Impacts Of Cultural Capital On Student College Choice In China

Educational researchers have long been concerned about the factors that influence the patterns of attendance in higher education and the extent to which higher education has been accessible to all students regardless of their socioeconomic status. Extensive research has indicated that a variety of class-related factors, such as cultural capital, social capital, and economic capital, exert remarkable impacts on the amount and type of education that one receives. Drawing on cultural capital theory, this study aims at analyzing how students' college choice process varies by social class in China. By exploring different cultural and financial factors that influence different stages of students' college choice process, this study hopes to contribute to identifying the most appropriate policies and practices for raising the representation of students from the lowest social class among college participants.

This monograph highlights the educational experiences of rural children who are 'left behind' by their migrant worker parents in China, analyzing how this situation impacts on their aspirations and self-identity. Via an ethnographic and qualitative case study of a rural school in southwest China, the author presents the real lives of these disadvantaged children along with their challenges and needs, and provides an in depth understanding of how being ‘left behind’ impacts on their future aspirations. Building on the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, the author makes an original contribution by combining seemingly incompatible disciplinary perspectives, such as cultural capital from sociology, rational action from behavioral economics, and self-efficacy from psychology. Hence, the book endeavors to transfer these Western theories to an Eastern context and demonstrates cultural nuances that are not always captured when applied in the West. The book will attract academic scholars and postgraduate students in the area of socially disadvantaged children and young people as well as those who are working on youth studies and rural education.

This book combines the ideologies of parentocracy and consumer theory as theoretical lenses to view the private supplementary tutoring, also known as shadow education, with a focus on the demand at primary and lower secondary levels in China. It first explains parents’ motivations of seeking private tutoring and their decision-making dynamics, and then explores the evolving micro-level process of demand that has changed over time. It further investigates how demand for private tutoring varies across parental socioeconomic status. This book also discusses parents’ attitudes towards the Double Reduction policy and corresponding changes in their demand for tutoring. It concludes with some implications for regulating private tutoring and for improving school education. This book has pertinence in other countries as well as in China. Unpacking the demand for tutoring improves understanding of the global expansion and changing shapes of the phenomenon. Researchers, educational policy-makers, teachers, tutors, consultants, and other educational practitioners interested in the topic of private tutoring will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

World-Class Universities: Towards A Global Common Good and Seeking National and Institutional Contributions provides updated insights and debates on how world-class universities will contribute to the global common good and balance their global, national and local roles in doing so.

Providing an indispensable resource for students, educators, businessmen, and officials investigating the transformative experience of modern China, this book provides a comprehensive summary of the culture, institutions, traditions, and international relations that have shaped today's China. In Modern China, author Xiaobing Li offers a resource far beyond a conventional encyclopedia, providing not only comprehensive coverage of Chinese civilization and traditions, but also addressing the values, issues, and critical views of China. As a result, readers will better understand the transformative experience of the most populous country in the world, and will grasp the complexity of the progress and problems behind the rise of China to a world superpower in less than 30 years. Written by an author who lived in China for three decades, this encyclopedia addresses 16 key topics regarding China, such as its geography, government, social classes and ethnicities, gender-based identities, arts, media, and food, each followed by roughly 250 short entries related to each topic. All the entries are placed within a broad sociopolitical and socioeconomic contextual framework. The format and writing consistency through the book reflects a Chinese perspective, and allows students to compare Chinese with Western and American views.

Given the increasing global interest in Chinese culture, this book uses case studies to describe and interpret Chinese cultivation in contemporary Taiwanese schools. Cultivation is a concept unique to Chinese culture and is characterized by different attitudes towards teaching and learning compared to Western models of education. The book starts with a discussion of human nature in Chinese schools of philosophy and levels of goodness. Following the philosophical background is a presentation of how cultivation is practiced in Chinese culture from prenatal through high school education. The case studies focus both on how students are cultivated as they become members of Chinese society, and on what role teachers play in cultivating the children in school. In addition, supports from Chinese educational institutions, including public schools, families, and organizations such as private cram schools, are introduced and explained. In closing, the book presents a critique of the modern school reform movement and the conflicts between the reform proposals and traditional practices. Based on the collective work of Taiwanese researchers in the fields of education, history and anthropology, the book identifies the purpose of education as cultivating virtue in a process of creating an ideal person who serves society, and describes the way teachers have carried on this tradition despite its faltering status in contemporary educational discourse and in the face of reform movements.

China has been experiencing great economic and social changes since the late 1970s when the Reform and Opening-Up policies were accepted. While some Sinologists argue that such changes have made the Chinese structure of authority fragmented and discrepant, and have weakened the directive power of the Central Government, a few others emphasize that despite a certain degree of economic decentralization and segmentation of public power, the Central Government has been seeking ways to hold the nation together. Consequently, while the former argue that due to the centrifugal nature of the political system, policy implementation is bound to deviate from the route specified by the Central Government, the latter hold that national policies are carried out faithfully, with minor deviations only in certain circumstances. This book studies the processes of policy implementation in contemporary mainland China by taking minban/private education at the level of basic education in Shanghai as an example. Based on 65 interviews conducted during 2001 and 2004, three moduses of policy implementation are proposed, and the Model of Structural Fracturation is advanced as the prevailing modus of policy implementation in contemporary China. The model argues that policy metamorphosis during implementation is not something random; in contrast, it is determined by structural factors that no single policy actor can manipulate. The pyramid of Chinese politics is a loose construction, with vertical and horizontal fracturations between different layers. The model highlights the fact that governments at the county/district level are remote from and beyond the control of the Central Government and the provinces. They deserve more attention than they have received. Contrary to Western perspectives which regard the structural fracturation in the Chinese polity as dangerous for national stability and unity, this book takes the fracturation as an important and delicate element of the Chinese mode of governance, and suggests that the very strength of the state lies in its capacity to tolerate local deviation and to embrace it into national institutions.

This book represents an ethnographic study of an International Baccalaureate Diploma Program in a school in mainland China, serving Chinese students and staffed by teachers from a variety of origins. It offers in-depth descriptions of the way in which students, teachers, and managers interact and communicate with one another in a variety of school activities. Through the communication process, cultural experiences and understandings are negotiated constantly among school participants. The ethnographic study also has a critical intention. Going beyond description, the author discusses the extent to which networks of social relationships in the case are imbued by asymmetries in power, and how this leads to people’s inability, unwillingness, and unawareness to interact with those from different cultural backgrounds. As research findings reveal, where the construction of meaning is less equally available to each participant, prejudice and exclusiveness are more likely to be assumed, impeding individuals’ intercultural learning. The key is to empower those less privileged, giving them legitimacy to come to voice in an institutional context on the one hand, and protecting their reflections on hegemonic discourse meticulously on the other hand. Since the research explores the complexities and subtleties of the communication process that are bound to particular contexts, like most ethnographic studies, it aims at adding a body of experience and humanistic understanding of cultures, rather than testing theories. Although the IB Program being studied can hardly be representative of the overall development of international education in China, the detailed description of contextual issues of the case and the research procedures could facilitate the readers to vicariously experience these events, thus they can make their own decisions about the transferability of the research to their own unique situations.