Author: chineseedmobilities

Dr Min Yu, Wayne State University, USA

Featured Research:

Yu, M. (2015). Revisiting Gender and Class in Urban China: Undervalued Work of Migrant Teachers and Their Resistance. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 9(2), 124-139. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2015.1011781.

Yu, M. (2016). The Politics, Practices, and Possibilities of Migrant Children Schools in Contemporary China. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Yu, M. (2018). Rethinking Migrant Children Schools in China: Activism, Collective Identity, and Guanxi. Comparative Education Review, 62(3), 429-448. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/698404.

Yu, M. & Crowley, C. B. (in press). The Discursive Politics of Education Policy in China: Educating Migrant Children. The China Quarterly.

Reflecting on the struggles taking place within schools and marginalized communities, critical scholars have applied social movement theories to analyze issues around education both locally and globally. These cultural historical analyses document the challenges and rewards of community organizing and highlight the values of collective actions that promote public good (Freire, 2000; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 2006; Anyon, 2014; Apple, 2013). These discussions have contributed to the development of particularly useful concepts which explain why and how collective actions could be mobilized and organized for educational changes in schools and communities. In addition to analyzing the resources and strategies movements utilize, this body of research identifies both barriers and opportunities that activists, stakeholder groups, and individuals have encountered as they attempt to bring about changes. Furthermore, the theoretical and empirical studies of social movements in education emphasize the diverse conditions and circumstances that led to the formation and development of these actions—that is, the various contexts from which these actions emerge, expand, negotiate, and sustain.

The attention given to the contextualization of educational social movement in different political and cultural structures is particularly important for recognizing the ways in which different communities mobilize at the grassroots level, especially the ones in non-Western societies. As Kurasawa recognizes (2007, p. 12), the pattern of social action “is located within—and thus structured by—historically transmitted and socially institutionalized forms of thought and action, discourses and relations of power, which have enabling and constraining effects upon a practice’s effectiveness and the range of possibilities within which it operates”. In my work (Yu, 2015, 2016, 2018, forthcoming), I have shown that adopting social movement framework in China one needs to recognize different meanings and functions of civil society and public sphere in this context. This analysis revealed the limited social space and uncertain conditions in which many social actors have struggled in contemporary Chinese society and examined forms and process of collective actions, or what people do, in the movement of educating migrant children.

Existing studies of migrant children education in China tend to focus on children’s experiences, giving less attention to the schools which provide education to the majority of migrant children. To date, very little research on the education of migrant children in China has focused on the experiences of people who have mobilized around building schools for migrant children. There are only a few studies examine the process in which the problems and possibilities of migrant children schools brought. However, migrant children schools have in many ways come to represent both the determination and struggles of migrant communities. The efforts to provide an alternative solution for their children’s schooling has been overlooked for decades by the state. Even though the development of these schools is still strongly impacted by government policies and regulations, the actions related to navigating different regulations in this process has opened up a space for the reconstruction of relationships between the state and society. Meanwhile, the daily life and work within migrant children schools have played a crucial role in building a sense of solidarity and the transformation of collective identity in the migrant community.

Drawing from a longitudinal qualitative study, my work focuses on the foundation of collective actions in China’s migrant communities by analyzing the mobilization of personal and social networks, as well as the gradual formation of a sense of collective identity among those involved in the movement of educating migrant children. In other words, my work concerns why and how people participate in the movement. I view this work as part of a larger effort to challenge the dominant discourse surrounding migrants in China. I engage with discussion of social movements theories regarding the roles of activists, civil society, collect identity and social networks and introduce what has traditionally been recognized as guanxi in Chinese context. Some of the questions I have focused on in my work are: In what ways do migrant children schools provide space for parents and teachers to connect and mobilize for collective action? How might the stories of emerging migrant teachers-activists provide insights into the nuances of collective identity transformation that would otherwise be overlooked?

