'Ren-de' Agency in International Faculty Professional Development: A China Case Study of Glocal Identity Integration

Global experiences are a significant form of professional development for teacher education faculty preparing teachers to support twenty-first-century diverse classrooms. This case study examined the international professional development (IPD) experiences of teacher education faculty at a Chinese university as involving personal-professional, researcher-practitioner, and aesthetic-pragmatic development. Faculty interviews, courses, and publications evidence challenges met and strategies for integrating global and local (glocal) identities, values, and practices – abroad and upon returning home. A Confucian ren as social benevolence and de as virtuous introspection served as a form of faculty agency in bridging the global and the local to bring new perspectives to home institutions, while maintaining an integrated sense of glocal identity. Implications for teacher education practice, policy, and research encourage IPD cultivating a ren-de agency via glocal collaborations.

Keywords: International professional development; globalization; Confucian philosophy; teacher education faculty; glocal

Cultivating teacher education faculty dispositions and practices that support globally and locally diverse student populations is critical for our twenty-first-century glocal societies (Brooks and Normore [5]). Research has not emphasized how faculty professional development can address this need. In light of our complex and evolving twenty-first-century societies, Cobo ([6]) suggests 'global mobility' as an integral component of higher education, and encourages students and educators to learn from cross-cultural 'environments,' 'communities,' and 'disciplines,' via a learning process that involves 'adaptation and collaboration' (82). Faculty international professional development (IPD) as dynamic lifelong learning, unlimited by 'space, institution or diploma' (83) is vital for teacher educators preparing students for glocally rich classrooms. This study builds on previous work concluding three complementary tensions specific to the IPD of teacher education faculty. These tensions involve balancing personal and professional, research- and practice-based, aesthetic, and pragmatic aspects of this work.

Becoming a multicultural educator involves becoming a multicultural person (Gay [12]). Likewise, becoming an international educator involves becoming an international person. As multicultural growth entails personal engagement (Ambrosio [1]), IPD entails a person's sense of values, beliefs, knowledge, and behavior, as well as any long-held assumptions shaping 'individual and collective identities' (37). Internationally immersed education professionals are challenged to make sense of contradictory phenomena across new and home settings (Rahal and Vadeboncoeur [26]). Akin to geological strata, a person's inner realms contain 'developmental strata' (Vygotsky [29]) in which one's past and present narrate a unique story. Personal and professional development are inseparable processes. Potential connection and fragmentation in IPD is important to anticipate for teacher education faculty crossing international sociocultural contexts.

Personal-professional development involves 'construction and reconstruction' to meaningfully 're-story' the self (Dirkx [11], 68). Setting aside dominant narratives and institutionally accepted knowledge is vital to hear others' stories and enables discovery of different 'starting points' and developmental outcomes (Ambrosio [1], 38). Gee's ([13]) Discourse theory provides insight into ways internationally immersed persons might become 'bi-Discoursal' (164) in navigating Discourses that 'exist and mean in juxtaposition to each other,' even creating pressure to 'mean against' one's previous identity in a new social context (163). IPD involves personal reflection on such tensions, and offers insight on 'subtle, complex, and often arbitrary ways' in which society 'stacks the decks in favor of certain kinds of people' (165). Ultimately, IPD provides a broader cultural lens, as internationally immersed professionals apply insight from their own journeys to those of others.

The work of teacher education faculty is unique in entailing continuous bridging of practice and research. Since the inception of teacher preparation as a practice in the late 1800s, questions have continued regarding teacher education's university presence as a research-based field (Cochran-Smith and Demers [7]). Dewey's ([9] pioneering work established the university as theory-oriented home for teacher education, shaping the field's foundation as being practice and research based. Additional scholars forged connections between universities and K–12 'professional development schools' to support theory-to-practice transfer, and practice-to-theory transfer (Kwo [20]) in which the practice shapes theory. IPD supports this work.

As colleagues collaborate across international settings 'to make their own struggles and their own ongoing learning visible and accessible to others' (Cochran-Smith and Demers [7], 40), aesthetic and pragmatic capacities converge. Immersing oneself in a new culture involves learning new sensitivities and new skills. Brief cross-cultural encounters can reduce culture to a 'narrow range of acts,' whereas cultural immersion allows a more 'complete development of personality' immersed in the new context (Dewey [10], 117). IPD cultivates aesthetic and engineering capacities contributing to the larger architectural feat of shared global-local (glocal) societal development. As teacher education faculty engage as learners (Kwo [20]) in collaboration with global communities, they more readily may be able to view self as part of their international societal fabric. Li in the Confucian Analects highlights humility as essential to morality, or yi, in maintaining harmonious relations amidst regional differences. Kind regard, or qingyi (Ames and Rosemont [2]), transforms etiquette from mere behavior to an aesthetic relational work vital for the work of IPD.

Pragmatic professionalism can become comparative competition that pushes away any threat to goal attainment, including people. In contrast, aesthetic vocation brings relational meaning to one's profession via careful attention to each other, in learning from the gifts and struggles of fellow professionals. Pragmatic professional development relies on 'tangible external products' in measuring progress (Dewey [10], 117), while aesthetic professional development attends to the personal enrichment taking place via social engagement. Attending to both in IPD is important.

