Abstract
This article examines the relationship between international education and English as an additional language (EAL) education in British Columbia’s public education system. Drawing on a wide range of data generated as part of a longitudinal study of high school aged fee-paying international students (FISs) in an urban school district in British Columbia, I make the case that FIS recruitment and presence is having a socializing impact on EAL education in British Columbia’s public schools. In contrast to the way FISs are accounted for in official government statistics, I show how, across multiple actors and dimensions of the public system, FISs are routinely treated and represented as English language learners (ELLs). I argue that these routinized constructions are evidence of the multilayered socialization of EAL education by internationalization efforts in British Columbia’s K-12 sector, and discuss some of the ways this FIS socialization is consequential for EAL learning and teaching in public high schools. I situate my discussion of the FIS-EAL relationship within the larger context of applied linguistics and education-related research on internationalization and educational migration in K-12 settings, and raise questions about how FIS socialization is relevant to discussions of public education.
Highlights
While at the national level the largest percentage of international students attend tertiary-level institutions, in 2014 roughly 50,000 international students in Canada were studying at the elementary or secondary grade levels (Canadian Bureau for International Education, 2015)
The findings reported in this article were guided by the following questions: 1. In what ways and to what effect are students, teachers, administrators and other stakeholders socialized to understand fee-paying international students (FISs) as English language learners (ELLs)?
Given that at present 100% of FIS tuition revenue in British Columbia (BC) is collected, managed, and distributed by school districts, and that there is little transparency about how these funds are allocated for English as an additional language (EAL) learning and/or teaching at the district or school level (Kuehn, 2014), broader understanding of the connections between FISs and EAL education is needed. Such an understanding would be relevant to FISs, who have been recruited with the promise of access to quality education and a BC high school credential, but may not be receiving the specialized ELL funding they require in order to realize that promise
Summary
While at the national level the largest percentage of international students attend tertiary-level institutions, in 2014 roughly 50,000 international students in Canada were studying at the elementary or secondary grade levels (Canadian Bureau for International Education, 2015). In educational policy and practice affecting K-12 contexts in BC, the category “international student” is used to refer to students who “have moved from outside of Canada to British Columbia and do not meet the residency requirements of Section 82 of the School Act” (BCMoE, n.d.) Because of this, these students are charged yearly tuition fees to attend public schools (Study in BC, 2015). Policy researchers have pertinently framed the impact of FISs on BC’s public education system in negative terms, with a dual critical focus on (a) neoliberal competition between school districts for FIS tuition monies, and (b) the educational inequities engendered by such competition (e.g., Fallon & Poole, 2014; Kuehn 2002, 2012a, 2012b; Poole & Fallon, 2015).
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