Teaching abroad during TESOL initial teacher education: The case of a project in China

This chapter presents a general overview of teaching-abroad experience from the relevant literature. It explores one such experience, now in its third year, offered by an initial teacher education (ITE) institution in Hong Kong that involves preservice Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teachers teaching English in a primary school in China for two weeks. In Hong Kong, preservice English-language teachers have been found to perceive new immigrants from Mainland China negatively and see them as deficient when compared to “local” students. The chapter describes teaching-abroad experiences and their development in response to the changing roles, needs, and expectations of TESOL ITE. Teacher educators from the preservice teachers’ ITE must be involved in the development and implementation of such experiences. The chapter also explores the effectiveness in three areas: personal reflectivity, increased adaptability and enhanced communication and collaborative abilities, and important attributes of teaching in a transnational world.