A contextual understanding of Mainland Chinese parent involvement in their children's primary school years' education

Although parent involvement has received long-standing attention in the literature, there is limited research about Chinese parent involvement, especially, in mainland, China. With Chinese immigrant students' high academic success having been repeatedly reported, more attention has been given to Chinese parent involvement, however it was restricted to Chinese overseas, or in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It is unclear whether findings obtained accurately described Chinese parent involvement, and can be generalized to Chinese in Mainland. This research attempts to add an in-depth contextual understanding of mainland Chinese parent involvement. Based on face-to-face interviews, this study investigated Chinese parents' involvement in, expectations for and perceptions of their children's education. Participants were 30 parents, randomly selected from 5 primary schools in Changsha, China. Results indicated that parents: 1) are highly involved in their children's education, with daily homework supervising; frequently communicating school issues to their children and generously investing time and money in children's extra-curricular training; 2) hold high expectations for their children with more than 70% parents expecting their children to complete "at least" university education; 3) mostly attribute their educational involvement to the realistic need of well preparing their children for the fierce workforce competition, and passing the university-entry exams.