Interculturality, Identity, and Power: Experiences of Volunteer Chinese Teachers at Overseas Confucius Institutes

Abstract

With the rapid expansion of Confucius Institutes globally, the Hanban launched a Volunteer Chinese Teachers (VCT) Program with the purpose of selecting a large number of college graduates and graduate students from Chinese universities to fill vacancies for overseas Chinese teachers. In spite of the multitude of students participating in the program, there has been a paucity of research attention on them. How do these students, most of whom have never been abroad before, manage their life in their host country and negotiate their new role as a VCT in an overseas Confucius Institute? What are their intercultural experiences as they venture into a new country to serve as a native teacher of Chinese? Based on in-depth interviews with a dozen VCTs teaching in linguistically and culturally different contexts, this study seeks to examine the dynamics of interculturality, identity and power relations involved in their overseas language teaching.