong Kong) is quite different between the image I had at the start of the course and my
actual experience (during the teaching practicum). I thought to be kind and caring is
a teacher’s fundamental job. But, no way could I be like that! Actually, it’s exactly the opposite.
It’s a lot more about punishing and controlling students than caring about them. In teaching
practice, we saw so much ‘harsh behavior” by teachers, like punishments (for students) for really
minor things. So when I asked some of them (school-based teachers) about why the punish-
ments, they just told me we (teachers) just have to follow school policy and school rules,
because if we don’t follow the rules we are the ones who end up in trouble with the principal.
Many of my friends (other preservice teachers) had a similar experience in their school. So, for
me, it was a turning point and I found that this profession is just not suitable for me. . .that was
really important in my decision to not become a teacher. (Sally)
 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 563

Sally recalls her experience of participating in the practices and activities of teaching by
contrasting her imagined teacher identity, which she held at the commencement of her
ITE program, and the later experience of TIC in practice during her teaching practicum.
Linguistically, this stark distinction is underscored by her repeated use of the term “very”;
image and reality are “very, very different”. In particular, this experience of TIC is
discussed in terms of her ability to invoke the discourse of “the teacher as kind and
caring” within the practicum school. Indeed, her alignment with this discourse, as
integral to the identity construction work of all teachers is unmistakable: “to be kind
and caring is a teacher’s fundamental job”.
However, despite the strength of this commitment, Sally is adamant that in practice
she was unable to realize the aim of self-positioning herself as a kind, caring teacher
identity: “no way could I be like that”. Rather, she is convinced that her TIC in practice
was “the opposite”. This distinction between image and reality is emphasized through
the choice of terms such as “punishing” and “controlling”, which lend an implicit
negative evaluation to her identity construction experience in practice.

Imagination and alignment in TIC

Looking beyond their own engagement in the classroom, some participants drew upon
the power of imagination to envisage their future TIC trajectories. Larry, for example,
argued that during the teaching practicum he realized that the possibilities he imagined
for his future TIC challenged his professional alignment with the discourse of “the
teacher as relevant”. In particular, the way in which he, as a “school teacher”, was
positioned by some of his students relative to the identity, “private tutorial school
tutor” played a critical role in his exit decision:
Excerpt nine

Larry: One of the most important things that made me decide not to teach was the
way the students thought about me during the teaching practice.

Researcher: what do you think the students thought about you?

Larry: I could tell that the students in my (teaching practice) school didn’t see me as
important for their learning. But they didn’t even find many of their school
teachers very relevant either. . .they seemed to rely on private tutorial school
tutors for help with English, basically just help to pass the (public) exam.
What I really wanted was to be teaching them English they can use beyond
the exam, for their whole life. But I feel that students looked at us, I mean all
of the teachers there (in the school), as on the sidelined, marginalized. Being
seen by students like that, as almost totally irrelevant to their learning, it was
something I really hated, as a teacher and it was something that I, or any of
the other teachers in my (practicum) school, could never seem to overcome or
to counter and I thought nothing will change for me as a school teacher in
the future as so many Hong Kong students think of these tutors as gods of
teaching! (Larry)
564 J. TRENT

Imagination is crucial to the construction of Larry’s identity as a “relevant teacher”, as he

looks beyond the boundaries of his teaching practice school to contrast the identity
“school teacher” with an alternative identity: “private tutorial school tutor”. His position-
ing of these tutors is cast in implicitly negative terms; these tutors are “just helping to
pass the exam”. In contrast, Larry emphatically positions his imagined ideal teacher
identity in more expansive, and implicitly positive, terms by looking at teaching and
learning beyond examinations. Linguistically, the term “but” signals a contrast between
his ideal imagined teacher identity and the way he believes students position school-
based teachers as “on the sideline, marginalized”. Invoking the discourse of “the teacher
as relevant”, he remains resolute in the belief that this positioning is at odds with his
personal goals for TIC (“it was something I really hated, as a teacher”) In addition, partly
because he could envisage no change to this positioning in his imagined future identity
construction efforts, this experience was directly implicated in a final decision to seek
employment outside teaching; as he explained, it was “one of the most important things
that made me decide not to teach”.
Imagination was also critical to the participants TIC as several looked back in time to
contrast what one characterized as “old school teachers” with the contemporary profes-
sional identities they sought to construct, as well as with their future imagined identities.
Examining the comparisons some participants made between these different teacher
identities – past, present and imagined future – is essential to understanding why,
despite successfully completing an ITE program, they decided not to seek a teaching
post. Jack’s recollections are illustrative of this decision-making process:

Excerpt ten

Jack: A really important part of my decision not to teach in Hong Kong was the fact
that teaching never changed much from when I was very young and it was
depressing, very depressing to be just like another old school teacher and
unable to do anything about it!