The analysis of the daily lives of migrant parents and teachers reveals how they both struggled with, while spontaneously contested against multiple layers of inequalities. My work highlights how these inequalities are produced, not only by the political control from the state but also by the cultural practices that associated with these policies. Moreover, it demonstrates the development and transformation of collective identity by focusing on the seemly insignificant daily activities of migrant parents and teachers. These activities include sharing information, searching for potential resources, and building informal networks under the complex and uncertain social and political circumstances. The examination of their seemly invisible, small-scale, and apolitical actions indicates the challenges and possibilities of mobilizing to create social spaces that were not available for them within these marginalized communities. I argue that the stories of migrant parents, teachers, and activists who work to maintain schools for migrant children are in many ways emblematic of the process in which the collective identity of members in migrant communities has been socially and culturally transformed, which not only influence the reconfiguration of migrant children school movement but also implicate a broader movement towards educational equity.

My work also explores the complex functioning of education policies specifically affecting the education of migrant children, the schools responsible for educating them, and the migrant families who are attempting to provide their children with a formalized education. The interplay between notions of constraint and agency is key to policy analyses that recognize the discursive functioning of education policies. With the intention of building upon ongoing discussions surrounding both the conceptions and purposes of policy sociology, I analyze policies directly related to the education of migrant children living in and around China’s largest urban centers, bringing into consideration community perspectives regarding policy enactment. I argue that education policies have an underlying agenda that extends beyond that of simply addressing the educational needs of migrant children. In essence, these policies come to frame what people collectively assume to be possible regarding the education of migrant children. My work seeks to raise questions about who is best served by these policies, for whom these policies are intended, who are the intended beneficiaries, and what will the long-term impact be.

References:

Anyon, J. (2014). Radical possibilities: Public policy, urban education, and a new social movement. New York, NY: Routledge.

Apple, M. W. (2013). Can education change society? New York, NY: Routledge.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.

Kurasawa, F. (2007). The work of global justice: Human rights as practices. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Ladson-Billings, G., & William F. T., (eds.) (2006). Education research in the public interest: Social justice, action, and policy. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Bio:

Min Yu, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Teacher Education in the College of Education at Wayne State University, U.S. Her research focuses on how changing social, political, and economic conditions affect the education of children from migrant and immigrant families and communities. She is the author of the book, The Politics, Practices, and Possibilities of Migrant Children Schools in Contemporary China (Palgrave Macmillan 2016). Her work also appears in journals such as The China Quarterly, Comparative Education Review, Review of Research in Education, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, as well as chapters in edited volumes.

Dai, K., Lingard, B., & Musofer, R. P. (2019). Mobile Chinese students navigating between fields: (Trans)forming habitus in transnational articulation programmes? Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-12. doi:10.1080/00131857.2019.1689813

Dr Kun Dai, Peking University, China

Abstract:

Transnational articulation programmes are one way China is attempting to advance its higher education (HE) system. We report a study of twelve Chinese students’ experiences in two China-Australia 2 + 2 articulation programmes. In our analysis of semi-structured interviews, we use Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus to understand the impact on the habitus of the students. We report the experiences of the Chinese students in the HE sub-field in Australia. Students were like fish in water with the logics of practice of Chinese HE. In the new sub-field of HE in Australia, their habitus was out of place. This field/habitus mismatch created a field-habitus dissonance that can be productive of change to the habitus. Some in the study strategised to overcome this field-habitus mismatch and to adjust to the logics of the new field. We designate this emergent habitus as an in-between, diasporic cosmopolitan habitus, while others were able to ‘compartmentalise’ the demands of the new field, indicating durability of habitus.

文章简介：

该研究以布迪厄的场域和惯习概念为基础对十二位中国学生在中澳合作办学项目中的跨境学习体验进行分析。通过进行半结构化访谈，作者们着重探索了跨场域的转换对于学生惯习所带来的转变。研究发现一部分学生在澳大利亚高等教育场域中仍然保持着已经在中国高等教育场域中形成的行为逻辑。这也使他们在场域转换过程中从‘如鱼得水’的状态进入了与新场域和行为逻辑的冲突之中。这种场域与惯习的不匹配造成了二者之间一定程度上的不协调。这种不协调也对学生形成新的惯习产生影响。同时，有一些学生在跨场域转换中有策略地克服了场域与惯习之间的不匹配并在澳大利亚高等教育的场域中发展了新的行为逻辑。这种转换并不是一味地接受新事物摒弃原有的而是在两种场域和行为逻辑之间动态地调整，取长补短，兼收并取，形成可以让自己在各种不匹配之间游刃有余的行为策略。我们将这种惯习概念化为一种介于两者之间的、散漫的世界性惯习。然而，有些人则能够将自己与新场域的需求进行‘划分’，这反映出已有惯习的持久性。

