‘Start-up’ capital: cultivating the elite child in an elite international kindergarten in Shenzhen, China

ABSTRACT

The enrolment of Chinese middle-class children in elite international kindergartens is a big education industry in China. Our paper is situated in the broader sociology of elite schooling which has yet to fully explore how middle and upper middle-class parents are increasingly sending their children to elite international kindergartens. We present a case study from Shenzhen, China with a view to showing how the curriculum and the routine of its practices are used to cultivate the elite child for competitive advantage in the educational rat race in China. The approach of Bourdieusian accumulation of capital theory is used to unravel the categories of capital embedded in the curriculum.We term these ‘start-up capital’ which has exchange value for students to gain competitive advantage in their application to key primary schools and their onward schooling trajectories in China. Our case study provides a window into how social advantage and class are reproduced as soon as the child sets foot in an elite international kindergarten.

KEYWORDS:

• Elite international kindergarten
• Bourdieu
• ‘start-up’ capital
• early childhood education
• China

Introduction

Early childhood education has become a big industry in China worth 380 billion yuan (Chen, 2018). While the market demand for early childhood education can be accounted for by the sheer size of China’s population, there is a broader socio-cultural logic as to why Chinese middle-class parents place much emphasis on the importance of early childhood education. Kuan (2015) argues that ‘Chinese society has rapidly become a society of striving individuals guided by a deeply embedded drive in the psychic of Chinese mentality and ethos of “ren shang ren 人上人”, striving to be “a person above other persons”’ (p. 15). In local parlance, there is a popular saying among Chinese middle-class parents that ‘you don’t want to lose at the starting line’. Parents are therefore keenly aware in an increasingly stratified education system of ‘earning educational credentials that mean something starts with attending the right preschool’ (Kuan, 2015, p. 15). This is why early childhood education in China has become a competitive site where middle-class parents queue for an elite international kindergarten to give their children a head start to their education.

Our study focuses on this recent phenomenon in the early childhood education industry in Shenzhen, China, also observed in other large cities in China, where there is a high demand for kindergartens that are branding themselves as elite international kindergartens. This high demand is triggered by ‘parent-initiated school choice’ (Wu, 2014, p. 2), where rising middle- and upper middle-class Chinese families vie to send their children to key schools which are regarded as high quality, well-resourced, and a ‘model’ for other public schools (Wu, 2014). According to Chinese scholars, ‘attending key schools is seen as an ideal pathway to elite universities and then elite social positions’ (Liu & Apple, 2018, p. 74; Ye, 2015). This ‘school choice fever’ has now spilled over to the preschool sector (Wu, 2014, p. 2).

However, parent-initiated school choice for an elite international kindergarten is a sector yet to be fully explored in research. So far, research in early childhood education in China has tended to focus more broadly on curriculum reform, policy and practices (e.g. Yang & Li, 2019). But missing in the literature are studies that examine from a sociological perspective how social advantage and class are reproduced as soon as the child sets foot in a pre-school. Furthermore, although scholars in elite education have studied how curricular form plays a significant role in the cultivation of elites (Khan, 2011; Lim & Apple, 2015), there is a dearth of research related to elite international kindergarten in China. We argue that ‘marks of the elite’ (Khan, 2011, p. 159) begin for kids in our case study kindergarten anonymised as Excel, where the market driven curricula of an elite international kindergarten lays the foundation for the accumulation of what we posit as ‘start-up’ capital.

Our paper features the observed curriculum as a centrefold of analysis to make the argument that the early accumulation of ‘start-up’ capital is a composite of categories of capital which have exchange value for students to gain competitive advantage when they apply to key primary schools. The aim of our paper is to show how the curriculum and the routine practices in an elite international kindergarten cultivate the elite child for competitive advantage in the educational rat race in China. The approach of Bourdieu’s (1986) accumulation of capital is used to unravel the specific categories of capital embedded in the market driven curriculum coalesced around what we term start-up capital.

Before we proceed to set up the theoretical framework in the next section, our frequent mention of ‘Chinese middle class’ in the paper requires proper qualification here because in Chinese sociology, ‘middle class’ is a slippery term. Thus, we follow a few Chinese sociologists who use key classifications such as income, occupation (white-collar occupations), ownership of private property, high education credentials and consumption to define Chinese middle-class (So, 2013; Tsang & Lee, 2016).