China's twenty-first-century educational internationalization has balanced government-led top-down approaches with market-oriented bottom-up approaches. Top-down policies mobilize resources to attain national aims, yet systematic rigidity hinders educational development. In contrast, bottom-up approaches enable adaptability to available manpower and innovation, yet inequity emerges (Yang [33]). Reform policies increasingly focus on qualitative aims to cultivate well-rounded citizens to connect past and future national growth (Wang [30]).

Teachers are central in educational reform anchoring China's progressive future with the nation's rich history and cultural traditions (Zhang [35]). This work has involved re-tracing Confucian roots to surface cultural legacies lost throughout the twentieth century, particularly in the 1919 May Fourth Movement when political leaders encouraged embracing Westernization as modern development (Zhang [35]). The 1966–76 Communist Revolution furthered this disconnect by framing traditional culture as a threat to the nation's evolution as a modern society (Hayhoe [16]). During this period, a cultural legacy of high regard for academic scholars was lost, as many faculty fled their institutional homes to reside in safer regions (Hayhoe [16]). In 1978, Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up Policy initiated educational recovery, socialist market reform, universalization of compulsory education, and higher and minority education expansion.

The 1993 Teachers Law recognized teachers as high-status professionals, even 'engineers of the human soul' with great 'historical responsibility for knowledge inheritance and intelligence development' of youth (Xu and Mei [31], 248). Yet, China's rapid economic expansion has left many educators feeling neglected with income levels lower than those of peers, and jobs that send students through institutionalized testing systems offering little vocational connection (Zhang [35]). It is vital to cultivate teacher education aims and practices that maintain the nation's rich historical value for learning, amidst societal pressure to engage as a competitive global participant.

In the 1960s, China began sending more students and scholars abroad to enhance educational quality, a trend that increased with Deng Xiaoping's 1978 Reform and Opening Up Policy and the Ministry of Education's (MOE) October 1980 Conference on the Management of Studying Abroad (Xu and Mei [31]). The 1992 CPC Central Committee and Central Government and the 2000 Ministry of Personnel's Opinions of Encouraging High-level Talents Studying Abroad to Work in China encouraged students and scholars to return and contribute to the nation's development. Policies offered benefits such as spouse positions, child provisions, and research funding for 'foreign advanced technology and projects' (Xu and Mei [31], 152). In 2007, the Ministry of Personnel policy issued the '11th Five-Year Plan for Talents Studying Abroad to Return Home' for the purpose of supporting China's 'innovation and entrepreneurship' (149).

China's recent growth in the internationalization of higher education has been tremendous, from hosting only 33 Eastern European international students in 1950 to over 407,000 international students from Asia, Europe, America, Africa, and Oceania by 2003 (Xu and Mei [31], 156). The MOE continues to demonstrate a value for integrating diverse national cultures on its university campuses.

This case study explored how 14 Chinese faculty at a teacher education research center at a large, urban teaching university in China experienced international professional development, and how this development impacted their perspectives and practices. This study explores how IPD shaped faculty's personal-professional development, researcher-practitioner development, and aesthetic-pragmatic development, and considers the role of IPD in higher education.

Purposive sampling (Maxwell [23]) was employed for research site and participant selection. The Normal University (NU), instituted in the early 1900s, is one of China's oldest 'normal' universities specializing in teacher training. NU is the academic 'home' of numerous Chinese educational scholars and is a leader in international collaboration as part of the nation's gradual opening to global economic, professional, and academic communities. The 14 Chinese faculty at NU's teacher education research center all went abroad as visiting scholars funded by the MOE, and returned to contribute to national development – the MOE's ideal scenario.

This case study analysis is conducted by two teacher education faculty who are women in their 30s, one American of European heritage, and the other Chinese in ethnicity and nationality. Both researchers share an interest in exploring how globalization and IPD shape teacher education faculty identity to be distinct yet connected, singular yet multiple, akin to Bloom's ([4]) theory of nonunitary subjectivity. Each researcher appreciated her own long-term IPD immersion, including one researcher's four-year immersion from China to the University of Hong Kong for a doctoral degree, and the other researcher's three-year immersion from the US to China for a postdoctoral degree and one-year faculty position. Continued short-term professional immersions also shaped their perspectives on this study. These distinct, yet connected backgrounds enable complementary perspectives in developing shared insights, including how Confucian perspectives and Chinese higher education and teacher education policy shaped the IPD of the 14 Chinese teacher education faculty participants. The Chinese author served as both study participant and author for this study, providing a unique blend of insider-outsider status (Banks [3]), both culturally and professionally.

Data analysis took place in multiple layers, representing a geological approach to qualitative inquiry, as each layer took place in a different space and time, engaging different aspects of the researcher's memory in connection with the data. The first layer of data analysis took place during the data collection at the research site, where the second layer also took place the following year. In this first and second stage, the primary researcher was engaged in her own international professional development experience abroad, while studying faculty participants' IPD experiences after their return home to their home context. In this season of data analysis, the researcher was most interested in learning from faculty how they navigated their own local immersions abroad, including any challenges faced and their responses. A third and fourth layer of data analysis took place in the primary researcher's home context in the US, where she and a Chinese colleague continued to analyze the data together, first two years and then three years after the data collection was complete. During these layers of data analysis, both researchers noted how faculty participants navigated their own local cultures upon returning with a new global perspective, often at odds with their first culture. This insight emerged during the American researcher's interview with her Chinese colleague and co-author, and through subsequent discussions over the next few years (2014–17). In each data analysis layer, new insights emerged from the same data, as a result of the geologically layered space and time approach to analysis (Vygotsky [29]).

