Professional Development for Chinese
EFL Teachers in Australia: Perspectives,
Challenges, and Research Potentials
Dat Bao
This chapter discusses the experience of Chinese in-service teachers of
English who participated in a professional development program in
Australia. The program reflects an increasing trend in English language
education in today’s context of globalisation and transnationalism where
it is common to see practitioners from one context seek interaction with
colleagues and senior experts in another context. The chapter presents,
first of all, an overview of the current discourse on EFL teacher develop-
ment in China. Instead of focusing on a Western view, the discourse takes
on a Chinese perspective which is a less-commonly discussed positioning
on this theme. In doing so, the review looks at both the need and the
challenge in teacher development in context.
Secondly, the discussion reports an empirical study based on the pro-
gram as offered by Monash University which annually hosts Chinese
teachers in ten weeks’ course in the city of Melbourne. The aim of the
study is to examine the teachers’ experience with the program in terms of
D. Bao (*)
Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia
e-mail: dat.bao@monash.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
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Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64140-5_6
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