Maintaining Dynamic Interactions to Enhance Longer-Term Sustainability of Cross-Cultural In-Service Teacher-Training Initiatives in China

Abstract

This article reports on a study that examines decisive factors for longer-term sustainability of cross-cultural teacher-training initiatives in China. It focuses on the Chinese project implementers' perspectives of a Sino-British adult education English-language teaching project based in central China. Semistruc-tured individual interviews were employed as the main instrument for data gather-ing. Twenty Chinese project implementers participated in the study, 17 of whom were English teachers selected from the English department of the host university to work as project team members and 3 of whom were departmental administra-tors. Documentation and journals were used as supplementary sources of infor-mation. The findings suggest that seven intrinsic factors and six extrinsic factors were decisive to longer-term sustainability of the program. The study indicates that the roles and actions of all parties, as well as the constant and dynamic interac-tions between them, were vital in implementing cross-cultural teacher-training pro-grams in China.