SOJOURNING EDUCATORS AT INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS OVERSEAS AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Rebecca Stroud Stasel Queen’s University
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has jolted educational organizations and their stakeholders. Mobility between countries is a requisite feature at international schools, with students and educators shifting between home, host, and intermediary countries. Stakeholders are diverse in international schools, representing transcultural interests, giving rise to complex needs and considerations for school leadership. This article explores a subset of data from a study on educator acculturation in international schools that unpacks the effects of, and responses to, the pandemic by sojourning educators at international schools in Southeast and East Asia.
Effects on students were not examined. Findings include adaptive responses, mobility barriers and role/school precarity, spikes in acculturative stress, and creative problem-solving. These effects have generated substantial leadership enigmas. Implications include an urgent need to activate adaptive leadership practices, including contingency planning and action research projects aiming at experiential learning from different stakeholder groups in international schools.
KEY WORDS: Acculturative stress; Action research; Adaptive leadership; Educator acculturation; International schools; Narrative inquiry
INTRODUCTION
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic required education practitioners to make drastic and immediate changes to professional practices in the interest of safety, well-being, and most importantly, creating an educational format that could lend itself to sustainable practices for students and teachers, such that they might weather the pandemic storm with minimal interruption to learning. In the early stages of the pandemic, its life cycle was projected to be shorter than it has proven to be. The numerous direct and intersectional challenges ensuing the onset of the pandemic has made evident to school leaders and policymakers the
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 imperative of contingency planning for chaotic events in both short- and long-term. When the pandemic struck, there was little warning for educators in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and parts of Asia, and no warning at all for educators in educators in East Asia.
Before Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, educators in China’s K-12 schools and in nearby countries that were immediately affected by the Covid-19 outbreak grappled with urgent concerns about how their schools would manage the threat of outbreaks, as case numbers rose rapidly and spread from region to region. During this time, I had already commenced a study that focused on the acculturation and wellbeing of international educators living and working overseas. This study was anchored in the lived experiences of teachers, counsellors, and leaders at international schools, addressing a significant gap in the field of international education (Ingersoll, 2014). The study was designed using narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2013) and embedded several features of participatory action research through study instrumentation, data collection and analysis cycles, and extensive member- checking. The study was thus both interactive and participatory, engaging key stakeholders in international schools—teachers, school counsellors, and leaders, collectively referred to as educators—"in cycles of inquiry and practice within their systems” (Bradbury et al., 2019, p. 7). The study served as a vehicle to engage in both personal and professional dialogues about experiences of sojourning while working in education settings abroad. The study followed an “action-reflection-action cycle” (Bradbury et al., 2019, p. 14) that was carried out over a three-phase study design. The onset of the pandemic occurred during the second phase of the study, which protracted the study and which led to additional pandemic-related research questions. It is the subset of early pandemic data that this article addresses.
The first data collection phase was completed by December 2019. The study’s second and third phases required modifications because I was not able to return to the study sites. Since the study was anchored in educator acculturation and well-being while sojourning abroad, and since the Covid-19 pandemic would almost certainly affect the participants’ sense of well-being and acculturative experiences during data collection, an additional inquiry was introduced into the study; following educators’ experiences with the pandemic while sojourning abroad. This element of the study was particularly iterative in its shaping and meaning-making between myself and the participants, involving some informal check-ins and an extra step to ensure trustworthiness.
This article shares data and analysis from the pandemic subset of the study, which pertained to the personal lived experiences of educators at K-12 international schools in five regions in Southeast and East Asia during the first year of the pandemic, as well as how schools responded to and adapted the professional practices of the participants, as told from the participants’ viewpoints. The three research questions guiding this part of the project were:
1) How did the onset of the pandemic affect educators’ acculturative experiences with respect to their personal and professional lives?
2) What is the relationship between being a sojourning educator during a regional time of crisis and one’s sense of well-being and professional self-efficacy?
3) What personal and professional adaptations did educators make in order to navigate the pandemic?
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 The broader study aimed to highlight effective practices for successful acculturation, a prerequisite for high-capacity work, and how the findings may inform systemic change that could inform leadership practices for more supportive infrastructure for newly arrived sojourning educators, thus enabling higher teacher retention in international schools. As a researcher who is a licensed K-12 teacher with experience in international schools, I designed the study to involve ongoing communication and reflective work with the participants, who were fulfilling roles as teachers, school counsellors, school leaders, and those in hybrid teacher-leader and leader-teacher roles. Our conversations unfolded organically along with experiential insights, intertwining the embodied personal and professional experiences while at the same time being highly reflective. The broader study informed a research agenda that includes current participatory action research probing one of this study’s findings of a policy-scape of special education (Stroud Stasel, 2021a), with the aim of better understanding practices and improving them. Beyond the ongoing conversations, there were additional measures to facilitate systemic improvements via knowledge mobilization not just at the level of higher education, but by using instruments that were accessible to non-academic practitioners, (i.e., infographics), as well as to share the findings in publications accessed by K-12 educational practitioner through publishing in newsletters and presenting at webinars with audiences of teachers and school leaders.
The data collected between March 2020 and June 2021 is provided in this article. Data sources included the researcher’s field notes and reflexive journal, participants’ reflexive journals, discussion interviews from second and third interview cycles, photovoice artifacts, and member-checking correspondence. Data were coded (Saldaña, 2013) and then thematically analysed (Guest et al., 2012). The themes discussed in this article represent those that emerged across all five regions where participants were living.
