Examining the roles of family and school social capital on academic achievements of sixth-grade students between migrant private schools and public schools in Bao'an district, Shenzhen city

  • Sudan WU

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis (Lingnan)

Abstract

Background: During the rapid development in Shenzhen, it has drawn millions of workers from all over the country accompanied with their family. And Bao’an District as the biggest district in Shenzhen, it has 4.49 million of population, including 0.89 million local hukou residents. Due to the hukou system, 177,682 students enrolled in public schools while 189,287 in migrant private schools. School facilities and teacher quality varied from public schools and migrant private schools lead to widening gaps of the academic achievements between students in migrant private schools and public schools. The equity for migrant children becomes a topical issue in education. This study aims to examine the roles of family and school social capital associated with variations in children’s academic achievements. The present study also attempts to find out the effects of school social capital on migrant and local students in both migrant private schools and public schools, so as to investigate potential policies to support migrant students in both school types.

Methods: Adopting a mixed methods approach for the study, a questionnaire is designed for sixth-grade students from six sample schools in Bao’an District, Shenzhen City, consisting of three public and three migrant private schools, with a total of 1,313 valid samples. Hierarchical regression is used to investigate the roles of family and school social capital in children’s academic achievements (i.e. Chinese, English, Math, Science and the mean score of these four subjects) in both migrant private schools and public schools, as well as the impacts of school social capital on migrant students and their local peers. Then, in-depth interviews with 24 teachers are conducted to determine how school social capital can be utilized to mitigate the effects of migrant students’ low-income family backgrounds from the teachers’ perspectives.

Results: The empirical findings reveal that both family and school social capital have positive and significant effects on academic achievements for students in migrant private schools and public schools. Among the indicators of family social capital, time-spent with parents on discussing about school matters, time-spent with parents and parental academic expectations affect students’ overall achievements positive statistically significant. For school social capital, indicators of teacher-student interactions, teacher’s academic expectations, and feeling of safety at school have positive statistically significant impacts on the overall achievements. Results also show that school social capital has great impacts on migrant students than on local students, whereas different indicators indicate different impacts in different school types. Teacher participants in the interviews perceive the teacher-student relationship and the teacher-colleague relationship as the most influencing factors on students’ academic achievements comparing to relationships between teacher-teacher, teacher-parent and teacher-leader.

Conclusion: The findings of the study fill a research gap in examining the impacts of both family and school social capital for migrant and local students in migrant private schools and public schools, as well as the impact of school social capital on student status in Bao’an District, Shenzhen City. It also includes how to help migrant students from teachers’ perspectives. This study suggests that policies should be adopted to increase teacher’s expectation through teacher-student interactions, teachers’ professional capacity and parental interactions in students’ education so as to improve students’ achievements.
Date of Award19 Jun 2023
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • Lingnan University
SupervisorKa Wai Maggie LAU (Supervisor)

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