This study investigated Chinese students’ experiences in China-Australia transnational articulation programmes using Bourdieu’s thinking tools, particularly field and habitus. Research on articulation programmes has explored transnational higher education (TNHE) and forms of TNHE in the Chinese context (Huang, 2003; Yang, 2008). Australia has been successfully internationalising its higher education (HE) and is one of the active partners that have engaged in articulation programmes with China (Dai, 2018a). Enrolling in China/Australia articulation programmes under the 2+2 mode, students learn in China for the first two years and then they move to an Australian university to complete the remaining two years of their undergraduate degrees. Few studies have investigated the experiences and adjustments of Chinese students in transnational programmes (Qin & Te, 2016). It is those adjustments or otherwise that this paper is focused on to understand what occurs in relation to students’ habitus.

The evidence demonstrates that some students modify their habitus in response to the demands of what we see as the sub-field (see Thomson, 2008) of Australian HE with its particular logics of practice that are contrastive with those in what we are referring to as the Chinese subfield of HE. Both sub-fields are situated within what we can today rightly see as a global field of HE with some converging policy developments in all HE systems, including the emergence of a one world science system, mass participation, and new managerialist/marketised, management/leadership practices (Marginson, 2016). While some students modified their habitus, others demonstrated the durability of their extant habitus developed in China and thus ‘compartmentalised’ their experiences of the challenging new logics of practice of the Australian HE sub-field (Jin &Ball, 2019).

Research methodology

This qualitative study investigated twelve students’ learning experiences in two China-Australia 2+2 articulation programmes. By adopting a purposive sampling approach, the first author recruited these students (see Table 1) based on his networks. Seven students studied in Programme A, and their major was about Design. The other five students were in Programme B and studied in Information and Technology (IT) related fields. The students were also in different years of the Australian stage; five students were in their first year, the rest in second year. All participants had successfully completed all required courses in the Chinese stage and met the English requirement for starting their Australian study. When they were interviewed, they were studying in their major courses in different years in Australia. Thus, they had both Chinese and Australian learning experiences, which meant they were able to share their stories from a comparative perspective.

Discussion and conclusion

Here we begin with some speculative analysis, which concerns the emergence of a cosmopolitan habitus amongst some of the students who modified their extant habitus in response to field-habitus dissonance in the Australian HE sub-field. It also concerns digital space as a field. There is much globalisation literature that comments on the flows of people (including mobile international students), ideas (articulation programmes), policy (internationalisation of HE), finance, images and media across the globe and related talk about diasporic public spheres, where migrants still participate in the life of their country of origin through usage of social media and new technologies (Appadurai, 1996). This has altered the migrant experience and we would argue the lives of mobile international students as indicated in our interview data. Rizvi, Louie, and Evans (2016) argue that long-stay international students can be seen as a diaspora, perhaps a short-term diaspora, but a diaspora nonetheless. Their experiences, like those of contemporary migrants and guest workers, are different from those of pre-internet migrants. Today social media and the new technologies allow and enable ongoing real-time communications with ‘home’ when away from home. This diasporic experience means continuing influences of and connections with the home nation during overseas study. The articulation programme facilitates this diasporic experience (Dai et al., 2018). The students participate in China and in Australia in particular material places. At the same time, the internet enables their participation in an internet space in-between the two places, in-between the two HE sub-fields. It is this experience of an in-between or liminal space (Dai, 2018b), which we speculate encourages a more cosmopolitan habitus in some of these mobile international students, particularly for those who incrementally modified their habitus. Reflecting an emergent cosmopolitan habitus, some such students speculated on their possible futures in a global labour market.