In each layer, the data were analyzed in light of the framework themes (personal-professional development, researcher-practitioner development, and aesthetic-pragmatic development), and with consideration for 'discrepant data and alternative ways ... of making sense of the data,' beyond 'established views' (Maxwell [23], 46). Through this data analysis process, an alternative Confucian view of the data emerged, particularly in regards to the traditional Confucian concepts of ren and then later, de – best translated in this study as benevolence (ren) and virtue (de). Key data points from the interviews, observations, and publication analyses were organized in tabular form, in the Appendix, based on the three IPD tensions articulated in the study's framework: personal-professional development, researcher-practitioner development, and aesthetic-pragmatic development. Later in the study, these data points were further categorized in the participant's evidencing ren or de characteristics. As de characteristics are part of ren qualities, there certainly is overlap. For the purposes of this study, data evidencing ren involved interpersonal benevolence and data evidencing de involved intrapersonal reflection. The former often involved interactive learning and application, while the latter tended to involve introspective learning and reflection, abroad or in one's home context.

In addition to the alternative ren-de analyses that emerged in the study, additional sub-themes surfaced. Constant comparative analysis involved looking for patterned themes and conditions in relation to the three overarching IPD tensions of the framework: faculty personal-professional, researcher-practitioner, and aesthetic-pragmatic development (Strauss and Corbin [27]). Shared characteristics were integrated to develop theme-based findings and sub-findings, with more specified sub-themes, discussed in light of theory (Merriam [24]). Member-checking (Lincoln and Guba [21]) involved ongoing data analysis (Merriam [24]) and ongoing dialogue with the 14 study participants in regards to the emerging findings, from 2014–17. This dialogue process more closely resembled L. Harvey's ([14]) dialogic approach to research interviews, as the development of findings was collaborative and co-constructive in nature. Data analyses considered ways in which participant voices affirmed, countered, or added new perspectives to the framework. Akin to member-checking, the American researcher's continued immersion in the IPD site in China enabled 'context-checking,' by which the findings could be examined in the light of the study's context. This contrasts with studies that involve collecting data on site, and then returning to one's home context for analysis.

Finally, aesthetic narrative inquiry sought to 'be with' and 'for' participants (Herbert [17]) by inviting stories without imposing comparisons about what is 'already-known,' which can distance researchers from authentic understanding of participants (120). This inquiry enabled understandings shaped from societal margins encountered abroad to offer insight into teacher education faculty IPD. The American researcher served as empathetic audience for storied narration (Jones [19]) to support participant voice (Herbert [17]) and assimilate tensions (Zhang [35]). Inquiry as stance welcomed 'complex understandings' to 'interrogate practice' and generate 'local knowledge,' considering 'multiple perspectives' (Cochran-Smith and Demers [7], 20). Such inquiry enables looking beyond standards to consider the complexities involved in how students, teachers, and researchers co-create knowledge.

The above data analysis strategies allowed findings both to emerge inductively, and be considered deductively in light of theory framing the study (Strauss and Corbin [27]). The findings ultimately offered implications for IPD-related practice, research, and policy.

Participatory observation involved the American researcher's two-year immersion as a postdoctoral researcher at the research site, including research, teaching undergraduate and graduate teacher education courses, leading professional development workshops for local teachers, and attending weekly faculty meetings. The two researchers discussed data gathered via notes formally recorded on laptop and informally recorded in memory.

The visiting researcher observed 9 out of 14 faculty participants in their teacher education practices. She observed a few graduate course sessions in the culture of teaching, qualitative research, anthropology, and both graduate and undergraduate courses in teaching pedagogy. She observed five sessions and taught one class for a graduate course in national education and development, and observed five and taught two sessions for a graduate course in teacher professional development. Finally, she observed 14 of 16 sessions and taught three classes for a graduate course in comparative teacher education research and practice, and taught a 15-session course on teacher quality, assessment, and policy across international contexts.

Participant interviews explored key themes aligned with theory framing the research, including teacher educator IPD as personal and professional, research and practice based, and aesthetic and pragmatic. Participants were asked how IPD shaped their notions of achievement as teacher education faculty. Participants summarized a key IPD learning point with a chengyu, or traditional Chinese proverb. This inquiry process became a dialogue between the researcher and participant, highlighting convergences and divergences in challenges met and insights realized. As professional development 'evokes a sense of self ... within our various practice contexts' (Dirkx [11], 74), the interview process invited verbal and visual expressions of participant IPD experiences, tensions, and learning. Data collection engaged the power of the aesthetic to enrich learning in the presence of the other, and to diminish voice-less-ness as the other. Ongoing data analysis (Merriam [24]) involved inviting participants to name a value observed on both 'sides' of cultural dissonance to consider contrasts as complementary.