‘Start-up’ capital: a Bourdieusian theoretical framework

Forms of capital

Our conceptualisation of ‘start-up’ capital draws theoretical inspiration from Bourdieu’s oeuvre of capital accumulation as a theoretical resource to analyse how the curricular form in Excel cultivates the elite child for social advantage. The premise of Bourdieu’s capital accumulation theory is that access to an assortment of capitals – comprising economic, social, and cultural – is important for ‘the chances of success for practices’ (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 242).

A cursory explanation of the four types of capital Bourdieu (1986) theorised is necessary here. Bourdieu (1986) defines economic capital as material goods that are ‘immediately and directly convertible into money’ (p. 243). Cash, property or any material goods of quantifiable financial value are good examples. Social capital is the ‘durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ one has, which Bourdieu says, ‘is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalised in the form of title nobility’ (Bourdieu (1986). Cultural capital exists in three forms, namely, embodied (e.g. accents, body language and mannerism), objectified (books, paintings, computers) and institutionalised (e.g. academic credentials) (Threadgold, 2018). These different forms of capital are however only recognised as capital if they are authoritatively endorsed and legitimatised by institutions, groups and individuals in a particular social field (Carrington & Luke, 1997). And when a form of capital is conferred with prestige, status and reputation, it becomes symbolic capital (Threadgold, 2018).

Recontextualising Bourdieu’s capital theory in the Chinese context

To fully appreciate the relevance of Bourdieu’s capital accumulation theory in the context of our study, it is necessary to provide an account of the culture of education in China to which we briefly alluded in our introduction to the paper. It is important to do this because there have been critiques about the national specificity of Bourdieu’s theory and questions raised about the portability of his theory (e.g. Bennett et al., 2013; Kenway & Koh, 2013; Thompson, 2017). We take the advice of Dooley et al. (2019) to use Bourdieu’s theory with reflexivity in research on education in China. We modified Bourdieu’s capital theory as ‘start-up’ capital using the data we collected and analysed, taking into consideration the doxa in the Chinese context where there is a deep belief that investment in education can yield returns and social mobility.

Bourdieu (1979/1984, p. 114) states that one’s social position in the field depends on the ‘volume of capital, composition of capital, and change in these two properties over time … ’ The uneven ownership of forms of capital therefore has consequences for individuals and different social groups. It also explains why there is stratification within society. In China, families who have economic capital will have the financial means to choose the type of kindergarten they want to send their child(ren) to. Conversely, those families who do not have the financial means will have to make do and their choice will be limited. Thus, the level of the playing field at the starting line of education is not equal to begin with because of unequal volumes of capital that families possess.

In recent times, the accelerating growth of China’s economy has given rise to emergent middle-class families who have become ‘active participants in a competitive educational field’ (Guo et al., 2019). These middle-class families know the ‘rules of the game’ in the competitive educational field. ‘Investment’ in education begins as early as preschool and has become a middle-class strategy for upward mobility and an individual project of ‘ren shang ren’ (Kuan, 2015). Middle-class families have the economic capital to send their child to an expanding elite international kindergarten market of their choice. To stay ahead of the competition, it becomes a necessary condition to make an early start to own, access and acquire specific forms of capital that can become convertible into economic and/or symbolic capital as one enters into specific fields.

Expanding ‘categories of categories’: ‘start-up’ capital

In addition to Bourdieu’s capital theory, we turn to some relevant literature to further develop the concept of ‘start-up’ capital. Bourdieu’s capital theory has been further refined and expanded into ‘categories of capital’ (Thompson, 2017, p. 121), in a new research context necessarily so, as Bourdieu himself encouraged scholars ‘proofing’ his theory to take into consideration ‘the distribution of agent in social space’ (Bourdieu et al., 1991, p. 626).

Aihwa Ong’s (1999) and Jane Kenway’s (2017) studies are significant in this regard. Their studies examined how Chinese families (Hong Kong families in Ong’s study and Chinese families from China in Kenway’s study) navigate as agents in the geographies of migration using elite education as strategies of capital accumulation. These rich families send their children to ‘the right school’ (Ong, 1999, p. 91) to leverage the prestige and the reputation of elite schools to accumulate a new kind of ‘start-up’ capital – symbolic capital ‘signifying good educational taste and [which] confers cultural recognition’ (Kenway, 2017, p. 36). A more recent study on global middle class parents and school choice identified a sub-type of capital called ‘cosmopolitan start-up’ capital which parents desire their children to accumulate, as this specific form of capital can be convertible to advantages in a broader, cosmopolitan social space (Beech et al., 2021).

