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Abstract

Most research bodies rest on a fixed boundary between daytime and shadow education until some recent literature investigates their dyadic relationships. Ineffective policies toward shadow education often come when countries fail to understand such relationships. With the nomadic inquiry, this article aims to reshape the whole landscape of daytime and shadow education under the double reduction policy (DRP) in China using the Foucaultian and Deleuze & Guattari's frameworks with policymaking implications. Firstly, it depicts key features of the transboundary learning culture and schooling system (TLCS) connecting daytime and shadow education and uncovers those power relations among state and non-state actors under DRP in China. Secondly, it addresses crossing-over research boundaries using the nomadic inquiry from international perspectives. Notably, traditional research agendas in daytime education can be “transferred” into shadow education and even to the whole realm of TLCS.

Keywords

power dynamics nomadic movement research boundaries shadow education transboundary learning culture

Introduction

On July 24, 2021, the Chinese government released the official statements of the double reduction policy (abbreviated by DRP) (GOCPCCCSC, 2021). Under DRP, there has been one reduction in the burden of out-of-lesson paid tutoring programs and another reduction in amount and duration of homework in the vast territory of China. Running tutorial times of many chained tutorial centers (Xiàowài Péixùn Jīgòu in Chinese, labeled as cram schools hereafter) are reduced at K9 (Grades 1–9) levels. Moonlighting daytime school teachers are being caught, punished, and even fired in case of delivering illegal paid supplementary tutorial lessons to their or others’ daytime students. No daytime schools can provide out-of-lesson extra-paid tutorial lessons under DRP.

In this article, the terms “private tutoring” and “shadow education” are used interchangeably. They refer to out-of-lesson provision of extra tutoring lessons on academic subjects paid by needy parents for their schooling children, besides daytime education. Bray and Zhang (2023) recently used shadow education provision of private (supplementary) tutoring to depict their inter-relationships. The current study in this article is based on a relational ontology of the transboundary learning culture and schooling (TLCS) system in K12 education of China. The researchers used nomadic inquiry to scrutinize the TLCS system under DRP governance. The authors used participant observation, interviews, and case studies (Creswell, 2003; Yin, 1994) to investigate the inseparable relationships among state actors (policymakers, national curriculum developers, and government officers in central and regional ministries of education), non-state actors (tutoring company owners, tutors, tutees and daytime schooling children and their parents, daytime teachers, and principals), research contexts (different types of shadow education and daytime schooling systems), and researchers. What is being researched is also regarded as a research body. In this article, Deleuze and Guattari (1972/1977, 1987/2003)'s rhizomatic analysis is incorporated to depict complicated nomadic movement among learners (as tutees), tutors, and even parents in the TLCS ecology. Secondly, Foucault (1972, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1984)'s notions of “power/knowledge” and “governmentality” were utilized to depict power relations between the state and non-state actors in the shadow education discourse during the research period from December 1, 2021, to December 31, 2022.

Theoretical Framework

In Foucault (1972, 1977)'s earlier development, he uses the term “power/knowledge” to specify power being constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding, and truth. He then conceptualizes “power” as relational forces permeating educational institutions and social organizations connecting all individuals and social groups bodies in a web of mutual influence (Karlberg, 2005). Each society has its regime of truth, shaped by cultural, historical, and societal development over time. The so-called “general politics” of truth are types of discourses that help distinguish between true and false statements, based on which value judgments are formed, and the techniques and procedures are taken for granted with normalization and standardization (Foucault, 1983, 1984). Besides being spoken and written forms of linguistic utterance, discourses can be conceived as social constructs, created and reproduced by those who have the power and dominant means of communication, governed by social norms and cultural values over time through dynamic social changes and reforms (Foucault, 1972).

