Network for Research into Chinese Education Mobilities (NRCEM)

Research Highlighted:

Xing Xu, Helena Sit & Shen Chen (2020): International education through a bioecological development lens – a case study of Chinese doctoral students in Australia, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2020.1811646

Read Dr Xu’s other article here.

Background

Scholars have identified an increasing interest in exploring the lived experiences of international research students in Australia (e.g., Ai, 2017; Yu & Wright, 2016), which ranks fourth in attracting international doctoral students (Shen et al., 2016). However, few studies have focused specifically on the Chinese cohort, which remains the largest single national group (Shen et al., 2016) with steadily rising numbers (Chung & Ingleby, 2011). By listening to Chinese doctoral students’ emic conceptualizations of studying in Australia, this study aimed to expand the current literature regarding the enablers and disablers that contribute to their doctoral journey as a developmental trajectory under a self-formation paradigm of international study. Specifically, this article focuses on addressing two sets of research questions:(1) According to the participants, what factors contribute to their positive and negative experiences of studying in Australia? (2) Through the lens of the bioecological systems theory, how do these factors dynamically interact with each other to affect the participants’ doctoral trajectories?

Theoretical Framework

This paper adopts the theoretical framework of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory. It offers an analytic framework that explains human development as proximal processes within a constellation of relationships that forms the whole system of a person’s environment. A bioecological approach would contribute to a comprehensive yet nuanced understanding of the person–environment interactivity in Chinese students’ navigation of their doctoral trajectories. It would also offer international education market dominated by the global North countries such as Australia valuable insights to accommodate needs in the global South and capitalize on intellectual assets of the global South. This study bears potential practical significance to the internationalization of doctoral education given the salient status of the Chinese cohort in the international education market.

Methodology

This paper adopts a volunteer-employed photography (VEP) approach, wherein participants use photographs they choose to assist their recall or make concrete their point. Applying VEP to examine doctoral students’ experiences, previous research has revealed that the method (combined with interviews) brings abstract questions down to a hands-on and imagery level due to its visual nature (van Auken et al., 2010). Thus, it enables more disclosures of the students’ lived reality. Snowball sampling was utilised for the recruitment of participants, which secured 24 participants. The data collection was conducted over two phases: the first being the time-point where participants consented to participation, after they were informed of requirements concerning collection of photos and ethics considerations; and the second being the interview, when they elaborated on their chosen photos. The participants were required to prepare self-taken photos depicting settings, activities, or persons that negatively and positively affect their study trajectory. They were guaranteed sufficient time to compile photos they took previously or to take photos to capture a current phenomenon (Bates et al.,2017). The 24 participants were then invited to take part in a one-on-one interview. The photographs with concomitant elicitations, along with the interview transcripts, were transferred into NVivo 12 for thematic analysis.

Findings

Findings of the study reveal that the developing person with varying dispositions, resources, and demands sits at the core of the developmental trajectory. In particular, this study shows how developmentally generative dispositions featuring agency, initiative, and engagement, reflected in inward management, enabled the participants’ doctoral study. Further, the participants demonstrated inviting demand characteristics as agents who reciprocated care and showcased initiative, encouraging favorable reactions from the social nexus. Through these transactions, more developmental dyads featuring mutually supportive effects were nurtured, boosting positive development of the doctoral trajectory. Nevertheless, not all characteristics were developmentally instigative. Health issues, for example, were counterproductive in terms of stimulating and sustaining the students’ momentum, posing barriers to the doctoral development. Further, the evolvement of development was embedded at the intersection of various contexts, ranging from direct settings to broader sociocultural factors. The findings show that the participants’ doctoral trajectory transcended the academic sphere and was influenced substantially by non-academic factors. It was holistically molded by social agents, behaviors, and relationships within the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. The complexity of the content and structure of these subsystems concurrently enabled and restrained the students’ PhD journeys.

The findings suggest some practical suggestions for stakeholders involved in this trajectory. For example, the doctoral students’ situation warrants empathy and cultural sensitivity from supervisors who enact pedagogical principles based on equity and professionalism. As important shapers of students’ experiences, institutions and faculties should give greater voice to PhD students regarding teaching, learning, and other facets of student life, as a holistic understanding can allow for optimization of service delivery. Further, as the core driving force in the bioecological system, it is contingent upon PhD students to initiate their autonomy to negotiate, utilize, and create resources for their development in both their home and host environments. A fine-grained elaboration of these practices, however, is neither the focus of this study, nor possible to accomplish in a piece of this length. Based on a small sample, this study is limited in terms of generalizability and representativeness. Nevertheless, it has contributed to the current scholarship of international education by (1) further substantiating the self-formation paradigm based on empirical discussions with a particular cohort in a particular locale, and (2) unpacking the entwining dynamics shaping the developmental trajectory of international study using the broad framework of the bioecological systems theory.