The international schooling and education literature also draws on Bourdieu’s capital theory to understand the specific forms of capital that parents desire their children to accumulate. Research has shown that international schools are the preferred choice of expatriate families and increasingly local middle-class parents (Maxwell et al., 2019). To these families, international schooling provides children with an environment to immerse in and form friendships with students from different cultures important for the accumulation of ‘cosmopolitan capital’, which Weenink (2008) defines as possessing a form of capital that is open to different cultures, peoples, nationalities, well-travelled and proficient in English and one other language. Inherently, cosmopolitan capital is a form of social and cultural capital that will serve ‘a propensity to engage in globalizing social arenas’, as Weenink (2008, p. 1092) argues. However, in Excel, we argue that the acquisition of cosmopolitan capital via the intercultural lesson serves to confer ‘positional advantage’ recognised by key primary schools that these families have had early training to a ‘different’ and ‘distinctive’ curriculum which makes them a suitable applicant.

Moreover, in international schools, children can pick up English as linguistic capital to boost their ‘class and cosmopolitan striving’ (Park & Abelmann, 2004). Linguistic capital in non-English speaking countries is often a much desired capital because it is also a symbolic marker of class that carries advantage (Park & Abelmann, 2004). In China, fluency in English is ‘a symbolic key and a valorized form of cultural capital with exchange value’ (Fish et al., 2017, p. 164). Hence, Chinese middle-class parents are eager to send their children to elite international kindergartens to have a head-start to learning English as an important addition to their repertoire of ‘start-up’ capital.

Specific to our study, ‘start-up’ capital refers to the accumulation of symbolic capital acquired through brand name early childhood kindergartens such as our case study kindergarten which is branded as elite international. We valorised symbolic capitals in our analysis because they have ‘use and exchange value’ (Thompson, 2017, p. 12) when children apply to the next stage of schooling. In other words, attending elite international kindergartens brings ‘positional advantage’ because symbolic capital confers distinction. Drawing on the expanded ‘categories of capital’ discussed in the literature above, our analysis of the data will show that there are semblances of such ‘categories of capital’ evident in the curriculum practices in Excel. Thus, ‘start-up’ capital is defined as the early foundational knowledge and skills whereby students acquire and begin to accumulate a composition of categories of capitals. We show that cosmopolitan and linguistic capitals have the most ‘symbolic efficacy’ and ‘lie[s] in the logic of transmission’ (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 49) evident in the curriculum of Excel. Importantly, such forms of capital also function as ‘reputational capital’ (Hayden, 2011, p. 217) in that these capitals stand for prestige and are given recognition in the social field of education in China.

Elite international kindergarten landscape in China

A contextual description of the elite international kindergarten landscape in China is necessary in order to give a better understanding of how our case study kindergarten, Excel, sits within this broader sector. It is important to note first that early childhood education is not part of free compulsory education in mainland China, but Grades 1–9 are. This does not, however, deter educated middle-class families from sending their child(ren) to their choice of kindergarten, particularly affluent families who can afford to choose from public and private kindergartens. Currently, there is a huge demand for private kindergartens branding themselves as ‘elite international kindergarten’ such as our case study kindergarten. In 2013, there was a two-fold increase in the number of private kindergartens, from 65,102 public kindergartens to 133,451 private kindergartens (Hong & Chen, 2017). A market research company calculated the growth of the elite international kindergarten industryto be worth USD60.91 billion during 2020–2024 (Businesswire, 2021). This is an indication of the scale and expansion of a thriving early childhood education industry in China that warrants research.

However, there are no existing studies that define elite international kindergartens in China, although they share certain characteristics with elite secondary schools which are defined in the literature (e.g. Kenway et al., 2017; Koh & Kenway, 2016). Some of those characteristics such as the high fees charged, good learning facilities, the curricular and extracurricular range and affluent clienteles are recognisable characteristics of the elite international kindergartens in China. We define the elite international kindergarten sector in China as a private for profit education industry driven by market logics of increasing demand for quality preschool met by a supply of large- and small-scale preschool providers capitalising on the growing market size of the early childhood sector.

