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In this chapter we make predictions about developments in empirical worlds of Sino–foreign higher education as the 2020s unfold from beginnings marked by geopolitical and global health crises. Inspired by efforts to review and recraft Bourdieusian sociology for post-national investigations in other fields, we propose problematics for researching higher education which crosses and flows over nation-state borders, with or without student mobility. These problematics are informed by Bourdieu’s methodological autonomisation, that is, his conceptualisation of fields as relatively autonomous spaces of social activity. We consider the concerns of Bourdieusian scholars and higher education researchers with both methodological nationalism and methodological globalism. The former does not account for the global, while the latter does, but it obscures that which occurs on national and sub-national scales and in relation to the global. To enable investigation of the activity of universities in these complexly multi-scalar conditions, we canvass the utility of concepts about universities qua organisational fields and as agencies within fields of organisations, and of institutional, organisational, or university habitus. We also highlight the utility of multiple correspondence analysis for post-national research on higher education. The chapter assumes that crafting sociological tools is a priority given the still intensifying heteronomisation of higher education practice and research.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed With English hegemony sustained in ‘multicultural’ Anglophone universities, non-English speaking research students often develop diverse strategies to improve their English. While such strategies demonstrate a form of resilience, the symbolic power of English remains intact. To grapple with this paradox, we draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to probe Chinese international research students’ academic language practice in response to English monolingualism in Australian universities. Findings from semi-structured interviews with 18 Chinese international research students in Australian universities indicate that participants’ academic language practice is influenced by both the doxic English monolingualism and the evolving exercise of academic multilingualism. Drawing insights from Bourdieu-informed sociology of resilience and post-monolingual theorising, we problematise English monolingualism and provide recommendations for (Chinese) international research students, supervisors, and universities to capitalise on linguistic repertories for the sake of enriching academic experience.

In educational research, there has been much stricture of neoliberalism as a scourge. In the higher education sector, the neoliberal turn has been observed as eroding academic freedom and deprofessionalising academics. Early career academics are often described as victims of neoliberalism. In this paper, we take a positive perspective through a deep dive into resilience that enables self-transformation and, potentially, system change. Our paper is situated in the Chinese higher education context where the “up-or-out” system has been put in place, mirroring the neoliberal university at a global range. We — a mid-career researcher and an early career academic — analyse our collective narratives generated through WeChat text and voice message. Drawing insight from Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology, our narratives lead to four themes: capital accumulation and self-transformation, shaping the publication habitus, emancipation from symbolic violence, and resilience to symbolic domination. We conclude the paper with a call for sociology of resilience and recommendations for deneoliberalising higher education.

Education systems worldwide have shown much interest in “21st Century Competencies.” In response to the call for better assessment of these competencies, we draw on a 4Cs framework (Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking) and develop the 21st Century Competencies Scale-4C on a sample of 5857 Grades Four to Nine Chinese students. The Scale demonstrates good validity and reliability, yet statistical variance exists across the urban and the rural subsamples. Our discussion revolves around rural-urban disparity. Our findings provide insights into policy, practice, and research regarding 21st Century Competencies that account for sociocultural dynamics within student populations. These findings may have implications for understanding 21st Century Competencies elsewhere. