Hannah Soong

International mobility and educational desire: Chinese foreign talent students in Singapore

Singapore’s rapid rise in global capitalism has translated its economic success into massive improvements in material living. Within a brief two decades, Singapore has transformed its labour-intens...

Being and becoming an intercultural doctoral student : reflective autobiographical narratives

This paper underscores the dynamic and complex dimensions of ‘becoming’ an intercultural doctoral student. It employs autobiography as a research method to portray the reshaping of ourselves as doctoral students to help us engage in self-reflexivity on our mediation of academic, personal and cultural identities in international doctoral education. Our self-narratives on how the plurality of our doctoral identities has emerged and how we have mediated these multiple identities show that becoming an intercultural research student is intimately linked to the process of self-empowerment and re-construction of oneself as a flexible and reflexive intercultural learner and human being. The paper concludes by discussing the notion of ‘reciprocal intercultural supervision’ in doctoral education. It highlights the increased need for (Western) supervisors to develop reciprocal interculturality and the capacity for greater agency in their international doctoral students so that both groups can understand each other better.

Why volunteer? The complexities of international pre-service teachers’ intercultural adjustment experiences through community service engagement

Anecdotal evidence suggests that pre-service teachers who have volunteered in schools demonstrate greater awareness of the general operational aspects of a school and, thus, are better prepared for the teaching practicum. However, there is little documented evidence about the cross-cultural challenges of international pre-service teachers volunteering in the host community. Drawing on the preliminary findings of a larger study, this paper offers a hermeneutic view of the adjustment experiences of five international pre-service teachers who have volunteered to be tutors in schools and unpaid helpers within local community centres. The findings highlight a range of cultural and personal dimensions associated with the process of pre-service teacher professional development and their intercultural engagement with members in the host society. Hence, adjustment through community service engagement is viewed as an opportunity to increase the intercultural and intracultural awareness of the international pre-service teachers.

Cultural differences in justificatory reasoning

Justificatory reasoning, the ability to justify one’s beliefs and actions, is an important goal of education. We develop a scale to measure the three forms of justificatory reasoning – absolutism, relativism, and evaluativism – before validating the scale across two cultures and domains. The results show that the scale possessed validity and reliability. With astrology as domain, Western students preferred evaluativism, but Eastern students favoured relativism. However, with adultery as domain, both student cohorts preferred absolutism. Also, compared with Western students, Eastern students were less likely to engage in and more likely to avoid controversial discussions. The findings indicate that culture may influence justificatory reasoning forms, but not with moral domains such as adultery. Collectively, the results also suggest that teachers should not unconditionally aim to develop evaluativism in students, supposedly the highest form of justificatory reasoning by Western standards. They further reinforce researchers caution not to associate collectivism with lack of evaluativistic reasoning skills.

Transnational mobility through education: a Bourdieusian insight on life as middle transnationals in Australia and Canada

ABSTRACT This article argues for a more nuanced view of mobility through education within an era of increased globalisation. We explore questions of transnational mobility through the lens of underexplored Bourdieusian concepts, specifically transnational habitus and habitus clivé. Our analysis shows how ones perception of a ‘better life’ and ones ideology of ‘entrepreneur self’ are produced despite ones encounter with disparity between their fields of their host countries and countries of origin. We therefore assert the need for a more complex conceptual work to unpack the lived experience of mobility especially for those who are unable to operationalise their capital in the transnational field.

Transnationalism in Education: Theoretical Discussions and the Implications for Teaching Global Citizenship Education

This chapter uses the construct of transnationalism as a conceptual lens to examine the tenets of educating for global citizenship. While the goals for educating students for global citizenship are important, the key argument that this chapter offers is that the meaning of ‘global’ should be depicted as trans-centric instead of nation-centric. Furthermore, within an age of mobility, transnationalism can offer new insights on the importance of global citizenship. In doing so, it provokes readers to consider how transnationalism can move citizenship education practices beyond political and geographic boundaries to theory building.

‘It’s the Future!’: Students as Key Stakeholders in Asia Literacy

Although the development of student skills and experiences of Asia are central to the implementation of Asia literacy in schools, the voice of the student is notably absent from the literature. The effort of this chapter is to foreground and valorise the voice and role of students as key stakeholders in relation to Asia literacy, using authentic data collected from three groups of students in a South Australian high school. The students participated in focus groups, responding to a range of open questions in relation to their understanding and experience of Asia literacy, in the classroom and beyond. The findings from these discussions are preseneted in two parts. To start, the broad themes which emerged from the discussions are identified and compared across the different cohorts. Next, in order to unpack them and offer more insight into the broad themes, verbatim examples of the students’ comments in relation to those themes are presented. While the students identify some issues described in the literature, new understandings of these and other issues have been raised. The chapter concludes with recommendations in relation to the development of engaging and coherent pedagogies with measurable outcomes informed by student perspectives and situated in both Australian and Asian contexts.

Building spaces of hope with refugee and migrant-background students

ABSTRACT Within the Australian context, research into schooling experiences of refugee and migrant-background students has tended to focus on developing English language proficiency with little attention given to initiatives that contribute more broadly to students’ social and educational resources. Whilst not denying the significance of English language acquisition, this paper explores strategies, implemented at one school, designed to enhance social, cultural and educational outcomes for refugee and migrant-background students. We draw on a relational view of space informed by Foucault and Lefebvre, and Fraser’s theorisation of justice, to explore the school context, connections to students’ life-worlds, moving beyond trauma and teachers as knowledge producers. Findings suggest that contextualised forms of knowing and practices can work to build connections and educational resources for refugee and migrant-background students. Where human spatiality, including as this relates to schools, produces advantages and disadvantages, we conclude in arguing for further research that incorporates the perspectives and voices of refugee and migrant-background students and their teachers.

Transnational Student-Migrants and the Negotiation of Connectedness and Self- Identity in Australia : The Pains and Gains

As globalisation deepens, student mobility through international education-migration nexus is becoming a prominent feature of today’s global education landscape. Over the last decades, international students have become more visible in most universities, especially in developed countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Europe, North America and even some parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Yet, beneath these visibilities of international students, very few scholarly projects have looked into the desire for overseas education as part of an imagined mobility for transnational flows to adequately deal with the heterogeneity and complexities of education-migration interactions. Drawing on an ethnographic study of seven international student-migrants undertaking Australian Teacher Education, I investigate how students’ imagination for mobility can be a more useful way of understanding the reality of their sense of connectedness and self-identity. By using the work of imagined mobility as a lens for analysis (Soong, 2016), the chapter illustrates how the forms and workings of transnational connectedness are being shaped, rendering the transnational student-migrant a subject of ‘being in flux’ between the pains and gains.

An imagined 'haven' for refugee Muslim families: slowly remaking the school

This paper explores how one Catholic school in Australia set out to reculture its practices with the goal of increasing the social and academic capabilities of their refugee students. It draws on Appadurais (1996) meditation on social imagination to show that educational innovation requires new ways of thinking and doing, both in and beyond the school. Rather, the work of imagination is what enables the remaking of the ethos and practices of a school. Drawing on qualitative data produced through a rapid ethnography approach, our analysis shows how the gradual negotiation of whole-school sustained innovation can begin to produce a space of haven for Muslim refugee families. The study found that it takes time and perseverance to contest the deficit discourses that surround refugee students and their families. The school community has to work across many sites of practice to become a hopeful and enabling space.