Literacy and Identity Options: A Case Study of Literacy Curricula in a New Brunswick Transnational Education Program in China

• In Event: 61.070 - Sheraton Roundtable 10 - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 61.070-2 - Philosophy and Practice in the Shadow (of) Curriculum Reform

Abstract

This case study borrowing ethnographic tools focused on a transnational education program (Pseudonym: Sino-New Brunswick School [SNBS]) in an inner city in Mainland China that used Canadian curriculum from New Brunswick. Its methods consist of interviews with Canadian and Chinese policy-makers who were involved in developing transnational literacy curricula, teacher interviews and classroom observation to document the particulars and dynamics of the implemented curriculum, and student interviews and artifacts that shed light on their lived curriculum. Findings reveal SNBS’s contested institutional curriculum of developing biliteracy, its bifurcated programmatic and implemented curriculum, and expansive but constrained literacy and identity options for its transnational education students.

Authors

• Zheng Zhang, Western University

• Rachel May Heydon, University of Western Ontario

• Wanjing Li, The University of Western Ontario

• Pamela M. Malins, University of Western Ontario