These kindergartens brand themselves as ‘elite’ and ‘international’ to differentiate themselves from their competitors in order to increase their market share of clienteles. Such kindergartens integrate ‘international’ elements by employing ‘native’ English teachers and embedding international and intercultural activities in the curriculum to burnish the kindergarten as ‘elite’. Strikingly, these elite international kindergartens all ‘sell’ themselves by offering a bilingual curriculum as a hallmark of distinction. The names of some of these elite international kindergartens are telling; for example, the Beanstalk Bilingual International Kindergarten and Etonkids Bilingual International Kindergarten. These two elite international kindergartens are established and international players in the sector who have pricing leverage (Businesswire, 2021). The tuition fees for Beanstalk Bilingual International Kindergarten, for example, are RMB180,000 (equivalent to USD27,792) per academic year while Etonkids Bilingual International Kindergarten’s tuition fees range from RMB 135,000 – RMB138,000 (equivalent to USD20,844 – USD21,307). With this brief overview of the elite international kindergarten landscape in China we introduce our case study kindergarten, Excel, next.

The study: Excel Elite International Kindergarten

Our case study kindergarten, anonymised as Excel Elite International Kindergarten, is a well-known kindergarten in a residential area in Futian District, which is the central district of Shenzhen. In this area, the average housing price is above the average of around 75,000 RMB/square metres compared to Longhua District (45,000 RMB/square metres). Excel Elite Kindergarten caters to middle-class families who can afford the high fees charged. The fees are RMB7260 per month (equivalent to USD1123) compared to other kindergartens which charge a lower fee of RMB1000 per month (equivalent to USD145). The school’s fees are inclusive of tuition (RMB4140 per month), meals (RMB630 per month) and miscellaneous fees (e.g. uniform, school bags and etc, RMB 2490).

Excel is a whole-day private kindergarten, established by the Hong Kong X Education Group and currently managed by Shenzhen Corporation. The Education Group has more than 15 years of early childhood education (ECE) history and has more than 20 branches in different parts of China. Awarded by the Chinese Association of Educators and China Association of Private Educators, it was one of the top ten brands of private kindergarten in China in 2001, in the same rung as Beanstalk and Etonkids. The Education group has its own curriculum research and development centre and has collaborated with early childhood educational resources from Europe and America to design its curriculum, textbooks, and pedagogies. On its websites and guidebooks, Excel claims to be a transnational and multicultural early childhood educational institution that aims to give children the experience of a global village. Its mission is ‘to educate children to take the first step of noble life, construct and develop a platform that transfers future leader talents for our future society’. A detailed account of the school information is provided in Table 1.

Table 1. School information of Excel Elite International Kindergarten.

Founding year	2009
Grade levels	Pre-K (NA) – 2–3 years old K1 – 3-4 years old K2 – 4-5 years old K3 – 5-6 years old
No of classes	13
No of children	420, about 25–32 per class
No of teachers in each class	1 Lead teacher 1 Team teacher 1 Nurse 1 Foreign teacher
Academic qualifications of class teachers	All have associate or above degree
Local teachers	26
Non-local (native teachers)	10
Professional qualifications of class teachers	All are certified teachers

What characterises Excel as an elite international kindergarten is the demography and class background of the students. For example, the students all live in an expensive housing area in the central district of Shenzhen where Excel is located. The school fees are nearly triple the fees of another kindergarten nearby, yet there is a long waiting list. The high fees charged index the symbolic values of ‘quality’, ‘taste’ and ‘class’ because it is a ‘product’ not every family can afford. Although classes are big and kept at under 40, in China, a high student-teacher ratio is an indication of the educational quality and popularity of the kindergarten (Vickers & Zeng, 2017), in contrast to other education contexts such as the U.S., Australia and elsewhere where the teacher-student ratio is kept small.

In Excel, the admission interview serves as a screening process of who gets in. Parents who are interested in enrolling their child in the kindergarten have to attend an admission interview. This screening process is an indication that the kindergarten is selective, although the principal did not disclose the selection criteria when asked. Neither did she reveal what sort of parents were excluded citing confidentiality as a reason. However, she disclosed that at the interview, naturalistic observation of the child and an evaluation of his/her verbal and motor skills was undertaken by a selection committee made up of teachers. A decision is then made whether to admit the child. We argue that it is through such a selective process that ‘the work of social reproduction, closure, and exclusion gets done’ (Ball, 2003, p. 76). It is also this selection and exclusion mechanism that makes the kindergarten ‘elite’. However, specific to our study we take a close-up analysis of the curriculum of Excel, which is how they position themselves in the ECE market as an ‘elite international kindergarten’.

