The previous three decades have seen increasing variety in the types of education that parents choose for their children (Plank and Sykes 2003). Besides various school choices within the public educational system, alternative education that falls outside of state-provided mainstream education has become increasingly popular and also attracts more academic attention (Nagata 2007; Woods and Woods 2009; Kraftl 2013). Most of the existing studies, however, focus on alternative education in Western contexts, and little is known about the development of alternative forms of education in China. Against this background, this paper provides an overview of the development of alternative education in China over the past 20 years. To address the heterogeneity within this category, we developed a framework that enables researchers to classify these different types of alternative education. This paper consists of three parts. Firstly, we review the definition, categories, and development of alternative education in China. Secondly, we discuss three critical questions regarding alternative education, namely (1) who are practicing alternative education, (2) why do they choose alternative education, and (3) what is the legal status of alternative education in China? Finally, by situating the development of alternative education against the global educational context, we try to detect both the similarities and uniqueness of Chinese cases and formulate a research agenda.

According to social reproduction theories, the middle-class is seen as highly dependent on the educational system to maintain and transmit their social status. This is thought to apply especially in a Chinese context (Crabb 2010). As previously discussed, education is one of the fiercest battlefields for middle-class families in China. Parents spend a large amount of money on children’s education to help them win the competition (Lin 2019). Against that background, for middle-class parents, choosing alternative schools seems to be a risky choice considering their ambiguous legal status. As most Innovative schools adopt laid-back learning styles, students in these schools may have few advantages in a competitive exam-oriented educational system, especially compared with their peers in mainstream schools. This apparent paradox raises questions about the classical social reproduction schema. Thus, academic efforts are needed to reveal whether and how these alternative school choices could become a hidden strategy for Chinese middle-class families to foster humane talents in a globalised world (Bai 2010).

Meanwhile, the development of alternative education in China also causes a re-evaluation of the social implications of bottom-up educational initiatives in a state-dominated social context. Over recent decades, education in China has been represented as a national enterprise for the country's prosperity (Woronov 2009), and educational desires are largely mobilised through multiple policies and discourse across the country (Kipnis 2011). Private sectors are encouraged to provide educational services to satisfy the public's increasing educational needs. However, the emergence of multiple choices outside of state-provided education may contradict the need for uniform education in an authoritarian country (Schulte 2018). However, establishing and opting for innovative education outside of the mainstream system may indicate noncompliance towards the system and authority in some way (Gofen and Blomqvist 2014). Thus, it is still undecided whether will alternative education significantly grow and bring profound change to education or should be considered as an ‘alleviating measure’ with a doomed destiny (Schulte 2018). Based on the above insights, we claim that more academic efforts and further investigation are urgently needed to reveal the dynamics underlying the alternative educational choices in China and the potential social implications they may lead to.

Although different types of alternative education have gained increasing popularity and publicity among parents and on social media, it is still an understudied phenomenon and academic research on this phenomenon is extremely scarce. In order to provide a picture of alternative education in China as comprehensively as possible, we combine a variety of (data) sources. First, we have searched for relevant studies in both English and Chinese literature on the broad topic of alternative education in China. The database and search engines we have used include google scholar, ProQuest, Web of Science, CNKI, and Airiti Library. We have used many keywords in the search such as “alternative education”, “homeschooling”, “Waldorf school” “Christian school”, “体制外教育”, “另类教育”, “实验教育”，创新教育”.The papers collected in this way include empirical studies, review articles, education reports, master thesis, and dissertations. Then, we also collected relevant media coverage, books, and interviews of the practitioners/online lectures about alternative education in China. In addition, information from websites and public promotional materials of some alternative schools are also used in the analyses.

As an exploratory study, this paper provides an overview of the development of alternative education in China over the past 20 years. Instead of providing a unified picture, we have shed light on the heterogeneity within the category and the particularities of the Chinese context. More specifically, we have detected a type of alternative education that seems particularly related to the Chinese context and rather interesting for further investigation, namely Innovative schools. First, while alternative education in China is usually associated with marginalised people (Nagata 2007), Innovative schools seem to be preferred by middle and upper-middle-class parents in big cities. Second, as ‘pedagogues’ (Van Galen 1991), these schools do not attach themselves to particular ideologies or creeds but pay more attention to the innovations of teaching and learning. Instead of isolating themselves from mainstream schools, they try to connect with mainstream education in many ways (e.g., actively applying for school licenses from local authorities, combining official curriculums into their teaching). More interestingly, although most alternative education has an ambiguous legal status, some Innovative schools have been reported and praised by official media for their educational exploration. A number of Innovative schools have also gained school licenses from the government. All of these features may suggest the possibility of the growing popularity of Innovative schools in China in the long term. This will also serve as a good example to investigate the relationship between alternative education and the middle-class and re-examine the social reproduction theories in a new field (i.e., alternative education) under a new social context (i.e., post-socialist China). Thus, some empirical questions and theoretical potentials regarding this new phenomenon are put forward and discussed as future research agendas.

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