Consequences

Under these circumstances one might think that British teachers would be well- settled in a school where they speak the dominant language and where they only deal with professional challenges:

I am not used to teaching what are called mixed ability classes, where you have very bright and less bright pupils.

(James, 02) So I’d never taught in a system where it was explicit that I was teaching L2 students, even though sometimes I undoubtedly was, in Hong Kong, it was never that explicit. So that took some getting used to.

(Owen) However, the shock of new teaching circumstances undermines such easy assumptions:

There was nothing like I had done before except my subject was called the same thing, was called physical education.

(Ronald) Everything is so different; it was just like another planet.

(Lisa) British teachers admit they do not feel they work on strong ‘home’ ground, although they work in England with so many British colleagues around:

I know that I’m in my own country – but it’s still sort of foreign.

(Owen) Having so many teachers in the school who are not very competent in English makes British teachers wonder about issues of democracy, decision-making and equal rights for all in a staff meeting when foreign teachers cannot convey their messages effectively and cannot consequently influence school decisions. They acknowledge how language difficulties may prohibit teachers who are not brave with the dominant language to stand up for their opinions:

The discussion ones are sort of okay, but only a certain number of people speak. They are typically conducted in English, which you could say, suits someone like me, but I think it is sort of wrong, and it means that if you are not confident in English, you are very unlikely to contribute.

(Owen) They also claim that staff meetings can give a wrong sense of democracy in the school:

it was never, often not, made clear whether it was meant to be democratic…its not clear enough whether you are just giving information, discussing but with no power, is it really democratic? – which it never can be by the way – so I wouldn’t support that approach because I think it gives a false sense of democracy.

(Owen) Although foreign teachers’ inability or reluctance to make their point or disagreement explicit in a staff meeting happens due to language deficiency, teachers may be confrontational with one another in cases when they feel their rights have not been respected, their ideas have not been heard or authority, in general, has been overstepped. Foreign teachers’ professional beliefs can be culturally orientated rather than just linguistically limited and this can give rise to communication problems, as the following case demonstrates.

5.2.1.1.1.1 Case: Owen’s proposal

Owen had invited comments on the proposal for an award which he was about to present at a staff meeting:

and this is where it gets annoying you see, I went and said if there’s any other comments, please contact me or the Deputy head because it was sort of me with supportive management. And then the next staff meeting I was basically presenting how we are going to do this and this teacher got up, really took me by surprise, I didn’t see this coming at all, and really he was quite annoyed and angry and he said: But we didn’t agree this; we didn’t agree this idea at the last staff meeting.

(Owen) He had taken foreign teachers’ lack of argument against his proposition as a sign of agreement:

Well, we didn’t have a vote because we don’t really have votes, but my understanding is that the nature of the discussion and the fact that we asked for any comments and there had only been one person who had said anything, something typical and that was whatever it was and we had taken account of, that we felt it was okay.

(Owen) But the teacher who opposed him probably felt his democratic rights for voting were not taken into serious consideration and needed to do something about it ultimately not to offend his colleague’s ideas for innovation but possibly to defend his professional beliefs in a working environment which he felt was not interested in them. It has been claimed that the ‘strong and often unexpected emotional responses’ people experience in cross-cultural encounters are the result of their cultural values being ‘violated’, their culture’s expected behaviours being ignored or when things ‘do not unfold according to their expectations’ (Cushner and Brislin 1996:8):

He replied: But we didn’t vote on it; there was no vote.

That foreign teacher’s cultural schema of introducing or accepting innovations was probably through a formal procedure, which should be generally accepted by most teachers in a form of a written agreement or voting. Teachers who are reluctant to participate or verbalise arguments in staff meetings because of lack of confidence in the English language obviously hold an opinion of their own and innovators are well aware of that:

I wasn’t so naïve as to imagine everyone was sitting there thinking ‘God he’s a genius, what a great idea’, but I thought at least they didn’t have a strong objection.

(Owen) The whole incident reveals that linguistic and cultural barriers are difficult to distinguish in professional environments in the sense that one can never be sure what it is that makes teachers refrain from expressing themselves freely in a multilingual setting; however, this case indicates that foreign teachers can overcome linguistic barriers when they feel their voice needs to be heard in the school. This particular foreign teacher needed to support his professional beliefs and he did not seem to worry about linguistic mistakes in doing so.

Teachers’ beliefs are constantly revised or reshaped within culturally and linguistically enriched contexts in the light of the unexpected feelings such misunderstandings might cause, even if it means negotiations need to start over and flexibility needs to be reconsidered as a safe policy, which is how this case was eventually resolved:

So I was quite taken aback; obviously I defended myself and said how I saw it and if that was a general view then it would clearly have to be discussed again.