His notion of “governmentality” (Foucault, 1977, 1983, 1984) is a bit different from our daily life usage of governments and governance. In his philosophy, the term “government” not only refers to political structures and administrative management of states but also designates the ways toward which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed. And to govern, in this sense, is to control the possible fields of action of others in long discursive practices. So, there is a power, there is always resistance, which is inseparable from power. Noteworthy, “governmentality,” the overarching “problem of government” has the two sides of the same coin, being governed versus governance. Indeed, Foucault has deep concerns on the “know-hows” of governance. For instance, it is interesting to know how governance emerges, how and whom to be governed, how to govern oneself or others effectively, by whom and what criteria we should accept being governed, what is the best form of governance, and so forth.

Foucault has three meanings of “governmentality” in individuals, human relationships, organizations, communities, and societies (Binkley & Capetillo, 2009; Foucault, 1984). Firstly, the “governmentality” points to the ensemble shaped by the analyses, computations, institutions, procedures, reflections, and strategies exercised by such a specific (albeit complex) form of power, which has as its target population. Secondly, “governmentality” refers to the tendency over time, leading to the pre-eminence over all other forms of power, which may be termed as “government.” Thirdly, “governmentality” is the subsequent process and the results, by which the state gradually “becomes governmentalized.” As a result, the “governmentality” approach refers to the study of power, stressing the governing actions of individuals, organizations, communities, and societies, instead of the sovereignty of the laws.

Opposite to one disciplinarian form of power, the “governmentality” is generally associated with the willing participation and active consent of the governed people and parties. Foucault (1972) contends that every education system is a political way for maintaining or modifying the appropriation of educational discourse with knowledge and the enacted powers. When the Foucault notion of “governmentality” is applied to the shadow education discourse, it takes the shaping forces of the societal governance toward the shadow education systems and its dyadic power relations with the “shadowed” daytime schooling systems at local, national, regional, and global levels. On one hand, some state policymakers, educationalists, and school practitioners consider the public good of shadow education (Bray & Kwo, 2014) and possible collaborations between daytime and shadow education (Yamato & Zhang, 2017). The “governmentality” of shadow education systems refers to the exercises of their organized political power acting upon them in their localities with the stakeholders’ active consent and willingness to participate in their own governance. On the other hand, some other states or countries totally reject or partially deny the functions and utility values of shadow education, alongside the daytime schooling systems under their governance. The regional and central ministries of education endeavor to control, regulate, and even ban various forms of shadow education or private tutoring, based on sociocultural and other ideopolitical forms of power (e.g., creativity, egalitarian, pragmatist, utilitarian criteria). Local, regional, and international organizations and some traditional academic fields often stick to the “governmentality” of daytime schooling systems without paying attention to shadow education ones. They regard shadow education as one possible way to destruct daytime schooling with backwash effects on it, increasing students’ learning burden, exacerbating educational inequalities, and causing social equality problems. For example, negative values concerning shadow education in China (GOCPCCCSC, 2021), Germany (Entrich & Lauterbach, 2019), Japan (Entrich, 2018), Korea (Byun, 2014; Sung & Kim, 2010), Russia (Mikhaylova, 2022), and from cross-national perspectives (Dang & Rogers, 2008).

Literature Review

Voluminous international research literature mostly centers on the socioeconomic, sociological, sociocultural, sociohistorical, and curricular aspects of shadow education, and its policy governance from local, national, regional, cross-national, and international perspectives. Socioeconomic investigations mainly scrutinize the demand-supply mechanism of shadow education systems in terms of the demand determinants and supply factors for and against private tutoring and inter-relationships (Bray & Kwok, 2003; Dang, 2007; Tansel & Bircan, 2007). Sociological lens usually focuses on how achievement gaps and educational inequalities are being further widened in terms of cultural and social capital when needy children from families of high socioeconomic status (SES) seek better or more tutoring services than those from low-SES ones (Entrich, 2018; Zhou & Kim, 2006). But the overall results in a wide range of literature were inconclusive or divergent (Byun, 2014). Sociohistorical approaches reveal how changes in basic education, economy, and ideopolitical reforms shape the scale and types of shadow education over time (Mikhaylova, 2022; Zhang & Bray, 2021). Sociocultural research studies cover corruption threats (Kobakhidze, 2014; Zhang, 2014), effectiveness and efficiency of tutoring (Dang & Rogers, 2008; Yung, 2020), parenting, maid and tutor effects (Cheo & Quah, 2005; Park et al., 2011), parentocracy and parent agency (Tan, 2017; Yung & Hajar, 2023, pp. 73–92; Yung & Zeng, 2021), cram schools (Kany, 2021; Yamato & Zhang, 2017), how teacher power shapes tutoring demand (Zhang, 2014), and tutors’ professional teaching identities (Liu & Sammons, 2021). More specified curriculum studies examine the effectiveness of shadow curriculum in Korea (Kim & Jung, 2019), the negative associations between academic results in international baccalaureate (IB) programs and participation in tutoring in China (Wright et al., 2018), and the dynamics of English private tutoring in cross-national and cross-regional domains (Yung & Hajar, 2023). Multilevel policy governance discussions focus on regulatory practices and increasing levels of intervention (Bray, 2009) in monitoring or restraining the growth of shadow education (Bray & Hajar, 2022; Zhang, 2023). However, multilevel power cohesions among state and non-state actors are still under-explored in local and international contexts.