The study included five regions in Southeast and East Asia, which were areas familiar to me.
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, threats to well-being and thriving became evident, thus adding the lens of what participants were doing personally and professionally in response to the pandemic also became topical to this inquiry. It is this added area of focus that is the subject of this article; responding to questions of adaptive leadership. This article thus may inform educational leaders who are developing contingency plans, such as those that were required and adapted throughout the pandemic.
Findings include rapid adaptive leadership responses and teacher bravery, characterized by a near unanimous “adrenalized” approach to quickly shift from in-person to online instruction; the experiences of mobility barriers and job/role precarity, spikes in acculturative stress (Berry, 2006) and mental health concerns, and widespread fatigue was reported by both teachers and leaders; creative problem solving (to address imminent threats of the long-term financial precarity emerged in one educational organization) and a widespread need for, and attention to, self-leadership strategies. These findings, with the exception of self-leadership strategies (which are discussed in greater detail in another manuscript, see Stroud Stasel, 2021b) are unpacked and implications are discussed.
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 POSITIONALITY
My positionality as an emergent researcher is informed first by a life history of experiences in the borderlands, an embodied juncture where epistemologies and ontologies from diverse orientations coalesce and create tensions (Anzaldúa, 1987). Living in the borderlands includes both tangible and nuanced demarcations between groupings of lived experiences that cause tensions that can range from influencing one’s sense of belonging, identity, and safety. Scholars have written about their experiences in the borderlands (e.g., Anzaldúa, 1987; Freire, 2002; Said, 2000), and in different contexts, such as psychological, spiritual, racial ones, and involves negotiating new meanings that guide one’s daily life and enduring understandings as a result of experiences with the borderlands. Anzaldúa (1987) explained that borderlands can be discerned where a culture encounters another one. While experiences of borderlands can be classified by groupings of people (e.g., living along the US/Mexican border or experiencing exile from one’s homeland), with documented tensions trending within the group, the experiences and meanings made can be deeply personal.
When inter-culture contact occurs, so do processes of acculturation, which include experiences of stress, learning, and adaptation (Sam & Berry, 2016). I have worked in K-12 environments as a teacher and leader in Canada and abroad. My first overseas teaching experience was transformational. I was particularly drawn to international teaching for its learning and growth opportunities and enjoyed working with students, many of whom also had lived experiences in the borderlands.
STUDY’S CONTEXT AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
This study situates expatriate educators (teachers, counsellors, and leaders) as sojourners, and draws from culture shock and acculturation theories. Sojourners are “between-society culture travelers” (Ward et al., 2005, p. 6), bringing their home culture identities with them while adjusting to life in a host country. It is assumed that sojourners will eventually return to their home countries, and thus their stays are temporary (Safdar & Berno, 2016). The global demand for teachers has reached exponential numbers (ISC Research, 2021; UNESCO, 2016), predominantly favouring Anglo-Western teachers (Blandford & Shaw, 2001; Bunnell, 2016; Hayden, 2011). Bunnell (2016) posited that the exponential and largely unregulated growth of international schools could lead to a global educational precariat. When the threat of a pandemic emerged in the early months of 2020, a possible educational precariat became palpable. At that time, this study was underway.
Acculturation theory (e.g., Berry, 2005, 2006, 2011; Sam & Berry, 2016) is more comprehensive than culture shock theory but both theories are important to this study.
Culture shock is referenced widely in communities outside of research (e.g., social media, at international schools, and among expatriates), and was thus salient with the participants in the study. Culture shock theory is framed as an occupational malady afflicting some expatriates. It begins with a euphoric honeymoon phase, followed by the shock phase, and then shifts to adaptation and recovery phases. The malady had various symptoms, from anxiety to complete psychological breakdown, and in its most extreme manifestation, the afflicted individual may experience a mental breakdown requiring immediate repatriation to one’s home country (Oberg, 1960). When expatriates depart suddenly, they are referred to as midnight runners, or runners, referring to a type of expatriate failure (Stephenson,
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 2015) that results in them breaking their contract and secretly departing the host country.
Teacher turnover in international schools is high, and it wreaks havoc upon program stability (Garton, 2000), which is important for engagement with robust pedagogies and strong teaching and learning. Safdar and Berno (2016) explained:
Expats who fail in their assignment, underperform or do not complete their assignment inflict sizable cost on their organizations. The costs that companies endure include not only major financial drawbacks but personnel and resource failures, which often have negative impact on the expats’ self-esteem and performance. (p. 174)
This risk of expatriate failure motivated the broader study and became a concern at the onset of the pandemic. Educational workers are underrepresented in both the research on international education and acculturation, despite the argument that all international teachers experience culture shock (Roskell, 2013). Since educators carry the duty of care for students, understanding their experiences, including factors influencing their wellbeing and thriving are of high importance, as lack of wellbeing can threaten a sojourner’s tenure.
Acculturation theory explains interactive phenomena involving changes to individuals and societies when intercultural contact occurs, including factors for successful and unsuccessful acculturation (Sam & Berry, 2016), as well as strategies for optimizing acculturation (Berry
& Hou, 2016). This field of inquiry is still being developed by scholars, which is why this theory is more comprehensive, yet Oberg’s work (1954, 1960), especially on the first and second phases of his theory—the honeymoon and the culture shock—continue to be salient to expatriate communities in international schools. The premise is that attention to the acculturation of sojourning educators is critical to sustaining healthy international school environments. Better understandings leading to practices to support successful acculturation are sure to support the implementation of robust pedagogies and strong teaching and learning.