Author Bios

Dr Kun Dai is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow (funded by China International Postdoc Exchange Program) at the Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China. He obtained his PhD from The University of Queensland, Australia. His research focuses on transnational education, intercultural learning and adjustment, and students’ cross-cultural learning experiences. His articles have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including Scottish Educational Review, Compare, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, and Higher Education Research & Development. He can be contacted via email: kdai@pku.edu.cn.

戴坤博士于2018年12月毕业于澳大利亚昆士兰大学，获博士学位。同年入选中国博士后国际交流引进计划，自2019年4月起进入北京大学教育学院从事博士后研究工作。戴坤博士的研究方向主要为跨境教育，国际教育，学生跨境学习体验，大学教与学的改革等方面。读博期间以中国学生在中澳合作办学项目中的学习体验为研究重点开展探索，相关成果发表在Compare, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Scottish Educational Review, Journal of International Students, 以及Educational Philosophy and Theory等刊物。此外，其最新研究通过运用活动理论（Activity Theory）将学生跨境学习体验进行的分析即将在Higher Education Research & Development上发表。联系邮箱：kdai@pku.edu.cn.

Dr Bob Lingard is an Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia and a Professorial Fellow at The Australian Catholic University. He is a sociologist of education who researches education policy, globalization and education, systemic and school reforms and social justice in schooling. His most recent books include, Globalizing Educational Accountabilities (Routledge, 2016) and Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education (Routledge, 2014). He is Editor of the journal Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education and of the Routledge, New York Book Series, Key Ideas in Education. He is a Fellow of the Academies of Social Science in both the UK and Australia and is a former President and also a Life Member of the Australian Association for Research in Education.

Bob Lingard教授，现为澳大利亚昆士兰大学教育学院荣休教授，澳大利亚天主教大学学习科学与教师教育研究中心专职研究员，澳大利亚及英国社会科学院院士。其研究领域主要为教育全球化，国际化，教育政策，以及教育社会学。其新著作有Globalising Educational Accountabilities (2016) 和Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education (2014).

Dr Reshma Parveen Musofer completed her PhD in curriculum reform enactment using Bourdieu’s theoretical resources. She is currently working as research project manager at the School of Education, The University of Queensland.

Reshma Parveen Musofer博士于2018年12月在澳大利亚昆士兰大学获博士学位，现为昆士兰大学教育学院科研项目主管。其研究主要集中在通过运用布迪厄相关理论工具进行中小学课程的设计，创新和发展。同时，Musofer博士还对STEM教育进行探索。

 

 

Xiaye Huang, University of Exeter

The primary interest of this research arises from the author’s experience in studying in UK. The author witnessed international students tried to capture more values out of the degree when they were studying in the UK for a postgraduate degree. Additionally, employability becomes an increasingly important agenda for higher education since the Dearing Report. Therefore, this research was set up to explore the Chinese international student’s self-perceived employability. The researcher conducted photo-elicitation interviews for capturing students’ experience in the UK and their perceptions concerning the experience. Participants firstly selected photographs that they perceived as most representative for their international study experience in the UK, at a southwest university. Then they talked about the meaning of these photographs in an interview. Eventually, 11 students agreed to take part in the research; 10 of the participants selected 66 photographs to represent their oversea studying experiences. The verbal and visual data related to each participant are analysed in order to identify themes emerging from the individual experience. After this, cross-case analysis allows identification of participants’ common themes in international study experience and employability. Finally, these points emerged from analysis are theorised. This research identified vital issues valued by Chinese international students concerning their employability. Participants highlighted that their master’s studies bring them essential skills such as subject-related skills and English proficiencies, qualifications including a master level degree and other certificates related to their subject area, and working, networking, attending events experience.

This research takes a holistic view of the UK-educated Chinese master student’s educational trajectories, highlighting Chinese student’s voices in terms of employability perceptions. By doing so, it provides an alternative way of understanding employability by incorporating the international student’s perspective, analysing interview and photograph data into four layers. The author identifies skills, qualifications and experiences are highly valued by the participant when they evaluated their oversea studies. Chinese student’s employability outcome is consistent with graduate capital theory, which confirms international student’s development in human, cultural, social, identity and psychological capitals, in their educational experience in the UK university.