Authors’ Bio

Dr Xing Xu obtained her PhD from the University of Newcastle, Australia, and is Lecturer at Sichuan International Studies University. Her research interests include internationalization of higher education, doctoral students’ evaluation of educational experience, academic mobility, identity construction of doctoral students, and qualitative inquiry. Her publications have appeared in Higher Education Research and Development, The Australian Educational Researcher, Reflective Practice, etc. Her recent co-authored book The Eastern Train on the Western Track: An Australian Case of Chinese Doctoral Students’ Adaptation was published by Springer in 2020. She can be contacted via email: xing.xu@uon.edu.au.

Dr Helena Sit is a Senior Lecturer and PhD supervisor in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Prior to joining the University of Newcastle, she worked as a teaching and research academic at Macquarie University and the University of Hong Kong. Her research expertise includes Second Language Education, International Education, Higher Education and Teacher Education. Her research experience is concerned with internationalisation, transformative learning, and innovation language education programmes. She supervises Ph.D. students in Education and her contributions have been recognised at both the national and international levels. 

Dr Shen Chen is a teacher educator in School of Education at University of Newcastle, Australia. He has extensive teaching experiences including a visiting fellow in Cambridge University, Warwick University, UK, University of California, Berkeley, USA, University of British Columbia, Canada, University of Hong Kong, Nanjing University, Beijing Language and Culture University, China. His contribution has been in the teaching and research of culture in language education and second language teacher education. He was the recipient of the Australian National Teaching Award in 2014. His established record as an excellent researcher has been demonstrated by 8 books and numerous articles.

Research Highlighted:

Yu, J. Consuming UK Transnational Higher Education in China: A Bourdieusian Approach to Chinese Students’ Perceptions and Experiences. Sociological Research Online, 0(0), 1-18. doi:10.1177/1360780420957040

Background

Accompanying the ascendance of neoliberal market principles in higher education systems (Naidoo and Williams, 2015), the ‘student-as-consumer’ discourse has prevailed in the Global North while developing great complexity, which diverges across different nation-states (Brooks, 2018). However, little is known about students receiving Western higher education in the transnational education market (TNE), ‘in which the learners are located in a country different from the one where the awarding institution is based’ (Council of Europe, 2002), particularly in China, where a neoliberal approach does not apply. In the Global North, where the ‘student-as-consumer’ discourse took shape, ‘the state’s right to intervene is habitually questioned’; by contrast, in China, the intervention of the state into any social conduct is widely accepted (Marginson, 2018: 498). The Chinese state is the largest promoter and regulator of TNE. On the one hand, TNE represents ‘a faster and more efficient way’ to directly import advanced educational resources and to train competent professionals domestically (Huang, 2007: 428). On the other hand, foreign education, together with the mobilities of foreign people, information, and ideology also present a potential threat and thus must be controlled under a centralised plan (Lin, 2016). Thus, instead of a bottom-up way that is more responsive to the market, the development of TNE in China has been characterised by centralised control and top-down planning (Lin and Liu, 2016). All foreign TNE establishments operating in China are required to operate within the ‘Chinese–Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools’ (CFCRS) framework laid out by the Ministry of Education in partnership with a Chinese higher education institution.

Methodological and theoretical approaches to the case

This article emerged from a research project exploring the influence of TNE in-situ experience on Chinese students’ socio-spatial mobilities, based on a qualitative case study of the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China (UNNC), the first Chinese-Foreign Cooperative University. In the partnership, the University of Nottingham gained full control over the curriculum and other academic affairs, while leaving the administrative issues to Zhejiang Wanli College and its parent Wanli Education Group, such as campus construction, facilities management and logistics, negotiations with the Communist Party of China (CPC) and government. Drawing upon 30 semi-structured interviews (including 27 with Chinese UNNC students and 3 with UNNC staff), this article examines Chinese students’ perceptions and experiences of UNNC education with reference to patriotism education by the Chinese partner, international education by the University of Nottingham, and investment strategies by students themselves. The analysis of this paper mainly adopts a Bourdieusian perspective, seeing knowledge construction in the global field of higher education as intrinsically linked to power inequalities. ‘The West’ exercises symbolic power that confers the ability to legitimate certain forms of cultural capital, such as the English language, Western lifestyles, Western university credentials, etc. There is thus a‘stratification of knowledge’ between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’, where the knowledge of the West is legitimised with higher symbolic value.

