British‐Chinese pupils’ constructions of gender and learning

Abstract

British‐Chinese pupils are the highest achieving ethnic group in the British education system, and British‐Chinese boys’ performance equals that of girls. This paper investigates aspects of British‐Chinese pupils’ constructions of learning, focusing particularly on subject preferences and their constructions of themselves as pupils. The results are analysed according to gender as well as social class, and demonstrate that British‐Chinese pupils’ constructions of gender, subject preference and self‐image as pupils differ in some respects from those of pupils from other ethnic groups. Reasons for such differences are considered, and the paper also reflects on the implications of these findings in relation to broader findings concerning the stereotyping and ‘othering’ of the British‐Chinese within the British education system.

Notes

1. Research has shown that the Chinese in Britain face both discrimination from the general public and from institutions, and problems accessing public and social services (Chau & Yu, 2001; Cheng & Heath, 1993).

2. The vast majority of those owning or managing a business ran their own Chinese restaurant or take‐away, pointing to the complexities of applying traditional social class categorisations to the British‐Chinese in the UK. As we have pointed out elsewhere (Francis & Archer, 2005a; Archer & Francis, forthcoming), many of these parents, despite owning their own businesses, do not ‘fit’ traditional middle‐class trajectories in that they often originate from impoverished backgrounds, and many have had little access to formal education. As such, the ability of arguably ‘Eurocentric’ models of social class and social capital to describe these trajectories effectively is limited.

3. This sample involved 100 14–16‐year‐old pupils drawn from three London comprehensive schools, of whom 33 were British‐white, 32 were British Caribbean, and 35 represented diverse other ethnic origins, including a handful of British‐Chinese. 50 pupils were female, and 50 male.

4. Maths was often noted by pupil and parent respondents as something which Chinese people are good at, or are stereotypically seen to be good at. Some pupils discussed how parents take maths, and achievement at maths, particularly seriously. Also, teachers as well as pupils frequently observed that Chinese first‐generation immigrant pupils who have been schooled in China tend to be particularly advanced at maths, and ahead of British peers.

5. Unfortunately, though, the notion of a ‘good pupil’ is not the same as that of the Western ‘ideal pupil’ (Francis & Archer, forthcoming). Where British‐Chinese pupils were overwhelmingly positioned by teachers as ‘good pupils’, they were constructed as insufficiently questioning/assertive to fit Westernised, gendered discursive constructions of the ‘ideal pupil’ (Archer & Francis, 2005).