Given the widened access to Chinese higher education, a large proportion of students studying at Chinese colleges come from rural lower-class families and encounter different challenges in English language learning. By using Bourdieu’s social theoretical lenses, this case study explores how the interplay of capital, habitus and social fields affected ten rural lower-class college students’ English language learning. This study finds that these students inhabited difficult and inferior positions because they lacked different forms of capital needed for accessing language and cultural learning resources, solidifying their English language foundation, and developing intercultural understanding and competence. Their narrow, test-oriented focus, and the lack of confidence and initiative in English language learning stemmed from their habitus formed in their situated socio-cultural and educational fields. Through reflecting on these complexities and conditions in English language learning, teachers and rural lower-class college students may move from a deficit lens in terms of their knowledge foundation and learning styles, which leads to the lack of confidence in teaching and learning; instead, they might collaboratively explore appropriate strategies and resources that cultivate students’ comprehensive English language competence and intercultural competence.

In recent years, a large amount of Chinese international students, from middle or upper-middle class families, began their international education in Canadian secondary schools, where critical thinking is the main educational goal and often determines students’ achievements. Guided by reflexivity in multilingual and intercultural education, this ethnographic study explores potential ways to foster Chinese international secondary school students’ critical thinking in a second language, and the host country’s socio-cultural contexts. Following 11 students’ academic learning experiences in two English language and literacy courses in a Canadian international secondary school, this paper examines how language, social, and cultural factors affect learning and thinking processes. The findings challenged the stereotypical view that Chinese international students lack critical thinking skills. Insufficient English language competence and a lack of Western socio-cultural knowledge determined students’ responses to learning content, the challenges they met in engaging with learning materials, and their critical and reflective judgements. This study underscores educators’ and Chinese international students’ reflexivity in their linguistic repertoires, and the socio-cultural effects on multilingual and intercultural education. Based on these results, teachers and students should employ a dialogic pedagogy to constructively negotiate learning and thinking.

In recent years, increasing numbers of Chinese international secondary school students have come to study in Canada. Upon arriving in their international context, their academic studies are influenced by socio-economic and cultural forces circulating between the home and host spaces of China and Canada. This paper delves into the economic, cultural and social rationalities behind eleven Chinese international secondary school students’ distinct ways of learning in transnational contexts. My study was guided by Ong’s [1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press; 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] notion of cultural logics and critique of neoliberal discourses by examining how sociocultural forces/rationalities in transnational contexts governed eleven Chinese international students’ learning goals, characteristics, needs, and preferences, as well as how global-scale neoliberal cultural logics played a dominant role. This ethnographic study not only problematises the dominance of neoliberal discourses and Western cultures in daily teaching and learning, but also gives educators and policymakers insights into how to support academic studies and language learning of Chinese international secondary school students by considering the aggregated effect of multiple transnational forces.

Recently, an increasing number of students have been seeking international education to accumulate cosmopolitan cultural and social capital and realise upward social mobility. In addition to this pragmatic dimension, international education also enables international students to acquire dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, providing them opportunities to appreciate diverse cultures, values, and gain intercultural/translocal learning experiences. Guided by a theoretical discussion on pragmatic and dedicated cosmopolitanism, this study employed the case study method to explore how 19 international students who studied in Chinese universities navigated their transnational mobility, academic learning, and social lives, and how multiple discourses in their transnational spaces influenced their development of dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions. The findings revealed that international educational programme arrangements, social discourses regarding accruing capital and upward social mobility, and cultural and educational discourses in transnational spaces converged to influence students’ development of dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, affecting their emotions, practices, and choices. This study suggests that actors in international education provide students with more opportunities to connect with the host society and dialogical spaces. Not only international students, but all actors should engage in constant dialogue, and strive to acquire dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, and promote a socially and culturally inclusive educational environment to support international students’ learning and well-being.

This study employs the notion of ‘flexible citizenship,’ to examine how national and transnational forces and discursive logics mediate Chinese international secondary school students’ educational routes and life trajectories. It draws upon a larger ethnographic research programme that followed 11 Chinese students in a Canadian international secondary school across a period of 14 months. Our current findings affirm that neoliberal logics mediated by (trans)national cultural forces shape how participants navigate their lives. In employing flexible citizenship as a lens, we seek to support more comprehensive understandings of Chinese international students as agentic and socially regulated citizens-in-the-making in their transnational routes. More comprehensive understandings, in turn, elicit pedagogical insights on how study abroad might better support the education and wellbeing of (Chinese) students studying internationally.

Clinical translation of poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA)-based nanomedicine is limited, partly because of the poor delivery efficiency resulting from non-specific phagocytosis by phagocytes. Understanding the nanoparticle interplay between cancer cells and immune cells remains largely elusive. In this study, a quantitative investigation on cellular internalization of fluorescent PLGA particles (100 nm, 500 nm, and 1 µm) against laryngeal carcinoma cells with or without monocytes/macrophages in monoculture or co-culture systems was first performed. PLGA particles at concentrations of 5–20 µg/mL show superior biocompatibility except for 500 nm and 1 µm PLGA particles at 20 µg/mL slightly reduce cell viability. Microscopic observation has discovered all three sizes of particles are effectively ingested by both cancer cells and macrophages; however, quantitative fluorescence examination has disclosed that the uptake index of cancer cells (mean intracellular particle fluorescence per cancer cell normalized to that of per macrophage) is substantially declined for all PLGA particles in co-cultures compared to that in monocultures (1.35–1.05, 1.50–0.59, and 1.4–0.47 for 100 nm, 500 nm, and 1 µm particles, respectively). Quantitative analysis using flow cytometry further confirmed the reduced uptake index of cancer cells in co-cultures, but higher particle counts per macrophage. It has also been found that the formation of multinucleated giant cells via the fusion of macrophages increased after PLGA treatment, which could be further exploited as a potential approach for tumor drug delivery. Overall, these findings provide new insights into the interaction of nanoparticle-immune-cancer cells, which may facilitate the application of PLGA-based nanocarriers for the treatment of laryngeal carcinoma.