Findings and discussions

First, Chinese patriotism education is provided at UNNC but has been kept to a minimal level compared to public universities in China. There is only one relevant module, Chinese Cultural Courses, delivered to Chinese students through weekly evening courses outside their university curriculum. Most students showed resistance, although some of them appreciated the necessity of such courses at UNNC. Without having much effect on Chinese students, conversely, the courses have been gradually adapted, with its content being depoliticised and its pedagogies leaning more towards British-style education.

Second, in talking about their experience of ‘a truly international education’ as advertised on the UNNC official website, the students frequently referred to ‘critical thinking’ and often in a positive way. Most students tended to believe that the liberal arts education they received at UNNC was more advanced than traditional Chinese-style education. Nevertheless, there were also students felt the true spirit of British liberal arts education was ‘sometimes not properly delivered’. Students observed a ‘merely rhetorical’ misinterpretation of ‘critical thinking’; in some cases, ‘critical thinking’ was simply understood as ‘rebellious thinking’. Some students also felt ‘cultural bias’ of the Western teachers and challenged the necessarily positive view of ‘critical thinking’ as it was implemented at UNNC. The durable, transposable Western educational habitus is generative of the teaching and learning that Chinese students experienced. As a result, formal education at UNNC served to impose Western discourses on Chinese students.

Third, a consumerist approach emerged in students’ perceptions of TNE. Students have cautiously calculated the quality of service, the long-term return in both the local and international credential markets, and the risk of potential failure. It turned out that UNNC was the ‘most score-effective’ option, which comes with good returns and low risk. On the one hand, UNNC experience is beneficial for Chinese students to gain the linguistic and institutionalised cultural capital that is necessary for future global mobility, as well as to imitate the educational habitus in the field of global education that is dominated by ‘the West’. On the other hand, they can also avoid the risk of potential failure in overseas education, staying embedded within domestic sociocultural networks, with the extra benefit of a good university credential that is convertible within the Chinese educational system.

Despite this consumerist approach, some students regarded their perceived-change in UNNC towards ‘utilitarianism’ as necessarily negative. They attributed this perceived-change to Chinese society and as by no means relevant to UK higher education which represents ‘humanitarianism’, contradicting the intensifying marketisation that many scholars have observed in the Global North, and particularly in the UK.

In conclusion, the case-study students have become voluntary participants in the symbolic violence exercised by ‘the West’, experiencing and perceiving TNE through ‘the symbolic veil of honour’ and thus valuing British education highly in both material and immaterial forms. This unique transnational educational space has emerged as an important factor in shaping students’ perceptions and experiences, incorporating the field of UK higher education into the field of Chinese higher education. They converge and, at times, collide, while both are embedded in the wider field of global higher education. Market-based rationalities converge with a centralised statist agenda, while being subordinated to a symbolic classification in which ‘the West’ dominates and colonial relations of knowledge production emerge. British-style education is perceived as legitimate, not only conditioning students’ perceptions of Chinese patriotism education but also affecting the staff’s approach to the ‘enhancement’ of pedagogies. Consumerist approaches further affirmed its symbolic value, by accelerating the circulation of cultural capital gained in a Western setting through active conversion into economic capital in the global marketplace. However, through transubstantiation, economic capital is presented in the immaterial form of cultural capital, and hence the real instrumentalism of cultural capital is concealed (Bourdieu, 1986). Cultural capital seems to be fundamentally different from economic capital because its self-interested nature is much less transparent. As can be seen in UNNC students’ responses, UK higher education was perceived to be unrelated to ‘utilitarianism’ and was only characterised by ‘humanitarianism’. As a result, Chinese students highly valued UK higher education in both material and immaterial forms, colouring the way in which they experience and perceive TNE, which is strengthened rather than being balanced out by China’s nation-building efforts. This article reveals the persistent symbolic power of UK higher education in the transnational context and its reproduction within the hierarchically structured global field of higher education.

References

Bourdieu P (1986) The forms of capital. In: Richardson JG (ed) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 241–258.

Brooks R (2018a) Understanding the higher education student in Europe: A comparative analysis. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 48(4): 500–517.

