Transnational Educational Trajectories Between a Global Orientation Towards Education and the National School System. International Students at Private Boarding Schools in Germany
It is not uncommon for young people from abroad to attend private boarding schools in Germany for several years with the aim of completing their Abitur and graduating from secondary school. In this paper, first a theoretical framing of this educational practice is initially undertaken before a qualitative content analysis is presented on the presence of international students on the websites of private boarding schools in Germany. Based on this, an interview-based case study reconstructs the expectations of a student from China, his father, and the head of a German boarding school. The joint creation of a transnational educational trajectory shows a global orientation towards education with a simultaneous anchoring in the national education system. Private boarding schools in Germany can provide a setting for such practice for students and their families from abroad. This addresses a form of educational migration of young people into the school system in Germany that has not yet been taken into account in the current discourse on newly arrived students and the so-called side-entry into the German school system
