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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has investigated international graduate employability in home or host countries. However, limited studies have accounted for such employability across the home and the host. Drawing on Bourdieu's relational and reflexive sociology, this paper critically examined the first author's narrative of his employment experiences as a doctoral graduate navigating across Chinese and Australian academic fields after completing ten years of higher education and research training in Australia. While he encountered various challenges due to capital deficiency and habitus-field mismatch, he also reflexively learned to capitalise on his transnational academic dispositions and decode different logics of practice across different academic fields. Thus, he underwent constant changes of identity, agency, and belonging in his cross-field employment journey, which potentially shaped his transnational habitus. This Bourdieusian reflexive narrative contributes to research and practice on graduate employability and reflexivity from a sociological perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological studies on international research students' resilience to mental distress have attracted much scholarly attention. Yet, sociological inquiries into resilience to 'invisible' pressures such as power imbalances remain limited. Drawing insights from Bourdieu's relational sociology, we recast the psychology of resilience to adversities into a sociology of resilience to symbolic violence. To delve into the latter, we surveyed 220 Chinese international Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students across Australian universities using a self-designed instrument and analysed the data through Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Findings revealed that Chinese international HDR students were drawn into a space of forces fraught with the symbolic violence of supervisor authority, English hegemony, and neoliberalism; yet, simultaneously, they ventured into a space of struggles with such forms of symbolic violence by virtue of their agency and reflexivity as well as peer and supervisor empowerment. Such resilience practice was complicated by their capital portfolio and habitual dispositions, which in turn, contributed differently to their perceptions of symbolic violence and resilience to it. We thereby offer diverse stakeholders strategies in building resilience for (Chinese) international research students within and beyond Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on capitalism and liberal democracy being a holy combination. Topics include Asian histories demonstrating ancient territorial grievances, border disputes, and new security threats as well as interconnected Asian colonial histories and interwoven major ethnic strands; and recent diplomatic systems of ties, trading relationships, and political associations.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bourdieu carved out a distinctive analytical niche for his reflexive sociology. His epistemological tool of field analysis, sometimes coupled with statistical correspondence analysis, is particularly powerful when deciphering the matrix of objective structures and subjective structures within social spaces (field) where agents vie for positions (capital), strategise dispositions (habitus), and negotiate practices. When grappling with the inner workings of the social world and the logic of practice within the social world, Bourdieu favours his field theory over network theory and considers correspondence analysis to be superior to regression analysis. In this paper, I argue that Bourdieu's canonical theory-laden analytical framework does not exclude other methodological approaches. Indeed, Bourdieu himself argues against 'methodological monotheism'. I therefore make an attempt to develop a Bourdieusian approach to Social Network Analysis (SNA) and regression analysis, despite Bourdieu's explicit rebuttal to these methodological schools. To this end, I first review Bourdieu's rebuttal to network analysis and regression analysis. I then tentatively incorporate SNA and regression into Bourdieu's analytical framework. This is followed by an example of using SNA and regression in Bourdieusian research conducted in a Chinese educational context. In this vein, I engage with a Bourdieusian rebuttal to Bourdieu's rebuttal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identity-language link has been widely recognised. In Heritage Language research, the complex entanglement between Chinese ethnic identity and Chinese Heritage Language has gained increasing attention in recent decades. Both social psychological and poststructural schools have offered meaningful insights into this field, but have also received criticism from other perspectives. To think through these two camps of scholarship, this paper draws on Bourdieu’s sociological notion of habitus and zooms in on the visible racial identity of Chinese looks. To unveil the dynamics and nature of this particular form of Chinese identity in relation to Chinese Heritage Language learning, the author first surveyed 230 young Chinese Australian adults and then interviewed five of them. The survey result indicated that perceptions of Chinese looks were significantly related to Chinese Heritage Language proficiency. In addition, the theme of looking Chinese repeatedly emerged from the interview data. Participants considered looking Chinese as an integral part of their Chinese identity, reported powerful others’ stereotypical perception that looking Chinese necessarily meant being able to speak Chinese, and indicated that these internal and external understandings of looking Chinese came to shape their Chinese Heritage Language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rapid pace of urbanisation in China has seen a massive increase in the movement of the rural population to work and live in urban regions. In this large-scale migration context, the educational, health, and psychological problems of floating children are becoming increasingly visible. Different from extant studies, we focus our investigation on the rural dispositions of floating children through interviews with leaders, teachers, and students in four schools in Beijing. Drawing on Bourdieu’s key notions of habitus, capital, and field, our study indicates that the rural habitus of floating children can differentiate these children from their urban peers. This habitus can be marginalised and stigmatised in certain fields but can be recognised and valued as capital in other fields. Our paper offers some implications for research and practice in relation to the schooling of floating children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Classroom support plays a salient role in successful inclusive education, hence it has been widely debated in the literature. Much extant work has only focused on a particular aspect of classroom support. A comprehensive, systematic discussion of classroom support is sporadic in the literature. Relevant research concerning the Chinese context is even more limited. To address this gap, our study developed and validated a multidimensional classroom support model conducive to teachers’ inclusive education practices. Data were drawn from our large-scale survey with inclusive education teachers in Beijing. Further analyses were conducted to compare different dimensions within the classroom support model. Drawing insights from the results, we provide some recommendations for practice and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes, knowledge, and skills are widely recognised as the three pillars of professional competence of inclusive education teachers. Studies emerging from the Chinese context consider these three pillars important for the practice of Learning in Regular Classrooms—an idiosyncratic Chinese form of inclusive education. Our mixed methods study reveals that agency is the fourth pillar of the professional competence for inclusive education teachers in Beijing, China. Results from comparative analysis indicate that the level of teachers’ agency