Many international school leaders and recruiters ascribe to the “fit proposition” (Ward et al., 2004, p. 138) which blends theorizing about people’s personalities and how they respond to situations with cultural and psychological theorizing (Berry et al., 1987). Recruiters have spoken about fit at international teaching recruiting fairs and seek to hire teachers who have
“intercultural competence and sensitivity, flexibility, adaptability, and self-awareness,”
(Budrow & Tarc, 2018, p. 867). In a previous article, I proposed that:
The learning space of the sojourner is an interstitial one; it draws from facets of one’s personal identity and culture as well as from the host culture, including the organizational culture, which may differ radically from organisational structures in one’s home country, but it is in the interstitial spaces that hybrid identities and learning can form which can create novel and adaptive ways of thinking and being. (Stroud Stasel, 2020, p. 97)
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 Even without a pandemic, adaptive leadership (DeRue, 2011) is a high priority for international schools, and strong self-leadership capacity is necessary for sojourning educators. Self-leadership involves opportunity-thinking and drawing upon skills and strategies from within oneself in the absence of leadership supports (Houghton et al., 2003).
What has highlighted this proposition is the pandemic, which has launched numerous organizational curve balls at international schools. This article shares findings from this study regarding the effects of the pandemic upon sojourning educators.
RATIONALE FOR ACTION RESEARCH AT INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS
Educational action research seeks to improve service, such as classroom or whole school conditions (Mertler, 2019) and it may be broadly conceived, such as improving a better quality of life for stakeholders or quality of service (Kumar, 2011). In the case of this study, appropriate actions to achieve betterment included personal and professional benefits to the participants and their broader stakeholder group, which is international educators, but also to provide international school leaders and policymakers, and faculties of education with trustworthy evidence that informs shifts for better practices. The conceptual framing of the study drew from holism (Morcom, 2017) to make the case that acculturation is embodied, that sojourner wellbeing was inextricably linked to professional capacity, and that sojourning educators confront pedagogies other than those they were used to, which could create a policy-scape (Mettler, 2016) threatening professional capacity, self-efficacy, and ultimately, teacher retention.
Allen (2004) used a metaphor of the international school as an atoll to reflect its isolated, yet interconnected nature. International schools create isolated work environments in several ways. For instance, they recruit expatriate educators who move away from their homes and supportive networks. International schools often compete with other international schools in similar regions, deterring inter-school collaboration. Finally, teacher turnover is quite high in international schools, which can threaten program stability. Action research is participatory and relational, and it is needed in international schools to help address local and transculturally-specific challenges that include pedagogies to employ, policies to enact, and practices for supporting and retaining educators. Bradbury (2015) defined action research as a “democratic and participative orientation to knowledge creation. It brings together action and reflection, theory and practice, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern. Action research is a pragmatic co-creation of knowing with, not on about, people” (p. 1).
Lewis and Winkleman (2017) noted linkages with appreciative inquiry, an approach developed by Cooperrider and Srivastva (1987), which is also relational and focuses on positive phenomena, which has a generative effect upon knowledge construction (Bradbury et al., 2019). Bradbury and colleagues (2019) distinguished action research as a transformative learning process that places “equal emphasis on three elements: creating genuine relationships, bringing in useful concepts to the dialogue from which those involved can extend together into collaborative experiments, and developing experiments that are used to enrich a next cycle of inquiry for action” (p. 11).
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 The Covid-19 pandemic has shown educators around the world that both compassionate approaches to education, as well as self and adaptive leadership strategies and practices, are direly needed. Leadership includes processes that optimize influence in the pursuit of goals.
Expatriate educators need to navigate their hurdles and joys with high self-efficacy because educators carry with them the persistent duty of care for their students. Students thrive when teachers thrive, and teacher thriving is linked in part with school leadership (Darling- Hammond, 2003). Thus research on pandemic-related phenomena is needed. However, arriving at effective practices requires significant reflexivity. Bradbury (2015) stated, “action research brings together action and reflection, as well as theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern” (p. 1).
Kumar (2011) identified four processes that action research follows. The first pertains to the identification of an intervention, programme, or a “felt unmet need” (p. 131). The second involves “analysing data to draw conclusions with respect to areas of concern” (p. 131). The third involves suggesting “changes to deal with concerns” and the fourth is to “take action”
or “to introduce changes” (p. 131). The first three processes are operationalised in various ways by research studies, but there is widespread variance in what the third phase involves;
it could be to unpack a list of implications from the study’s findings. Two unique features of action research are that it is carried out by stakeholders within a system for all the stakeholders within that system, as well as the fourth component listed above, which is the action phase that follows the findings. This highlights a benefit of action research specific to educators, because including the voices of teachers and school leaders will lead to greater resonances with stakeholders in K-12 education.
METHODOLOGY
From the onset, the broader study was designed as a narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2013) in order to have applied value. Two specific features drove the design and implementation process. The first was to engage in a research process that would resonate with teachers.
