After few rounds of discussion, brainstorming & testing, they pivoted & found an alternative way to execute their concept. The result: a site specific restaging of the community library space + storytelling of children's conflicted encounters with education in rural Vietnam. 👏🏽

Yet, for these pathways to impact & change to be realised, there must be some stable conditions to allow for & to facilitate that process.
So, I say to my students, it's more important to focus on how to stabilise critical conditions for change to happen!
#theoryofchange

Students often focus only on problem framing and solutioning, but give little attention to the process of getting from 1 pt to the other. Designing solutions becomes simply an exercise in identifying feasible pathways to effect change.

Free eprints: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SAIFV...

3️⃣ The unique drivers behind varying patterns of student mobility to different Southeast Asian destinations, including economic initiatives, geopolitical dynamics, cultural affinities, and institutional collaborations.

2️⃣ The heightening educational credentialism in China serves as a significant driver of Chinese student mobilities to Southeast Asia, reflecting the increasing interconnectedness of the regional education market.

We underline 3 key themes:

1️⃣ The emergence of SEA as an international node in the diversifying pathways of Chinese student mobilities is far from being a homogenous space; it instead replicates the hierarchical nature seen current state of international education.

Inside, we consider the internationalisation dynamics in both China & Southeast Asia, & note the diversifying pathways reflecting not only HE's strategic adjustment in response to both domestic pressures & global opportunities, but also broader shift in educational & aspirations in Asian youth.

ari.nus.edu.sg/events/educa...

Even as we briefly shared our interview stories at the dinner table, we're beginning to see the many faces of these extended lives of international students beyond education.

So interesting to see how international education intersects with marriage and family, and where pathways to social mobility crisscross each other in sometimes romantic and irrational but also strategic and instrumental ways.

In this trip we managed to speak with female Vietnamese and Thai students who studied and eventually settled down in China in Nanning, as spouses and parents to children.

We not only did the fieldwork we set out to do, we also were treated extremely well as tourists and guests of Nanning! The hospitality was 👍🏽⭐.

This article is part of a special section carrying country reports that discuss BRI's impact on the internationalisation of education in SEA, all to be published in Asian Population Studies.

Malaysia: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Singapore: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

2. We discover new university actors who're proactively building educational linkages in 'off the map' places, using border region to do the work of internationalisation, via quick-to-implement programmes. Such geography & institutional strategy look very different to global universities on the map.

Article's unique insights
1. Our case on Vietnamese language & cultural learning programmes & student mobilities push against BRI research's predominant focus on Chinese language, adding new layer of analysis on BRI's (multiple) language politics & diplomacy.

We observed that these developments are 1. driven largely by language and cultural learning, 2. geographically active in the south of China and north of Vietnam, and 3. sustained by universities' aspirations for internationalisation through quick-to-build regional collaboration.

🍬Free eprints: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QR8TY...