International teacher training programs and the anticipation of epistemic injustice

: An interview-based study of the professional identity construction of non-native English language teachers in southern China

Abstract

With the ongoing pre-eminence of English as a world language there continues to be robust private sector growth and public sector investment in English language education. This has been accompanied by continued growth and proliferation of international English language teacher training programs. These programs may ignore testimony of local teachers and cause dysfunctional circumstances in their pedagogical contexts, representing sustained challenges to teacher autonomy and identity construction. As a continuing reality, this highlights the need to proactively foreground epistemic justice in educational discourses of teacher training.

This interdisciplinary, hermeneutic-phenomenological study contributes to decentered critical discourses by instrumentalizing the philosophical concept of epistemic injustice and applying it to exploratory, semi-structured interviews. Within a pluralistic robust realist ontology, interviews were conducted with 13 Chinese teachers of English regarding their experiences on international teacher training programs. To sufficiently portray the ecological richness of participant experience, participants were assisted in constructing thread narratives of their training experience. Narratives were analyzed through a two-stage process of thematic analysis. Stage one deductively identified individual participant experiences epistemic injustices, as reconstructed into vignettes. Stage two progressed to the inductive and abductive construction of emergent themes relevant to epistemic injustice. Among these themes is the contribution of a new conceptual form of epistemic injustice - anticipated injustice. The five additional emergent themes which had an ambient, supervenient, or exacerbating relation to epistemic injustice were time scarcity, insufficient input, critical appreciation, tutor centrality, and discursive gaps.

The study finds that epistemic injustice was present across participant experiences but was not as disruptive to their pedagogical contexts or teacher identities as it was in other locations. This is partly attributed to unique domestic factors that offset the impact of systemic global forces. However, its emergence nonetheless detracted from participant experience. By not sufficiently taking the testimonies and standpoints of teachers into account, training programs discussed in interviews impeded the optimal construction of effective professional identities. It concludes by arguing for further incorporation of a reflexive, non-ideal cosmopolitanism into teacher training programs.

Date of Award	25 Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Santiago Sanchez (Supervisor) & Trevor Grimshaw (Supervisor)