Gansu Survey of Children and Families Papers
Document Type
Working Paper
Date of this Version
2012
Abstract
For China’s rural children, the State’s commitment to improve teaching quality in rural regions is a key component of the 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. Importantly, 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 enroll in post-compulsory vocational education. We consider the implications of these results for both educational policy and social inequality.
Date Posted: 13 November 2012
Comments
Yiu, L. & Adams, J. (2013). Reforming Rural Education: Understanding Teacher Expectations for Rural Youth (Working Paper). Gansu Survey of Children and Families.
Forthcoming in The China Quarterly 2013. This article has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input by Cambridge University Press, in The China Quarterly.
© 2013 Cambridge University Press
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