Since teachers often use stories to teach and because there is a gap in studies that follow the experiences of teachers in international schools, the study sought to capture lived experiences of teachers and school leaders via narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2013), a relational method with rich theoretical underpinnings that position the researcher and participants inside of the research.
Perhaps John Dewey (2012) whose work influenced narrative inquiry (Clandinin et al., 2018) would have advocated for action research. He proposed that:
If the living, experiencing being is an intimate participant in the activities of the world to which it belongs, then knowledge is a mode of participation, valuable in the degree in which it is effective. It cannot be the idle view of an unconcerned spectator. (p. 393)
Prior to creating the three-phase research design that employed multiple qualitative instruments, I developed a stakeholder network map in regions that I was familiar with. The participants who joined the study fulfilled roles as teachers, school counsellors, teacher-
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 leaders (e.g., teachers with positions of added responsibilities, such as head of primary division), leaders (both with and without extra teaching duties), a consultant, and a CEO. All participants were sojourners who did not identify as belonging to the host culture. Most had prior experience sojourning in another country, and the majority were experienced teachers.
Over half the participants either already had advanced degrees or were in the pursuit of one.
Table 1 (below) provides demographic information about the participants.
The three-phase design included two interactive phases and one reflective phase that was carried out individually. The reflective phase occurred between the two interactive ones, allowing participants solitary reflective time and allowing for analysis of the preliminary data set.
Table 1
Participant information (n = 17) Pseudonym Host
Region
Previous Sojourning as Teacher
Teaching Experience
(in years) Educative Role Contract Status*
Bria Singapore No 10-20 Teacher/Leader** EC
Charlotte Malaysia Pre-service 2-5 Teacher HC
Claire Malaysia Yes 20+ Teacher EC
Fréderic Mainland
China Yes 20+ Teacher LE
Harry Malaysia Yes 10-20 Leader EC
Hayley Malaysia Yes 5-10 Teacher EC
Jake Malaysia No 10-20 Teacher EC
Jayna Thailand Yes 10-20 Leader/Teacher HC
Joon-Ho Malaysia No 5-10 Leader EC
Lily Macau Yes 5-10 Teacher HC
Mandy Mainland
China
Yes 2-5 Teacher EC
May Malaysia Yes 10-20 Leader EC
Pat Malaysia No 5-10 Teacher/Leader EC
Ron Malaysia Yes 20+ Teacher EC
Rowan Malaysia Yes 10-20 Teacher/Leader LE
Sean Mainland
China No 5-10 Teacher HC
Victoria Malaysia No 10-20 Teacher/Leader EC
Notes : * HC = Honoured Contract; EC = Extended Contract; LE = Left Early. (Of the two who left early, one negotiated an early departure and left on favourable terms to teach at another international school in another country and the other became a midnight runner.) **Where
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 two roles are listed, the primary duties are listed first. Originally published in Stroud Stasel (2021b, p. 91).
Toward the end of the first phase, which began with school site visits and in situ interviews, participants were invited to become co-investigators in the inquiry process by engaging in photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997), whereby educators took notice of their acculturative experiences and documented them with photography. They also engaged in memory box creation (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999), in which educators collected artifacts that they believed represented their acculturative experiences, and then narrated the significance of these artifacts, in reflexive journals in order for participants to engage in ongoing “record[ing of] ethical dilemmas, decisions, and actions … [and to engage in] self-critique by asking difficult questions” (McMillan & Schumacher, 2010, p. 334). The reflexive journals, which were used by [the] researcher and participants, allowed for an opportunity for the sense- making of the research processes to continually revisit questions such as “Who am I as a researcher?” and “What brought me to where I am today?” (Shuman et al., 2018, p. 1270). As the researcher leading this study, I engaged in all reflective processes that participants engaged in (e.g., photovoice, memory box, and reflex journals).
Data collection began in November 2019 with the first set of one-on-one interviews, which were conducted through in situ interviews and school visits. At the conclusion of the first interview, participants were given training on photovoice, which had ethical protocols in order to protect anonymity. They were also given reflexive journals and were each offered a decorative bag that had been made by local artisans, as a means of storing their artifacts. The second phase entailed inner reflexivity of participants who were engaging in these data collection methods. I also engaged in photovoice, memory box, and reflexive journals myself in order to better appreciate the eventual narratives given by participants. The first sets of interviews were coded during the second phase. The third phase involved a second research trip for follow-up interviews, digital scanning of artifacts as well as collecting narrations of these, and to conduct focus groups, which would allow educators across schools to be able to share and learn from one another (Bradbury et al., 2019). However, the second research trip had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, and from this point onward, all data was collected virtually. Two modifications to the study's design were implemented and both of these led to an extension of data collection timelines. The first modification pertained to the pandemic data. Time extensions were necessary due to school shutdowns, shifts, and work intensification. Additionally, it became clear that inquiring about the effects of the pandemic would be important data to collect. The second modification broadened the perimeters of participant selection in order to learn more about leadership perspectives. This modification led to ongoing dialogues with school leaders—who were also teachers—to probe actions that would benefit the participants and students in international schools. Data came from two sets of interviews with participants, researcher field notes, as well as participant and researcher reflexive journals, ongoing follow-up dialogues, photovoice, and artifacts. The first interviews used semi-structured questions. The second interviews used unique protocols for each participant that were developed after coding the first interviews. Both sets of interviews followed a discussion format. In total, 17 educators joined the study from five regions: Macau, mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Participants’ roles
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 included teacher, school counsellor, division lead, school leader, and educational consultant.
