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Yang, Peidong
- PublicationMetadata onlyAllying and aligning: Teachers' extra-curricular work, meritocracy and state-sponsored scholarships in SingaporeResearch in education has long noted teachers’ role in assisting social and ideological reproduction. Separately, scholarship has also investigated the use of extra-curricular activities in equipping disadvantaged students with social and cultural capital, to embark on social mobility. Positioned at the intersection of these two apparently disparate strands, this paper presents a case in which teachers’ extra-curricular work is seen to simultaneously enact subtle socio-ideological reproduction, and the facilitation of social mobility attainment. Specifically, the paper draws on a study of how teachers in a lower-status junior college in Singapore prepare their students in applying for prestigious state-sponsored scholarships. Through teachers’ extra-curricular work of allying and aligning, social mobility and social reproduction are simultaneously made possible, yet also exist in some tension. Thus, this paper offers a unique sociological perspective on teachers’ extra-curricular work and its significance for broader issues of meritocracy, social mobility, and social reproduction.
109 - PublicationOpen AccessRethinking international student mobility through the lens of "crisis" at a juncture of pandemic and global uncertaintiesInternational student mobility (ISM), defined as the movement of students to pursue tertiary education outside their countries of citizenship, has conventionally been understood in terms of micro social actors’ behaviours of cultural capital accumulation and macro-level institutional processes following the logics of neoliberal globalization and knowledge economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly and severely impacted ISM, plunging the latter into what seems to be a “crisis”. Taking this fluid juncture as an opportunity for reflection and re-thinking, this paper re-examines ISM through the discursive lens of “crisis”. Broadening the “crisis” perspective beyond the pandemic to include a longitudinal view over the twentieth century through to the present, the paper considers the ways in which movement and recruitment of international students may be seen as consequences of as well as responses to “crises” of various natures – geopolitical, economic, and social. The author’s own work on student mobilities in Asia is drawn upon for illustration. The paper ends by briefly considering both the immediate crises confronting ISM, as well as various broader global uncertainties lying ahead.
WOS© Citations 10Scopus© Citations 16 79 100 - PublicationOpen Access
163 4896 - PublicationOpen AccessChina in the global field of international student mobility: An analysis of economic, human and symbolic capitalsThe global landscape of higher education is an uneven field where players like nation-states are placed in hierarchical and centre-periphery relations. This paper focuses on the global field of international student mobility (ISM) and investigates China’s place in the field using an analytical framework consisting of three key categories of ‘capital’: economic, human, and symbolic. Drawing on existing scholarship and author’s first-hand ethnographic research, the paper examines the case of China as both a source and a destination of ISM, and analyses the flows and accrual of these three forms of capital as consequences of outbound and inbound student mobilities. Analyses show that in a global ISM field characterised by asymmetries and inequalities, China’s place is arguably semi-peripheral economically and symbolically. It is argued that this country-focused macro perspective complements existing ISM scholarship’s emphasis on social reproduction at individual and private levels.
WOS© Citations 46Scopus© Citations 68 146 823 - PublicationMetadata onlyThe developmental and state-driven logics in Intra-Asia student mobilities: Insights from Singapore's ‘foreign talent’ scholarship schemes and China's English-medium medical programs
The world higher education (HE) landscape has seen a significant rise in internationalization and international student mobility over the past decades. In the Anglophone world, the prevailing model of internationalization is economically driven, with education commercialized as a lucrative export commodity. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of this model and calls for a critical re-examination of HE internationalization. This chapter offers an Asian perspective by drawing on author's research into two cases of intra-Asia student mobility: (1) Singapore's long-standing schemes of recruiting students from China as ‘foreign talent’ and (2) China's English-medium medical programs that attracted students from India. It argues that these two student mobility cases are driven mainly by the student-recruiting/receiving states’ developmental and non-commercial objectives, thus representing a divergence from, possibly an alternative to, the economic-driven model. However, the chapter also cautions against essentializing or idealizing these Asian experiences by highlighting certain problems found in both cases as well as parallels with aspects of Western HE internationalization.