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Bourdieu’s sociology has traditionally been confined to the limits of its French national context. This edited collection seeks to challenge these boundaries, applying Bourdieu’s analysis of practice to Chinese education as it gains relevance and attention around the globe. This book stems from the conviction that empirical investigation and conceptual inventiveness are needed to understand the historical and contextual particularities of Sino-foreign higher education. It brings the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu to the specificity of higher education in and for China and the multi-scalar complexity of higher education beyond the nation. Aggregating recent Bourdieu-informed investigations of empirical worlds of Sino-foreign higher education, the volume mainly considers two problems: structures and strategies of advantage behind institutional and individual action in Sino-foreign higher education; and student participation in the practices of that higher education. The volume probes the potential of Bourdieusian theory and methodology for understanding Chinese higher education beyond the nation. This book is written to engage with the intellectual work of both established scholars and higher degree research students within China and beyond. The empirical studies provide useful insights for educational leaders in Chinese higher education sectors and in the universities of English-dominant western countries where students and researchers from China have been a growing presence. The theoretical and methodological discussions will be pertinent to scholars who are interested in Bourdieu’s sociology and sociology of higher education.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Although scholars have noted the detrimental nature of the various changes in higher education prompted by neoliberalism, its impact on the experiences of international Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students has yet to be adequately studied. Informed by Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa, field, habitus, and capital, this paper examines the ways in which neoliberalism as doxa in the Australian higher education field has colonised the perception and practice of Chinese international HDR students whilst some students were able to demonstrate resilience to the pervasive neoliberal practices. The paper draws on a larger qualitative research project including interviews with 18 Chinese HDR students from four Australian universities. Data suggest that Chinese HDR research students gradually developed intensifed dispositions of self-reliance and self-exploitation in response to neoliberal academic practices whilst others were enculturated into a floating habitus (or vulnerable position) in relation to academic publishing as they attempted to negotiate the tensions across fields and over time. Data further reveal that some participants demonstrated resilience to neoliberalism when empowered by their supervisors with less utilitarian and more critically reflexive supervisory practices. The paper argues that the embrace of neoliberalism in the Australian higher education field has become widespread yet controversial, and that thinking and enacting resilience sociologically may de-neoliberalise the higher education field in Australia and beyond.

In this book, Mu crafts a sociology of resilience through his multi-year research with Australian students. The content is not merely concerned with individual achievements in precarious conditions but also ponders over transformative, reflexive, and power-rejective everyday practices that make social change possible, probable, and even inevitable. Since Emmy Werner and her colleagues discovered the "self-righting" and "invincible" children on the Hawaiian island of Kauai who fared well despite exposure to significant household risks, positive psychology has markedly advanced the knowledge about child and youth resilience to adversities. Yet, many children and adolescents continue to slide through system cracks. This fact does not invalidate psychology of resilience; rather, it urges new frameworks to break the reproductive circle of inequality. Reframing the traditional psychological notion of resilience through recourse to Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology, the book moves beyond individual adaptation to adverse conditions and takes a deep dive into sociological resilience to structural problems. It offers school professionals and educational researchers an epistemological tool to reapproach resilience and reappropriate Bourdieu for social change. Offering scholarship that will interest researchers in the areas of child and youth resilience, sociology of resilience, and sociology of education, the volume is written to engage with the intellectual work of both established scholars and emerging researchers within Australia and beyond. The empirical analyses also provide useful insights for educational professionals in schools and resilience researchers in universities.

Since the publication of the Salamanca Statement, inclusive education has gained prominence at a global range. In China, this has seen the implementation of ‘Learning in Regular Classroom’–a nationwide program initiated by the Chinese government in the 1980s to make regular schools accessible to children with disabilities. The developments of ‘Learning in Regular Classroom’ over a nearly four-decade time are laudable. Yet structural problems abound and persist. One has been ‘lazy inclusivism’ that insidiously conceals the unequal social order by strategically labelling certain populations as disadvantaged and diligently providing support to them through a mainstream framework that de facto silences their epistemologies and practices. ‘Lazy inclusivism’ sustains an astute system that tailors a cloak of laborious business to shroud its own laziness in achieving