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Abstract
China’s engagement with the outside world over the last 60 years has intersected with its internal ethnic relations in a host of complex ways. In the context of China’s changing policies on ethnic relations, this study critically examines key discourses shaping China’s minority/bilingual education policy, and how these policies are enacted in three Tibetan schools.
A qualitative research methodology involving an ethnographic case study approach was employed, rooted in a social constructionist epistemology. Three theoretical lenses provided the conceptual framework: policy genealogy, discourse theory, and policy enactment. Documentary, interview, and observational data was collected from a Tibetan farming town school, a Tibetan semi-agro-pastoral school, and a Tibetan pastoral school.
Findings show that firstly, a political-moral unity discourse reflecting a discursive dichotomy between ‘backward’ minorities and the ‘advanced’ Han majority and a cultural diversity discourse reflecting neoliberal ideology have been central themes in China’s minority/bilingual education history. These conflicting discourses were further found to be inscribed into the everyday practices of Tibetan school life.
A third finding identified varied dynamics of discursive power relations and Tibetan identity across the three schools. In the first school, a moral-neoliberal order fostering monolingual education was identified, in which Tibetan students developed instrumental linguistic dispositions, characterized by Han-only values and marginal Tibetan identities. In the second school, a moral-cultural order fostering monolingual and bicultural education was identified, in which Tibetan students developed instrumental linguistic dispositions, characterized by cultural distance and alienated Tibetan identities. In the third school, however, a cultural-neoliberal order was identified promoting bilingual and multicultural education, in which Tibetan students developed open linguistic dispositions, characterized by multicultural values and core Tibetan identities.
The study reveals the hybrid nature of neoliberal globalisation processes in China’s minority education policies and describes the role such hybrid discourses play in shaping public representations and policy enactments in Tibetan schools. This study makes a contribution to developing the theory of policy enactment by extending its reach to the analysis of issues of language, identity, and power affecting bilingual learning of Tibetan communities with relevance to other bilingual and/or multiethnic contexts.