Data and method

A case study approach is our methodological design as the data collected in this way is expected to illuminate ‘exemplary knowledge’ (Thomas, 2011, p. 21) of the curriculum and routine of the practices used to cultivate the elite child for competitive advantage in the educational rat race in China. Thomas (2011) asserted that exemplary knowledge of a case study is not meant ‘to be representative, typical or standard’ nor ‘is it exemplary in the sense of being a model or an exemplar’ (p. 31). As such, our study does not offer a generalisation of how elite international kindergartens in China are organising and ‘branding’ their curriculum as ‘elite’, as there are many such kindergartens each marketing themselves as ‘distinctive’. To do so would require a much more extensive scale of study involving multi-case studies. However, to compensate for the methodological weakness of the generalisability aspect of a case study, triangulation of three sources of data was used to strengthen the credibility of the findings (Yin, 2018). For our case study, three sources of data were collected, namely classroom observation, interviews and documents.

To address the issues of credibility and validity of our methodological design as well as the interpretation of our data, a brief methodological explanation of the division of labour and positionality of the two authors is necessary here, although the boundary of research and the distribution of who does what can at times overlap. Author 2 was primarily involved in data collection while Author 1 did the data analysis (i.e. coding and thematic analysis). Inter-coder agreement scores were not undertaken. However, Author 2 provided her perspectives and standpoints to the overall interpretation of the data because of her positionality as the ‘insider’ of the culture of education in China while Author 1 is the ‘outsider’, who, with expertise in elite schooling, points out the familiar strange for her. This synergistic ‘insider-outsider’ approach to data analysis ensures a reflexive analysis and a synthesis of two perspectives with no one view dominating the other.

The fieldwork was conducted by the second author in the first quarter of 2018 after ethics approval was granted by the ethics committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Approval Number: EDU2017-11). The second author observed three classrooms for each grade and observed the classes for 2–3 hours per week over eight weeks. An overview of the class timetable is given in Table 2.

Table 2. A day’s class timetable at Excel.

Time	Activities of Children	Major Language
8:00–8:10	Flag raising or morning jogging	Mandarin
8:10–9:00	Breakfast, morning reading and sharing	Mandarin
9:00–9:30	English - theme learning activity	English
9:30–10:20	Learning centred group activity	English supplemented with Mandarin
10:20–11:20	Outdoor physical exercise	English supplemented with Mandarin
11:20–11:40	Free play (dancing, singing, storytelling)	English supplemented with Mandarin
11:40–14:20	Lunch break and afternoon nap time	Mandarin
14:20–14:50	Wake up and afternoon tea	Mandarin
14:50–15:50	Outdoor physical exercise	English supplemented with Mandarin
15:50–16:20	Learning centred group activity	English supplemented with Mandarin
16:20–16:30	Prepare and organise to leave school	Mandarin

There are differences in sequence of the daily activities for each class due to the arrangement of playing areas.

Author 2 spent two months conducting this classroom observation, which also included observing the routines of the school as well as indoor and outdoor activities. The kindergarten did not allow video-recording of the curriculum practices in the classroom claiming that it was too intrusive to do so. Following Merriam and Tisdell (2016), to ensure the consistency and reliability of the data collected from observation, we developed a code sheet focusing on a few analytic categories that would help us capture the range and variation of patterns relevant to curriculum practices in the classroom. This code sheet was used for every classroom observation.

In addition to the observation data, Author 2 interviewed four teachers and the principal to get an overall sense of the curriculum practices of Excel. The teachers interviewed were a mix of local and foreign teachers who had worked in the kindergarten for two to five years. The teachers chosen for the interview have a good knowledge of the kindergarten curriculum and its routines. Semi-structured interviews which lasted 60 minutes were conducted with the participants. An Interview Guide was developed to ensure that all participants were asked the same questions (Atkins & Wallace, 2012). Information was elicited about the curriculum design of Excel, how it differentiates its curriculum from its competitors from the same district, and the skills and intended outcomes of the curriculum. All the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim by Author 2. To avoid errors in the transcription process, Author 2 re-checked the quotes used in this article with the audio recorded interviews.

Various documents related to the curriculum practices of Excel were also collected as data. These included Excel’s official website (which features its unique ‘elective courses’ such as ‘Etiquette course’, ‘International Culture course’, ‘English and Chinese theme course’, ‘P.E. course’ and ‘Music course (Cajon)’), curriculum documents used by the teachers (e.g. lesson plans and worksheets) and field notes written by the second author.

