The biggest source of stress in the workplace was the administration

Furthering their aim of serving the students’ needs, while trying to maintain (their own idea of) professional standards, often put teachers at odds with the administration. This was the biggest source of stress – leading to frustration or conflict - in teacher narratives. Different workplace cultures and organisational goals led to conflicts, especially because of

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(1) goals that were not clear – a lack of guidance as to what was expected of the course.

(2) a clash of values, with the teachers portraying the administrative staff in both countries as profit driven, clashing with caring teachers.

The teachers valued being given clear guidelines and knowing that the administration had clearly defined goals, but rarely received these. Not knowing what was expected of them caused stress. With Beth, who was new to teaching EFL, the stress of coping with constant and confusing changes in the instructions she was given for courses she was asked to create and teach caused her to leave her first university.

I taught a not-very-successful writing course with them … I wasn’t sure what the goals were - and that’s one of the things I find frustrating when I’m in a job

I chose to leave because I found it too stressful to be honest ... the Korean government and whoever oversees this … don’t really know what they want to do yet I think, so there was a lot of last minute total change of direction and then last minute total change again, and so I didn’t feel like I could do my best work, and so I chose to leave.

However, teachers who had spent more time teaching EFL were energized by the lack of guidelines and enjoyed being able to find their own pathways (Gabriel), or took advantage of the opportunity to set their own different goals until they arrived at one that worked (Simon).

Gabriel: it was hard cos we were reinventing the wheel because we didn’t know what we were doing and we had no real guidance on anything, but it was still kind of it was enjoyable work and I loved it, it was just what I wanted to do

Simon: our curriculum is – the polite word for it is emergent. The not- so-polite word for it is non-existent. We’re given very very broad guidelines –what the expectations for student performance are, and then we’re sort of expected to fill it in.

Another problem was a clash of values, between a rigid and controlling administration (Japanese or Korean) and Western teachers who did not understand

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these expectations, or had different expectations. John and Simon expressed this as a disconnect between an uncaring, profit driven company, versus caring teachers. John was very bitter about a Japanese language school he worked at in the 1990s:

(The language school)… was very much a sales driven place. The people who got promoted were very much kiss up kick down types and it was all just about numbers and processing people through without much care for you know doing something good for students

Simon had also worked for a Japanese company, and had the same experiences of culture clashes between Western teachers and Japanese administrative staff. Reminiscing about his time working in Canada for a Japanese company, he said:

for the last year I was regional manager for a half a dozen schools ... there were lots of control issues ... it was a Japanese company that was run in a very particular sort of Japanese businessman kind of way but everyone who worked for the company was Canadian, and they chose this career path because they were interested in internationalization and international cultural sharing and those kinds of things but then they were working for a company that was very focused on the bottom line so there was a lot ... of communication issues and a lot of staff and company not sharing a common goal

Both John and Simon used an accounting and profit driven narrative to talk about the Japanese workplaces: sales driven, numbers and processing people through, focused

on the bottom line, which contrasted with the emotional terms used with the Western

teachers: care, doing something good, interested in cultural sharing. John also found the same problems in South Korea:

I just felt like the universities I worked in, the administrations were just staffed by anti-humanity or something you know (laughs), it’s like they weren’t really thinking about the kids

Beth was not as negative about the administration when she talked about the administration not being in touch with how English was taught, and programming large numbers of students in her Cinema English and CNN Listening classes, but was clear that here was a disconnect between administrative planning and the execution of the class:

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whoever makes the decisions about these things may still have this idea that students sit and listen and memorise (laughs) and instead of the idea that you have interaction and production of language you know in a language classroom, but, aside from that, the large class – I had a very positive experience,

The stories of clashes with administration outweighed the stories of good relationships with staff, with the only positive note coming from John, who talked about a couple of good bosses, in Japan, who he was still in touch with

The junior college in (city), uh, if that boss called me tomorrow, I would work- I would work it out, I would get out there to him. I still see my two bosses from that job – about once a year ... that was just four wonderful years

5.1.8 Gaps in understanding cultural expectations caused misunderstandings