Noteworthy, there is a tacit assumption common to local and international research literature that shadow education can be separated from daytime schooling for investigation, as the former to some extent mirrors the latter or the latter causes the former. Some comparative education research bodies examine shadow education systems in cross-regional and cross-national domains, based on the clear-cut definitions of private tutoring or shadow education. However, recent empirical research studies reflect that shadow curricula/education can complement (deepen, enrich) and even supplant the role of daytime one (Bhorkar & Bray, 2018; Kim & Jung, 2019; Mahmud, 2019). Therefore, the boundaries between daytime and shadow education, and between teachers and tutors are blurred (Bray, 2021c; Zhang, 2023) in some cases. Bray (2021b, p. 2) further notes the multifaceted shadow education systems, with parts extending beyond its mimic function by sketching their spatial lenses of geography. Regulating tutoring practices mostly focus on mediating between demand and supply factors without thoroughly investigating the dyadic relationships between daytime and shadow education, leading to ineffective regional and national policies (Bray, 2009; Dang & Rogers, 2008; Zhang, 2023). Indeed, ideopolitical forces acting on state and non-state actors in the fluidic relationships between daytime and shadow education systems are still under-researched.

Recently, some holistic approaches undertaken by Bray (2023), Zhang and Bray (2017; 2021), Yamato and Zhang (2017), Zhang (2023), and Kim and Jung (2019; 2022) focus on the dyadic relationships between daytime and shadow education, instead of taking shadow education system as a separate unit of analysis. Bray (2023) also calls for microlevel interactions shaping the nature and outcomes of shadow education related to daytime education. Zhang and Bray (2017) examine how needy parents exercise neoliberalist choices of preferred types of private tutoring at the confluence of daytime and shadow education in China. Further, Zhang and Bray (2021) scrutinize the dynamic interactions between urbanization and the growth of shadow education related to economic and education reforms while Yamato and Zhang (2017) outline the dynamic interactions between daytime and shadow education in Japan. For better control or reduce the growth of shadow education in comparative perspectives, Zhang (2023) reminds us to take prompt policy actions using multiple perspectives and consider daytime and shadow education altogether. Meanwhile, Kim and Jung (2022, pp. 62–63) develop the transboundary learning cultures and schooling (TLCS) framework using Deleuze and Guattari's (1972/1977, 1987/2003) rhizomatic analysis to theorize the relationships between daytime schooling and shadow education in some East Asian cities or countries (other than China). They conceptualize four features of complex, fluidic, and inter-connected learning spaces, consilience of learning materials, a fusion of the concepts of good (active and passive) learners, and co-existence of two formal and informal academic success paths in TLCS. On evaluation, such a framework sheds new light on the new paradigmatic development of daytime and shadow education research to capture the entire students’ learning spaces.