inclusion. Such labourious business is paradoxically lazy owing to its reductionist approach to inclusion that shows little interest in deconstructing the conservative understanding of disability, which itself is constructed and sustained within current schooling. This Special Issue collects wisdom of Chinese children, parents, and educators to force ‘lazy inclusivism’ to retreat. At the core of the collective wisdom is agency and resilience, both demonstrating autonomy and power in precarious conditions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This paper intends to develop a sociological thinking of child and youth resilience through recourse to Bourdieu. The paper starts by problematising the misconceptualisation that equates resilience with adaptation. It then marks a clear conceptual boundary between the two notions. This is followed by a review of conceptualisations of resilience across different historical times and theoretical schools, discussing the paradigmatic shifts from the individualistic to the ecological framework. To enable an intellectual and innovative engagement with contemporary developments in resilience research, the paper comes to grips with a sociological reconceptualisation of resilience through Bourdieu’s field analysis. The crux here is to grapple with resilience to symbolic violence for emancipation from structural constraints–a thinking largely absent in current resilience work; and to complement the bulk of Bourdieusian research on reproduction by exploring a change-oriented resilience thinking through the work of the famed sociologist. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Teachers play key roles in advancing the use of mobile devices for language learning in both formal and informal settings. However, in contexts where top-down educational policies are prevalent, the roles of teachers are usually overemphasized while learners–the end-users of educational technologies remain largely ignored. Less understood is what roles students expect teachers to play in facilitating their acceptance of mobile-assisted language learning. This study was conducted in an attempt to fill this gap using the extended technology acceptance model (TAM). Survey data from 293 higher education learners of English in Vietnam were analyzed by the Rasch-based path model. Results indicated that students showed stronger desire for teachers’ orientation toward appropriate use of mobile resources for language learning both inside and outside the classroom than teachers’ demonstration of mobile-assisted language learning activities in the classroom. The findings offer useful implications for teachers, researchers, and language education policy makers in fostering the use of mobile devices for language learning. What is already known about this topic? Teachers’ role in promoting learners’ adoption of mobile-assisted language learning is under-researched. In contexts dominated by top-down educational policies, the voice of learners is largely ignored. Learners’ expectation of teachers’ roles in promoting their adoption of mobile-assisted language learning needs more empirical evidence. What this paper adds? This paper highlighted the important roles of teachers in orienting students toward appropriate mobile learning resources for out-of-class learning. Teachers were considered by learners as “guide on the side” rather than “sage on the stage” in enhancing their adoption of mobile-assisted language learning. Implications for practice/policy Teacher training programs on mobile-assisted language learning can be redesigned to enable teachers to better support mobile-assisted language learning in and outside the classroom. Teachers should be better able to enrich their knowledge of various mobile learning resources to support their students.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed In the edited book “Bourdieu and Chinese Education”, a group of scholars in China, Australia, Canada, and the USA engage in a dialogue with Bourdieu and raise persistent questions not only about issues of equity, competition, and change in Chinese education, but also about the value, venture, and violence in using established Western intellectual frameworks for analysing Chinese education. In response to these questions, this special issue analyses and discusses Chinese rural education, teacher education, language education, health and physical education, and transnational education; and proposes a series of new conceptualisations, for example, regression- and network-based field analysis, Bourdieu-Chinese philosophy encounter, field of mediation, localised pedagogical capital, and new Chinese habituses (e.g., contemptuous habitus, diasporic cosmopolitan habitus, habitus (re)structuring). Such collective effort responds to the strident, and sometimes misleading, castigation of Bourdieu for determinism; and also disputes the non-reflexive, celebratory tone that consecrates the French sociologist and his canonical theorem, and hence reproduces the symbolic violence in the doxic academia. In this vein, the special issue is respectful for, but not restricted to, Bourdieu’s sociology, showing no timidity in questioning and contesting the framework of the famed thinker when research problems and findings demand so.