Researcher: why do you say that?

Jack: The teaching methods they (the practicum school) insist on using are so
boring. Like, teaching listening: I only play the recording, check the answers. .
.dictation: just read the script, check the answers. Reading: just give students
a passage to read, they answer some questions, I check. . ..so what am I doing
as a teacher? Nothing really! I didn’t need to exist (as a teacher), because
I wasn’t really teaching. . . I wanted to be able to do something to change this
exam approach to teaching that I endured as a student, and I really hated
that I was totally unable to do anything different from the old ways of
teaching and I became an exam-preparation teacher. I found that frustrating
and really didn’t want that and I began stagnating, professionally, no real
development in my teaching skills at all and I just lost all my dedication; so
why go into teaching?

Researcher; how did that influence your decision not to apply for a teaching position?
 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 565

Jack: Well, I thought it’s useless to continue (in teaching) if I am so different from
what they (schools) want as a teacher. And the approach to teaching that
they use was like a straitjacket that I could never be free of; even if I am
teaching for 20 or 30 years nothing would change, for me, as a teacher in the
future. . .but I really changed from then on; I didn’t want to be a teacher after
that point. (Jack)

Jack seeks to make sense of the way he was positioned as a teacher in his practicum
school partly by looking back in time to what he “endured” as a student. Here, the term
“endured” provides an explicit negative assessment of his past teachers, an assessment
that had significant implications for his own TIC and, ultimately, his decision not to
pursue a career in teaching. For example, prefaced by the term “boring”, he recounts his
experience of teaching listening and reading to his students, ending with the emphatic
declaration that he “was totally unable to do anything different from the old ways of
teaching”. This form of engagement in the classroom is associated with identities such
as “old school teacher” and “exam preparation teacher”, positionings which are explicitly
evaluated as undesirable using terms such as “depressing”.
Moreover, it was this apparent lack of agency in TIC that was crucial in Jack’s career
decision. For instance, referring to his positioning as an “exam preparation teacher”, and
noting that he was “unable to do anything about it”, Jack is adamant that his preferred
teacher identity had been effectively blocked, noting that “even if I am teaching for 20
or 30 years nothing would change, for me, as a teacher in the future”. This identity
blockage, which he also projects to his future imagined identity, was key to his exit
decision: “I thought it’s useless to continue (in teaching) if I am so different from what
they (schools) want as a teacher”.
Jack’s opposition to this positioning, and his ultimate turn to a career path other than
teaching, is justified by invoking several of the discourses of teachers and teaching dis-
cussed in the previous section: the discourse of “the teacher as a force for change” (“I really
hated that I was unable to do anything different”), the discourse of “the teacher as dedicated
and committed” (“I just lost all my dedication”) and the discourse of “the teacher as
developing and improving” (“I could just see myself stagnating, professionally”).

Discussion
Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) theory of discourse, which was discussed above, suggests
that identity construction occurs through identification with subject positions, or nodal
points of identity. In the current study, “teacher” represents one such nodal point of
identity. Laclau and Mouffe (1985) maintain that different discourses will fill such a nodal
point of identity with particular meanings by linking together signifiers within a chain of
equivalence. Thus, the data described in the previous section reveals that one such chain
of equivalence identifies a “teacher” as “a force for change”, “kind and caring”, “devel-
oping and improving teaching competency”, “relevant to students” and “committed to
teaching as a long term career”.
According to Laclau and Mouffe (1985), meanings are constituted relationally: “the subject
is something because it is contrasted with something it is not” (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002,
p. 43). Therefore, this study revealed the existence of a second chain of equivalence that uses
566 J. TRENT

a very different set of signifiers from those discussed above to define the meaning of the
identity “teacher”. Within this alternative chain, which participants commonly associated with
their practicum schools, “teacher” is equated with “maintaining the status quo”, “punishing
students”, “unable to fulfill the language learning needs of students”, “stagnating in their
professional development” and “teaching as a short-term career”. These alternative meanings
assigned to the identity “teacher” within both chains of equivalence are summarized in
Table 2:
A crucial concept in Laclau and Mouffe (1985) identity construction framework is the
notion of “hegemonic practices” which, as Mouffe (2013, p. 2) explains, are:

The practices of articulation through which a given order is created and the meaning of social
institutions is fixed.