All the interview transcripts and related data were input into the software MAXQDA2020. After thorough reviews of the texts, data analysis followed ‘two cycles’ of coding suggested by Miles et al. (2014). In the initial round of coding, an extensive list of 80 codes were generated. In the second cycle, pattern coding was conducted both within and across data to group the first-cycle codes into a smaller number of categories and theme after redundancies and overlaps were eliminated. The themes include ‘history, curriculum design and missions of Excel’; ‘parents are important stakeholders in Excel’; ‘learning English through phonics, song, dance, movements, story-telling and play’; ‘intercultural classes and benefits’. Our analysis of the data was also guided by the theoretical framework where we made use of Bourdieu’s (1986) capital accumulation theory to dig into the data. As the analytic focus of our study is the observed curriculum in Excel, our discussion below centres on this aspect of the findings examined through Bourdieusian lens of ‘start-up’ capital.

Findings and discussion

Schooling and the curriculum play an important part in the socialisation and cultivation of a child, although the family plays an equally if not more important role. However, when schools are chosen by parents such as an elite international kindergarten, they have higher expectations of the sort of education their child will benefit from. We make explicit the themes that emerged from our data analysis organised around the early accumulation of an assortment of specific types of capitals coalesced around embodied cultural capital. Paraphrasing Bourdieu, Carrington and Luke (1997) define embodied cultural capital as ‘directly linked to the biological being’ where ‘the composite set of skills, dispositions, practices, knowledges [is] embodied by an individual’ (p. 102). We identify and discuss three embodied cultural capitals evident in our data: linguistic capital, creativity and imagination (through play-based learning) and intercultural capital.

Many existing studies have investigated middle-class parenting and class reproduction strategies. However, many of these studies are concentrated in the U.S. (e.g. Lareau, 2011) and U.K. (e.g. Vincent & Ball, 2007), and focused on how parents organised extra-curricular activities to build up what Friedman (2013) calls ‘competitive kid capital’ (p. 3), defined as ‘the lessons and skills that parents hope their children gain from participating in competitive activities’ (p. 17). Our findings enrich the literature by turning the spotlight on the specifics of the curriculum rather than extra-curricular activities and how the child is cultivated with specific capitals in an elite international kindergarten to give the child a head-start in the competitive rat race of education in China.

Linguistic capital

How English was taught is noteworthy, and therefore, warrants some analysis here because we had preconceived ideas before the observation that much of the lesson would be drill-and-practice or learning by rote of the alphabetical system (i.e. the recitation of A, B, C, D. E …). However, this was not the case. We provide an example of one observed English lesson from our field notes:

At the beginning of the class, the teacher asked ‘how’s the weather today? Is it sunny? Cloudy? Rainy? Windy? Students responded by answering ‘Yes/No!’ or ‘Sunny/windy’!. The teacher then played a song related to weather and they sang along and danced to it. The teacher excitedly gestured to the students: ‘Let’s dance together!’. After the dance, they listened to another song:

Brush my teeth, up and down, brush my teeth, day and night.

Wash my face, up and down, wash my face …

Comb my hair, up and down, comb my hair …

The students listened to the song and did the actions. The teacher then used the song and used phonics to teach the students the words: brush, teeth, wash, face, comb and hair. She enunciated the words very slowly so that students could follow. After the students learned how to pronounce the new words acquired, the teacher asked the class, “Where is your teeth? How to brush your teeth? What is next?’. The students answered the teacher with actions, and ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and in short sentences that they just learned. (Field notes, February, 9^th, 2018).

The observed lesson suggests several things about the way English is taught and acquired. English was taught in a context, using a song to introduce new lexicons related to everyday living (e.g. sunny, windy etc.). The chorus contained repetitive words that helped students remember the words taught meaningfully. Phonics was also taught in a meaningful way using a context. Instead of learning by repetition, students were asked questions that required them to answer using the taught phrases and vocabularies. There was opportunity for students to understand and use the new vocabularies as students demonstrated the newly acquired words with actions.

Although the use of English could well be deemed superficial evidenced by the ‘bite sizes’ (i.e. small chunks of vocabularies) rather than larger chunks of discourse, and the prevalent use of Putonghua, what needs to be kept in mind is that this is an early years setting in a Chinese context where ‘English’ is regarded as a ‘foreign language’ and not widely spoken in everyday life. However, in our interview with the native English teacher, she said that:

We as teachers try to use English and body language to communicate with children every time and that allows less use of Putonghua. Children can progressively learn and understand the meaning day by day. They learn naturally by interacting with English daily. We hope that English becomes their tool for expression and that they do not fear the language (Interview with Sasa, March, 1^st, 2018).

