What’s really happening in Shanghai primary schools : gender differences in education quality and equity for floating children

Author(s):

dan Zhang(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES H 03, Gender and Education

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

11:00-12:30

Room:

W2.06

Chair:

Isabelle Mili

Contribution

Nowadays promoting equity is one of the fundamental values of Chinese educational policies．However，the issue of gender equity，especially gender differences in education, is still overlooked by national policies and school education，particularly for the group of floating children[1] in urban primary schools or even migrant children school. What is the status quo of the gender differences of floating children in schools today, especially in migrant children schools? Does the group of floating children vary the same ways in gender difference as in social stratification and by Shanghai local culture? Is this gender difference relevant to the variation of school quality or school locations? Especially relevant to Chinese national and local educational policy, even the different ways of implementation by district policy? Why is there the learning difference between boys and girls, etc? Does it the same representation on gender between Shanghai local students’ performance and migrant children’s performance? Based on the five dimensions of education quality by UNESCO ( Learner，Environments，Content，Processes and Outcomes) ，we try to use learning process to explore and analyze the status quo of gender difference in Shanghai primary schools today，and then attempt to explain why the gender gap is so great in school education for the floating population in Shanghai urban primary schools, especially in migrant children schools.

[1] China requires all citizens to hold a hukou (or residence permit), which is a passport-like document issued by a family’s province of origin. It serves the purpose of rationing social services, including health care and education. Students who do not have a hukou for Shanghai are referred to as ‘migrant’ children or “floating children”. With the dual educational system, public schools should be the major channel for the education of migrant children. However, within the present dual-household system, it is a paradox for the residence province to take the responsibility for the education of migrant children.

Method

This research lasts four years, first phase, we selected eight primary schools in four different districts in Shanghai ．Some schools are located in the city center，while others in the outskirt. We interviewed 55 teachers ( including 36 female teachers and 19 male teachers) and conducted class observations ( 100 lessons in all) in seven schools of them．Then the second phase, we selected 10 migrant schools, and interviewed 148 samples, including 10 principals (10 male principals), 69 teachers (23 male teachers and 46 female teachers); and 69 students (34 boys and 35 girls). The selection of the eighteen schools in these four districts was determined in part, based on the basis of factors of regional disparity in the Shanghai district (located district and economic indicators), social stratum and also the ratio of migrant children. Students in these schools included children from largely middle class families in urban schools; from migrant worker families (migrants within China); and rural schools in the city living in “urban villages”, called “Chengzhongcun3”). Some of these schools are composed of a significant number of migrant students, who do not have the hukou registration documents identifying them legal local Shanghai residents. 4 Each school was visited for a period of 5 days; the school principals were permitted one week to follow the classes; they randomly selected one class of each grade to follow for the entire day. At the conclusion of the school day, the research team selected both a teacher to interview, and a class for observations. For the data of teacher interviews, student interviews and principal interviews, data analysis was guided by grounded theory to explore the issues related to gender. With the permission of each interviewee, then we used digital pen to audio record all the discourses of interviews, then transcribed interview records. Code themes were developed through the reading and re-reading of the transcript texts. NVivo (10) software (http://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-product) supported the analysis of the interviews, by permitting the research questions to be addressed directly.

Expected Outcomes

Our findings show that the participation of floating children has influenced the local classes，especially on gender percentage in the schools and classes which more floating children attend. The percentage of the boys is bigger than that of the girls，especially for the families of floating workers．Then in migrant children schools, the percentage of boys is typically big than girls’ , which is “common sense” of teachers’ perception and understanding. Also，the gender divide between boys and girls is big，as is reflected in student performance in class，teacher attitude and expectation, teacher-student relationship，even in peer choice of friend, which shows a “small society” based on gender and also student achievement, like good student usually select good peer on academic achievement, and underachievement student select underachievement ones, etc, during all these different representations, all of which are based on gender. When we try to explain the differences，we find that the traditional and patriarchal thought is still popular，especially in the families of floating children today．This patriarchal culture has solidified the social division of gender role first in family，then in school education it is reinforced and even reproduced through teacher-student interaction in the classroom．Thereby the processes of education seem to have widened the gender differences and even gender gap in terms of students’ classroom behavior and academic performance. Finally，we suggest some solutions to narrow the gap，such as raising the parents’ awareness of their children’s education，strengthening the home-school collaborations，as well as effective measures taken by schools, strengthen teacher gender cognition and perception on teaching and moral education in their quotidian school life. Last but not the least, the government should pay more attention to gender gap in primary school especially for the migrant children in Shanghai in national and also local educational policy．

References

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Author Information

dan Zhang (presenting / submitting)

East China Normal University

Institut of international and comparative education

Shanghai

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