Mouffe (2013) goes on to argue that every fixation of meaning “is always the
expression of a particular configuration of power relations” (p. 2). In the case of
the current study, the fixation of the meaning of “teacher” reflected the dominant
power relations within the practicum schools. This hegemonic intervention had the
effect of displacing the participant’s preferred meaning of “teacher” to which, the
data implies, they had aligned their TIC goals. Furthermore, the fixation of meaning
that participants encountered in these schools appeared to deny them agency in
their efforts to construct professional identities. Thus, a repeated theme throughout
the data presented above is the perception of being “cornered and trapped” (Brian)
as a teacher and of being positioned in ways that, as Larry expressed it, “I could
never seem to overcome or counter”.
This denial of agency resulted in the blockage of the participant’s goals for TIC
(Howarth, 2000). Brian, for example, lamented his inability to “give my students the
real me, as a teacher”. The data also suggests that a consequence of this failure of
identity construction was the decision not to pursue a teaching career. Thus, Sally,
maintained that observing the positioning of the identity “teacher” as “punishing
students” during her teaching practicum represented a “turning point” in her career
decision-making process, one that ultimately led her, and other participants, to pursue
a career outside teaching.
Nevertheless, Mouffe (2013) insists that every fixation of meaning is contingent,
which implies that “every order is susceptible to being challenged by counter-
hegemonic practices that attempt to disarticulate it in an effort to install another
form of hegemony” (p. 2). Therefore, the following section considers how such
a challenge might be achieved in the case of preservice teachers in Hong Kong
and analogous setting worldwide.

Table 2. Identity construction in two chains of equivalence.

One chain of equivalence identifies teachers as: Another chain of equivalence identities teachers as:
Changing methods and practices of ELT in Hong Kong; Maintaining the status quo in terms of ELT methods and
practices of ELT in Hong Kong;
Kind and caring; Punishing, controlling, harsh;
Undertaking professional development and Failing to achieve their aims for professional development;
improvement;
Fulfilling the language learning needs of students; Marginalized in terms of fulfilling the language learning
needs of students;
Committed to teaching as a long term career. Teaching as a short term job.
 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 567

Supporting and sustaining preservice TIC

As the blockage to identity construction described above does not appear to be
attributable to factors unique to English language teachers in Hong Kong, confronting
and overcoming such blockade should be of concern to all teacher educators, school
authorities and teachers regardless of their subject specialization. Previous research that
explores the failure of some teacher education graduates to enter the teaching profes-
sion has considered ways in which this could be achieved. Rots et al. (2014), for example,
stress the importance of mentor support during the teaching practicum, in particular the
ability of mentors to promote self-reflection on the part of preservice teachers. This view
is shared by Struyven and Vanthournout (2014), who suggest that “a good functioning
mentor system may help novice teachers to deal with disappointed expectations and
negative experiences” (p. 44).
Although such strategies may empower individual preservice teachers within parti-
cular practicum schools, managing the expectations and negative experiences of PSTs
does little to challenge dominant discourses, and the relations of power that underpin
them, which deny certain identity construction possibilities to these teachers. As
Pennycook (2001) points out, “empowering individuals within inequitable social struc-
tures not only fails to deal with those inequalities but also reproduces them” (p. 39). In
particular, these strategies fail to address the participant’s perception that the dominant
discourses within practicum schools threaten their agency in identity construction,
thereby blocking construction of their preferred professional identities. It was, moreover,
this blockage of agency, and hence identity, that was shown to play a crucial role in their
decision not to consider a teaching career. Therefore, the remainder of this section
describes an alternative approach to addressing the reasons why some ITE graduates
choose not to enter the teaching profession.
Moving beyond empowering individual teachers within a teacher education program
to construct their professional identities will require what Pennycook (2004) describes as
the problematization of practice, which necessitates “turning a skeptical eye towards
assumptions, ideas that have become ‘naturalized’, notions that are no longer ques-
tioned” (Pennycook, 2004, p. 799). In the case of PSTs, this skepticism might be fostered
by beginning with Hong’s (2010) suggestion that teacher educators challenge PSTs pre-
existing implicit beliefs about teaching and learning by making them explicit. For
example, PSTs could be given opportunities to write and speak about their personal
experiences and backgrounds, such as their own learning histories in Hong Kong
schools, motivations for enrolling in a teacher education program and beliefs about
teachers and teaching in Hong Kong and abroad.
Next, it will be essential that these experiences and beliefs be subject to critical
analysis and reflection. To do this it will be necessary, as Luke (2013) notes, “to provide
students with technical resources for analyzing how texts and discourses work” (p. 145).
For example, using tools of discourse analysis similar to those employed in this study,
the views and beliefs expressed by PSTs could be critically deconstructed by teacher
educators and PSTs to reveal the presence of discourses that promote and constrain TIC.
This awareness of being afforded and denied particular identities by dominant
discourses could be the first step in promoting PST agency in TIC: “Awareness becomes
a sort of political enlightenment that can lead to empowerment, which if turned into
568 J. TRENT

