Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2008-1
How Middle-Class Parents Help their Children Obtain an Advantaged Qualification: A Study of Strategies of Teachers and Managers for their Children's Education in Hong Kong before the 1997 Handover
It is well-documented for most industrial-capitalist societies that despite
educational expansion, class differentials in educational attainment persist.
This paper seeks to understand mechanisms maintaining the class differentials by
examining how two groups of middle-class parents – teachers and managers – help
their children obtain an advantaged qualification. Qualitative data were
collected in Hong Kong between 1996 and 1997. Given a changing employment
structure, teachers and managers anticipated that their children would need at
least a bachelor's degree in order not to become disadvantaged in the future
labour market and therefore used economic, cultural, and social resources to
enable their children to obtain such a qualification. However, despite their
strategies, whether respondents will succeed in achieving that remains
uncertain. In addition, the evidence also indicated that their strategies could
be counter-productive. This points to a need for researching into possible
negative impacts of strategies of middle-class parents on their children's
academic performance and emotion. As Hong Kong is then under the Chinese rule
after the 1997 handover, this study documenting strategies of middle-class
parents for their children's education under the British rule could serve as a
reference for future comparisons.
AllattP.,
and YeandleS.1990Youth Unemployment and the Family,
London:
Routledge.
2.
BallS.2006Education Policy and Social Class: the selected works of Stephen J.
Ball, London and New York:
Routledge.
3.
BallS.2003Class Strategies and the Educational Market: The Middle Classes and
Social Advantage, London:
RoutledgeFalmer.
4.
BallS.,
MaguireM.,
and MacraeS.2000Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-16: New youth, new economies in
the global city, London:
RoutlegdeFalmer.
5.
BernsteinB.1993The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, codes and
control, Reprinted Edition, London and New
York:
Routledge.
6.
BotteroW.2003Stratification: Social division and inequality,
London:
Routledge.
7.
BoudonR.1974Education, Opportunity and Social Inequality,
New York:
Wiley.
8.
BourdieuP.,
and PasseronJ.1977Reproduction: In Education, Society and Culture (Translated by
Richard Nice), London:
Sage.
9.
BrayM., and
KwokP.2003‘Demand for private supplementary tutoring: conceptual
considerations, and socio-economic patterns in Hong Kong’Economics of Education Review22(6):
611–620.
10.
BreenR., and
GoldthorpeJ.H.1997‘Explaining Educational Differentials: Towards a Formal Rational
Action Theory’Rationality and Society9(3):
275–305.
11.
BrownP., and
ScaseR.1994Higher Education and Corporate Realities: Class, Culture and the Decline
of Graduate Careers, London:
UCL Press.
12.
BulterT.,
and RobsonG.2003‘Plotting the Middle Classes: Gentrification and Circuits of
Education in London’Housing Studies18(1):
5–28.
13.
ChanK.W.1991The making of Hong Kong society: three studies of class formation in
early Hong Kong, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
14.
ChanT.W.1994Social Mobility in Hong Kong,
Oxford: D.Phil. Thesis, Nuffield College,
University of Oxford.
15.
ColemanJ.S.1988‘Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital’American Journal of Sociology94: S95–S120.
16.
CromptonR.1998Class and Stratification: An Introduction to Current Debates,
Second Edition, Cambridge:
Polity Press.
17.
DevineF.2004Class Practices: How Parents Help Their Children Get Good Jobs,
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
18.
DevineF.1998‘Class Analysis and the Stability of Class
Relations’Sociology32(1):
23–42.
19.
DevineF.,
and SavageM.2000‘Conclusion: renewing class analysis’ in R.
Crompton, F. Devine, M. Savage, and J. Scott (eds) Renewing Class
Analysis, Oxford:
Blackwell.
20.
ElderG.H.1981‘History and the Life Course’ in D. Bertaux (ed)
Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social
Sciences, Beverly Hill, Calif.:
Sage Publications.
21.
EriksonR.,
and GoldthorpeJ.H.1992The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial
Societies, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
22.
FischerC.S.,
HoutM.,
JankowskiM.S.,
LucasS.R.,
SwidlerA.,
and VossK.1996Inequality by Design, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University
Press.
23.
FosterP.,
HammersleyM.,
and GommR.1996Constructing educational inequality: an assessment of research on school
processes, London:
Falmer Press.
24.
GoldthorpeJ.H.2000On Sociology: Numbers, Narratives, and the Integration of Research and
Theory, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
25.
GoldthorpeJ.H.,
and McKnightA.2006‘The Economic Basis of Social Class’ in S.L.
Morgan, D.B. Grusky, and G.S. Fields (eds) Mobility and Inequality:
Frontiers of Research in Sociology and Economics,
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press.
26.
HalseyA.H.,
HeathA.F.,
and RidgeJ.M.1980Origins and Destinations: Family, Class and Education in Modern
Britain, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
27.
HambroE.1955The Problems of Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong,
Holland:
Sijthoff.
28.
HerrnsteinR.J.,
and MurrayC.1994The Bell Curve, New York:
The Free Press.
29.
HirschF.1995Social Limits to Growth, London:
Routledge.
30.
Hong Kong1981: A Review of 1980, Hong Kong Government Publications
Bureau, Hong Kong:
Hong Kong Government
Press.
31.
