Repertoires of learning in a society in uncertain transitions: re-conceptualizing educational inequality and change in contemporary China

• In Event: Dissertation workshop session
  In Special Session: Inequality and Education

Proposal

Advised by Meira Levinson, Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Despite China’s rapid marketization, urbanization and modernization, the portrayal of Chinese children’s learning experiences in academic literatures has remained singular and nearly static: ambitious tiger parents, perseverant but passive learners, and intensively test-oriented schools. My dissertation investigates how these different dimensions of social transformation intersect to shape Chinese children’s repertoires of learning – the frames through which children understand the aims of learning and the scripts that structure their learning practices – as well as how constellations of these repertoires of learning contribute to the reproduction as well as reconfiguration of China’s emergent social structure.

My conceptualization of repertoires of learning draws on Lave's (1991) theory of learning as social participation – the process through which persons gradually acquire the competencies and identities of mastery in a community with shared social practice. In contrast to mainstream understanding of learning as cognitive processes taking place within individuals’ brains, this approach reveals how “learning is a source of (emergent) social structure” (Wenger, 1998, p.96). In other words, the learning of individuals and the (re)production of social groups are two sides of the same coin, mutually constitutive of each other. Therefore, zooming in on repertoires of learning reveals how social divisions and hierarchies structure children’s learning as well as how these uneven learning produce emergent social hierarchies.

I investigate these questions through ethnographic research at four junior secondary schools in southern China: a rural township school, a county seat school, a migrant private school and an elite public school. I chose to focus on the junior secondary school level because it is the critical stage of triage from universal basic education to the highly stratified senior secondary education and labor market. The township school and county seat school are in Zhenxiong, an impoverished rural county in the southwestern province of Yunnan. The migrant private school and the elite public school are in Guangzhou, a metropolis on the Southeastern coast. All four schools are considered good schools within their respective categories.

I spent 3-4 months at each research site between August 2017 and August 2018. At each school, I chose one regular/mainstream track 7th grade homeroom as the main research site and observed 50-70 classes in this homeroom. I joined students at lunch chats, various extracurricular activities as well as after-school excursions. I also interviewed about 20 students, 6-7 subject teachers, and 10 (grand)parents in each homeroom (see Appendix for interview guides). Finally, I surveyed 3-4 homerooms at each school to gather comprehensive information on the demographic composition of the school and assess potential divisions among the various tracks within the school.

I am currently in the stage of data analysis and expect to begin writing in the spring of 2019. Preliminary findings suggest the simultaneous presence of different repertoires of learning that have been wrongly constructed as dichotomies in existing literatures: “Eastern” versus “Western” (emphasis on discipline and virtue versus interests and curiosity), and traditional agrarian versus modern industrialized (learning through observation and pitching in versus assembly-line instruction). I further find that while the rural-urban and class divisions shape the particular sets of repertoires of learning that children can access, the reproduction of metropolitan middle class privilege is only part of the story. The differentiation in repertoires of learning also contributes to the disintegration of rural society and the incorporation of most rural children into the emergent urban working class.

With a unique multi-site ethnographic design, my dissertation is the first study to delineate the landscape of repertoires of learning in China and examine the evolving intersections of class and rural-urban divide in the educational realm. It challenges the dichotomy between the Chinese and the Western model of learning in existing literatures and reveals the critical role of schools in the reconfiguration of Chinese society. Though it’s a single-country study, it contributes to educational research and practice across the globe. For those working in fast-changing developing countries like China, my study highlights the importance of understanding the repertoires of learning that children can (or cannot) access. For those focusing on the culture of schooling and learning, it provides a telling example of how the globalization of Western schooling, psychological discourses, and capitalism get incorporated with local traditions to produce contemporary meanings and practices. For those working on inequality and social reproduction, it demonstrates how different dimensions of inequality intersect to shape learning processes at the micro level and contributes to the discussion on the shifting scale of class in an increasingly globalized world.

Author

• Xin Xiang, Harvard University