Chinese international schoolgirls in an Australian independent school: gender, ethnicity and international education

This study draws on a feminist of difference theoretical framework to investigate the identities of a group of Chinese international schoolgirls enrolled in a Victorian independent school. I also employ the analytics of Michel Foucault - governmentality, technologies of self and surveillance -in order to understand the ways in which the schoolgirls regulate their schooling practices as they shape their identities. The notion of resistance is employed to understand the processes of mediation and negotiation in which they are engaged as they construct their multiple identities. Twelve Chinese international schoolgirls enrolled in Year 11 and Year 12, and nine of their subject teachers, were involved in this study. The research methods included individual and group interviews with the schoolgirls and their teachers. I also examined a set of documents published by the school. These documents included the school magazine, newsletters and marketing documents. As a result of this investigation I conclude that ways of being Chinese schoolgirls in an Australian independent school are multiple and shifting. Gender and ethnicity/Chineseness are crucial markers for the schoolgirls as they shape their identities. In my conversations with the schoolgirls and the teachers, both groups drew on multiple discourses and employed the terms ‘good’ Chinese girl and ‘traditional’ Chinese girl as a way of describing their understandings to me. In addition to this terminology, the Chinese schoolgirls and their teachers acknowledged the existence of other student identities in their school. These identities included that of ‘elite’ all round student and the ‘perfect all round international student. Elite all round students are understood through the discourses which operate in independent schools in Australia. To be an elite all round student, an independent school student must be academically successful as well as a successful participant in co-curricular activities. Teachers supplemented the terms ‘perfect’ and ‘international’ on the rare occasions when they deemed an international student could be represented in this manner. The Chinese schoolgirls drew on the multiple discourses which inhabited this schooling site as a means of shaping their individual identities. They also engaged in the process of self-regulation and surveillance as a way of achieving the identities that they desired. While some of the schoolgirls maintained the symbolic boundaries of the ‘good’ and ‘traditional’ Chinese schoolgirl, others crossed into spaces that were conventionally occupied by local Australian schoolboys. These findings endorse the notion that in Australian independent schools, certain identities are privileged while others are marginalised. The Chinese international schoolgirls negotiated these stereotypical representations through a subtle and passive resistance and in doing so, shaped new identities.