All participants were sojourners. Most of the participants had received their initial teacher training in Canada; three of the leaders were trained or completed graduate degrees pertinent to their practices in the UK or the USA.
For the data analysis, a codebook was developed (Saldaña, 2013) for the first cycle of interviews. The codebook included deductive codes based upon a priori themes that had been informed by a review of the literature, as well as inductive codes that related to the broader study’s five research questions and the three pandemic-specific research questions.
After the first cycle of interviews had been coded, the codebook was revisited for use with the other instruments. The researcher’s field notes served as a reference and facilitated clarification and writing up the stories in narrative vignettes, following each participant. The participant reflexive journals, memory box artifacts, and photovoice artifacts were coded using the codebook and they also underwent an analytical process by the participants, who reflected about their artifacts in their reflexive journals and provided participant explanations during the second cycle of interviews. These data were used to corroborate or inspire the narrative vignettes of participants’ individual journeys. Very few memory box and photovoice artifacts were collected during the initial pandemic phase, and hence are not shared or discussed in this article.
Thematic selection cycled around participants’ iterations of unmet needs (Kumar, 2011) and the research questions. Both exploratory and descriptive thematic analyses (Guest et al, 2012) were conducted on all data except the field notes. In the former case, this approach parsed out interactions between researcher and participants to deepen further analyses, and to lay a foundation for the broader research agenda, while the latter provided novel data to broaden understandings of the a priori themes while giving specificity in the context of experiences of sojourning educators where a notable research gap exists. Not all themes are discussed. Some are being developed in separate manuscripts (e.g., a case study regarding a midnight runner).
Seven processes were undertaken to ensure trustworthiness (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2019) consistent with the interactive spirit of action research. These were: 1) persistent engagement with the research sites; 2) the employment of multiple qualitative methods to triangulate data and analysis; 3) incorporating verbatim accounts in the findings; 4) member checking with participants; 5) seeking negative or discrepant data to check for exceptions to patterns that would enable understandings of complexities and nuances; 6) participant review to verify accuracy of analysis and representation and to invite participant representation to surface; and 7) transparency with the participants. All names referring to the educators in this study are pseudonyms.
FINDINGS
Pandemic effects and leadership strategies were numerous. The following four categories of findings are discussed: adrenalized leadership responses and teacher bravery; mobility barriers and role/school precarity; spikes in acculturative stress; and creative problem- solving. These reflect four out of the five areas of deepened focus of the participants.
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 Adrenalized Leadership Responses and Teacher Bravery
International school leaders are particularly cognizant of the power of parent choice of schools, the impacts of which may affect one’s performance appraisals and thus job security.
Parents who lack trust in the organization or in the quality of education may move their children to other schools. One principal shared that that in efforts to ensure client satisfaction, the schools initiated a rapid transition to online instruction to minimize interruption to learning. One participant’s pre-K/elementary school closed without immediate online options, re-opening with an online option approximately one month later.
The remaining schools transitioned to virtual instruction within days. In these regions, the transition began during the annual lunar new year celebrations, which represents a significant celebration in all regions of this study, and into which the scale of the pandemic was inserted. One participant included a photovoice entry depicting masks being inserted into the hóngbāo, which are red pouches usually containing money as a symbolic gesture to wish people good health and fortune.
Figure 1. Photovoice images [cropped]. Left: hóngbāo envelope. Right: contents of hóngbāo include a protective mask (Lily). Originally published in Stroud Stasel (2021b, p. 156).
The Lunar New Year break extended the school break for students, while teachers and school leaders worked frenetically to facilitate the rapid turnover to an online model. Educators were required to work overtime to develop virtual frameworks, while others were given 24 hours to upload two weeks of instructional material online. Teachers managed this time crunch, displaying bravado and some seemed adrenalized by it. Many teachers exhibited stress but also accepted the rationales provided by their school administrations as
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 exceptional and necessary to ensure that students’ rigorous work habits not be interrupted.
Educators perceived this to be a unique and chaotic time.
Most educators made the rapid transition efficiently. This may have been helped by the fact that most of these eleven schools were already well-poised for virtual learning. Two schools housed all “course binders” in online repositories. One teacher explained that at his school, the transparent and widely accessible curricula served to mitigate other challenges at international schools, such as teachers who become “runners,” a term for those who leave the host country secretly, without even informing their employer of their plans to leave. This teacher beamed when he said,
Now everything’s on Google classroom. Everybody has access to everybody’s binder. It’s by design because of attrition or people resigning and runners. If the new people coming in, they need that binder, [it’s] here for you. […]The PowerPoint presentations, unit plans, lesson plans, rubrics. (Jake)
Further to the school’s readiness for a shift to remote instruction, some participants explained that the community at large had enhanced readiness for physical distancing. One participant shared a photovoice artifact of a library as a vending machine.
Figure 2. Photovoice image. “Vending machine” automated library (Hayley). Originally published in Stroud Stasel (2021b, p. 150).
