Search

Migrant workers in China and their children too frequently are treated as outsiders in the city. This paper explores and compares the opportunities for female Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students in western rural areas of China. Learning from migrant girls how they perceive and evaluate benefits in and from their schooling provides us insights into how TVET played a role in achievements that rural migrant girls value and enact. The capability approach specified for education is used as a structure to assess TVET as experienced by its participants. This research shows that despite its deficiencies and obscurity within socio-economic structures, for the current generation of young rural migrant girls, TVET education was highly accessible, provided a singular opportunity and space to equip them with some skills and knowledge, and enhanced their capabilities to participate in a rapidly changing urbanizing economy. TVET education created changes on both individual and collective levels. Rural migrant girls' opportunities were constrained by unequal migration patterns and were structured along intersections of gender and ethnic lines. Implications for improving TVET policy include improved information flow, diversification of TVET curriculums, standardization of regulations, and increased opportunities for female and ethnic students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is an investigation of the English language learning aspirations and deprivations of female rural migrant youth in technical and vocational education and training (TVET) schools in two locales in western China. This study adopted basic interpretive research focused on individual voices and experiences. The capability approach provided the conceptual framework. Participants in this research primarily aspired to learn English for instrumental purposes: to pass exams, earn higher degrees, find better jobs in cities, and support their children in learning English. A lack of English proficiency, economic situation, and living environment greatly limited their aspirations. Participants showed a spectrum of levels of aspirations of English learning. For participants with low levels of English proficiency, their English could neither support their educational and employment goals nor inspire them for greater future plans. Participants from the TVET–university joint program formulated a stronger and wider range of aspirations when compared to those encapsulated in secondary TVET. Recommendations include increasing opportunities for exposure to English, reforming exam-oriented English learning, enriching the prevailing culture of learning and the perceived value and social uses of English, increasing TVET school and university cooperation, and adapting the TVET English curriculum to economic imperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]