The changing landscape of literacy curriculum in a Sino-Canada transnational education programme: an actor-network theory informed case study

Abstract

This paper concerns an exploratory and interpretive case study of the literacy curricula in a Canadian transnational education programme (Pseudonym: SCS) delivered in China where Ontario secondary school curricula were used at the same time as the Chinese national high school curricula. Using ethnographic tools and actor-network theory, the study sought to understand and conceptualize the constituents, movements, and effects of the institutional, programmatic and classroom literacy curricula in the programme. The study found that many actors were responsible for the various and interrelated forms of literacy curricula from institutional to classroom. Actors included neoliberalism, educational entrepreneurs, and a philosophy of connecting the East and the West which in particular affected the institutional curriculum. Major findings concern the instability of this novel form of transnational curriculum-making when it was translated into programmatic and classroom curricula. Throughout our descriptions of these actors and translations, we highlight how the changing commitments and interests that mobilized SCS’s literacy curricula eventually enabled and constrained certain forms of literacy and identity options for SCS students. We also address the possibilities illuminated by the network movements of cross-border curricula.

Keywords:

• Literacy
• curriculum
• actor-network theory
• transnational education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by Ontario Council on Graduate Studies, Council of Ontario Universities (Ontario Graduate Student Scholarship).

Notes

1. Pseudonyms for the programme and participants were used throughout the paper to protect respondent confidentiality.

2. IELTS: International English Language Testing System; TOEFL: The Test of English as a Foreign Language; OSSLT: the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test.

3. All fieldwork was conducted by the first author who is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

4. All the teachers referred to as ‘Canadian teachers’ by SCS and in this paper are Canadian citizens except for Mr Abrams who was a US citizen.

5. This is generally how Chinese policy-maker and teacher participants referred to the Canadian ways of teaching.