Education for Whom and for What? Reconceptualizing Educational Inequality in Urbanizing China

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This panel brings together four researchers working on Chinese rural education and one researcher working on American rural education to reconstruct the dominant yet over-simplified conception of educational inequality in China as disparities amongst rural, left-behind, migrant and urban children. Theoretically, it argues for a rethinking of what rural-urban educational inequality means and how it interacts with class and gender, in the Chinese context as well as in other parts of the world. Empirically, it challenges the taken-for-granted boundaries between the four groups of Chinese children, examines the changing meaning of "suzhi" (quality), and advocates for educational research that centers the meanings, strategies, and experiences of families, children and educators.

Sub Unit

• SIG-International Studies

Chair

• Jingjing Lou, Beloit College

Papers

• The Institutional, the Socioeconomic, and the Symbolic: Redefining Rural-Urban Inequalities in China - Xin Xiang, Harvard University

• Vicious Cycle of Rural Decline: Rural Educational Migration in China - Dan Wang, The University of Hong Kong; Teng Yuan, University of Hong Kong

• Recognizing Community Curriculum as Quality Education - Min Yu, Wayne State University

• Remapping Rural-Urban Divide in Chinese Education Studies: The New Implications of Suzhi - Jingjing Lou, Beloit College

• Exam-Driven Learning Intensified, Watered-Down, or Critiqued: Class and Educational Inequality in China - Xin Xiang, Harvard University

Discussant

• Mara Casey Tieken, Bates College