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

选择学校是父母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、社会和文化上处于不利地位，择校被农村家庭视为实现跨代社会流动的重要工具。尽管如此，他们中的大多数人无法为孩子选择他们想要的学校，即使他们选择了，他们通常也需要支付相当可观的择校费用，甚至带着孩子迁移到城市，这对低收入家庭来说是负担不起的。因此，择校成为一个关键问题，可能会重现社会不平等，加剧社会分歧。农村居民占中国总人口的36.11%。然而，到目前为止，很少有关于农村家长选择学校的研究，他们的声音和担忧在公共话语中几乎听不到。这项研究将通过利用皮埃尔·布尔迪厄和斯蒂芬·鲍尔的理论工具进行的跨案例研究来弥补这种差距。这项研究将对农村父母的中介作用和结构性因素之间的相互作用提供有价值的见解。它将代表缺乏经济财富和政治影响力的农村家庭的声音，为教育政策制定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影响。此外，这些关于择校和社会不平等之间相互关系的见解可以为国际背景下的研究和决策提供参考。

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.