53 - PublicationOpen AccessCompromise and complicity in international student mobility: The ethnographic case of Indian medical students at a Chinese universityExisting scholarship on international student mobility often draws on Bourdieu to interpret such mobility as a strategy of capital conversion used by privileged classes to reproduce their social advantage. This perspective stems from and also reinforces a rationalistic interpretation of student mobility. A shift of focus to interAsian educational mobilities involving non-elite individuals and institutions can reveal logics of behavior and of social interaction that are at discrepancy with the dominant perspective, thereby advancing the theorization of educational mobilities. This paper examines a case of Indian youths of less affluent backgrounds pursuing English-medium medical degrees (MBBS) at a provincial university in China. Through ethnography, the paper illustrates how various parties – individual, organizational and institutional – to this somewhat ‘unlikely’ project of knowledge mobility follow the discrepant logics of compromise and complicity to seek to realize their educational desires, social aspirations, and organizational objectives amidst realities of class disadvantage and resource inadequacy.
WOS© Citations 65Scopus© Citations 87 146 465 - PublicationOpen AccessVirtual student mobility on Zoom: Digital platforms and differentiated experiences of international education and (im)mobilities in a time of pandemic
Against the backdrop of growing prevalence of digital platforms in higher education, strong considerations are being made for the potential of virtual student mobility in the aftermath of the pandemic. While extant literature on digital education platforms has shed light on the relationships between platform interfaces and wider political economies, less is known about students’ experiences of virtually mediated mobility and immobility. This article draws upon research that examines how students and universities are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent impact on border control and international travel. First, it discusses how the socio-technical platform of Zoom extends and stabilises students’ imagined, communicative, and aspirational mobilities in a context of stalled physical mobility. Second, it underlines the crevices and moorings of digital platforms in the mediation of students’ experiences of mobility and immobility. Third, it examines how students refashion their (im)mobile subjectivities in and through digital spaces vis-à-vis a negotiation of co-presences in a renewed context of virtual interaction. In doing so, we argue the role of corporeal mobility, social interaction, and inhabiting tangible places remain a core aspect of student mobility experiences and aspirations.
WOS© Citations 1Scopus© Citations 5 78 16 - PublicationOpen AccessImmigrant teachers in Singapore schools: Backgrounds, integration, and diversificationImmigrant-background teachers make up a fragment of the teacher population in mainstream Singapore schools. Though modest in terms of number, the presence of these teachers in the Singapore teaching workforce is arguably significant in other ways. To date, little research attention has been paid to this unique group of teachers. Based on a Ministry of Education-National Institute of Education (MOE-NIE) funded study (OER 16/17 YPD), this article provides an overview of the characteristics and experiences of immigrant teachers in mainstream Singapore primary and secondary schools, with a focus on the practical challenges and value tensions they encounter in the professional settings. Findings show that immigrant teachers are generally well integrated into the Singapore education system notwithstanding certain challenges. Meanwhile, some teachers’ experiences of negotiating with value differences suggest that immigrant teachers may have the potential to add diversity to the education system, although this potential appears to be limited by the pragmatic imperative of professional integration.
242 589 - PublicationOpen Access“Positive energy”: Hegemonic intervention and online media discourse in China’s Xi Jinping eraScholarship to-date agrees that the internet has weakened the Chinese party-state’s ideological and discursive hegemony over society. In this paper, we document a recent intervention into public discourse exercised by the Chinese state through appropriating and promoting a popular online catchphrase—“positive energy” (zheng nengliang). Analyzing the “positive energy” phenomena using Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony and discourse, we argue that the relative effectiveness of this hegemonic intervention rests on the semantic versatility of “positive energy”, which enables “chains of equivalence” to be established between the label’s popular meanings on the one hand and its propagandist meanings on the other.
630 964 - PublicationOpen Access
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