“Helpless” or “feckless”: Perspectives of higher vocational college students on their working-class parents’ education involvement style

Abstract

The education involvement of parents plays an important role in the student’s learning and development. Based on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, this study explores Chinese higher vocational college students’ perspectives of their working-class parents’ education involvement. A qualitative research approach was adopted and eight students from two higher vocational colleges in mainland China were interviewed. The findings of this study indicate that laissez-faire, reliance on others, and in-person styles are the three main styles that Chinese working-class parents are involved in the education of their children. Furthermore, it was found that working-class parents’ educational involvement is mainly related to the higher vocational college students’ academic learning, academic choices, interest and hobby cultivation, and cultural leisure activities. This study contributes to the use of cultural capital theory to understand working-class parents’ education involvement styles in Chinese contexts. This study provides new insights to reconsider the influence of parental education at different levels among Chinese parents in their child’ s development. It also offers an insight into the perceptions of higher vocational college students, which could prove invaluable in enhancing their higher education learning outcomes, fostering school-family collaboration, improving educational quality in vocational schools, and mitigating educational disparities between general universities and higher vocational education in China.