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 Two other participants explained that they could order their groceries over their phones and these would be delivered to their apartment doorstep shortly thereafter. One teacher laughed, saying she hadn’t physically been inside a grocery store since August 2019:
I haven’t set foot in a grocery store since August when I arrived [laughs]. I think I went to look at it and see what was there. I order them through a phone app. […]
it’s all in Chinese, choose a translator and translate the words that you need right into it. I just translated the word dog, and it shows you everything the store has for dogs. So, dog food, dog collars, dog leashes, dog toys, dog, whatever. And you just pick, move things into your cart and then you hit order. And they’re usually here within the hour. (Mandy)
Despite the rush to meet organizational demands, most teachers acknowledged a high degree of respect for their principals and similarly, most leaders for their respective leaders.
While the overall sense of what the participants were experiencing in the moment involved them perceiving themselves as rising to the challenge and feeling proud of their work, a couple of participants resented the measures taken and became suspicious of upper school leadership. One teacher found the rapid request for instructional material to be preposterous, adding that this demonstrated a lack of respect for teachers and that the organization failed to foster an organizational culture of shared humanity and compassion.
She believed that the leadership response had similarly come from above her principal, and she felt that the tone was hostile toward teaching staff. She shared:
And our big boss was there too. It was very intimidating. We, and our new principal [who’d] been hired, but he couldn’t come. He was [still] in Canada. So we had no new principal. Our vice [principal] was at the front of the meeting along with our director of education from [Name of organization]. So, we were in a very punitive, aggressive situation. (Rowan)
Another teacher, who praised the school principal minutes earlier in our interview, sighed and said, “I have no faith. I really don’t. And I feel like the person who can be that buffer, that’s [Name of Principal]. And he’s just here doing what the boss is telling him to do.”
(Claire). Claire explained that some of her concerns pertained to cost-saving measures that would not adequately protect her or her students from getting sick.
Mobility Barriers and Role/School Precarity
The high levels of mobility required for international schools were immediately evident. In all five regions, shutdown measures were swift and strict. Reports emerged from participants about students and teachers, who were vacationing in nearby countries, and who could not regain access to their host countries where their schools were located. One teacher was backpacking in Korea and could not return. She explained:
we were in South Korea and things were just starting to get that inside of Korea.
And then we were like, well, we can't really stay here with the infection rate coming up here. We could be exposed to it at any time and we don't know what's
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 going to happen with borders because borders was the biggest problem. Borders were closing borders were restricting. Nobody knew what we knew, what was going to happen. (Mandy)
Mandy extended her stay while waiting to be able to return to China, and she sent in lessons and supported students’ remote learning via smartphone for a month. Some educators had friends visiting their host country (e.g., Malaysia, Singapore) when the shutdowns began, and so they assisted their stranded sojourning friends by giving shelter or helping to find a place to stay while their friends awaited a possible return to their respective host countries (e.g., Indonesia, China).
The mobility barriers wreaked havoc upon student enrolments, new teacher arrivals, and services relating to the smooth running of international schools. Enough students disenrolled that some school schedules needed to be revised. One school leader reported that the school lost one-third of its students during the first wave of the pandemic. This could have prompted teacher layoffs, but because three newly hired teachers were unable to enter the country due to government restrictions, no layoffs occurred. One of these three teachers was en route but had been turned back to Canada during a stopover in a third country, with the news of the restrictions only breaking after this teacher boarded their international flight. A negotiation of revised start dates was achieved, and these teachers eventually joined the staff.
Following the pandemic beyond its first year, rumours of international schools closing due to financial losses in the early stages of the pandemic emerged. The impacts of these mobility barriers were broad. One principal spoke of the challenges of catering contracts. With restrictions in the cafeterias leaving them occupied at reduced capacity, caterers’ solvency became a concern. Caterers reported to the principal that they could not keep their businesses afloat under these new measures. The principal was obligated to renegotiate each catering contract. Since it was an international school that served a transnational and cosmopolitan student body comprising many diverse dietary needs, a wide array of small, niche catering services had been collectively servicing the school’s cafeteria.
Beyond the immediate concerns of running the school, the recruitment of teachers became challenging for those participants who were involved with hiring. Suddenly, international teaching had lost some of its appeal to prospective teachers due to the added layers of bureaucracy, the confusion of navigating new protocols, as well as the vanishing fringe benefit of travel opportunities for international teachers, which diminished greatly during the pandemic as some participants were confined to visiting neighbouring cities through periods of mobility restrictions. One participant wrote in her reflexive journal: “In one month we will be in Thailand. Unless… The novel coronavirus spreads further […] I hope we will not be interrupted in our travel plans” (Claire). School leaders forecasted different scenarios and two leaders spoke of engaging in planning for leadership in turbulent times. It was clear that such engagements were in their nascence, while the pandemic made the need for adaptive leadership planning much more important.
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 Similar to the effects of mobility barriers, issues of role and precarity were experienced both uniquely and systemically by study participants. Several examples illustrate how precarity manifested itself. First, a school that shutdown for a month stopped paying their staff. This teacher asserted that due to the shutdown and the ensuing reduction in services, the school could not afford to pay its teachers.
Second, the school leader who had negotiated the new catering contracts found the workload to be intense. He explained that while renegotiating contracts such as these were always part of his job description, they usually involved automatic renewals with simple cost-of-living adjustments. In the case of the pandemic renegotiations, virtually all service contract renegotiations involved a re-examination of the needs of both the school and the service provider. Renegotiations, which included catering, parking, and dealing with other service providers, approximated a second full-time job and was accompanied by a time-sensitive urgency.
