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

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.