Author Biography

Xiaye Huang is a PhD candidate in Education at the University of Exeter. She will complete her PhD project in March 2020. Before this, she studied at Zhejiang University of Technology, got two bachelor’s degrees in educational technology (Software engineering speciality) and Business Administration.

Her PhD project focuses on Chinese student’s overseas study experience in UK higher education institutions, especially concerning their perceptions about employability. After completing the project, she will pursue her research in international education and educational technology.

Xiaye has taught mathematics and statistics at the Business School, University of Exeter since 2016. She got the Higher Education Academy associate fellow award in 2018. She is interested in teaching educational psychology, educational research method, applied statistics and other subject related to education, mathematics & statistics and software engineering.

Dr Meng CHENG, Beijing Normal University, China

中文版本

Research highlighted

Cheng, Meng. “College Material” and Their Cultural Production：A Narrative Study of Contemporary Rural Kids ’Growth (in Chinese). China Social Sciences Press. 2018.

Cheng, Meng. & Kang, Yongjiu. Youths from Rural Families Admitted to Elite Universities: “Empathy” and Destiny (in Chinese). China Youth Study. 2018(5)

Cheng, Meng. & Chen, Xian. “College Material” and Its Cultural Implication (in Chinese). Journal of Schooling Studies. 2018(5).

Cheng, Meng. Rural Background：A Complex Structure of Feeling (in Chinese). Youth Study. 2018(6)

Cheng, Meng & Kang, Yongjiu. “Things Are Increased By Being Diminished”: Another Discourse on the Cultural Capital of Underclass (in Chinese). Tsinghua Journal of Education. 2016(4).

Cheng, Meng. & Chen, Xian. The Cultural Production of Conformists. Youth Study. 2016(2)

My publications over the past four years have been focused on a special group of Chinese rural students who were born after China’s Reform and Opening-up and have managed to get access to elite universities. There are three reasons why they are special. First, they are the first generation of rural kids who grow up in a market-oriented economy as well as an Urban-Rural dual social structure. Second, most of them had to enroll in urban schools in their middle or high school for a better academic environment in their early life, experiencing rural-urban inequality deeply in their heart. Third, these rural children were not only economically placed in the bottom of Chinese society, they were also politically positioned at the bottom of Chinese society. As such, their cultural experiences were complex and their body and mind were constrained by class, identity as well as the Urban-Rural dual structure.

Their schooling experience is expanding from rural village to county, small city and big city through the view of space. Meanwhile, their schooling experience is also like migrant bird, flying from home to school and then from school to home. Unlike their father, most of those rural kids are only passing traveler of village life and will finally got middle-class jobs in cities. People had paid much attention on their academic success but ignore their special emotional experience and social actions in the process of climbing academic ladder. In some sense, they were contemporary Chinese class travelers as Trondman has described (Trondman 2006, 2018). They went into university in order to achieve upward class mobility which means they will “not be their mother, their aunt, their father” (Hurst 2012).

I would like to use a Chinese local metaphor to name these rural kids: College Material (Du shu de liao, in Chinese “读书的料”). The following text is the abstract of my recent book “College Material” and Their Cultural Production：A Narrative Study of Contemporary Rural Kids’ Growth which is theoretically inspired by Paul Willis’s Cultural Production theory and Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital theory (Bourdieu 1986, 1990).

In Paul Willis’s masterpiece Learning to Labor: How working class kids get working class jobs，the conformists are just “a dramatic foil”, comparing with “the lads” who create counter-school culture (Willis 1981a, 1981b). Most Chinese researchers take this paradigm and pay their attention to the cultural production of students who come from lower classes and do not obey school rules (Xiong 2010；Zhou 2011; Xiong 2013; Li 2014). The logic of this kind of cultural production is that those underclass students create a subculture which encourage them to give up the possibility of getting higher social status and sink into the curse of social reproduction by their own. In these studies, the underclass students who have attained notable academic achievements and make a class breakthrough are selectively overseen. Are they really as bookish as the lads satirized? What is the cultural production behind their conformity? Where is their subjectivity and creativity?

