ABSTRACT
In this chapter we look at teachers’ views of British-Chinese pupils and their families. First we consider how teachers unanimously attributed British-Chinese educational success to ‘home’ and ‘culture’. We then discuss their constructions of home-school relations. In both of these sections we argue that, despite recognising British-Chinese success, teachers (albeit unwittingly) framed this success as problematic. We then look specifi cally at the ways in which teachers’ constructions of British-Chinese pupils were distinctly gendered. Finally, we propose our conceptual model (a trichotomy) as a framework for understanding how dominant educational discourses of the ‘ideal pupil’ work to position both high and lower achieving minority ethnic pupils as ‘other’.