In this paper, we engage with Chinese diasporas research through recourse to Bourdieu’s relational, reflexive sociology. We start with the historical and recent developments of Chinese diasporas research and point out the potential of using Bourdieu to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of this research. While we see a steady stream of Bourdieu-informed Chinese diasporas studies and acknowledge their contribution and innovation, we observe that some studies use Bourdieu’s capital and/or habitus without field. In response, we draw on Bourdieu’s relationalism to highlight the significance of ‘fielding’ Chinese diasporas research. In addition, we turn field analysis onto Chinese diasporas researcher-selves through Bourdieu’s reflexive tool of participant objectivation. In this vein, we ponder over the positions and position-takings of Chinese diasporas researchers within and beyond the academic field of Chinese diasporas. To conclude the paper, we make a call to shift the intellectual landscape by developing a research agenda to sociologise Chinese diasporas challenged by complex and difficult issues of power, politics, and participation. Our critical sociological approach may have implications for doing scholarship reflexively and relationally in other research fields. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Alternative teacher preparation programs have triggered global debates. This study analysed 16 fellows of an alternative teacher preparation program who entered rural schools located in China—a high-stakes testing context—with a strong disposition toward quality-oriented education. Drawing on Bourdieu’s sociology, we revealed four forms of fellows’ responses to the tensions between quality- and examination oriented education: (1) Resistance to examination-oriented education; (2) “Betrayal” of quality-oriented education; (3) Reconciliation of the two educational orientations; and (4) Confusion about both. Pursuant to these findings, we suggest that program recruitment and training keep some distance from the “star fellow” narrative and develop localised materials to prepare fellows for the real-world challenges. Our paper situates EGRT fellows in coexisting and competing educational orientations, calls for more studies to construct global alternative teacher preparation as a space of contestation, and ignites more discussion regarding what educational quality is. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Teaching is challenging and has long been vexed by teacher stress, burnout, and attrition. Framing through a positive perspective, this paper investigates teacher resilience to a form of structural challenge, that is, neoliberalism. The paper quantitatively models the resilience process of a sample of 2219 Chinese inclusive education teachers who develop professional competence and manage burnout despite the structural constraints brought about by neoliberalism. The analysis highlights the role of teacher agency in the resilience process. The paper calls for proactive policy and research response to the neoliberal tendency that deprofessionalises teachers. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In the last 20 years, we have seen a growing interest internationally in Pierre Bourdieu’s scholarship within the field of educational research. Bourdieu’s reflexive and relational sociological armory provides insight into how structural inequalities are established and maintained, ripple through education, and can be attenuated or disrupted. This chapter charts the genesis of Bourdieu’s deep conceptual work regarding education, which was deeply connected to his own biography. The chapter then focuses on three conceptual advancements Bourdieu made which inform educational research today: education and social reproduction; education and cultural capital; and education and symbolic violence. This is followed by a discussion of two of Bourdieu’s early works written with Jean-Claude Passeron: Les Heritiers (1964/1979) and Reproduction in Education, Culture and Society (1977). The two works represent important junctures in the formation of Bourdieu’s thinking regarding how inequality is manifested and maintained at all levels of education. usc

This paper analyses the forms of, and the reasons for developing extracurricular activities by fellow participants in an alternative teacher preparation programme in China. We frame the paper through Bourdieu’s sociology. Our interviews with 16 fellows reveal that fellows manoeuvre their capital portfolio to develop both academic and non-academic forms of extracurricular activities. Reasons for developing extracurricular activities include using available resources through capital conversion, expanding students’ horizon through contemptuous habitus; and taking into account the local needs. Despite fellows’ good intention to compensate local students, we call for reflexivity to transform their contemptuous habitus into one that realises local values. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Feng and the Phoenix Fruit is the second of the picture book series Journey to Resilience. The main character Feng had to deal with difficult issues such as family disadvantage, schoolwork, peer relations, disability, injury, and risk behaviours. While Feng’s life trajectory was disrupted by these difficult issues, the empowering community nurtured a resilience process that got Feng back on track. Kaya – the main character of the first picture book Kaya’s First Day of School – played a mentor role in Feng’s journey to resilience. The Phoenix Fruit cured Feng’s wounds, physically and psychologically. It drew on the symbolic meaning of the Phoenix as an immortal, resilient legendary creature reborn from its own ashes. Feng and the Phoenix Fruit can be used for resilience education. Parents and educators can use the picture book as a resource for guided reading with pre-schoolers. Children in lower primary school years can read the book by themselves and discuss the book with parents, teachers, and peers.