Applications of TLCS in Learning Cultures of China

In this article, Kim and Jung (2022)'s four TLCS features are used due to their simplicity and universal applicability in depicting the learning cultures shuttling between daytime and shadow education in China. Besides contextualizing Kim and Jung (2022)'s TLCS framework, the current study utilizes Foucault's notions of “power/knowledge” and “governmentality” to articulate the key features and internal structure of TLCS concerning the power dynamics among state and non-state actors in China under the DRP governance. The synergy of Deleuze & Guattari's and Foucault's frameworks helps give the full picture of the TLCS's application into learning cultures connecting daytime and shadow education systems. The former analysis helps articulate the overall structure of TLCS while the latter analysis helps depict internal power relations.

Methodology of Nomadic Inquiry

During inseparable material-discursive entanglements in nomadic inquiry, both humans and nonhumans agents/contexts/processes related to humans are equally important for making meanings. Nomadic researchers (the two authors) in general not only “center” themselves in an awareness of their bias and values, but also “decenter” themselves by knowing the interactive roles of other agents and their interrelationships (Sidebottom, 2019). Methodologically, nomadic inquiry gains a new understanding of the process of “becoming” (Braidotti, 2012, 2013), instead of “being” in interpretive/naturalist camp. Nomadic space depicts the dynamic nomadic movement of learners or even tutors (including moonlighting daytime teachers) from one learning and teaching state/venue to another, articulated from poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives.

Research Directions

The focus of the study was to depict the nomadic movements of inhabitants (including tutees, their parents, and daytime teachers/tutors) under DRP and use various types of data to conceptualize the features of TLCS in the vast territory of China and to depict and conceptualize some multilevel power relations between daytime and shadow education. The first author made observations, carried out semi-structured interviews, and analyzed policy documents in the shadow education discourse using snowball samples (Creswell, 2003) while the second author provided a literature review. All the informants came from East China, South-Central China, and Northwestern China during the research period.

Internal Structure of Nomadic Movement of Inhabitants in China

Using such a rhizomatic analysis, Kim and Jung (2022) unfold the interconnected and discursive learning and teaching spaces in which daytime students as tutees, tutors (including moonlighting teachers) have their nomadic movement in TLCS. Non-state actors were depicted as nomads of TLCS. The internal structure of TLCS related to daytime and shadow education discourses was exemplified by the inhabitants’ nomadic movements under DRP in China. Categorically, shadow education discourse is one part of TLCS, which embraces both daytime and shadow education systems, formal and informal education, lifelong and life-wide learning, and so forth. For brevity and sharpening focus, this article solely scrutinizes the dyadic relationships between daytime schooling and shadow education systems. During the research period, there were three main types of nomadic spaces in the shadow education discourse of TLCS in China at micro- and mesolevels.

Learners as tutees in the bilateral, dynamic process of their deterritorialization and reterritorialization between daytime schooling/curricula and types of shadow education/curricula. With a return to daytime schooling, shadow education plays complementary/supplementary role whereas, without such return, it plays its supplanting role. There are still some learners in the fixed state without deterritorialization or reterritorialization. That means there is no demand for shadow education and no nomadic shift or movement.

Both deterritorialization and reterritorialization occur simultaneously in the aforementioned TLCS. Deterritorialization enables learners to constitute or extend the space of their reterritorializing various types (or one single type) of shadow curriculum or education (Kim & Jung, 2019). Absolute reterritorialization refers to one type whereas relative deterritorialization or reterritorialization refers to more than one type. Relative deterritorialization is always accompanied by relative reterritorialization or vice versa (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 1987/2003). This is fully applicable in China. Facing societal pressure and studying competitiveness in Grades 6, 9 and 10–12 levels in China, some nomadic learners would diversify their types of tutoring when they were further promoted to the stressful upper levels of schooling during the research period.

Meantime, subject to relational ontology, nomadic inquiry in the TLCS framework helps depict moonlighting daytime teachers’, full-time or part-time tutors’ nomadic movement beyond their daytime working times. More varieties were also applied to (grand) parents’ physical nomadic movement when they sent their schooling (grand)children to various types of tutoring venues or vice versa. Similarly, tutors’ physical and virtual nomadic movement reflected changes in the modes, types, and venues of delivering their tutoring services. Noticeably, the boundary between daytime schooling and shadow education is blurred. The fluidic nature of their nomadic movement suffices to explain why the boundaries between teachers as tutors and tutors as teachers are blurred in shadow education discourse. Such qualitative depictions of TLCS cannot be found in most past research on learning and tutoring cultures in China and comparative perspectives.

