Planning School Transition Through Relational Influence in Chinese Families: Adolescents’ Perspectives

Abstract

Building on the relational approaches, particularly social relational theory, this study investigates how Chinese adolescents plan their transition to post-compulsory education through relational influences between themselves and their parents. By examining the family and school lives of 25 Chinese adolescents from a small Chinese town, it has been found that they exercise their agency when negotiating their educational future with their parents. Their mixed agentic strategies are embedded in multiple parenting styles and they result in differing levels of agreement. Despite such variation, the adolescent–parent relationship is interpreted as the reliable interdependence across the participants. The findings provide new insights into parental influence on young Chinese people’s educational future and stress the value of the relational approach in studying the family–education nexus.

Chinese students’ perspectives on learner identity

“…Almost all the participants normalised such a narrow role of teachers and schools without expecting any radical changes. Further interviews with some of the participants confirmed this idea that school transition is part of their "private lives" (Wang, Satka, and Julkunen 2020).…”

Diversifying youth temporal orientations during educational transitions in China

“…In this article, we pragmatically reformulated this concept of agency regarding its relation to the encompassing sociotemporal contexts, identifying the conforming, resisting and balancing forms of agency. Rethinking agency from a relational perspective revitalises its theoretical and analytical strength in fleshing out the nuances, transgressions and ambiguities that the current young generation often encounters in their everyday lives (Alanen, 2011; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Esser, 2016; Wang et al 2021). Thus, we have suggested the usefulness of the relational perspective for better grasping the nuances and ambiguities of youth experiences.…”

“…Childhood and youth studies, in a broad sense, also (re)address the ‘relational’ nature of youth agency (Alanen, 2011; Esser, 2016; James, 2013; Wang et al, 2021). Generating agency is a ‘socially situated process, shaped by the experiences, the chances present in the current moment and the perceptions of possible futures’ (Behrens & Evans, 2002, p. 262).…”