AI Insight
This study examined how two university art theory teachers in southern China renegotiated their professional identities after returning from overseas education, using a duoethnographic approach that combined contemporaneous and retrospective reflections. The analysis revealed three overlapping identity positions—learner, explorer, and pedagogical enactor—that emerged through classroom practice and dialogue as teachers adapted overseas pedagogical approaches to Chinese higher education contexts. Through reflective dialogue, the teachers developed more contextually responsive teaching methods that integrated conceptual scaffolding with student discussion and culturally situated interpretation.
Why it matters
The findings demonstrate that professional identity development for returned academics is an ongoing, context-dependent process rather than a one-time adaptation. This has practical implications for supporting returning scholars in higher education as they integrate international pedagogical practices with local classroom realities through reflective practice and peer dialogue.
Understand the Science
IntroductionInternationalization requires returned academics to reconsider pedagogical commitments developed across different educational contexts. This study explored how two returned university art theory teachers in southern China negotiated professional identities while adapting their teaching to changing classroom conditions.MethodsA duoethnographic design brought one teacher’s contemporaneous reflections into dialogue with the other’s retrospective accounts of comparable early-career experiences. Dialogues, reflective accounts, observation notes, and teaching materials were examined through reflexive thematic analysis.ResultsThe analysis identified learner, explorer, and pedagogical enactor as overlapping identity positions that the teachers entered and revisited through reflection and practice. Classroom responses unsettled existing assumptions and prompted further inquiry into theoretical explanation, participation, and student agency. Through dialogue, the teachers developed more contextually responsive approaches that combined conceptual scaffolding with opportunities for discussion and culturally situated interpretation.DiscussionThe findings present professional identity negotiation as a recursive and situated process in which dialogic reflection connected teacher learning with pedagogical decision making. Farrell’s reflective domains helped interpret how the teachers’ concerns connected educational purposes, pedagogical commitments, classroom practices, and wider sociocultural conditions. The study provides a context-specific account of how two returned art theory teachers reconsidered overseas pedagogical commitments in Chinese higher education.