Language, culture, and identity: Hui students\u27 cultural recognition and identity construction in eastern P. R. China

In this dissertation I explore Hui students’ lived experiences both in school and at home in P. R. China and the impact of their experiences on their identity construction. In order to better understand Hui students’ experiences in eastern P. R. China, I provide historical, policy, and curricular contexts through the examination of the evolution of China’s cultural pluralism, the exploration of Hui people’ history in China, and the study of the representation of minority culture and knowledge in elementary textbooks in China. I use phenomenology, narrative inquiry, and postcolonialism as theoretical frameworks to guide questions asked, data collection, data analysis, and interpretation and discussion of the findings in the study. Based on my case study of the two Hui students in eastern China, I found that schooling for them is a process of reproducing mainstream Han ideology and taking away their culture, knowledge, and identity; subjugating the Hui students’ voices; and imposing the mainstream Han culture and knowledge on the Hui students as truth as a means for social mobility. Through an extensive review of the literature and my own research I make a case for the urgent need for multicultural education in China. Multicultural education may help preservice teachers and inservice teachers, policy makers, curriculum designers, and school administrators learn to respect and value minority culture and knowledge and integrate minority culture and knowledge into school textbooks, school curricula, and class instruction. Through comparison and contrast with other minority students’ experience in China such as Tibetan students and similar findings about minority students’ school experiences in the U.S., I believe that more attention should be paid to minority students’ experiences in different countries in the world and global multiculturalism and multicultural education must be implemented so that minority language, culture, and knowledge may be respected and valued