Politically feasible and ethnically desirable: Supplemental schooling in Amdo Tibet and rethinking cultural capital

• In Event: Highlighted session: Rethinking learning sites, communities, and what is educationally valuable in Amdo and Kham Tibetan regions

Proposal

Relevance
Supplemental education pursued outside formal schooling is now commonplace worldwide (Bray 2017) and much research on it, proceeding from a conception that such practices constitute “shadow education” for the way they mimic the formal curriculum and exist only because of it (Zhang and Bray 2014), seeks to understand the impact that supplemental schooling has on the amelioration or exacerbation of ‘achievement gaps’ (e.g. Byun and Park 2012) that can exist between national averages and particular minoritized ethnic or racial groups. Such research, however, has a difficult time identifying and understanding supplemental educational practices that do not attempt exclusively to boost minoritized students’ exam scores and, rather, seek to reframe or even resist the content and norms prioritized in formal schools. This research project explores 1) how educators at a supplemental school in a nomadic Amdo Tibetan community in current-day China strive to provide their students with an education that is both ethnically desirable but still useful for obtaining better outcomes in formal schools, and 2) how these teachers conceptualize the cultural capital – i.e. the skills, habits, and dispositions – necessary for achieving and benefitting from such an education.

Theory/Context
I focus on what a particular group of Amdo Tibetan supplemental educators – who operate alongside but are not beholden to the Chinese education system – consider to be educationally valuable. By highlighting their perspectives on cultural capital (and problematizing a conceptualization of cultural capital that is substantively identical to what either Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) described or simply what the Chinese state school system seems to reward), I am better able to reveal how educators guide students towards an education that is both ethnically desirable and politically feasible.

Inquiry
This research is based on four months of participant observation and 45 ethnographic interviews with Amdo Tibetan educators at supplemental schools for K-12 students through which I sought to understand how these teachers conceptualized educationally valuable knowledges and behaviors and inculcated them in their students. Following Lareau (2015), participant observation focused on how supplemental school educators, who are often college students themselves, acted as “cultural guides” who not only provided curricular instruction for students but were in positions to model and impart less explicitly rewarded but nevertheless vital cultural capital that could affect students’ educational development both within and beyond formal school settings. I undertook this study with educators at supplemental, rather than in formal, schools principally because their role as voluntary, unofficial teachers affords them potentially greater autonomy in how they interpret and act upon educational norms in China and in their ability to provide instruction in valued Tibetan knowledges, such as poetry or debate, that are not included in official school curricula.

Findings and Contribution
The key finding discussed comprises an analysis of recurring Cultural Knowledge Competitions (shes rig ‘gran gleng) that took place twice weekly among students at one supplemental school for the duration of their one-month program. The analysis focuses on the teachers’ conceptualization of student bravery as cultural capital, valued because it is both politically feasible and ethnically desirable. I also analyze the components of the Competition (e.g. trivia, grammar, dance, song, code-switching ability) insofar as they are activities designed to cultivate students’ bravery and confidence in order to reveal the nature of the bravery these educators consider to be so valuable. Ultimately, this study has the potential to help uncover what is educationally valuable among groups that are minoritized by – but nevertheless experience significant pressure to succeed in – the formal education system.

Author

• Andrew David Frankel, University of Virginia