Starting from the questions above, this monograph turns to the cultural production within the process of getting high academic achievements. Students from rural areas who get access to elite universities and start their school lives after China’s Reform and Opening-up become an ideal research sample to investigate the cultural production in the process of class mobility. I define these rural kids as “college material”. This research tries to interpret the cultural production of students from rural areas and its unanticipated consequences. Surrounding the growing-up narratives of “college material”, this research pushes further the applicable research objects and the space-time scope in cultural production theory.

The findings are as below: (1) There is a unique type of cultural production which runs with the logic of “Some things are increased by being diminished”. “College material” created inherent impetus, moralized thinking and school-based mind which propped up their school life. (2) The cultural production of “College material” highlights the unique culture of Chinese underclass. The reason why some kids from underclass can get high academic achievement lied in the utilizing of the cultural capital of underclass rather than the remedy of cultural capital of middle class. (3) The cultural capital of underclass students is a double-edged sword and its limitations will burst out after they enter universities. Inherent impetus is followed by tremendous recoil. Huge psychological pressure was hidden behind moralized thinking. The school-based mind was highly relying on timely encouragements from institutions and the powerful public education system. (4) The cultural capital of underclass is complex. A dark side accompanies with high academic achievements. In the process of climbing up the academic ladder, “college materials” produce a complex structure of feelings which focuses on their rural background and results in constrained body and mind. Although the character of being sensible to the sacrifice of their parents helps them fit into a family community，it also restricts their family roles and their expression of emotion, extending a relationship structure characterized by both love and hate. They turn out to be marginal individuals in the process of class and culture travelling, facing double walls of interpersonal communication, lacking cultural belongings. (5) Another cost of being college material is the imbalanced development based on personal self-torture. It will cause heavy anxiety for success, bear the completion risk of meritocracy, sink into alienation and self-estrangement or even drive their lives into the paradox between success and happiness.

Therefore, we can confirm: First, there is another kind of creativity besides counter-school culture, which is an active cultural production through a kind of conformity and from which one can reconstruct their universe of meaning and achieve class mobility. “College materials” are not fully born beauty. There is a moral world based on Chinese culture traditions, family and school life practices which underlie their cultural production. This moral world encourages their own subjectivity. In this perspective, conformity is also a process of cultural production. Family relationship is an important perspective to explore the cultural production of underclass students. Second, cultural capital is not constructed by the same materials. Underclass students can produce their unique underclass cultural capital which contains inherent impetus, moralized thinking and school-based mindset that prop up school life. This kind of cultural capital is not a natural thing. It can only present itself in cultural production. This underclass capital theory connects cultural production and cultural reproduction in a unique way, extending Bourdieu’s and Willis’ thoughts with a new approach and countering the idea that the underclass lacks cultural capital. Third, the paradox that either being weeded out for resistance or being assimilated by middle class culture and betraying the culture of their original family is not an iron law. Class and culture travelling facilitates a complex emotional orientation. Rural students with high academic achievement love and hate their parents at the same time, reconstructing their parental relationship through creative actions, rather than fully cut off cultural connections with their original families.

The high academic achievements of these college materials are not only constrained by the underclass economic condition but also benefit from the creative power of their will. Learning to Labor did not pay enough attention to the energy of conformists’ cultural production while Bourdieu ignores the complex relations between personal will of social actor and social structure. The idea of “Things are increased by being diminished” rarely has living space in their theoretical framework. The life of college materials is a journey of fighting. Actually, their high academic achievements were based on a moral world connected with Dao tradition which has lasted for thousands of years in China. Objective family economic condition is not predestination and underclass cultural capital is not an eternal double-edged sword. The obstacles in mental and emotional structure can also be overcome. In a more sound, fair, diverse and open society, the pain of these “college materials” can be mitigated and the risk of their culture world can be defused to some degree.

References

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986.The Forms of Capital In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, J. E. Richardson (ed), New York: Greenword.