is significantly lower than that of their attitudes, knowledge, and skills. We offer some implications for policy and practice in inclusive education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has a massive population of children with disabilities. To address the special needs of these children, special/inclusive education in China has developed dramatically since the early 1980s onwards. This Special Issue puts together seven empirical studies emerging from the Chinese societies. These studies analyse inclusive discourses embedded in the education policy documents; scrutinise professional competence of inclusive education teachers; evaluate inclusive education practices in physical education, mathematics education, and job-related social skills education provided to students with disabilities; debate the required in-class support for inclusive education teachers; and discuss the social attitudes towards people with disabilities. The foci, methods and theories vary across the seven studies, while their aims converge. These studies are seeking best possible approaches and best available resources that facilitate inclusion. Knowledge built and lessons learned from these studies will provide implications for future inclusive education practices in China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusive education focuses on addressing marginalisation, segregation and exclusion within policy and practice. The purpose of this article is to use critical discourse analysis to examine how inclusion is represented in the education policy and professional documents of two countries, Australia and China. In particular, teacher professional standards from each country are examined to determine how an expectation of inclusive educational practice is promoted to teachers. The strengthening of international partnerships to further support the implementation of inclusive practices within both countries is also justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The critical role that family plays in Chinese Heritage Language learning (CHLL) has gained increasing attention from psychological, political and sociological scholarships. Guided by Bourdieu's notion of ‘habitus’, our mixed methods sociological study firstly addresses the need for quantitative evidence on the relationship between family support and Chinese Heritage Language (CHL) proficiency through a survey of 230 young Chinese Australians; and then explores the dynamics of family support of CHLL through multiple interviews with five participants. The interview data demonstrate ongoing intergenerational reproduction of CHL through various forms of family inculcation. Learners' transition from resistance to commitment is a focus of the analysis. Extant research struggles to theorise the reasons behind this transition. We offer a Bourdieusian explanation that construes the transition as ‘habitus realisation’. Our study has implications for CHL researchers, Chinese immigrant parents and Chinese teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The interaction between heritage language (HL) and ethnic identity has gained increasing scholarly attention over the past decades. Numerous quantitative studies have investigated and vindicated this interaction within certain contexts. Nevertheless, quantitative evidence on this interaction across contexts is absent to date. The current meta-analysis aims to make a contribution in this regard. By integrating relevant studies, this meta-analysis presents a powerful estimation of the reality in relation to the interaction between HL and ethnic identity. By virtue of certain retrieval strategies and selection criteria, the meta-analysis includes 43 data-sets emerging from 18 studies that have addressed the statistical correlation between the proficiency of HL and the sense of ethnic identity associated with different ethnic groups. When contrasted to one another, the results of these included studies are significantly different. However, when combined together, these studies point to a statistically significant moderate positive correlation between sense of ethnic identity and proficiency of HL across different ethnic groups. This result has a medium effect. The meta-analysis also inspires some methodological and theoretical discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The preparation, recruitment, work, and career of teachers are important in education. This is no exemption for special education. However, the shortage of qualified teachers serving students with disabilities has long been an international problem. In China, both the quantity and the quality of special education teachers are of concern. This places unrelenting pressure on special teacher education. Given its growing size and challenges, special teacher education has received increasing attention from research, policy, and practice. However, there is a dearth of scholarship published in English to address these issues. To the best of our belief and knowledge, there is no systematic, comprehensive, and contextualised examination of special teacher education in China to date. This article aims to make a contribution in this regard. First, we present the complexities of the Chinese context in which special teacher education is situated. Second, we synthesise recent literature on special teacher education in China through an extensive review of the relevant studies scattered in English publications. Third, we provide insights into special teacher education in China, regarding its trajectory of policy-making, its history of development, and its strategies and challenges. Finally, we conclude our article with some practical recommendations to aid the future development of special teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The benefits of learning and retaining heritage languages are well documented in the literature. Chinese heritage language learners’ commitment to their heritage language learning has gained significant research ground in social psychological and post-structural schools, with empirical evidence predominantly emerging from the North American contexts. There is scant sociological examination of similar problems conducted outside North America. The current study aims to make a contribution in this regard. The use of Bourdieu's sociological notion of capital in the Australian context complements the social psychological and post-structural work predominantly produced in the North American contexts. The initial quantitative sub-study analyses the impacts of various resources on the Chinese heritage language proficiency of 230 snowball-sampled Chinese Australian respondents to an online survey. The subsequent qualitative sub-study explores the profits of learning Chinese heritage language through interviews with a subset of the survey sample. Findings indicate that cultural, social, and symbolic capital significantly positively contributes to Chinese Australians’ Chinese heritage language proficiency, which, in return, produces profits in different forms of capital. The study suggests a reciprocal relationship between ‘capital’ and Chinese heritage language proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between Heritage Language (HL) and ethnic identity has gained significant research ground in social psychological and poststructural scholarship, with empirical evidence largely emerging from the North American settings. There is little pertinent sociological work conducted outside North America. To fill this gap, this sociological study sets its scene in an Australian context. Drawing on Bourdieu's notion of habitus, the study examines the contribution of Chinese Australians' Chineseness to their Chinese Heritage Language (CHL) proficiency. A total of 230 young Chinese Australians completed the online survey. Results from multiple regression indicate that habitus of Chineseness is one of the significant predictors for the CHL proficiency of these young people. The study makes a theoretical contribution to investigate ethnic identity–HL link through the notion of habitus and makes a methodological contribution to quantify this habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]