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Reforming Rural Education in China: Understanding Teacher Expectations for Rural Youth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2013

Lisa Yiu  and
Jennifer Adams
Lisa Yiu*
Affiliation:
Stanford University.
Jennifer Adams
Affiliation:
Stanford University. Email: jennifer.adams@stanford.edu.
*
Email: lyiu@stanford.edu (corresponding author).
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Abstract

The Chinese state's commitment to improve teaching quality in rural regions is a key component of national efforts to close the rural–urban education gap. In this paper, we investigate an understudied but critical dimension of quality teaching: teacher expectations. We employ longitudinal data gathered in Gansu Province in 2000 and 2007 to first examine whether teacher expectations for rural youth are conditioned by students’ social origin and teacher background characteristics. Next, we determine the predictive accuracy of their expectations. Our results highlight the ways in which teacher expectations condition the sorting of rural children among different schooling tracks with distinct life trajectories. Significantly, teachers are more likely to hold lower expectations for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition, non-local teachers hold lower expectations for rural children compared to local teachers. Finally, a low percentage of teachers expect students to enrol in post-compulsory vocational education. We consider the implications of these results for both educational policy and social inequality.

Keywords

educationteacher expectationssocial inequalityeducational policy, China
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 216 , December 2013 , pp. 993 - 1017
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2013 

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Footnotes

*

The Gansu Survey of Children and Families is supported by a grant from the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council and Department for International Development (ESRC RES-167-25-0250). Earlier support for data collection came from The Spencer Foundation Small and Major Grants Programs, The World Bank, and NIH Grants 1R01TW005930-01 and 5R01TW005930-02.

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