Council of Europe (2002) Code of Good Practice for the Provision of Transnational Education. Paris: UNESCO.

Huang F (2007) Internationalization of higher education in the developing and emerging countries: A focus on transnational higher education in Asia. Journal of Studies in International Education 11(3–4): 421–432.

Lin J (2016) Basic relationships among scale, quality, and benefits in Sino-foreign cooperative education. Chinese Education & Society 49(4–5): 254–270.

Lin J and Liu M (2016) A discussion on improving the quality of Sino-foreign cooperative education. Chinese Education & Society 49(4–5): 231–242.

Marginson S (2018) National/global synergy in the development of higher education and science in China since 1978. Frontiers of Education in China 13(4): 486–512.

Naidoo R and Williams J (2015) The neoliberal regime in English higher education: Charters, consumers and the erosion of the public good. Critical Studies in Education 56(2): 208–223.

Author’s Biography

Jingran Yu is a visiting scholar at Southern University of Science and Technology (China). She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Manchester (2020). Her interests lie at the intersection of sociology, education and geography, including but not limited to socio-spatial (im)mobilities and (in)equalities; international branch campuses; transnational higher education; cosmopolitanism; educational space and place. She can be contacted at yujingran.ac@gmail.com

Research Highlighted:

Yiu, L. (2020). Educational Injustice in a High-Stakes Testing Context: A Mixed Methods Study on Rural Migrant Children’s Academic Experiences in Shanghai Public Schools. Comparative Education Review, 64(3), 498-524. https://doi.org/10.1086/709429

ABSTRACT 

This mixed method study analyzes rural migrant children’s academic experiences in two Shanghai public schools when 2012 PISA scores were administered. It contributes empirical evidence on how hukou status shapes educational inequality in contemporary China. Since rural migrants are ineligible for the high-stakes test for Shanghai’s senior secondary admission (zhongkao), teachers diverted resources towards urban children at the expense of rural migrants, regardless of academic potential. Such “successful” teaching practices to maximize ranking motivated excessive resource provision to the detriment of urban youth’s development. This article argues that it is only possible to understand these patterns through an inequality theory that explicitly considers the diminished integrity of teaching in high-stakes testing contexts. The framework explains educational injustices when the moral assumption of “good” teaching to benefit a child is no longer valid, with implications on the growing global emphasis on high-stakes testing.

BACKGROUND 

Rural migrant children’s education has emerged as one of the most pressing problems facing contemporary China.  Under the hukou system, a hereditary household registration system that determines Chinese citizens’ access to public services (e.g. education), these young people face educational barriers and may be at risk of developing into an urban underclass.  In response, Shanghai’s equity-focused reforms (2008-11) aimed to dissolve hukou barriers and increase educational opportunity by allowing migrant children to attend public schools for compulsory education. 

Examining rural migrant children’s academic experiences in Shanghai public schools during this reform period provides opportunity to examine hukou inequality in a high-stakes testing context.  In Shanghai, divergent municipal policies towards migrant children’s education intersect with high-stakes testing pressures to situate public schools in a dilemma:  enrolling rural migrant youth who are excluded from the high-stakes zhongkao that has grave school consequences. While Shanghai reforms entitle rural migrant children to access public schools for compulsory education, restrictive post-compulsory educational policies in the city exclude rural migrants from Shanghai’s zhongkao. Thus, schools have little incentive to academically invest in rural migrant children.  

Importantly, research typically overlooks the role of high-stakes testing on rural migrant children’s education in the city, despite the dominance of exam-oriented teaching in China’s education system.  The few exceptions suggest that high-stakes testing is a critical factor in rural migrant children’s inequitable, public school experiences.  This article examines how high stakes testing shapes youths’ academic experiences in two Shanghai middle schools, which enrolled urban and rural migrant youth, during the reforms. 

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

To examine the extent and ways in which educators provide rural and urban students different learning opportunities and environments within the same school, the predominant framework conceptualizes inequality in terms of ability-grouping, a practice of sorting students based on ability or prior performance into “tracks” to better meet students’ needs through a more homogeneous learning environment.  This inequality framework has two moral assumptions:  1) “good” teaching practices aim to benefit the child, 2) any tracking-induced achievement gap is unintentional because teaching is done to benefit the student.

