Recognising localised pedagogical capital: a reflexive revisit of an alternative teacher preparation programme in China

Abstract

In recent years, alternative teacher preparation programmes are globally emerging to address teacher quality in ‘hard-to-staff’ schools. These programmes commonly attract graduates from prestigious universities to teach in disadvantaged schools for two years. One programme of this kind in China is the ‘Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers’ (EGRT). In this paper, we repurpose Bourdieu’s sociology to understand the power shift and social change through EGRT fellows’ position-(re)takings in subjective and objective crisis during their EGRT service term. Interviews with 16 EGRT participants reveal two themes: (1) In the initial stage of EGRT service, contemptuous habitus navigated EGRT fellows to a position of assumed privilege and misrecognised the arbitrary value of educational capital; (2) Over the EGRT service term, position-retaking gradually came to the fore. EGRT fellows learned to recognise a range of rural teachers’ attributes termed as ‘localised pedagogical capital’. We conclude the paper with some recommendations for EGRT to transform both EGRT fellows and local teachers into reflexive sociological workers. These recommendations have important implications for a long overdue response to the urban-oriented rural education.

Keywords:

• Alternative teacher preparation
• contemptuous habitus
• field of mediation
• localised pedagogical capital
• position-(re)taking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There are over 2,000 universities in China, of which 116 universities are sponsored by the Project 211. Among these Project 211 universities, 39 are sponsored by the Project 985 that aims to develop world-class universities.

Additional information

Funding

This work is jointly supported by the Key Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (2018SJZDI170), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities – Jiangnan University (JUSRP1806ZD), and the Australian Research Council (DE180100107).

Notes on contributors

Melody Yue Yin

Dr. Melody Yue Yin obtained her PhD in the Faulty of Education at Queensland University of Technology, and now works in Jiangnan University. She specialises in sociology of education. Her research topic is about alternative teacher recruitment programmes which channel prestigious university graduates to the teaching profession in disadvantaged schools.

Guanglun Michael Mu

Dr. Guanglun Michael Mu is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. His publications straddle three areas of sociology of education, namely child and youth resilience in a multicultural, (im)migration context; Chinese identity in a diasporic context; and teacher professionalism in an inclusive education context.