Some interview data revealed daytime Grade 9–12 students’ and tutees’ nomadic movement from their daytime lessons to their afterschool or weekend tutorial lessons and vice versa in an online mode during the pandemic. And the interview data with the experienced cram school academic manager also uncovered their nomadic movement from one type of tutorial school (or one form of tutoring) to another. Their learning and tutoring nomadic spaces are interconnected in the TLCS.

Four Key Features of TLCS in China

In China, key features of TLCS firstly embrace the fluidic and inter-connected learning spaces in which the functionality, running modes, and purposes of tutoring were totally affected by COVID-19 and policy governance. Interview and observation data revealed tutees’ nomadic movement in online learning between formal schooling and informal tutoring during the lesson suspension under the COVID-19's severe attack. Daytime students or private tutees were the same persons sitting at their residential home with most morning and early afternoon sessions belonging to daytime schooling whereas the late afternoon and evening sessions referred to private tutoring on weekdays. Private tutoring was still going on weekends, especially for Grade 9–12 students in some regions of China.

Secondly, consilience of assessment, curriculum standards, and learning materials in daytime schooling and shadow education was found in TLCS. Indeed, there was no sharp distinction between formal schooling and informal tutoring in curriculum contents and learning materials except for more examination-oriented instructions and skill-based training in private tutors’ learning instructions and pedagogy during the suspension of daytime schools, caused by the pandemic. There is no clear-cut distinction between the pedagogical roles and functions of daytime and shadow education in the students’ and their parents’ perceptions. Varied running modes included online/offline/hybrid forms of tutoring and online delivery of various course materials, and tutoring in the “hidden” learning platforms was privately provided by mass tutors of cram schools from different geographical origins.

Thirdly, there is a fusion of the concepts of good (active and passive) learners and tutees in TLCS. Case studies and interviews revealed some active learners would have positive learning attitudes, emotional intelligence, and resilience while passive ones would not explicitly exhibit such features. Both active learners and their elder family members have used “learning capital” (Kim & Jung, 2022, p. 31) to acquire or construct subject (propositional) knowledge, collect and analyze relevant information, and develop know-how and emotional intelligence to cope with learning stresses for getting their academic successes in China.

Fourthly, co-existence of two formal and informal academic success paths is involved in TLCS. Formal paths refer to the direct impacts of daytime schooling on daytime students’ successful learning outcomes and informal paths point to the direct effects of private tutoring, parenting education at home, or other informal nonacademic programs. Indeed, there was no sharp distinction between the formal and informal success paths in TLCS. This leads to the co-existence of formal and informal paths of students’ successful learning outcomes.

Multilevel Power Relationships Between Daytime and Shadow Education Systems

Both the COVID-19 pandemic and the double reduction policy (DRP) have shaped a new learning ecology lying between mainstream education and shadow education in China. Notably, there were tensions forces and value dilemmas among key non-state actors at micro- and mesolevels, and state actors at meso/macrolevels with reallocation of educational resources among homes, schools, and communities in the day-time schooling and shadow education systems.

At the ideopolitical level, there is a tension between socialism and neoliberalism before and after DRP was implemented on July 24, 2021. Case studies and interview data have shown that officers in local ministries of education, most school principals, daytime teachers (and even some parents) showed resistance against tutees’ and tutors’ nomadic movement. It is because it is not healthy for schooling children to seek long hours of paid tutoring services on weekday evenings and weekends. The dominating ideology of socialism in China aims to have stringent control of mass tutoring on academic subjects and ensure its equalitarian provision of K-9 education to all schooling children. Under the DRP governance, registered tutoring companies cannot launch any type of tutoring beyond the permitted times and moonlighting teachers are prohibited from providing any types of paid tutoring services on K-9 academic subjects in the vast territory of China. But some tutees’ parents and even some moonlighting daytime teachers are embedded in an interplay of ideopolitical forces under socialism whereas they have the meritocratic drive to consume and deliver tutoring services under microliberalism, respectively.

