Left-behind children: teachers’ perceptions of family-school relations in rural China

Abstract

Large-scale rural-urban migration in China has left rural schools with large proportions of left-behind children whose parents are away working in the city. This has a huge impact on family-school relations and poses a burden on teachers. This study draws on 42 interviews with teachers working in two rural schools. This article argues that teachers’ negative narratives about antagonistic family-school relations are driven by the gaps between their culturally embedded traditional models of family-school relations and the reality, with implications for the expanded role of schools and that of grandparents as caregivers. This article further discusses the implications of these findings for rural schools and draws heavily on Western models of family-school relations in a comparative perspective.

Keywords:

• Rural education
• rural to urban migration
• family school relationship
• teacher perspectives
• China

Acknowledgements

The fieldwork for this work was made possible with the help of Rachel Murphy, Ms Kuang, and Director Yi. The author also thanks the school principal and teachers who shared their stories and made this research possible. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author only.

Notes

1. Left-behind children, defined as children with one or two parents having migrated elsewhere for over six months (see Duan and Zhou 2005), are one of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, living in poverty either alone, with a single parent (often their mother), or with their grandparents.

2. There were six homeroom teachers in total in school A for the interviewed grades.