Global Learning from the Periphery: An Ethnographic Study of a Chinese Urban Migrant School

This paper presents an ethnographic study on the global learning practice of teachers and students in a Chinese internal migrant school. Rural children have relocated to urban centers with their parents on a massive scale over the past decades, as China undergoes rapid economic changes. Many migrant children have to attend privately run migrant schools which often function within limited budgets. Drawing on various types of data, this study investigates informal learning in a global context. In particular, the research focuses on a Scout program that is modeled on world Scouting movements and that is tailored for the migrant pupils’ educational demands. The data collection tools include participant observation, in-depth interview and document collection. The research finds that, with limited educational resources, the informants learn globally to improve the sustainable development of the migrant pupils, to fight against educational inequality, and to facilitate mutual understanding between the migrant and the urban communities. This paper concludes that global learning plays an important role in the informants’ ‘’up-scaling” progress facilitated by their linguistic capacity, computer literacy, and social network.