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.

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