What strikes us in the teacher’s interview is that the pedagogical approach is sensitive to young Chinese learners of English. Learning English through songs and actions lays a foundation for students to like English and, importantly, reduces their anxieties about speaking English which is a common hindrance for second language learners. The students may not speak much English in the early years, but in the Chinese context where Putonghua is widely spoken, having the opportunity to acquire what is not their mother tongue is in itself a class capital. The foundation for acquiring English is an example of a capital that requires time and early investment for further accumulation. Thus, ‘start-up’ capital appositely highlights the linguistic capital that parents seek in order to give their children a head start for learning English because this is a capital that will purchase and confer advantage in the future.

Another embodied set of cultural capitals: creativity and imagination through play

There is no shortage of literature on the importance and benefits of play in the early years (e.g. Brooker et al., 2014; Fleer & Pramling-Samuelsson, 2009). The adage that ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ is visibly articulated as play-based learning in the formal and informal curriculum in Excel. Creativity and imagination caught through play-based learning are closely associated with arousing and cultivating the curious child to think creatively and critically. Although the debate on what constitutes meaningful play persists in Chinese kindergartens in China (e.g. Lin et al., 2019), we depart from this debate and nourish the analysis of play-based learning with Bourdieu’s capital theory.

Play-based learning in Excel was organised in activities such as the ‘story telling king’ competition, little flea market, self-directed English play, food festival and environmentally friendly fashion show. These activities provided opportunities for students to learn new vocabularies and sentences related to various topics which students could use in a context. Teachers as well as parents who volunteered their time provided much support to the organisation of these play-based activities. We provide some observational evidence from field notes to show how the embodied capital of creativity and imagination is cultivated through play-based learning.

The story telling king competition expects children to tell a story in English on stage individually. They can dress up and act a little too. The little flea market lets children bring their own toys or books to kindergarten and then sell or exchange with other children. They are also expected to use English (e.g. ‘How much?’; ‘Xx yuan’, ‘Here you are’. ‘Thank you’). English theatre play also requires children to act together on stage, dress up, and memorise their lines. For food festival, students need to introduce the food they bring in English, such as its name, what are some of the ingredients? For the fashion show they need to explain what things they recycled to make this piece of cloth or work (Field note, March 2^nd, 2018).

Some observations can be made about the infusion of play-based learning and the embodied cultural capital that students could pick up. From linguistic skills – and notably English is the language of use in all these play-based activities – to entrepreneurial skills (from learning to sell and buy in a flea market) to creativity and imagination, all are required in activities like the fashion show and English theatre. While these activities are essentially fun activities, there are pedagogical benefits; play-based learning cultivates the curious and creative child, builds confidence and poise, and develops oratorical and presentational skills.

Apart from teacher-led play-based activities in the curriculum, free play is also encouraged in designated areas within the compound of the kindergarten. These play areas are not only spacious but also aesthetically designed and visually appealing. The school understands that play develops students’ creativity so there are resources and mock settings for students to play in indoor or outdoor spaces. For example, there is a small café and a fire station for students to role-play. This aspect of play is unstructured and students are allowed to use their imagination to guide their play. It is also a time for students to interact socially with their peers to enhance their communication skills. We note that these ‘fun’ spaces and the equipment are not the standard provisions one would find in ordinary kindergartens.

Acquiring cosmopolitan capital in the international culture classes

Our analysis of the curriculum also revealed that Excel harbours an ambitious plan of early exposure to cultivating world citizens and future elites. Indeed, this is one of the missions stated on the website of the kindergarten. Excel has a series of international cultural classes that covers 37 representative countries and regions from five continents. These classes aim to introduce students to different cultures. The contents include the cultural history, cultural conventions and life experiences of these diverse countries. The classes also facilitate an in-depth understanding of Chinese traditional culture. Overall, the aim is to encourage students to understand the diversity in cultures and to respect cultural differences.

According to the teachers we interviewed, every month the kindergarten will choose one country or region to be the major theme. The teaching group will decorate the school compound and the classrooms with cultural items from the featured country in advance; for example, the country’s flag, festivals of the country, the customs and tradition, prominent architectures, and traditional food. They also put up paraphernalia such as a globe, a map or an airplane in the kindergarten. In that month, teachers will introduce the cultures, history and folklores of that country in the class. A teacher we interviewed said that:

We introduce a country every month and we design and bring many interesting contents to children. In this way they can build international understanding of different cultures. Not only about knowledge of the country, they will build understanding of the differences between countries and people and their rituals and values. We believe this prepares them with an open mind to interact with this world. (Interview with Toto, March, 1^st, 2018)

Excel also conducts excursions to the Window of the World replica park as part of their ‘international culture class’. This is not one of those ordinary excursions to fill curriculum time. Children are brought to the park with the purpose of learning about different world cultures and histories to broaden their ‘little world’ at an early age. Window of the World is a famous tourist attraction replica park located in Nanshan, Shenzhen where reproductions of some of the world’s most famous sites and iconic historical heritage and architecture can be seen; for example, the Mahamuni Pagoda of Mandalay, Angkor Wat of Cambodia, the Eiffel Tower, Ancient Athens, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and many others.

