What do shifting narratives of suzhi tell us about the nature of migrant and rural children’s education in China?

• In Event: Educating vulnerable youth in China’s urbanizing context: the schooling of rural, migrant and ethnic minority children

Proposal

Rapid urbanization over the past three decades has significantly changed the landscape of China. In 1980, only 19% of the population was urban. By 2012, urban residents have outnumbered rural residents. It is projected to reach 65% of urbanization by 2030. This paper aims to unpack the complexities involved in the rapid urbanization process in China and how that has impacted the way education researchers should examine rural children and rural education. Specifically, by highlighting the evolving definitions of suzhi (quality) and its use in schooling context regarding various groups of children--urban, rural or migrant, and by various stakeholders--students, teachers or parents, the paper argues for a paradigm shift beyond the urban-rural dualism as we reposition rural and migrant children and their education in today’s China.

This paper is based on a review of the author’s longitudinal research of rural and migrant children, primarily in Shaanxi Province in Northwest between 2005 and 2012 and in Zhejiang Province on the East Coast from 2015-2018. The paper also includes studies conducted with migrant children in Zhejiang. The author highlights interesting findings collected via photovoice method (Wang et al, 1996) which shifts the “power” of defining research questions to children by allowing them to frame, record, and evaluate how they understood their lives at home, at school, and in society. The paper situates how rural students’, being left-behind or migrant children, and their teachers’ (re)interpretations and uses of suzhi in the context of rapid urbanization and in various locations in or in between the city and the countryside, and how that sometimes supports and sometimes challenges the rural-urban dualism imbedded in the discussion about suzhi in the literature so far.

“Suzhi”, originally used to describe an individual’s level of educational achievement (Woronov, 2008), encompasses multiple meanings in China. It is often associated with traits like creativity, innovation, knowledge vision, and pro-social skills, which are to the advantage of urban students (Kipnis, 2001). Yan also argued suzhi and its associated traits representing modernity and urbanity, more specifically, “formal education, civility, discipline, initiative, cosmopolitanism” (2008, 94), are constructed as missing from rural citizens. Based on the previous studies of suzhi, the paper explores how suzhi means different things for different group of children in both formal discourse such as curriculum, and information discourse--what parents, teachers and students value and practice. For example, data collected from interviews with teachers and photovoice with students demonstrated how suzhi was referenced to explain discrepancy of academic performance, family support, and character buildings between migrant and rural children, or between rural and urban children. Rapid urbanization allows the development of multiple narratives of suzhi, rurality, and urbanity, which is further complicated by rapid social stratifications accompanying rapid urbanization and has impacted the way children, parents and teachers redefine the purposes of schooling and their future positions in the society. The reconstruction of the meanings of suzhi sheds light on the process of how schooling produces a new type of working class straddling the rural and urban divide. (500 words)

REFERENCES
Kipnis, A.B.. (2001). The Disturbing Educational Discipline of ‘Low-Income Workers.’ The China Journal 46: 1–24.
Wang, C., Burris, M.A., & Xiang, Y.P. (1996). Chinese village women as visual anthropologists: A participatory approach to reaching policymakers. Social Science Medicine, 42 (10), 1391-1400.

Woronov, T. E. (2008). Raising quality, fostering “creativity”: Ideologies and practices of education reform in Beijing. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 39(4), 401-422.

Yan, H. R.. (2008). New masters, New Servants: migration, Development, and Women Workers in China. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Author

• Jingjing Lou, Beloit College