There is also a tension force between the state government's strict centralized control of the quality of daytime schooling through a series of educational reforms. These include strictly restraining running times of mass tutoring on academic subjects at K-9 levels and punishing moonlighting teachers with some regional disparities in the pace of regulating cram schools and controlling their running times (through decentralization from the central to local governments) under the DRP. Interviews with some regional governments’ senior officials, tutoring school owners, and star tutors realized that there have been different regional paces of monitoring, regulating, and closing registered tutoring companies.

In Foucault's philosophy, power shapes knowledge and knowledge in turn shapes power. Power using Foucault's discourse analysis in the transboundary learning culture and schooling system (TLCS) of China can be categorized as follows:

Ideological power for the state's governance under President Xi's socialist leadership.

Cultural power shapes the fundamental beliefs in heritage Confucian culture in China which heavily stresses on learning and craving for upward social mobility through academic success in high-stake examinations (like zhongkao and gaokao).

Bureaucratic power for educational decision-makers to implement educational policies at central and regional levels.

Consumer power for parents/students to consume tutoring services based on their actual needs or their affordability and private tutors or some blackmailed daytime teachers to provide paid tutorial services involving parentocracy and tutorocracy.

Educational power for actors to exercise: educationalists and school practitioners joined global movements like Education for All, positive education, and lifelong or life-wide education (from egalitarian/all-rounded education perspectives) in China.

Equalitarian power for state/non-state actors including educationalists, policymakers to consider that obtaining individual/societal success should be attained through achieved status, rather than acquired status through meritocracy (neoliberalism at micro- and macrolevels).

Intellectual power for educational researchers, educationalists, and educational policymakers to extend previous research bodies from daytime schooling system to shadow education one or vice versa and even to the whole dyadic relationships between the systems and the entire TLCS.

Notably, some state/non-state actors have experienced the following tension points after DRP between bureaucratic/educational/equalitarian/ideological power, exercised by state actors in local and central ministries of education and consuming/cultural power in non-state actors’ mindsets.

Power Relations Lying Between Daytime and Shadow Education

The Foucautian notions of “power/knowledge” and “governmentality” help us deconstruct some sociological concepts, based on different reference points to evaluate power sources, power agency, and path among state and non-state actors in the shadow education discourse. The underlying power relations with some new conceptual notions are depicted as follows. For instance, sociologically speaking, parentocracy is fully embodied in consumer choices under parents’ or tutees’ intensive demand for multiple forms of tutoring in meritocratic society of China, constituted by zhongkao (the regional senior high school entrance examinations at Grade 9 level) and gaokao (the largest national university entrance examination system at Grade 12 level) in China.

Crossing-Over Research Boundaries in TLCS

Over the past three decades, shadow education research bodies have been confined to static relationships between daytime and shadow education, starting from Stevenson & Baker's studies (1992). In comparison, nomadic inquiry using the relational ontology and material-discursive entanglement helps reposition shadow education discourse by “immersing” its researchers into the TLCS system. Crossing over research boundaries transcends the fixed dichotomies between daytime and shadow education and between online and offline learning. More interactions from multiple perspectives should be involved in future research directions (cf. Bray, 2023). Inter-connected and fluidic temporal and spatial microlevel interactions among non-state actors are new focused units of analysis in the mesolevel interactions between daytime and shadow education (in terms of contents, approaches, formats, and qualities) in the macrolevel sociocultural, socioeconomic, and geo-political environments.

With Foucault's and Deleuze & Guattari's apparatus, there is no fixed reference point for analyzing the shadow education system and its dyadic relationships with daytime schooling. New research agendas can be focused more on individuals or parties of state and non-state actors using new reference points and power relations in the shadow education discourse.

