Examining the influence of transnational discourses on Chinese international secondary school students’ academic learning

ABSTRACT

In recent years, increasing numbers of Chinese international secondary school students have come to study in Canada. Upon arriving in their international context, their academic studies are influenced by socio-economic and cultural forces circulating between the home and host spaces of China and Canada. This paper delves into the economic, cultural and social rationalities behind eleven Chinese international secondary school students’ distinct ways of learning in transnational contexts. My study was guided by Ong’s [1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press; 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] notion of cultural logics and critique of neoliberal discourses by examining how sociocultural forces/rationalities in transnational contexts governed eleven Chinese international students’ learning goals, characteristics, needs, and preferences, as well as how global-scale neoliberal cultural logics played a dominant role. This ethnographic study not only problematises the dominance of neoliberal discourses and Western cultures in daily teaching and learning, but also gives educators and policymakers insights into how to support academic studies and language learning of Chinese international secondary school students by considering the aggregated effect of multiple transnational forces.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese international secondary school students
• transnational forces
• cultural logics
• academic studies
• language learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Xi Wu http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6670-0905

Notes

1 Neoliberal rationality “informs actions by many regimes and furnishes the concepts that inform the government of free individuals who are then induced to self-management according to market principle of discipline, efficiency, and competitiveness” (Ong 2006, 4).

2 Regarding geographical locations, Kachru (1992) points out that Western countries include developed countries in North America (USA and Canada), Europe (e.g. England and Ireland), Australia and New Zealand.

3 Cultural logics, relying on the establishment of stereotypes and other kinds of precedents, serve as references in inferring and attributing motivations behind people’s actions (Enfield 2000).

4 Transnational spaces/contexts in this paper implicate cross-border economic, political and cultural relations (Rizvi 2010).

5 Since 1950s, Gaokao has been officially stipulated as the sole Chinese university admission criteria to ensure that only those who have reached cut-off scores for higher institutions will be admitted (You and Hu 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was Sponsored by Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at East China Normal University.