Search

This dissertation focuses on examining the motivations, experiences, and perspectives of socially elite urban Chinese students who attend emerging internationally focused public high schools in China and who plan to study at U.S. universities. Drawing on critical theory, I integrate critical curriculum studies with educational policy studies to demonstrate the complexity of these privileged Chinese students' choices of and subsequent educational experiences with internationally oriented high school programs in China. Employing multi-sited ethnography, this study explores how social, cultural, political, economic and global contexts of education influence and shape these students' educational experiences and aspirations through analyzing an assemblage of data sources, such as participant observation, informal interviews, semi-structured interviews, field notes, media research, policy documents, and site documents. I argue that privatization and marketization of education embedded in curriculum reforms and school reforms in China worsen existing educational and social inequalities and lead to social injustice in changing national and global contexts. To uncover the internal and external contradictions among social actors such as privileged students and parents, elite schools, and the state, this dissertation examines how neoliberal educational policies and practices influence socially elite Chinese students' educational opportunities, experiences, and identities. In doing so, I argue that under the support of market-based educational reforms, privileged Chinese families utilize the global higher education market, the Chinese education market, and the study-abroad educational consulting market to mobilize their various types of capital for producing a social advantage that can better position their children in the international labor market. I conclude that the process of the production of social advantage is how the elite class and elite institutions employ local and global forces to re-articulate power and privilege. This re-articulation constructs privileged Chinese students into neoliberal subjects. Given my focus on examining how the students negotiate schooling in the neoliberal assemblage (discourses, practices, and policies) across a range of macro, meso, and micro levels, this study contributes to how we understand the very processes and effects of the making of these new neoliberal subjects. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]