Limiting Professional Trajectories:
A Dual Narrative Study in Chinese Language Education
On a journal article entitled “Limiting Professional Trajectories: A Dual Narrative
Study in Chinese Language Education”, based on the effort to modernize practice in the
teaching of Chinese, Moloney and Wang (2016) attempted to address the issue of career
trajectories associated with Chinese as a foreign language. This inquiry was trying to reveal
the answers of two research questions, namely: What can the examination of Chinese as
Foreign Language (CFL) teacher narratives reveal about teacher beliefs and experiences in
the professional field? How do these experiences impact their teaching, research, and
commitment to the professional community? This inquiry was interestingly described the
condition of CFL teaching from two different perspectives and experiences.
This narrative study involved two informants to be the narrators as the source of the
data. Narrator A was a CFL teacher from Chinese family which had a background of English
major at the University of Beijing, while narrator B was a multilingual teacher (French,
German, and Japan) from Australian family who believe that the purposeful enjoyable
learning of his teaching experiences through three different language teaching could be
transferred into CFL class. Both narrators had a common perception regarding to their belief
about the transferability of their English (or other language) teaching which offer fun and
meaningful learning into CFL class. However, they also found their selves marginalized for
this belief.
This study designed its self-study process into three methodological steps: 1) both
researchers acted as narrative writers, who independently wrote texts of first person reflective
narrative exploring their history and relationship with language and culture teaching and
learning, and Chinese language teaching in particular. These texts are the data of the study. 2)
Each researcher individually and alone, read the other’s narrative data carefully. This
involved reading and making sense of the narrative data, coding for themes and recurring
concepts, and writing up an interpretation. 3) Using Skype and email communication, the
researchers compared their thematic interpretations, engage in dialogic negotiation, and
developed a collaborative analysis.
Through categorization and classification, particular instances of events in the data are
linked to more general relevant concepts, and relationships can be identified between
background influence, community membership and identity. The narrative has been placed
within a third person framework of analysis and commentary.
A Dual Narrative Study in Chinese Language Education
On a journal article entitled “Limiting Professional Trajectories: A Dual Narrative
Study in Chinese Language Education”, based on the effort to modernize practice in the
teaching of Chinese, Moloney and Wang (2016) attempted to address the issue of career
trajectories associated with Chinese as a foreign language. This inquiry was trying to reveal
the answers of two research questions, namely: What can the examination of Chinese as
Foreign Language (CFL) teacher narratives reveal about teacher beliefs and experiences in
the professional field? How do these experiences impact their teaching, research, and
commitment to the professional community? This inquiry was interestingly described the
condition of CFL teaching from two different perspectives and experiences.
This narrative study involved two informants to be the narrators as the source of the
data. Narrator A was a CFL teacher from Chinese family which had a background of English
major at the University of Beijing, while narrator B was a multilingual teacher (French,
German, and Japan) from Australian family who believe that the purposeful enjoyable
learning of his teaching experiences through three different language teaching could be
transferred into CFL class. Both narrators had a common perception regarding to their belief
about the transferability of their English (or other language) teaching which offer fun and
meaningful learning into CFL class. However, they also found their selves marginalized for
this belief.
This study designed its self-study process into three methodological steps: 1) both
researchers acted as narrative writers, who independently wrote texts of first person reflective
narrative exploring their history and relationship with language and culture teaching and
learning, and Chinese language teaching in particular. These texts are the data of the study. 2)
Each researcher individually and alone, read the other’s narrative data carefully. This
involved reading and making sense of the narrative data, coding for themes and recurring
concepts, and writing up an interpretation. 3) Using Skype and email communication, the
researchers compared their thematic interpretations, engage in dialogic negotiation, and
developed a collaborative analysis.
Through categorization and classification, particular instances of events in the data are
linked to more general relevant concepts, and relationships can be identified between
background influence, community membership and identity. The narrative has been placed
within a third person framework of analysis and commentary.
