Zhang Siqi, Tang Xiaoqing
Moray House School of Education and Sport, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
School of Philosophy, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China.
Front Psychol. 2021 Jan 18;11:584360. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584360. eCollection 2020.
The present qualitative study analyzes how cultural capital, gender, class, and family involvement impact Chinese female students' aspirations of studying in the United Kingdom. We investigated how these factors facilitate or limit female students' choice of study destination, as well as choices of subject and program. Data were gathered through participant observation and semi-structured interviews in a British university. A total of 25 young Chinese female students from different subject areas took part in the semi-structured interviews. Out of those, five students are undergraduates, 11 are taught master's students, and the other nine students are doctoral candidates. Most of the undergraduates and postgraduates are from middle-class families, while some of the Ph.D. students are from working-class families. The results of the content analysis were examined in light of gender and cultural capital theory. It was found that although there exist differences within the middle-class families regarding the possession of cultural capital, many female students from middle-class families obtained high levels of cultural capital, and these students usually internalized the idea of pursuing a place in the United Kingdom's tertiary education system as a way of enhancing women's competency in future job markets. Furthermore, compared with working-class students, many respondents' choice of subject and program was highly gendered, as their families expect them to live a feminine life by choosing "appropriate" feminine subjects. Therefore, despite having the privilege to study abroad, female middle-class students' educational choices are still constrained by gender and class.
本定性研究分析了文化资本、性别、阶层和家庭参与度如何影响中国女学生去英国留学的志向。我们调查了这些因素如何促进或限制女学生对留学目的地的选择，以及学科和课程的选择。数据通过在一所英国大学进行的参与观察和半结构化访谈收集。共有25名来自不同学科领域的中国年轻女学生参加了半结构化访谈。其中，5名学生是本科生，11名是授课型硕士生，另外9名是博士生。大多数本科生和研究生来自中产阶级家庭，而一些博士生来自工人阶级家庭。根据性别和文化资本理论对内容分析的结果进行了审视。研究发现，尽管中产阶级家庭内部在文化资本的拥有方面存在差异，但许多来自中产阶级家庭的女学生获得了高水平的文化资本，这些学生通常将进入英国高等教育体系深造的想法内化，作为提高女性未来就业市场竞争力的一种方式。此外，与工人阶级学生相比，许多受访者对学科和课程的选择具有高度的性别倾向，因为她们的家庭期望她们通过选择“合适的”女性化学科来过一种符合女性特质的生活。因此，尽管有出国留学的特权，但中产阶级家庭的女学生的教育选择仍然受到性别和阶层的限制。