Third, leaders sojourning in two different regions reported parents choosing to keep their children home and save funds during the pandemic. Discussions of downsizing ensued as a result. Since the pandemic outlasted initial predictions, this type of precarity is likely to be present in short and long term school planning and hiring. In addition, challenges in recruiting may become difficult for those smaller and non-profit schools, which could lead to another broad shift in international education.
Finally, reports of isolated precarity emerged. Educators indicated they were required to fulfil roles outside of their usual job descriptions, without additional recompense, in order to help schools adapt to this new chaotic and unpredictable environment. Participants, including those who consistently shared expressions of respect for their employers, indicated that these directives negatively affected their sense of wellbeing. They felt stretched too thin.
Spikes in Acculturative Stress
Early in the pandemic, participants appeared to be adapting well to the crisis, exhibiting a proactive mindset to the organizational shifts, suggesting that participants had a high capacity for resilience. One teacher-leader, in a metaphorical activity, shared that the title of her story with a short explanation would be,
“Resiliency, survival,
things you think you never thought you would do, but you can do,
how to put one foot in front of the other and get through it.
What to pack your backpack.” (Rowan)
Over time, despite the initial expression of goodwill and bravado by teachers and leaders alike turned to expressions of exacerbated acculturative stress as participants experienced the stress and fatigue of the ongoing pandemic, and reported work intensification as a result of responding to the changing dynamics of the school because of the pandemic. This does not
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 negate the possibility of resilience, but it does suggest that the ongoing chaos and stress took a toll. Many educators confronted their decision to sojourn and spoke of their isolation, living out the pandemic removed from the way of life that they knew and far from their loved ones.
Some spoke of professional isolation as well, including all participants in leadership roles.
One leader reflected that it was “lonely at the top” because of the competitive nature of international schools and how expatriate educators were not provided with collaborative professional learning experiences that were geared toward problem-solving current issues.
Another leader expressed similar sentiments, sharing that she found her supports and self- directed professional learning externally and on her own time. Some educators were anxious about host country laws and protocols for the pandemic. One teacher experienced hospitalization and found the hospital experience in a foreign country to be both reassuring because of the high standard of care and terrifying because of language and cultural barriers.
Some of the leaders who worked with newly hired teachers noted that these new hires did not have the time to create social, professional, or personal networks upon arrival, forcing them to navigate the pandemic in utter isolation without the support of fellow staff members, who often act as de facto family members to sojourning educators. One principal shared that he organized shopping excursions to support a newly hired teacher who was struggling with extreme stress. With rigorous mobility restrictions and the physical school being closed, meeting at the grocery store was the only way of being able to provide face-to-face support.
One participant became a ‘midnight runner’ and secretly left the host country. Another participant decided to hold off on engagement with the study until we would be able to meet in situ once again, and yet another participant, who had mentioned intermittent periods of loneliness and isolation as a sojourner, stopped engagement indefinitely. Most participants reported fatigue from workload increases, and some reported personal fatigue from living so far away from home and being confined to their apartments for a prolonged period of time. Some found themselves unable to support their elderly relatives back home. Anxieties that can be labelled as “What If?” began surfacing in reflexive journals and in ongoing communications with participants. Some regions saw the implementation of new arrival and departure laws, resulting in participants being unsure of their options, such as needing to come home for extenuating circumstances. Some participants could not even take wellness jogs around their apartment complex, being redirected to their apartment, while other participants noted that security guards seemed indifferent about them taking a wellness walk or jog. Some pools at apartment complexes were reportedly closed and mobility restrictions varied, but for some participants, they were not permitted to leave their apartment except to get groceries or medical assistance. Participants spoke of large fines being issued to those who broke such orders.
Creative Problem-Solving and Self-Leadership
During the first year of the pandemic, participants exhibited a substantial capacity for creative problem-solving. Participants drew upon numerous personal and professional self- leadership strategies to maintain their sense of resolve. Examples included a variety of personal pursuits, such as writing and playing music, taking music lessons online, cooking, and practicing yoga, while other examples bridged the personal and professional, such as creating and maintaining a blog, taking long reflective walks, journaling, and augmenting
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 online personal activities such as connecting with friends and family more frequently. Others were squarely aimed at professional self-leadership, such as reflecting on their own experiences with online teaching, enrolling in professional learning courses online, and seeking to advance one’s career with other types of professional learning. For some, these creative energies came and went as time permitted. A few participants noted that with the school’s shift in instructional formatting, at times, participants were “working around the clock” and at other times, they had too much time on their hands due to intermittent periods of significantly reduced workload. One leader explained:
That went on for almost a full week where I literally had nothing. Because the huge issue over here was ministry of higher education. All the colleges, all the universities, the ministry of education was completely silent. Things switched over … but for those first two weeks, it was so bizarre. I'll never forget it. I was sitting here going I'm so bored. I don't have anything to do. I started doing online guitar lessons and things like that. It was really weird. And then when it moved to the new reality of everything being online, then the workload really went up and then there's planning for the next semester and the courses, so that those things kind of came back into reality. (Harry)
The creative outlets that participants sought out proved to be beneficial for their sense of well-being, but the inconsistency of work demands was difficult for some to come to terms with. Some of their creative selections required an ongoing commitment that was not viable with a run-and-stop work schedule.
