Transnational students and educational change
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Transnational students and educational change Allison Skerrett1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This article discusses some educational issues introduced by the uprise of transnational students in global educational systems. It demonstrates the relevance of these issues for the field of educational change, in particular, topics of diversity and globalization that are in need of greater attention in the Journal of Educational Change. The article presents a recent conceptual and empirically-based framework—a transnationally-inclusive approach to literacy education. This framework provides a model through which educational systems and those who inhabit them can equitably and innovatively respond to the opportunities and challenges that transnational students present to education. The article concludes with some considerations of how the field of educational change is uniquely poised to generate research, theory, and practice that can promote productive change pertaining to transnational students and education. Keywords Educational change · Education policy · Equity · Globalization · Transnational students This article responds to a recent call from a comprehensive review of articles published in the Journal of Educational Change (Garcia-Huidobro et al. 2017) recommending that the journal address, in greater frequency and depth, issues of equity and marginalization including as they relate to a global education society. The article discusses a topic that is understudied in education research overall and in the field of educational change but which is of great relevance to the social and educational lives of a global citizenry. There has been an exponential growth transnational students in countries and educational systems across the world. Transnational students are those who live across two or more nations and who attend school in one or more of the nations they call home (Skerrett 2015; Coe et al. 2011; Zúñiga and Hamman 2009). Coe et al. (2011) estimate that one in four children worldwide * Allison Skerrett [email protected] 1
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin, D5700, 1912 Speedway, Austin, TX 78712, USA
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Journal of Educational Change
are transnational. A United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs policy brief (2016) reported that as of 2013, 28.2 million migrants worldwide are 15–24 years old, and ongoing data collection by UNICEF (2017) reveals that as of 2015, 31 million children worldwide are migrants. These numbers represent a substantial demographic of school-age youth. Migrant students can be included in the category of transnational people. Migration scholars work from the understanding that migrant people’s lifestyles often involve crossing and re-crossing borders across their nations of origin and new homelands (Hamann and Zúñiga 2011; Weidman and Jacob 2011). Even when physical bordercrossing is not possible, people classified as migrants employ digital and other tools to participate economically, socially,
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