HONG KONG CENSUS STATISTICS
DEPARTMENT, Hong Kong:
Hong Kong Government
Press.
32.
Hong Kong Statistics1947-1967
33.
Hong Kong1961Population Census Main Report
34.
Hong Kong1971 Population Census Main Report
35.
Hong Kong1976By-Census Summary Results
36.
Hong Kong1981Population Census Main Report
37.
Hong Kong1986By-Census Summary Results.
38.
Hong Kong1991Population Census Main Report.
39.
Hong Kong1996By-Census Summary Results.
40.
KohnM.L.1977Class and Conformity: A Study in Values, Second
Edition, Chicago:
University of Chicago
Press.
41.
LareauA.2000Home Advantages: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary
Education, Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield.
42.
LewisO.1959Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty,
New York: Basic
Books.
43.
LuiT.L.1998‘Characteristics of the new middle class in Hong Kong and their
future’ in T.L. Lui and T. Wong (eds) Class Analysis
and Hong Kong, Hong Kong:
Ching Man Bookstore (in
Chinese).
44.
LynchK., and
MoranM.2006‘Markets, schools and the convertibility of economic capital: the
complex dynamics of class choice’British Journal of Sociology of Education27(2):
221–235.
45.
MareR.D.,
and ChangH-C.2006‘Family Attainment Norms and Educational Stratification in the
United States and Taiwan: The Effects of Parents’ School
Transition’ in S.L. Morgan, D.B. Grusky, and G.S. Fields
(eds) Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research in Sociology and
Economics, Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press.
46.
MarshallG.,
SwiftA., and
RobertsS.1997Against the Odds, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
MooreR.2004Education and Society: Issues and Explanations in the Sociology of
Education, Cambridge:
Polity.
49.
MorganS.L.,
GruskyD.B.,
and FieldsG.S. (ed.)
2006Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research in Sociology and
Economics, Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press.
50.
MorrisP.,
McClellandJ.A.G.,
and YeungT.M.1994‘Higher Education in Hong Kong: the context of the rationale for
rapid expansion’Higher Education27: 125–140.
51.
NashR.2006‘Controlling for “ability”: a conceptual and empirical study of
primary and secondary effects’British Journal of Sociology of Education27(2):
157–172.
52.
PostD.1994‘Educational Stratification, School Expansion, and Public Policy
in Hong Kong’Sociology of Education67(April):
121–138.
53.
PostD.1993‘Focus on Educational Attainment: Educational Attainment and the
Role of the State in Hong Kong’Comparative Education Review37(3):
240–262.
54.
PowerS.,
EdwardsT.,
WhittyG., and
WigfallV.2003Education and the Middle Class,
Buckingham: Open University
Press.
55.
RafteryA.E.,
and HoutM.1993‘Maximally Maintained Inequality: Expansion, Reform, and
Opportunity in Irish Education, 1921-75’Sociology of Education66(1):
41–62.
56.
ReayD.1998Class Work, London:
University College London
Press.
57.
ReayD.,
DaviesJ.,
DavidM., and
BallS.2001‘Choices of Degree or Degrees of Choice? Class, “Race” and the
Higher Education Choice Process’Sociology35(4):
855–874.
58.
SaundersP.2002‘Reflections on the meritocracy debate in Britain: a response to
Richard Breen and John Goldthorpe’British Journal of Sociology53(4):
559–74.
59.
SaundersP.1995‘Might Britain be a meritocracy?’Sociology29(1):
29–41.
60.
SavageM.2000Class Analysis and Social Transformation,
Buckingham: Open University
Press.
61.
SavageM.,
and EgertonM.1997‘Social Mobility, Individual Ability and the Inheritance of Class
Inequality’Sociology31(4):
645–672.
62.
SchiffM.,
and LewontinR.1986Education and Class: the irrelevance of IQ genetic studies,
Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
63.
SchoferE.,
and MeyerJ.W.2005‘The Worldwide Expansion of Higher Education in the Twentieth
Century’American Sociological Review70(December):
898–920.
64.
ShavitY.,
and BlossfeldH. (ed.)
1993Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen
Countries, Oxford:
Westview Press.
65.
SkeggsB.1997Formations of Class and Gender,
London:
Sage.
66.
SweetingA.2004Education in Hong Kong, 1941 to 2001: Visions and Revisions,
Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press.
67.
ThurowL.C.1972‘Education and Economic Inequality’The Public Interest28(1):
66–81.
68.
TreimanD.J.,
and YipK.1989‘Educational and Occupational Attainment in 21
Countries’ in M.L. Kohn (ed) Cross-national Research
in Sociology, Newbury Park:
Sage.
69.
WatersJ.L.2006‘Emergent Geographies of International Education and Social
Exclusion’Antipode38(5):
1046–1068.
70.
WillisP.1977Learning to Labour: how working class kids get working class
jobs, Farnborough:
Saxon House.
71.
WongYi-Lee,
2005‘Class and the Educational Attainment of Siblings: An explanatory
Model for Social Mobility’Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Volume
23, Chapter 5:
129–151.
72.
WongYi-Lee,
2004‘A Unified Middle Class or Two Middle Classes? A Comparison of
Career Strategies and Intergenerational Mobility Strategies between Teachers
and Managers in contemporary Hong Kong’, British
Journal of Sociology55(2):
167–186.