social action can become emancipation” (Pennycook, 2001, p. 40). A critical approach
must, therefore, move beyond revealing how PSTs are positioned by particular dis-
courses “towards transformative and reconstitutive action” (Pennycook, 2017, p. 179).
Such action could be achieved by alerting PSTs to the fact that the dominant discourses
that position them during their teaching practicum, for instance are contingent, mean-
ing that these discourses “can be transformed and rearticulated in different ways”
(Mouffe, 2013, p. 45).
The contingency of dominant discourses might be explored by inviting school-based
teachers who are at different stages of their teaching career, including early career
teachers and veteran teachers, to discuss the challenges and opportunities they have
experienced in TIC as well as the strategies they use to successfully construct multiple
and resilient teacher identities. In doing so, this step could open possibilities for PSTs to
exercise agency by allowing them to challenge the view of TIC as limited to the binary
“either/or” possibilities suggested by the chains of equivalence described above and,
rather, to conceptualize TIC as “and/also” opportunities. For example, as teachers they
might be positioned as having opportunities in some circumstances to change teaching
methods and practices and also be positioned as someone who needs to maintain the
status quo in other circumstances. Fostering this type agency is essential because, as
the data presented in this paper suggests, the absence of such agency underpins the
decision of the participants not to enter the teaching profession.

Conclusion
Set against a background of concern in some countries about attracting and retaining
high quality teachers, this paper reported the results of a study examining why one
group of PSTs in Hong Kong chose not to teach upon completion of an ITE program.
Using a theoretical framework grounded in TIC, results suggest that a gap exists
between the participant’s alignment with discourses that position them as certain
types of teachers and their capacity to realize this alignment through engagement in
the practices and activities of teaching within Hong Kong schools and that this gap
contributed to their decision not to pursue a teaching career.
Earlier explorations of PST attrition focused on empowering individual teachers within
specific practicum schools through, for example, managing the expectations and nega-
tive experiences of PSTs. The current study, in contrast, addresses the need to foster the
agency of PSTs by contesting dominant educational discourses that position all teachers
in particular ways. This study, therefore, explored ways in which ITE programs can assist
PSTs to move beyond the conceptualization of teacher identity in terms of stark either/
or dichotomies to explore possibilities for how and when teachers can exercise agency
in their TIC.
As the data from this study was collected in Hong Kong, future research should
examine reasons why graduates from ITE programs choose not to pursue teaching
careers within other educational settings in Asia and beyond. In addition, as the
participants in this study were qualified English language teachers, future research
could explore similarities and differences between the positioning of these teachers
and the discourses that position PSTs in other disciplines, such as mathematics and
science, for example. This research focus would contribute to a data base for
 ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 569

comparative investigations of the affordances and constraints to TIC that PSTs confront
around the globe and for the sharing of good practices that can support and sustain
their TIC throughout ITE programs.

Notes on contributor
The author is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language Education at The Education
University of Hong Kong. His research interests include teacher identity and teacher education.

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