The Suicidality Scale was developed simultaneously in Chinese and English. The Chinese versions (traditional and simplified) have 'identical' items, 8 total. However, each was tested through several linguistic methods. Below, you can find the Suicidality Scale Manual, data, and supporting materials. The Suicidality Scale has a free culture license, please use freely. We welcome further collaboration on this and related projects. A preprint of our Suicidality Scale development and validation is here: https://osf.io/b4qut Please see the Suicidality Scale page for data and more info: https://osf.io/vjxnq/ Here you can find the Spanish Suicidality Scale: https://osf.io/fze6j/

usc Once commentators and policy-makers divest themselves of deep cultural Western assumptions that only democracies can prosper economically, or that capitalism and liberal democracy is a holy combination – assumptions buried in the metaphysical hard core of modernity and modernization theory – then there is a chance that Western theorists might come to be appreciate the complexities of an Asian future and China’s dominant role within it. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Experiences of alternative teacher preparation programs that target high achieving university graduates have sparked global debate. This study probes the sociological mechanisms by which exceptional graduates compete for temporary school teaching posts in disadvantaged schools. Interview data produced with 16 participants were analysed. The analyses reveal that reasons behind program participation can be attributed to the participants' socio-educational privileges (capital) and dispositions of entrepreneurialism, resistance, and altruism (habitus). These findings invite discussion around the emerging habitus of a current generation of young people in China, as well as understanding of the implications of neoliberalism in teacher education in China. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Decades of developments in inclusive education have seen the waning of deficit discourse towards children with special needs, but exclusion has not yet left the scene. In response to this persistent problem, the Special Issue ‘Destroying the Trojan Horse of “lazy inclusivism”’ collects the wit of Chinese children, parents, and educators to promote inclusion. In this concluding paper, I engage with some sociological analyses of exclusion and inclusion followed by some sociological rethinkings of the notions of agency and resilience. My intention here is not to portray a panorama of the Special Issue or provide a summary of the knowledge built and lessons learnt throughout the articles included in the Special Issue. As these articles are empirically complex and contextually rich, it would be presumptuous to reduce those profound ideas to this concluding article. The concluding article therefore aims to question the perennial, conservative reproduction of structural problems that have long perturbed inclusive education; propose some sociological reworkings to force structural problems to retreat; and spark some debates and critiques among sociologists of education and colleagues of inclusive education. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In recent years, alternative teacher preparation programmes are globally emerging to address teacher quality in 'hard-to-staff' schools. These programmes commonly attract graduates from prestigious universities to teach in disadvantaged schools for two years. One programme of this kind in China is the 'Exceptional Graduates as Rural Teachers' (EGRT). In this paper, we repurpose Bourdieu's sociology to understand the power shift and social change through EGRT fellows' position-(re)takings in subjective and objective crisis during their EGRT service term. Interviews with 16 EGRT participants reveal two themes: (1) In the initial stage of EGRT service, contemptuous habitus navigated EGRT fellows to a position of assumed privilege and misrecognised the arbitrary value of educational capital; (2) Over the EGRT service term, position-retaking gradually came to the fore. EGRT fellows learned to recognise a range of rural teachers' attributes termed as 'localised pedagogical capital'. We conclude the paper with some recommendations for EGRT to transform both EGRT fellows and local teachers into reflexive sociological workers. These recommendations have important implications for a long overdue response to the urban-oriented rural education. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and Professional Learning Community (PLC) are key notions to help understand teacher development for the benefit of student learning. Less understood is the contribution of PLC to PCK. This paper considers the Teaching and Research System in China to be a nationally institutionalised PLC for in-service teacher education. Building on quantitative analysis of a sample of 10,202 teachers, the paper concludes that participation in teaching and research activities within PLCs benefits teachers' PCK. The paper also concludes that building PCK through the Teaching and Research System has potential to counteract regional education inequality. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In diasporic contexts (e.g., Australia, Canada), Asians have long been exposed to the ‘model minority’ discourse (Pettersen, 1966). Such discourse seems justified by decades of empirical evidence from international comparative studies and cross-cultural studies: Chinese students, regardless of living in Chinese-speaking societies or not, are better mathematics performers than non-Chinese peers (see a review in Mu, 2014). Statistically, this achievement gap is persistent from kindergarten to school years (Huntsinger, Jose, Larson, Balsink Krieg, & Shaligram, 2000; Stevenson, Lee, & Stigler, 1986). Interestingly, early cross-national/cultural research found no difference in mathematical cognitive abilities between Chinese and non-Chinese students (Stevenson et al., 1986). This evidence prompts much research to attribute the achievement gap to non-cognitive factors like pedagogy, culture, and socialisation. Yet much of the dynamics and complexities behind the ‘Chinese maths myths’ remain hidden...