Document analyses included key publications shared by the research participants, ideally in relation to their IPD reflections, and documents pertaining to the center's research initiatives.

This two-year case study of 14 teacher education faculty at a large, urban university in China confirmed this study's conceptual framework for teacher education faculty international professional development as being personal and professional, research and practice based, and aesthetic and pragmatic. This study additionally found faculty IPD to bridge the global and the local through a relational practice of ren and an introspective practice of de. This study highlights this complementary Confucian practice of ren-de as a form of professional agency helpful for integrating global and local experiences, perspectives, and practices – while abroad and upon returning to one's home context. As faculty balanced Confucian and Western values, they maintained perspective on past and the present-day China to navigate tensions faced in maintaining global and local (glocal), social and personal (ren-de) integrity.

Ren-de agency – as a complementary social benevolence and virtuous introspection – became an empowering, even vital practice for faculty to navigate cultural dissonance between their home and IPD context cultures. Ren-de emerged as important to the work of IPD, globally. The Appendix summarizes participant IPD experiences and ren-de characteristics. While there was overlap in categorization, ren or de was highlighted as the key practice evidenced.

Like many university faculty members in China, Professor Wang, the director of the teacher education research center site for this case study, spent two academic semesters abroad as a visiting scholar in the US. During this time, Wang attended lectures and spent hours in the library reading English texts about teacher education in the US. Upon returning to China and his home university, Wang had many practices to implement as director of the teacher education research center and policy suggestions for China's MOE. For instance, Wang included more student–teacher discussion in his university courses, and developed more detailed syllabi, as gleaned in experiences abroad. In addition, he encouraged the MOE to bring teacher education across pre–K through Grade 12 into the university. As most faculty participants in this study experienced, Wang's international professional development was personal in nature, as it involved not only immersing himself in the US culture, institutions, and English language, but also his entire family during his time abroad. This personal aspect of how NU's faculty practiced international professional development resonates with practices across many Chinese universities, and offers a strong model for other global universities able to engage in long-term international personal-professional development to develop national education systems.

Liao reflected on a personal-professionalism that involves putting one's whole self into one's practice through meaningful introspection and inclusion of others. She shared her doctoral advisor's belief that the person who wants 'to be in the world' must be 'in relationship,' as 'we understand ourselves through the mirror of others' as dialogue. Gan similarly articulated development of a personal professionalism that sought to reach out to international others as part of learning about the self. Other faculty participants also described learning more about their own home contexts through engagement in their IPD experiences. Gan similarly emphasized need in modern Chinese society for a deeper personal introspection to build a 'stable inner self in a radically changing environment.' This ideal resonates with Zhang's ([35]) 'inner authority' (230) needed by modern societies to withstand fast-paced societal change causing global citizens to pursue singular notions of achievement measured by financial profit. Nearly all participants in this study articulated a desire to see more than this, for the development of their nation.

Professor Gong's reflections highlighted the personal and professional qualities that are important to develop as a teacher education faculty member, and experienced this himself as an international doctoral scholar in Belgium, where he improved his English and learned to speak the local Flemish dialect to converse with his colleagues. The time spent to engage in localized dialogue proved to be helpful, as these collegial relationships became a source of support in Gong's professional research methodology development. From this, Gong began to emphasize with his Chinese students the importance of developing personal and professional capacities. He now encourages his students to learn appropriate ways to communicate with one another and with faculty in their given cultural contexts, to behave with manners customary to a given region, and to attend to personal health from physical, psychological, and social considerations. Merging this practice with his research approach, Gong highlighted the significance of teacher beliefs in shaping teacher practice. Faculty often study teaching practice as the focal point of research, yet Gong placed teacher beliefs as primary, as personal beliefs anchor professional practices.

Similarly, Professor Yang aimed to help her graduate students practice being human, along with being a researcher. She was surprised by how a younger generation of researchers communicated without basic skills in appropriately greeting someone. She wanted her students to develop ethical research practices by communicating well with study participants and engaging in professional development activities. For Gong and Yang, becoming an effective professional entails personal development, as well. Professor Tai similarly articulated the need for teachers to show proper regard for all, reflective of the multicultural education attitudes and practices that she encountered during her two years in Australia's Ministry of Education. Tai made the connection between a Western multicultural education and the Confucian concept of ren, or benevolence, both of which regard all humans with dignity and deserving regard. Putting this belief into practice in her faculty teaching position in China, Tai encouraged her students to offer their ideas in class more frequently, as students in Australia did. Tai considered this a form of 'classroom justice' establishing mutual regard for both faculty and student dialogue and ideas. She reflected, 'Everyone has the right to share their answer. So, I would like to encourage [students] to share [their] answer, because it is equal for us, it is a classroom justice, for everyone to share their answer, or share their point of view.' Tai's commitment to equality of personhood reflected her personal approach to professional development.