At the systemic level, creative problem-solving was also evident. One leader spoke of strategic programmatic changes that would have the dual benefit of helping students wait out the pandemic storm coupled with providing some revenue to compensate for losses incurred by the pandemic. This programmatic change involved the development of short- term certificate programs that could be completed within one or two modules and were linked to core enrichment, course recovery, or to develop hobbies. These certificates were offered to students in higher education who had been studying abroad at other institutions and who had temporarily returned to their home country as well as for international students boarding in the host country who were seeking some side inquiries external to their program. This workaround solution served to buffer financial precarity as well as to provide a community solution to educational barriers emerging from the pandemic.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
To say that the pandemic has been both personally and professionally challenging would be an understatement. It has likewise changed organizational dimensions, such as highlighting the precondition of global mobility for international schools to function, which has proven to be demanding for the stakeholders. Evidence of organizational stresses and acculturative stress will likely emerge long after the pandemic ends, adding to new understandings of leadership in times of crisis. Findings such as those that emerged in relation to the effects of the pandemic upon the participants in this study illustrate the need for action research due to the isolated nature of international schools, much like atolls, which make it difficult for
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 collaboration and professional learning with those in similar situations. Action research can bring practitioners and scholars together to share in meaning-making processes and work toward future visioning that can result in viable directions for international schools post- pandemic as well as serve as valuable professional learning for all those involved.
Generally, participants manifested opportunity thinking, a key motivational feature of self- leadership (Houghton et al., 2003), and of futurist leadership (Kim, 2020), suggesting that one way to confront timely challenges such as a pandemic is to develop opportunity thinking as a competency. This curiosity and flexibility also happen to align with notions of fit (Ward et al., 2004), which are common features of values, traits, or inclinations that international school recruiters seek in potential teaching candidates.
One of the limitations of the study, brought on by the pandemic, was the cancellation of the most interactive instrument, the focus groups. The relational space that had been created in the first phase was done in situ, and adaptations for a virtual collective space would require care and time in order to nurture cultural safety. With participants reporting increased employer demands and acculturative stress, this component of the study was dropped.
Participants craved interaction and, in some cases, cultural learning. The little literature on the experiences of international teachers highlights the alienation of sojourning educators (e.g., Deveney, 2007; Roskell, 2013; Sunder, 2013). This may be addressed via the creation of more professional opportunities such as making possible action research opportunities for sojourning educators so that they may define their research goals and collaborate with other international educators.
Whilst engaging in member-checking cycles with participants, it became evident that some participants desired to continue ongoing discussions about these findings, while others preferred to turn their attention to their immediate daily concerns. Responding to this, ongoing continuous discussions with those participants who were interested were maintained. These discussions included both teachers and leaders. I created some infographics, each following a specific theme (the pandemic being one) to share my analysis in ways that might be conducive to teacher and school leader engagement. I have launched a study that involves groups of educators working at different international schools to delve deeper into the policy-scape manifestation mentioned earlier and to address this issue interactively with the goal of creating a resource for international school educators.
Challenges for action research with international schools are specifically related to the isolated and competitive nature of international schools. While some schools are part of a larger infrastructure (e.g., Maple Leaf schools in China) or education hubs (see Sidhu et al., 2011) most international schools operate in isolation. Those who yearned for ongoing professional learning looked outside of their school for this collaboration. Here, the promise of future action research in international schools includes being able to offer comparative and collaborative engagement with stakeholders from different schools in order to co- construct knowledge. Action research is relational and conducive to creating evidence-based change that stakeholders find salient.
The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 107-129 In discussion with the educators about the findings, interpretations, and implications, the educators reflected upon conclusions and resonances to their own current practices. Further ongoing discussions about these topics, with a shared desire that some of the findings would serve to improve professional practices and policies in international schools, indicating inclinations toward futurist leadership (Kim, 2020), including activities such as opportunity thinking, visioning, and creative problem solving. Such ongoing discussions could inform the development of an acculturation framework that could be used to continue studies on and inform supportive practices for sojourning educator thriving and well-being are needed.
This speaks to the practical benefit of adopting an action approach in research.
What has become clear from this particular study is the need for international schools to continue to develop educational contingency plans that look at policy alternatives in order to lead through times of crisis. While it appears that many teachers and leaders stepped up bravely during this time, the stress experienced was also instructive in terms of what teachers and leaders need for navigating crisis with high self-efficacy and cultural safety. One organizational trait that is critical in times of crisis is the cultivation of empathy in the workplace (Crawford, 2009). If leading with empathy is not a part of the organizational culture, it could take a long time to develop to gain the trust of the employees, so international schools could work on developing a proactive, empathetic organizational culture. Finally, adopting action research approaches to inquiry pertaining to the areas identified in this article would be useful to engage stakeholders in the field presently, and to move to the forefront perceptions, strategies, and deeper understandings that are culturally and situationally relevant.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: _______________________________
Rebecca Stroud Stasel (Global Academy; Queen's; ResearchGate; Twitter) completed her PhD at Queen’s University. Her research interests include educational policy and leadership, international education, arts-based pedagogies and methodologies, and Indigenous ways of knowing. Her high school teaching career has spanned 20 years and 5 countries. During this time, she observed acculturation hurdles with students and educators. Her doctoral research took her to Southeast and East Asia to explore educator acculturation by collecting
‘sojourning’ stories of some teachers and school leaders. Rebecca writes poetry and short fiction and enjoys spending time outdoors and traveling with her family.
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