School choice fever: parents' perceptions and practices in rural China

择校热：中国农村家长的认知与实践

• 批准号: 2756969
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Durham University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2756969
• 关键词: choice; fever; parents; perceptions; practices

Making school choices is an important way for parents to engage in their children's education to promote their learning outcomes. In China, where rural populations are disadvantaged economically, socially and culturally, school choice is treated as a crucial tool to achieve transgenerational social mobility by rural families. Despite this, most of them cannot choose the school they want for their children and even when they do, they usually need to pay considerable school choice fees and even migrate with their children to urban areas, which are unaffordable for low-income families. School choice, therefore, becomes a key issue that can reproduce social inequalities and reinforce social divisions. The rural residents make up 36.11% of the total population of China. However, to date, there is little research focusing on rural parents' school choices, and their voices and concerns are barely audible in public discourse. This research will redress such gaps through a cross-case study that draws on the theoretical tools of Pierre Bourdieu and Stephen Ball. The proposed research will offer valuable insights into the interplay of rural parents' agency and structural factors. It will present the voices of rural families who lack economic wealth and political influence, offering implications for education policymakers and NGOs in designing inclusive interventions that consider the needs of disadvantaged groups. Moreover, these insights on the interrelationship between school choice and social inequalities may serve as a reference for research and decision-making in international contexts.

选择学校是家长参与子女教育以促进其学习成果的重要途径。在中国，农村人口在经济、社会和文化上处于弱势地位，因此，择校被视为农村家庭实现代际社会流动的一个重要工具。尽管如此，他们中的大多数人不能为子女选择他们想要的学校，即使他们选择了学校，他们通常也需要支付相当多的择校费，甚至带着子女迁移到城市地区，这是低收入家庭负担不起的。因此，学校选择成为一个关键问题，可以重现社会不平等和加强社会分化。农村居民占中国总人口的36.11%。然而，迄今为止，很少有研究关注农村家长的学校选择，他们的声音和关注在公共话语中几乎听不见。本研究将通过跨案例研究弥补这些差距，该研究借鉴了Pierre Bourdieu和Stephen Ball的理论工具。这项研究将为农村父母的代理和结构因素的相互作用提供有价值的见解。它将表达缺乏经济财富和政治影响力的农村家庭的声音，为教育决策者和非政府组织设计考虑弱势群体需求的包容性干预措施提供启示。此外，这些关于学校选择和社会不平等之间相互关系的见解可作为国际背景下研究和决策的参考。