However, the predominant framework does not explain the inequality patterns in the two investigated Shanghai schools, where a different inequality emerged in response to maximizing ranking. Drawing on sociological theories of public measures, I develop an alternative educational theory to explain how high-stakes testing pressures differentiate students’ academic experiences within the same school when the moral assumption of “good” teaching no longer holds.  In both Shanghai schools, “successful” teaching practices to maximize ranking and consequent resource allocation led to two educational injustices.  First, “successful” teaching  is a source of injustice when educators prioritize ranking above the well-being of all students–urban and rural migrant. Second, in response to ranking pressures, educators in both schools admitted contributing to a widening hukou-achievement gap by diverting resources towards urban youth who “counted” for Shanghai zhongkao, at the expense of rural migrant students who did “not count.” 

METHODS 

I conducted a mixed methods analysis of resource allocation, i.e., the decision-making process by which educators in two Shanghai schools invested instructional resources along hukou lines. School S segregated rural migrants into hukou-based homerooms, in which “urban” and “rural” homerooms were high and low track, respectively. Contrastly, School I sorted rural migrants into integrated homerooms, in which “high ability” and “low ability” were high and low track, respectively. 

FINDINGS

An exam-induced inequality 

In response to Shanghai zhongkao pressures, both schools differentiated students into two ranking-oriented categories: “those that counted” (urban) and “those that did not count” (rural migrants). 

Educational injustice against rural migrant children

In both schools, homeroom sorting patterns are not explained by the predominant inequality model of “good” teaching, which expects schools to sort high-achieving rural migrant students into appropriately challenging high-track homerooms to develop their academic potential. Rather, homeroom track placement revealed a puzzle: both schools sorted high-achieving rural migrant children into low-track homerooms. 

Due to zhongkao exclusion, educators in both schools intentionally prioritized the academic development of students who “counted” (urban youth), at the expense of high-achieving children who “didn’t count” (migrant youth).  Both schools thus de-prioritized the academic growth of high-achieving rural migrant students, despite high scores indicating academic potential. These students were sorted into low-track homerooms, which provided a lower quality learning climate compared to high-track homerooms.  For example, School I educators sought to “spur on” low-achieving urban youth through a learning climate positively influenced by high-achieving, migrant classmates. As educators in both schools used “successful” teacher practices to maximize ranking, they admitted homeroom sorting neglected migrant children’s academic needs.

Educational injustice against urban children 

While homeroom placement privileges urban students’ academic development compared with their rural migrant peers, both schools’ label of “those who count” overlooks “successful” teaching as a form of injustice to urban students.  In both schools, urban students received excessive amounts of instructional time in-between class periods and after school. The instructional purpose of providing additional classroom teaching was to establish urban youth’s strong academic foundation in grades 6-7 for the accelerated learning of grades 8 and 9. However, teachers invested in urban youth’s academic growth at the expense of non-academic development. Consequently, Shanghai urban youth expressed anxiety from test pressures and considered test scores to represent their value.  

IMPLICATIONS 

This paper has two significant implications for China’s policymakers, scholars, and educators.  First, findings contribute to our understanding of hukou inequality in contemporary China. In Shanghai’s high-stakes testing context, the hukou institution has become a school marker of whether to academically invest in a child.   Shanghai findings converge with global data to reveal an exam-induced inequality in high stakes testing contexts, where teachers systematically prioritize students whose academic development will increase school ranking.

Second, I problematize the predominant conception of “educational equity” for China’s rural migrant children. Policymakers and researchers generally define educational equity for China’s rural migrant children as equal access to “quality” education (e.g. public school); such a conception motivated the Shanghai reforms highlighted in this study. However, my findings reveal the distorted understanding of educational equity that arises when we assume that teaching practices are “good” in  high-stakes testing context. As Shanghai educators used “successful” teacher practices to maximize ranking, they excessively invested in urban students’ academic growth at the expense of non-academic development. The education that urban students receive should no longer be regarded as the educational equity model for rural migrant students. When maximizing ranking is the purpose of education, teaching itself constitutes a form of injustice to all students. I thus propose an “equity” re-conceptualization towards whole-child development and the re-centering of teaching on the child.

Author Bio

Lisa Yiu is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong. Her equity-focused research applies critical and sociology theory to investigate diversity and inclusion issues for immigrant-origin youth in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.  Her work, which has been recognized by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, is motivated and critically enriched by her experiences as an inner-city teacher in Los Angeles Unified School District and English-as-a-Second-Language teacher in mainland China.  Publications include Harvard Educational Review and The China Quarterly. She can be contacted via email: liyiu@hku.hk.