Resonating with the above themes, Professor Liao's doctoral work in Hong Kong led to her commitment to engage students in inclusive learning experiences valuing the backgrounds of all learners. Liao shared her belief in ethical assessments providing insight for how to improve instruction, and not simply to rank students. Liao shared her value for providing students with enough space to confer trust in their ability and integrity to complete assignments and do their best. This space empowers students not only to complete assignments, but also to put their whole selves into their work and develop a sense of identity, simultaneously. For Liao, education should not only result in a test score, but in student identity development, and teacher professional development should lead to personal development, as well. To cultivate these perspectives and practices in her home institution, Liao invited her advisor from Hong Kong to serve as visiting faculty in China for part of the academic year, to support her colleagues in this work.

In some cases, faculty IPD experiences led to cross-cultural dissonance which was personal and professional in nature. For instance, Chang was surprised to see her US professor lead class with his feet on the table, while peers ate and drank soft drinks. Yet, she came to appreciate this informal learning environment, and sought to nurture a balance of formality and informality in her own classroom when she returned to her own more formal classroom context at home. A more challenging instance involved an instructor not being sympathetic to her wait for a 'pause' in class to contribute to class discussion, as such pauses were polite in Chinese culture. She shared this experience with her classrooms at home so they might recognize this challenge in their own study abroad. In another instance, Chang heard a CNN news reporter describe 'Made in China' products as 'trash' purchased for a low price, a statement she found hurtful and derogatory. In her return home, she focused part of her research on supporting teachers in disadvantaged areas of China, as a way to confront this very derogatory claim made toward an entire nation. Other participants also drew upon cross-cultural misunderstanding abroad to educate students toward a more gracious IPD.

After his one-year IPD experience as a visiting scholar in a US university, Professor Wang became the director of NU's teacher education research center for five years (2009–14). Wang drew upon IPD to encourage action research as a constructive means for bringing the researcher's theory and the teacher's practice into collaborative interaction. As a result, the center led many action research professional development workshops for teachers during this span of leadership. Wang then was promoted to Dean of NU's Faculty of Education, and sought connections across MOE policy, and teacher education research and practices meaningful for both global and traditional local Chinese education contexts. An became director in 2014, and continued to seek to build these meaningful connections, and to support faculty in building connections between their research and practice. An and Wang supported Professor Gao, who continued to apply research-based practices learned during her three-year visiting scholar position at a university in Japan. Despite the tough historical conflict between her home nation and Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, Gao gleaned many ideas from Japan for how health and physical education might be implemented in Chinese schools. For instance, Gao appreciated Japan's focus on building character and morals in sports education, the role of health education teachers in primary schools, and the numerous after-school sports clubs at the secondary level. Upon returning to her Chinese institutional home, Gao chose to leave the NU's Faculty of Health and join the Faculty of Education, and committed herself to the tasks of developing curricula, instruction, and assessments for health in China, including key topics for twenty-first-century students that were not widely discussed, such as AIDS prevention. She also committed herself to the work of preparing health education teachers for primary and secondary schools, a very challenging task, as there were no health teachers at the time.

Professor Su's IPD experience cultivated in her an interest in helping faculty glean knowledge from practicing K–12 teachers. A key learning point she gained from her one-year visiting scholar work in the US was the value for professor–teacher partnerships in which faculty and K–12 teachers both learn from each other. She described this work with a Chinese chengyu as jiaoxue xiangjiang, or teacher and learner growing together. Su reflected that during classroom discussions, she received as much help from the teachers as they gleaned from her. She also suggested faculty spend time working in local schools as teachers to understand better the challenges teachers face daily in their work, and how to help meet these needs best.

Similarly, Professor Liao discussed the value of theory-to-practice transfer via researcher-practitioner communities by referencing the Chinese concept zhong (众), or people together. In a faculty meeting, Liao described the top of zhong as the mountain, representing character emerging from wise choices made over time. The water-like base reflected the wisdom and empathy gleaned from life's daily lessons. Liao related this to teacher professional development in which life's mountains (research) and waters (practice) serve as complementary and distinct sources of learning. Zhong here represents the community built around researchers and teachers engaged in shared areas of inquiry together. Liao asserted that theory alone may appear excellent, but is 'without a soul' if disconnected from daily classroom realities. In this study, faculty participants included teachers in theory-building, while teachers benefited from theoretical guidance drawn from their work.

In her four-year doctoral experience in Hong Kong, Professor Bai came to value greater engagement between faculty and teachers in seeking insights for practice, together. Bai found follow-up discourse with teachers on their practice led teachers to integrate her research-based ideas into their work, while also informing and shaping Bai's theoretical perspectives. She encouraged faculty to develop an inter-language combining theoretical and practical terms bridging the worlds of the teacher and the researcher. Bai referenced a Chinese chengyu, or proverb, shared by a colleague, ren du xing keyi zou de geng kuai, danshi tong xing keyi zou de geng yuan, or 'if you go fast, you go alone; if you go together, you go further.' At the same time, Bai often felt the pressure in academia to move quickly, rather than slowly. Professor Chen similarly articulated pressures that faculty and teachers alike face to provide information upfront for students, so they might perform better on tests. Yet, Chen recognized in his four-year doctoral experience in Hong Kong and in his return to mainland China, that students can gain more from learning opportunities allowing students time to develop their own paths for developing solutions via problem-based learning. Rather than giving students information to memorize in a shorter amount of time, it may be more effective to allow students to take more time to develop their own problem-solving strategies. Applying this finding to his own professional development, Chen encouraged faculty to engage in self-study and considered the benefit of discussing one of his own taped class sessions with a student or teaching assistant. Like Bai, Chen felt time was limited to put this idea into practice, due to faculty pressures.

