The promised capitals of international high school programmes and the global field of higher education: The case of Shenzhen, China

Wright, Ewan; Mulvey, Benjamin Joseph

doi:10.1177/14752409221122070

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(56 reference statements)

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“…Our study contributes to the growing literature that examines the lived experiences of international school teachers (Brady, 2022;Bright, 2022;Budrow, 2021;Estaji & Tabrizi, 2022;Johnson, 2022l Poole, 2022Tarc & Budrow, 2022) as well as literature on international schooling in China (Bunnell & Poole, 2022;Poole, 2021;Teng & An, 2021;Wright & Mulvey, 2022;Wu & Koh, 2022a, 2022bYing & Wright, 2021). Specifically, this paper has sought to poole and bunnell examine the seemingly precarious experiences of international school teachers in a more positive light.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

‘I’ve Become a Lot Tougher’: Expatriate Teachers’ Experiences of Precarity and Resilience in Non-Traditional International Schools in China

Poole

Bunnell

2023

Beijing Int. Rev. Educ.

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The arena of education known as ‘international schooling’ has grown enormously, from a body of 2,500 schools in 2000 to almost 13,500 by 2022. By 2019, China had emerged as having the most schools delivering a non-national curriculum in English outside of an English-speaking nation. The arena continues to be dominated by British and North American educators. One enduring aspect of workplace reality is the short-term contract, normally of between two and three years. The field is acknowledged to be inherently precarious and insecure, with high levels of turnover, and a bleak ‘negative’ lens of imagination has always persisted. This paper focuses attention on the lived experiences of expatriate teachers among the growing body of ‘non-traditional international schools’ that might be best termed ‘Chinese Internationalised Schools’. Through in-depth phenomenological interviewing of six expatriate teachers, the reality of ‘short-termism’ was examined. Whilst the findings highlighted, as expected, the negative aspects of short-term employment, the findings also identify many positive outcomes. These include opportunities for developing resilience, agency, and reinvention. This offers scope for a new vision, based upon the accumulation of ‘resilience’, which helps to explain the continuous growth of the arena despite the presence of precarity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

‘I’ve Become a Lot Tougher’: Expatriate Teachers’ Experiences of Precarity and Resilience in Non-Traditional International Schools in China

Poole

Bunnell

2023

Beijing Int. Rev. Educ.

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“…Sancho (2016: 478), meanwhile, describes how in India a ‘new class’ is buying into ‘private English-speaking international schools’, especially in ‘second tier cities’ where such schools offer ‘a new arena for the wealthiest to reinstate their class privileges and distinguish themselves from the expanding middle classes’. The emergence and importance of the CIS and non-traditional international schooling in China has recently started to garner much academic interest (see, eg, Poole, 2021; Probert, 2022; Wright and Mulvey, 2022; Wright et al, 2022; Wu and Koh, 2022a), and presents an interesting contemporary line of academic inquiry.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diluting, decoupling, and dovetailing: Considering new metaphors for understanding the changing international school landscape in China

Poole

Bunnell

2023

Jnl of Research in Internatl Education

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A major development in recent years concerning the growth of ‘private English-speaking international schooling’ has been the transition from a ‘traditional’ mode of activity towards a ‘non-traditional’ context. This is especially the case in Asia, where the majority of international schools now reside. Moreover, we find that in Mainland China two-thirds of the (approximately) 900 schools that might be thought of as international schools are now perhaps better classified as ‘international ised schools’, catering largely for Chinese nationals and being taught by a largely local teaching force whilst delivering a fusion of international and national curricula in a profit-driven paradigm. A major challenge is to picture and theorise this changing, and increasingly very different, landscape. This paper offers a new imagery for discussion by using metaphor. Building upon the conflicting ‘diluting’ and ‘decoupling’ metaphors that have been recently introduced in the international schooling literature, we present here a conciliatory new imagery: that of ‘dovetailing’. This alternative, third metaphor suggests that the changing landscape of international schooling in places including mainland China involves models of private bilingual international schooling that are pragmatically ‘dovetailed’ with national forms of schooling, fusing cosmopolitan sensitivities with the nationalist needs of the state. This metaphor is now ready to be developed and adapted in China and beyond.

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“…Accordingly, our analysis does not just draw on teachers’ experiences in order to examine schools’ reactions to regulation, but also seeks to explore teachers’ understandings of international schooling and, by digging into them, consider the scope and nature of regulation on their very subjectivities. More generally, we add to the growing literature on international schooling in China, which can be divided into three main categories: teacher‐focused (Bunnell & Poole, 2022; Harrison et al., 2023; Kostogriz et al., 2022; Kostogriz & Bonar, 2019; Poole, 2021; Poole, 2022); student and parent‐focused (Ma & Wright, 2021, 2022; Woods & Kong, 2020; Wright & Mulvey, 2022; Wright, Ma, & Auld, 2022; Young, 2018); and industry‐policy focused (Deng et al., 2023; Jin, 2022; Jin & Chen, 2023; Probert, 2022; Wright, Lin, & Lu, 2022; Wu & Koh, 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nationalising the international in China: A phenomenological study on the purpose of international schooling in an era of regulation

Poole,

Qin

2023

British Educational Res J

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Recent policy changes to the regulation of international schooling for Chinese nationals in China have seen restrictions on curriculum, admissions and ownership. While there is evidence of the impact of these changes at the institutional level, it is not clear how recent regulation has impacted the actors at the phenomenological level. In order to address this gap, we situate recent regulation within the concept of cosmopolitan nationalism, which highlights the interplay of local and global forces and places lived experience at the forefront of analysis. We also draw on qualitative survey and in‐depth interview data with teachers from an international school in China that explored their understandings of international schooling. By analysing the teachers’ understandings of international schooling, we were able to gain an insight into the impact of regulation at the level of lived experience. Overall, we found little evidence that regulation had impacted the teachers’ beliefs about international schooling, suggesting either the normalisation of regulation or a lag between its implementation and internalisation. Our findings also suggested two main configurations of cosmopolitan nationalism held by the teachers. The first, which we refer to as ‘cosmopolitanism with national characteristics’, positions international schools as a more diverse and care‐free alternative to domestic schooling. The second configuration of cosmopolitan nationalism, which we refer to as ‘nationalism with cosmopolitan characteristics’, positions the nation as the foundation and cosmopolitan‐related aspects as peripheral.

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The promised capitals of international high school programmes and the global field of higher education: The case of Shenzhen, China

Cited by 6 publications

References 36 publications

‘I’ve Become a Lot Tougher’: Expatriate Teachers’ Experiences of Precarity and Resilience in Non-Traditional International Schools in China

‘I’ve Become a Lot Tougher’: Expatriate Teachers’ Experiences of Precarity and Resilience in Non-Traditional International Schools in China

Diluting, decoupling, and dovetailing: Considering new metaphors for understanding the changing international school landscape in China

Nationalising the international in China: A phenomenological study on the purpose of international schooling in an era of regulation

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