Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Integrated Article

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Education

Supervisor

Zhang, Zheng

2nd Supervisor

Heydon, Rachel

Co-Supervisor

Abstract

This dissertation concerns cross-border biliteracy education. It aims to understand how biliteracy education curricula can disrupt binaries between first and second languages, print-based literacy and multimodal literacies, and formal and informal literacy experiences in the service of equitable, diverse, inclusive, and ethical education. This dissertation consists of three papers that draw on data from two research projects. The first paper, “Literacies and Identities in Transnational Education: A Case Study of Literacy Curricula in a Canadian Transnational Education Programme in China”, and the second paper, “Literacy Teacher Agency and Transnational Education: A Case Study of Curriculum Implementation in a Sino-Canadian Secondary School Program in China” report on findings from a project titled “A multiple case study of literacy curricula in Canadian transnational education programs in China”. These papers concern the literacy and identity options provided to the students and teachers’ roles in the enactment of the school’s curriculum. Findings from the study of the first two papers reveal factors that mediate students’ literacy experiences and identity options and teachers’ curriculum implementation. Main mediators included the school’s governing structure on local/expatriate teachers and local/global curricula, standardized testing systems, the school’s policy on the use of digital resources, and students’ facility with the English language. The factors combined to create and exacerbate binaries of first and second languages, local and global curricula, and formal schooling and out-of-school experiences which may further constrain students’ identity options. The third paper, “Enacted Agency in a Cross-Border, Online Biliteracy Curriculum Making: Creativity and Bilingual Digital Storytelling” responded to the need identified in the first two studies for curricula to promote expansive literacy and identity options to students. This study experimented with how cross-border biliteracy curriculum could create opportunities for students to make meaning across languages, modes, and spaces. It took the form of a netnography of an online emergent biliteracy curriculum, culminating with students’ multimodal digital stories. This study provides a counterpoint to the standardized curriculum of secondary school. Findings related that the intra-actions among non-humans (e.g., materials, time, and physical and virtual spaces) and humans (e.g., researchers, teachers, and students) shaped participants’ creative acts.

Summary for Lay Audience

This dissertation focuses on literacy curricula in cross-border education contexts. Cross-border education has gained increased attention, due to the progress of globalization. This dissertation reports on two studies that concern two different types of cross-border education programs. The dissertation consists of three papers. The first two papers report on an ethnographic study that examines a Sino-Canadian transnational education program at the secondary school level in China. These two papers respectively concern students’ experiences and teachers’ roles in actualising Canadian and Chinese curricula. Findings reported in these two papers show various factors that have collectively influenced students’ experiences and teachers’ practices in this program (e.g., the school’s administrative structures and instructional management systems, students’ differences in language proficiency, tests’ expectations, and the school’s provision and use of resources, digital resources in particular). The third paper reports on an online biliteracy education program for students located in Canada and China, aged between 11 and 15. Responding to the limitations reported in the first study to expand diverse learners’ meaning making in different languages and modes, the online biliteracy program explored how cross-border biliteracy curricula could provide biliteracy learners with more literacy and identity options. Students in this study had the opportunities to create digital stories in their preferred language(s), to include content of their interests, and to make digital stories in ways to convey and exchange meanings. These digital stories take various forms including LEGO stop-motion movie, shadow puppet show, animation, and Minecraft movie. Combining interconnected findings across these three papers, this dissertation hopes to contribute to knowledge in the promotion of equitable, diverse, and inclusive (bi)literacy education.

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