Many faculty participants articulated pressure to be more pragmatic in their role as a young faculty member seeking to complete the promotion process. For instance, Professor Cai highlighted her desire to take a more artistic approach by focusing on student learning. Yet, she found herself criticized for not producing enough publications and defaulted to a more pragmatic paper producing focus, a focus that she did not feel represented a Confucian value for education and inner development. Inner development would entail paying less attention to outside standards and showing greater regard for student responses to curriculum and instruction. Cai noted the important role that nature played in this educational work, and cited the Confucian phrase ren zhe le shan, zhi zhe le shui, meaning the benevolent/upright person loves the mountains, and the wise person loves the water. Cai expressed her wish for her and her students to experience nature more often in urban China to develop both benevolence and wisdom through engagement with nature. Cai noted she hoped to take an artistic approach to teaching after career promotion. Cai was the one participant who did not have an extensive IPD experience, though two years after the study she chose to move with her family to Ireland.

Professor Chang described her one-year IPD visiting doctoral scholar experience in the US as fengfu duocai, or a very rich and colorful experience. After some initial adjustments, Chang came to embrace a blended formal and informal class atmosphere. In returning to her role as a teacher educator in China, Chang allowed her students to bring food to class, engage students in more informal classroom discourse, and brought her students to art and other museums around the city to engage in experiential learning. Chang described herself as more of an engineer than an artist as a teacher educator, yet described artistic practices in her work. She valued the practice learned abroad for allowing students to take more exploration time in class to develop their own ideas and to construct their own frameworks – in contrast to the more efficient method for teachers to tell students information that they then quickly intake. The former entails a more artistic appreciation for learning, while the latter is more pragmatic.

Professor Gan described her work as a teacher-researcher as aesthetic in nature, and attributed both her four-year US doctoral experience in educational philosophy and her immersion in nature as a youth as the primary contributors to this aesthetic approach in her work. Gan shared how her doctoral advisor's educational philosophy course helped her learn to hear her own voice and develop her own thoughts. Gan reflected, 'in that class, for the first time, I realize that I can think in my own way and think deeply and creatively to respond to some real problems,' and that this discovery brought her 'confidence and faith that everyone has this thinking power.' Gan found that speaking from her inner 'true voice' is where she experienced art, and encouraged her own students to find, express, and develop their own true voices and thoughts, as well. She recognized that authenticity comes with vulnerability, a hallmark of the artist needed to counter more dominating discourse in global societies today. After Professor Yeh's three-year visiting scholar experience in Macau, she began to offer teacher development workshops that coached teachers to develop an inner voice and reflective capacity through interaction with the US text, TheCourage to Teach (Palmer Parker [25]). Yeh described this work as akin to watching a flower slowly blossom over time. Teachers who participated in Yeh's workshop frequently sent her emails to thank her for introducing them to this book and helping them grow 'from the hidden mind to the bright world.' Yeh sought to create a platform for introducing accomplished teachers and their reflective work to the university classroom where new teachers might learn from their daily teaching experiences, lessons, and perspectives.

Findings highlighted ways in which teacher education faculty IPD involved a balance of personal-professional, researcher-practitioner, and aesthetic-pragmatic development. This study demonstrated how this balancing work continues when faculty re-integrate new development and learning into home contexts. This work results in faculty forging global-local connections between two cultures and institutions with varying emphases on the roles of research and teaching, and varying regard for aesthetic, reflective approaches to education versus more pragmatic national aims in education.

This study further demonstrated ways faculty navigated IPD tensions with a ren-de agency, or the complementary practices of external benevolence and inner virtue. Confucius (551–479 BC) is recognized for widespread integration of these concepts into Chinese culture, philosophy, and teaching (Ames and Rosemont [2]). Often translated as benevolence, ren also has been translated as human excellence (Yu [34], 34), reconceptualizing achievement in more harmonious and relational terms. Born in the state of Lu in ancient China, Confucius sought to offer alternatives to escalating conflict in the seven surrounding regions vying for power. In Confucian philosophy, ren begins with filial piety and fraternal love growing from the root of goodwill toward one's own family members, and then extends to the larger community (Yu [34]). Ren also offers helpful perspective today in supporting teachers and teacher education faculty forging connections among the global and the local to build twenty-first-century communities.

Merging individual morality with social ethic, ren (仁) is composed of two characters – - ren (人), or person, and er (二), or two – to connote that humanity inherently involves togetherness. Hayhoe ([16]) highlights that ren (仁) involves cultivating a sincere, self-giving heart with tradition guiding this work (Hayhoe [16]; Yan [32]). Evolved from an earlier etymological denotation as 忈 composed of xin (心), or heart, under er (二), or two, ren (忈) emphasizes the centrality of the heart in relationships, and may be translated as seed, or the original design for all cell life, connoting deep-rooted connection between relational and ecological health (Shen Li, personal communication, 25 June 2014). The ecological roots to ren's relationality resonates with Professor Cai's and Professor Gan's value for connection with nature to inspire relational harmony and personal insights. Ren as benevolence emerges as a vital life-sustaining force.

