As the world’s second-largest economy and the second most populous country, China hosts numerous international schools, some of which allow Chinese citizens to attend. In addition to foreign-owned international schools, there are many private bilingual schools (Chinese internationalized schools) and dual-curriculum international departments affiliated with Chinese public schools that are open to Chinese citizens. These for-profit schools often use affective storytelling to market their expertise in international education. Using a cultural studies approach and drawing on an affect lens, this study investigates how private international schools’ websites use colonial discourse and affective storytelling to attract prospective students and shape social imaginaries of Western educational supremacy. First, this study provides a literature review on themes related to the identities, curriculum, and tensions surrounding K-12 international schooling in China. Next, it introduces cultural studies and affect theory, and explains their interconnections as the theoretical foundations of this research. The methodology of Multimodal Critical Colonial Discourse Analysis (MCCDA) is also detailed to outline how textual and visual contents on the websites of Chinese internationalized schools are analyzed. Based on a systematic investigation of these schools’ websites, this paper argues that Chinese internationalized schools use their websites as forms of affective infrastructure to shape and normalize colonial logics and the supremacy of Western educational hegemony globally while marginalizing other ways of learning, knowing, and being.

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Exploring Colonial Discourse in Affective Storytelling by Chinese Internationalized Schools

  • Zhenyang Xu

摘要

As the world’s second-largest economy and the second most populous country, China hosts numerous international schools, some of which allow Chinese citizens to attend. In addition to foreign-owned international schools, there are many private bilingual schools (Chinese internationalized schools) and dual-curriculum international departments affiliated with Chinese public schools that are open to Chinese citizens. These for-profit schools often use affective storytelling to market their expertise in international education. Using a cultural studies approach and drawing on an affect lens, this study investigates how private international schools’ websites use colonial discourse and affective storytelling to attract prospective students and shape social imaginaries of Western educational supremacy. First, this study provides a literature review on themes related to the identities, curriculum, and tensions surrounding K-12 international schooling in China. Next, it introduces cultural studies and affect theory, and explains their interconnections as the theoretical foundations of this research. The methodology of Multimodal Critical Colonial Discourse Analysis (MCCDA) is also detailed to outline how textual and visual contents on the websites of Chinese internationalized schools are analyzed. Based on a systematic investigation of these schools’ websites, this paper argues that Chinese internationalized schools use their websites as forms of affective infrastructure to shape and normalize colonial logics and the supremacy of Western educational hegemony globally while marginalizing other ways of learning, knowing, and being.