Besides discourse analysis of interactive curriculum contents, pedagogical design, and power relations among school administrators, students, and teachers (Bhattarai, 2020), there are other significant implications in cross-overing research boundaries related to shadow education. Some locations of the research foci can be transferred from formal education to shadow education and vice versa. For instance, economics and financing of shadow education, comparative shadow education, and sociology of shadow education will become new branches of educational studies at national, regional, and cross-national levels when academic disciplines are shifted from school education to shadow education.

Meantime, there are other fluidic concepts or new units of analysis through nomadic inquiry, focusing on dyadic relationships between daytime and shadow education. Past research agendas focused on either one of the two systems, totally losing the overall picture. For example, previous researchers in the financing and economics of education only count the household figures spent on daytime schooling without considering the dyadic relationships, leading to imprecise computations of household expenditure and social/private rates of return in basic education. The sociological lens should also cover widely the dyadic relationships between daytime and shadow education, which might exacerbate or widen educational inequalities, instead of the one-sided static effects of shadow education on basic educational inequalities or students’ academic success using quantitative methods (Dang, 2007; Entrich, 2018). All these considerations would call for more new and complicated research methodological apparatus for depicting and measuring dyadic relationships.

There are some limitations in the current study. Firstly, the small snowball sample only aims to portray a common picture of the power relations among those selected actors in the shadow education discourse in China without over-generalization. Secondly, there are alternative ways of articulating Foucauldian notions of “biopolitics” and genealogy (Ball, 1994; Mikhaylova, 2022) and other rhizomatic forms of power relations like Deleuze's reinterpretation of Foucault's “power/knowledge” (Palti, 2021; Wang, 2011). Nevertheless, the current TLCS study will enrich the existing international research literature.

Conclusions and Implications

To sum up, this article scrutinizes inhabitants’ boundary-crossing nomadic movements lying between daytime schooling and shadow education in China through Deleuze & Guattari's rhizomatic analysis and depicts power dynamics among state and non-state actors using Michael Foucault's notions of “governmentality” and “power/knowledge.” It aims to reshape the whole landscape of daytime and shadow education in China within the TLCS framework. Concerning power relations, there was no international research literature explaining why and how some local and national governments neglect the values of shadow education systems. Nor do any policy and research documents depict effective value transformation from negative to positive impacts of shadow education on state and non-state actors. Here come more new research directions on shadow education and its dynamic interactions with daytime schooling.

Firstly, the new units of analysis lie in the multiplicity of power sources, the power directions, and the ultimate destinations of power in Table 1. The new theoretical frameworks of nomadic movements and power relations in TLCS help educationalists, school practitioners, and policymakers understand how the different types of power relations shape the tension forces among state and non-state actors of shadow education discourse.

Table 1.

Five Types of Power Relations Among State and Non-State Actors in Shadow Education and TLCS Discourses.

Conceptual notions in the TLCS	Origins of power	Directions of power	Ultimate goals of power under the DRP governance
Parentocracy (Brown, 1990)	Consumerism under neoliberalism	Needy parents use their consumer power to buy suitable forms of tutoring services for their needy children	Some needy parents seek afterschool tutorial services in the black market
Tutorocracy	Consumerism under neoliberalism	Tutors and cram school heads exercised their (service provider) power to deliver suitable forms of tutoring services to needy children	Some popular tutors and cram school owners provide afterschool paid online tutorial services in the black market
Tuteeocracy	Consumerism under neoliberalism	Needy daytime students use their own consumer power to buy suitable forms of tutoring services	Some needy schooling children demand and seek afterschool tutorial services in the black market
Meritocracy (under neo-liberalism)	Meritocracy originated from neo-liberalism	Societies highly value academic values and achievements through merits	Purposive reduction of academic merits and competitions in daytime schools under DRP
Intellectual movement in educational research and policy studies	Traditional shadow education research agendas investigate separately from those in daytime schooling	Decentering power relations in shadow education research by re-connecting daytime schooling and shadow education systems	Some broadening new research agendas in TLCS, focusing more on dyadic relationships between daytime and shadow education systems. Other key features of TLCS blur the boundaries of core concepts in learning, teaching, education, and training

Secondly, there is an urgent call for the future development of distinctive research methods that are suitable for postqualitative research paradigm and nomadic inquiry, especially concerning inter-dependency relationships (like “rhizome” in Deleuze & Guattari's works in 1972/1977, 1987/2003).