In this study, ren-de agency enabled faculty to bridge the global and the local, both abroad and in returning to their home contexts. Evidencing de as virtuous introspection applied to practice, participants took time to glean and internalize new insights abroad, and then implement what is 'appropriate in a particular circumstance' at home (Yu [34], 157). Reflective of Confucianism's 'sensitivity to the actual situations of human life' (156), participants merged de with ren by allowing introspective learning to translate into well-timed and meaningful applications. As participants engaged in global spaces to bring insights to their home local contexts, personal and professional development merged. Teacher education faculty identity evolved along with their professional growth. As international professional learning opportunities are increasing, faculty need support to integrate global forces with local contexts. This glocally integrative faculty work has vast societal implications.

Glocalization diminishes professional isolation for individuals and nations by providing global insights on shared problems of local practices. Cobo ([6]) is calling the twenty-first-century educator into richer global engagement via 'mobility' across international relationships and understandings, much as Dewey ([10]) called isolated educators of the early 1900s into richer social engagement. Twenty-first-century societies need educators able to nurture complex relational growth in students and future world citizens to face glocally shared challenges. Culture and language learning abroad can become meaningful lessons shared at home. Ren-de agency, as a practice of social benevolence built on introspective virtue, enabled faculty to engage and learn from their IPD contexts, and to share this learning generously with colleagues in their home context. Professor Wang spent time immersed in US university libraries and teacher education courses to glean new practices he ultimately suggested to China's MOE in his new role directing a teacher education research center. Professor Gong worked to learn the local Flemish dialect to converse with colleagues who ultimately became a source of learning new research methods. Professor Gao's IPD venture in Japan led to new insights on the role of character development in athletics, a view that she brought to her home institutional context in China. Professor Gan's publications highlighted value for maintaining social harmony while developing a unique, inclusive individuality. Professor Liao's creative, inclusive pedagogy brought together Chinese and visiting US student teachers to create and share dramatic performances on challenging teacher moments in their home contexts. In these experiences, participants' ren-de agency bridged the global-local, both abroad and at home.

International collaborations intentionally developed by faculty themselves are likely to become fruitful spaces for meaningful interchange. Each of the above IPD experiences led to glocal collaborations with impact resonating over time. Increasing use of global comparative assessments presents the need for meaningful collaborations to cultivate educational aims beyond comparative functions. Developing benevolent professional communities is supported by a ren-de agency practiced in glocal partnerships. In Politics of Friendship, Derrida ([8]) questions the feasibility of community of any kind, including across regional borders, due to moral, ethical, and political considerations. The French theorist laments that community inherently is an act of 'exclusion' that depends upon 'selection, election, exclusion' (21). In this light, the act of forming a community comes with 'the infinitization of responsibility' (Thomson [28], 80) by which one is 'sacrificing and betraying at every moment' all other possible relational obligations (69). Moreover, Thomson ([28]) highlights that any community must 'privilege one linguistic community over another' (77), due to the need to communicate in a specific language. Language learning was an important factor for faculty IPD in this study, and ren-de agency enabled needed relational humility leading to new language development and cross-cultural learning.

To question Derrida's cynicism regarding community, R. Harvey ([15]) highlights the importance of valuing 'the particular in the global,' or engaging with a particular expression in a given space-time context to allow for constructive, meaningful interchange. If all possibilities were enacted at any space-time context, constructive meaning would not be possible to our human perception. In IPD, professional communities are not an exclusion of infinitesimal unknowable differences, but an inclusion of a limited set of particular differences, which become knowable through slowing down space-time interactions. It is vital for professional community 'inclusion muscles' to be stretched and flexed, yet it is also impossible for all inclusions to take place at one time, in order for such inclusions to be authentic and sustainable. Moreover, within-group cultural identities are particular and distinct (Hiddleston [18]). In IPD, glocal communities offer group commonalities and differences, full of opportunity to bridge self and other via exploration of difference. Engaging with difference entails slowing down space-time interactions to interact with and potentially integrate these distinctions meaningfully.

This study slows down space-time explorations to examine faculty's particular IPD experiences in light of their integration of home and global cultures, both abroad and upon returning to their national, cultural, and linguistic contexts. Viewing difference as an opportunity for cross-cultural learning entails an ethic of humility along with appreciation for diversity and particularity. Particulars become a pathway by which a meaningful ren-de regard and value for others emerge.

IPD helps teacher education faculty become glocal practitioners, researchers, and policy shapers who understand dominant global discourses and nuanced local discourses. This study encourages teacher education faculty to embrace personal-professional IPD, cultivate researcher-practitioner collaborations, and shape policy to nurture glocal relationships.