Bourdieu, Pierre &Jean-Claude Passeron, 1990. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: SAGE Publications.

Hurst, Allison .2012. College and the working class：What it takes to make it，Sense publishers.

Li Tao. 2014. Underclass of Society and Education——The Truth of Underclass’s Education in an Agricultural Country of Western China. Doctoral Dissertation of Northeast Normal University.

Trondman, Mats. 2006. “Disowning knowledge: To be or not to be ‘the immigrant’ in Sweden”, Ethnic and Racial Studies，vol.29(3).

Trondman, Mats. 2018. Educating Mats: Encountering Finnish ‘lads’ and Paul Willis’s Learning to Labour in Sweden, Ethnography, vol.19(4).

Willis, Paul. 1981a. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs, Columbia University Press.

——1981b “Cultural production is different from cultural reproduction is different from social reproduction is different from reproduction”, Interchange, Vol.12.

Xiong Yihan, 2010. Underclass, School and Class Reproduction. Open times (1).

Xiong Chunwen, Shi Xiaoxi &Wang Yi, 2013.The Equal and Unequal Experience of “Yi”: The Migrant Children’s Group Culture and Its Social Meaning. Peking University Education Review (1)

Zhou Xiao,2011. Counter School Culture: A Complex Study of “Lads” and “Zidi”. Chinese Journal of Sociology (5)

Author Bio

Dr Meng CHENG is lecturer at Beijing Normal University. His main areas of research are on Sociology of Education, Anthropology of Education, Educational Administration and Educational Policy. Dr Cheng Meng gained his PhD degree in education from Beijing Normal University. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in Tsinghua University from 2017 to 2019 and was a visiting scholar in University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2015 to 2016. His publications examine how Chinese rural kids get access into elite universities and argue they had produced a special kind of culture capital which is “ underclass cultural capital” (Tsinghua Journal of Education, 2016); the unintended consequences of rural students getting high academic achievements (China Youth Study, 2018; Youth Study,2018; Journal of Schooling Studies,2018); the cultural production process of rural kids who get into elite universities (Youth Study,2016; China Social Science Press, 2018). The current research project that he is leading is on the cultural production of contemporary rural kids in the process of class travelling. He has also conducted studies on the psychological and mental problems of universities students in the perspective of medical anthropology. He can be reached at chengmengbnu@126.com.

This small-scale project is funded by an ESRC Methods North West Collaborative Innovation Grant to support marginalised groups to share their untold experiences.

Dr Cora Xu, from Keele University’s School of Social, Political and Global Studies, received the grant from the Economic and Social Research Council Methods North West to lead the project called ‘Digital Storytelling: How British-educated Chinese international students understand career and employment’, which aims to demonstrate how creative methods can be used in social research.

Digital storytelling is a new and innovative research method that has the potential to allow under-represented and marginalised social groups to articulate and present their own versions of stories. It gives a voice to participants who have felt unable to tell share their experiences previously, by giving them the skills to tell their story through images and film whilst remaining in control of their own narrative.

The research team is also in collaboration with Dr Yang Hu from Lancaster University and research students from both institutions, as well as those from Manchester and Liverpool universities.

The team will conduct a two-day digital storytelling workshop with six Chinese students using a guided creative research method, including digital technology to explore their understanding of career and employment, which in cultural and national contexts remains understudied. Participants will produce a digital story by combining pictures, video clips, music and individual recorded voices.

The workshop will provide postgraduate research students with the opportunity to observe, participate in and reflect on the use of digital storytelling in a real research context. Dr Xu and the team will develop a toolkit from the findings and present an online webinar for postgraduate students looking to use the research method.

Dr Xu, Lecturer in Education, said: “I am pleased to receive this funding as this will enable our research team to explore in-depth how to use digital storytelling in social science research.

“The digital storytelling workshop can enable our research team to work closely with a group of Chinese international students to explore their understanding about career and employment, an area that has often been portrayed in biased manners within the media. Through this workshop, the team will together disseminate our understanding of these research methods and about how it might be applied more widely in social science research.”

 

This message is adapted from a funding news post on Keele University’s Intranet.