Thirdly, the emergence of the new nomadic research paradigm can go beyond the current study using a relational and nonrepresentational ontology and material-discursive entanglement (Coleman & Ringrose, 2014). Future research agendas in China and other Asia-Pacific regions include further conceptualization of dynamic power relations among state and non-state actors in ideopolitical, sociocultural, socioeconomic and sociological aspects of shadow education in some capitalist and socialist societies; learner, parent or teacher agency, identity and well-being in psycho-social aspects of shadow education; leadership models and resilience exercised by heads and academic managers of cram schools, and mass tutors; emotional labor and management in cram schools and home tutoring, facing ideopolitical changes at meso- and microlevels; network governance concerning state and non-state actors in controlling and monitoring shadow education systems; tensions between curriculum standards and assessment systems in daytime and shadow education from national, cross-national and multicultural perspectives; power relations and other interactions between career trajectories and professional development of novice and expertise tutors in cram schools; strategic refinement of shadow and daytime school curricula, and parallel or branching tutoring times on the timescape of shadow education (Bray, 2022; Gupta, 2022)

Cross-national comparative lessons learn that drastic expansion at those levels of schooling in basic education at the expense of quality and low teacher salaries in many developing countries in Africa, East Asia, and Middle East may unintentionally cause huge demand for tutoring and uncontrollable growth of the shadow education sector, facing limited government resources, bottleneck schooling systems and dominating high-stakes examinations at upper levels of schooling in meritocratic societies (Bray, 2021a, 2023; Bray & Hajar, 2022; Zhang, 2023). The current TLCS study in China will help policymakers know the complicated power dynamics among state and non-state actors before formulating holistic education reforms concerning the dyadic relationships between daytime and shadow education systems.

In the TLCS, information globalization and the COVID-19 pandemic have initiated and transformed learning and teaching spaces, leading to the integrative daytime schooling and shadow education system. Traditional boundaries between formal and informal learning, between daytime schooling and shadow education, and between online and offline modes of tutoring would become blurred. There come local and global market segments of new forms of online tutoring (e.g., Jung et al., 2022; Ventura & Jang, 2010) and cross-border tutoring (Bray & Zhang, 2023) in the global education industry.

The ontological status, epistemological, and educational implications of TLCS research also draw the future attention of educationalists, educational practitioners, and policymakers. There remain unresolved policy measures on how some state and non-state actors would alter their negative viewpoints toward shadow education systems, how policymakers make a good balance between daytime and shadow education, and how related international organizations would like to count the full household and community costs of daytime schooling and private tutoring (cf. Bray, 1996). More contextualized studies in shadow education using Foucault's (1984) and Deleuze and Guattari's (1972/1977, 1987/2003) frameworks should further be carried out in Asian contexts and other continents. Policy enactment on state and non-state actors in shadow education discourses should draw more attention through TLCS research bodies. For further constructive dialogues, the TLCS researchers should take the social responsibility to help those actors and other academics understand the complexity of dyadic relationships connecting daytime and shadow education through trans-studies in the postmodern era.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical Consideration Statement

Rafsan and I had passed the ethical procedures at our working universities. All the involved stakeholders and informants' personal data and privacy information were not disclosed. During data collection process, they were informed of the ethical procedures and statements.

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Reshaping the Landscape of Daytime and Shadow Education: Decentering Power Dynamics in Transboundary Learning Culture and Schooling in China

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Theoretical Framework

Literature Review

Applications of TLCS in Learning Cultures of China

Methodology of Nomadic Inquiry

Research Directions

Internal Structure of Nomadic Movement of Inhabitants in China

Four Key Features of TLCS in China

Multilevel Power Relationships Between Daytime and Shadow Education Systems

Power Relations Lying Between Daytime and Shadow Education

Crossing-Over Research Boundaries in TLCS

Conclusions and Implications

Footnotes

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Ethical Consideration Statement

References