However, local culture is not left out. Teachers also guide children to learn about traditional Chinese culture through various activities such as tea tasting and Beijing Opera Mask painting. Using different kinds of multimedia, students learn about the similarities and differences between people and their cultures from all over the world. At such a young age, these children are already exposed to what Fazal Rizvi calls ‘cosmopolitan learning’ (2009), although what they see and experience is a simulation of world cultures. Bearing in mind that the student population in Excel comprises local Chinese kids, there is therefore little opportunity for them to mingle with foreign people other than the ‘native’ English teachers. Thus, via ‘cosmopolitan learning’, even limited exposure to foreign cultures is nonetheless important for the acquisition of ‘start-up’ cosmopolitan capital.

Conclusion

In this paper the locus of our attention has been a case study of an elite international school we named Excel Elite International Kindergarten located in Shenzhen, China. Our study aimed to examine a new development in the early childhood industry in China where kindergartens branding themselves as elite international and are growing in numbers. The popularity and demand for such kindergartens will continue to flourish because of the competitive culture of education for places in key schools in China, and in the broader society where striving to be ‘a person above other persons “ren shang ren” has become an individual project’ (Kuan, 2015, p. 15).

One strategy to stay ahead of the competition is to turn to education as a resource to begin acquiring the different categories of capital that have exchange value in future social fields (Bourdieu, 1986). This is precisely the strategy Chinese middle-class parents are seeking, to give their children a head-start by sending them to an elite international kindergarten to accumulate what we conceptualised as ‘start-up’ capital.

In our Bourdieusian inspired analysis of ‘start-up’ capital, the students pick up not just knowledge and a different set of skills, but categories of capital embedded in the formal and informal curriculum. For example, they pick up English as linguistic capital. In addition, at an early age children in Excel are already exposed to ‘cosmopolitan learning’ (Rizvi, 2009) as they learn about different cultures in the international culture classes, although it is hard to determine the actual volume of cosmopolitan capital they acquire at this tender age. Play-based learning encourages the development of creativity and imagination as embodied cultural capital. But we argue that these categories of capital, coalesced as ‘start-up’ capital, function more importantly as symbolic capital meant to bestow advantage as well as recognition as the child applies to key schools next.

Attending such elite international kindergartens and the benefits of accumulating ‘start-up’ capital is every parents wish. However, it is also a wish not available to all. This is the contradictory effect of the ‘parent-initiated school choice’ market in elite and international kindergartens (Wu, 2014). Ostensibly ‘school choice’ suggests the freedom to pick and choose, but to do so the family needs to have the resources to be able to choose to begin with. The selective entry and the high fees an elite international kindergarten charges are barriers to school choice. This has meant that in the early years the level of the playing field at the starting line of education is unequal in the first place. Access to the accumulation of ‘start-up’ capital is therefore unequal. This has wider implications to reproduction of social class and stratification in the broader Chinese social fabric if the provision of public kindergarten does not match the quality of the market-driven elite international kindergartens.

Overall, Bourdieu’s capital accumulation theory has been illuminating to show the reproductive logics (Grenfell, 2007) in the curricular form of an elite and international kindergarten where class and advantage is reproduced. However, there are some limitations to our study. Foremost, a comparative case study that featured a less elite pre-school would have showcased Excel as an elite international kindergarten in regard to its ‘eliteness’. In addition, evidence of how the play-based learning approach is used to promote children’s creativity and imagination could be more systematically documented and analysed. These limitations notwithstanding, our case study heralds much research to be done next: to expand the study to include more such elite and international kindergartens; to talk to middle-class parents about their school choice of elite and international kindergarten and what they expect out of such schooling. Indeed, much remains to be researched in China’s rapidly changing landscape of early childhood education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aaron Koh

Aaron Koh is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the Joint Editor of International Studies in Sociology of Education and Co-Editor of the Book Series, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education. His research fields are elite schooling, international and comparative education and global studies in education.

Li Ziqi

Li Ziqi graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Masters in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. She is a current school teacher in Shenzhen Futian Hongling Experimental School in China.