Transcending The City-oriented Rural Schooling

Since its advent, discourse study has been prevailing in different academic research fields, including in educational research. China's enduring future hinges on education and most education in China is in rural areas. Thus, it is of great significance to study discourses concerning rural schooling. This thesis aims to explore how the images of rural schooling are constructed by various discourses. Then, an alternative approach to understanding rural schooling is sought through the deconstruction and reconstruction of such discourses. Specifically, this thesis attempts to address the following research questions:1) How do mainstream discourses function in constructing the images of rural schooling? 2) How do rural practitioners' own discourses define the culture of schooling? 3) How can discourses of rural schooling be rearticulated and reshaped?The study was conducted in a rural primary school in Wenzhou. The research methods adopted were ethnography, discourse analysis, content analysis, class observation and interview. The data was collected for a period of 13 months, including class records, interviews, textbooks, documents and so on. Through the theoretical lens of discursive formation, culture diversity in schooling as well as place and identity, the thesis attempts to show how rural schooling is constituted by the classroom teaching discourses, the discourses of Learning Wenzhou Dialect activity and the educational document discourses. Two Chinese lessons in Grade Four, an activity called Learning Wenzhou Dialect and part of the Outline of China's National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) are presented and interpreted in the study.In the first place, it is argued that the utilitarian discourses of rural schooling should be deconstructed. Rural schooling should be carried out for its own sake rather than be reduced to making preparation for out-migration of rural students. Besides, it is proposed that the ontological discourses of rural schooling should be reconstructed. Urban schooling and rural schooling are two indispensible and independent categories of education. One should by no means be colonized by the other. Finally, the study maintains that discourses on rural schooling in academic research should be examined. Research is considered as a way of thinking as well as a way of being. Discourses embedded in rural schooling research must be reconstructed in order to revise the scripts that tell people the so-called 'truth' and images of rural schooling. Accordingly, rural practitioners should also re-story their own knowledge about schooling.This study ventures to provide an alternative way of understanding rural schooling in China. Meanwhile, it also illuminates the means of developing rural schooling.