This study invites faculty to draw upon a ren-de agency in twenty-first-century international professional development, particularly to integrate the global and the local abroad and at home. This study evidences the powerful role personal morality and social ethics play in the lives of teachers and teacher education faculty working together to prepare students and teachers for our shared glocal futures. As faculty engage IPD as a balance of complementary developmental tensions between the personal and professional, research and practice, aesthetics and pragmatics, a Confucian ren-de agency based on reciprocity (Hayhoe [16]) within our social-personal worlds can emerge within our global-local contexts, as well. As worldwide communities become increasingly interdependent, it is vital for educational institutions to prepare teachers and faculty for reciprocal glocal interchange. As educational institutions capitalize on globalization by promoting internationalization (e.g., China's Ministry of Education's 2006 Fourth National Conference on Science and Technology) (Xu and Mei [31]), nations also must aim to balance innovative progress with an inner pursuit for virtue.

This study encourages teacher education faculty to cultivate glocal communities and capacities. This work entails global inclusion and local introspection. Our twenty-first-century era compels practitioners to conceptualize what it means to become human together as a shared glocal work that no longer is a role filled effectively by political diplomats alone. Professionals from across fields must draw upon a ren-de agency to engage meaningfully and sustainably in benevolent and virtuous international collaborations as a form of twenty-first-century international diplomacy. Shared inter-disciplinary collaborations are needed in shaping future global-local citizens, a work inviting culture and language learning for long-term immersions to understand cultural dynamics and nuances across national, social, and political systems. Kwo ([20]) encourages learning 'as moral beings' via 'cross-boundary collaboration' and 'critical discourse' (332). Such work must extend to bring educational benefits beyond privileged spaces to marginalized regions, as well.

This study encourages faculty to engage with the globally 'relational nature' of their work to cultivate inclusive communities across international institutions. Moreover, this study invites faculty to cultivate a personal professionalism by reaching out to international others as part of learning about the self, both abroad and in one's home context. Finally, this study evidences and recognizes that IPD experiences inevitably will involve cross-cultural dissonance, and encourages faculty to search for the insights gleaned from these.

This study encourages teacher education faculty to work toward theory-to-practice transfer, particularly regarding research involving IPD and global-local connections. Liao referenced zhong, or people together, to highlight the importance of theory-to-practice transfer through researcher-practitioner collaborations. This timely insight at a faculty meeting resonated with her colleagues, and was a brilliant connection between Western and Confucian values for theory-to-practice transfer through researcher-practitioner learning communities. US multicultural education philosophies similarly encourage researcher-practitioner communities as places where individual capacities and values are cultivated for meaningful societal engagement (Mason [22], 55). Abroad and at home, meaningful theory-to-practice transfer entails community across levels, or zhong. This study encourages aesthetic inquiry that enables researchers to include empathy as an empirical aim and infuse academia with shared human experiences. Empathy reframes shared life trials as a path for learning. Aesthetic inquiry integrates tensions across intercultural, inter-linguistic, international spaces, and recognizes suffering as a shared human condition (Zhang [35]). Aesthetic inquiry challenges assumptions and enables connections between the global and the local, by allowing faculty participants to see their IPD and home cultures through a new lens. Aesthetic inquiry is an empirical tool for researcher-practitioners to cultivate empathic understanding of others and self.

On a policy level, this study encourages the glocalization of higher education. Teacher education policymakers and administrators across international settings should cultivate policy and support structures that engage teachers and teacher educators in intercultural, inter-linguistic, and international personal-professional learning. MOE policies encourage educational internationalization, making faculty IPD possible, financially and professionally. In light of China's increasingly global prominence, the MOE might expand their role as a global participant contributing to international student IPD opportunities. Teacher education faculty and institutions in China can take a contributions stance by participating from a position of national, financial, and cultural capacity.

As international communities and economies become intertwined yet distinct, national and global aims can seek common ground. The global extends well beyond English language development and Western cultural understanding to embrace multiple cultures and languages, domestically and abroad. In this study, participants engaged in international immersion experiences, contributing to the cultivation of global inclusivity as a national legislative aim. These policies are enabled by the Chinese MOE's growing support for globally diverse cultures to enhance local economies and participation.

IPD involves developing awareness and relevance for both the global and the local. Contextualized engagement with the local across global settings cannot be replaced by theories. Contextualized engagement brings together the particular cultural background of a faculty member with a particular cultural context – both of which are shaped in part by their connection with the broader 'global.' As faculty engage in IPD and then return to home contexts, they are faced with challenges needing creative responses for how to integrate the global and the local into their professional aims, practices, and larger institutions, while maintaining an integrated sense of identity. In many ways globalization happens one glocal exchange at a time, while global transformation happens one transformed identity at a time. In this light, how faculty embrace their calling in this significant global work, ultimately shapes how institutions and larger regions connect with, experience, and meaningfully translate the global to the local.

In this work, it is important to keep in mind important distinctions among globalization, internationalization, and glocalization. Becoming globally aware does not replace becoming either internationally relevant or glocally engaged. International immersion in specific localities to forge meaningful and sustainable long-term connections between the global and the local – is a needed practice for faculty professional development. Such practice is vital for supporting educators in becoming personal professionals and professional persons; theory-based practitioners and practice-based academics, and aesthetic engineers and engineering artists. This work involves connecting one's international experiences with one's home contexts, thus narrating and forging a new shared glocal. Ren-de agency helps teacher education faculty to develop social benevolence and internal virtue, through international professional development.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.