Identity grafting, values, and professional development

Chinese school systems have only just moved from the margins closer to the core of the global stage in achieving and sustaining student performance in international benchmarks. In this keynote, I examine the values underpinning teachers in the Chinese context to gain insight into the influence of professional identity and values on overcoming inequities via professional learning. I will use a theory I developed on identity grafting (repressive, born-again, integrating, and situationist) and cultural values (power distance, risk-taking, uncertainty avoidance) by Dutch organizational psychologist Geert Hofstede as the conceptual lenses. The theories will synergize my work in raising awareness in everyday professionals—that identities and values influence and are influenced by how they experience change—its opportunities, pitfalls, uncertainties, and risks. For a long time and too often, we have assumed that professional learning is an evolutionary, linear development from ignorance to enlightenment, from the margin to the core. Such binaries perpetuate repressive and defensive forms of professional development, which commonly plague marginalized contexts. I seek to provide recommendations on designing for empowering and enriching forms of professional development. We need to develop a new theoretical lens to go beyond binary assumptions that professionals are either “receptive” or “resistant” toward change or that some forms of professional development are culturally (in)compatible. Through my research, I would like to share with conference participants that there are alternative views of professional development that can be more empowering for the marginalized and more enriching for the core. Copyright © 2021 IPDA.