Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum Recent documents in Emily C. Hannum en-us Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:20:52 PST 3600 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/23 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/23 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:42:06 PST Gender stratification in education is declining in China, but some recent research suggests that girls' schooling is still vulnerable in poor rural areas. This chapter investigates girls' educational vulnerability in Gansu, one of China's poorest provinces. Specifically, it analyzes the Gansu Survey of Children and Families, a multisite survey that interviewed 2,000 rural children, along with their families, teachers, principals, and community leaders, in 2000 (when children were 9-12) and 2004 (when children were 13-16). Drawing on comparative and China-specific literature on gender and exclusion, we investigate several questions. First, do gender gaps favoring boys exist in enrollment, children's educational aspirations, and parental expectations? Second, are gender gaps in enrollment, aspirations, and parental expectations worse among the poorest children and families? Third, are girls' educational outcomes more sensitive to prior performance? Fourth, do characteristics of early homeroom teachers and early classroom experiences have different effects on outcomes for girls and boys? Our findings suggest that girls do not face substantially greater access barriers to basic education than do boys in much of rural Gansu. Jennifer Adams Gender Stratification http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/22 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/22 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:27:06 PST Insecure access to nutritious food is a common experience for poor households in developing countries. Despite the global scale of food insecurity, it has not been conceptualized by sociologists as a significant component of home environment or dimension of poverty that might matter for children's outcomes. Analyzing data from rural China, the authors show that nutritional environment in the home is associated with household socioeconomic status, that it predicts children's school performance, and that it is a significant mediator of poverty effects on schooling for children in early primary grades. Shengchao Yu Poverty and Educational Outcomes http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/21 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/21 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:23:56 PST In this paper, we investigate the gender gap in education in rural northwest China. We first discuss parental perceptions of abilities and appropriate roles for girls and boys; parental concerns about old-age support; and parental perceptions of different labor market outcomes for girls' and boys' education. We then investigate gender disparities in investments in children, children's performance at school, and children's subsequent attainment. We analyze a survey of nine to twelve year-old children and their families conducted in rural Gansu Province in the year 2000, along with follow-up information about subsequent educational attainment collected seven years later. We complement our main analysis with two illustrative case studies of rural families drawn from 11 months of fieldwork conducted in rural Gansu between 2003 and 2005 by the second author. In 2000, most mothers expressed egalitarian views about girls' and boys' rights and abilities, in the abstract. However, the vast majority of mothers still expected to rely on sons for old-age support, and nearly one in five mothers interviewed agreed with the traditional saying, "Sending girls to school is useless since they will get married and leave home." Compared to boys, girls faced somewhat lower (though still very high) maternal educational expectations and a greater likelihood of being called on for household chores than boys. However, there was little evidence of a gender gap in economic investments in education. Girls rivaled or outperformed boys in academic performance and engagement. Seven years later, boys had attained just about a third of a year more schooling than girls -- a quite modest advantage that could not be fully explained by early parental attitudes and investments, or student performance or engagement. Fieldwork confirmed that parents of sons and daughters tended to have high aspirations for their children. Parents sometimes viewed boys as having greater aptitude, but tended to view girls as having more dedication -- an attribute parents perceived as being critical for educational success. Findings suggest that at least in Gansu, rural parental educational attitudes and practices toward boys and girls are more complicated and less uniformly negative for girls than commonly portrayed. Emily C. Hannum Gender Stratification http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/19 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/19 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:18:29 PST As reforms to China's health care system have raised costs to users in recent decades, studies suggest that ill health has become intimately tied to social stratification as both a precipitant and a consequence of poverty. The problem may be particularly pronounced in China's poorest rural populations. Focusing on Gansu Province, one of China's poorest, this paper investigates the possibility that the ill health of adults also carries cross-generational consequences, through interfering with the education of children. Analyzing a survey of children in 100 rural villages, we find that parental illness is experienced disproportionately by the most economically vulnerable children. Moreover, parental illness can be linked to children's educational access and experience in several ways. Children with an ill father are less likely to be enrolled than others; prior parental ill health is associated with lower household educational spending; and ill parents are more likely to report borrowing for their children's education. Children with ill mothers are more likely to be absent and to work longer in the household. Children with ill mothers perform more poorly in math, and those with ill mothers and ill fathers are more likely to work for wages, on average, but these effects are accounted for by the deeper impoverishment of households with ill parents, compared to other households.Results suggest that ill health may have a 'spillover' effect on the long-term educational (and thus economic) prospects of the next generation. A change in this situation depends heavily on the success of new government initiatives to reduce health care and education cost burdens on the poor. Emily Hannum Poverty and Educational Outcomes http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/18 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/18 Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:18:28 PST Teacher professional learning communities provide environments in which teachers engage in regular research and collaboration. They have been found effective as a means for connecting professional learning to the day-to-day realities faced by teachers in the classroom. In this article, the authors draw on survey data collected in primary schools serving 71 villages in rural Gansu Province as well as transcripts from in-depth interviews with 30 teachers. Findings indicate that professional learning communities penetrate to some of China's most resource-constrained schools but that their nature and development are shaped by institutional supports, principal leadership, and teachers' own initiative. Tanja C. Sargent Educational Provision and Access http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/17 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/17 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:33:10 PST This report seeks to provide a portrait of schools serving rural communities in northwest China, and to shed light on factors that encourage and discourage school persistence among children in this region. To achieve these goals, we analyze a survey of rural children and their families, schools, and teachers in Gansu province. The project interviewed children in the year 2000, when children were 9 to 12 years old, and again four years later. In part one of the paper, we provide a descriptive overview of the material, human, and cultural resources available in sampled primary and middle schools. Where possible, we note changes between 2000 and 2004. We describe the following types of resources: (1) basic facilities; (2) financial arrangements; (3) teachers, including their background, qualifications, working lives, professional development activities, satisfaction with work, and attitudes about school management and culture; and (4) classroom environments, as reported by teachers and by students. In this descriptive section of the paper, we highlight basic infrastructure issues, the complexity of financial arrangements at the time of the surveys, problems of teacher wage arrears and teacher morale, and the pedagogies and learning environments in classrooms, as reported by teachers and students. In part two of the paper, we investigate reasons for school leaving reported by village leaders, families, and children themselves, and analyze contributors to subsequent enrollment, change in attainment, and attainment of nine years of compulsory education. Our models of family, teacher, and school effects on outcomes show that higher socio-economic status children are more likely to show grade attainment, continued enrollment, and attainment of nine years of basic education. In contrast, the gender story is mixed: girls are less likely to be enrolled, but have not gained less grades, nor are they less likely to achieve nine years of education. This finding suggests that boys may start later or repeat more. It is possible that boys are more likely to be encouraged to repeat a grade to complete it successfully or to increase high school exam scores. One significant finding is that the introduction of school and teacher effects, by and large, does not explain away the advantages of children in better off families. School and teacher effects do not consistently matter across the three outcomes. Some interesting findings include that teacher absenteeism in 2000 is associated with less attainment between 2000 and 2004; children with better-paid home room teachers are more likely to attain nine years of school; and children in schools with minban teachers are less likely to attain nine years. However, there is not a consistent story of school characteristics that help or hinder childrenʹs persistence. Reports by village-leaders, fathers, mothers, and children themselves indicate that, along with socioeconomic status, children's performance and engagement are significant factors in school continuation decisions in Gansu's rural villages. Multivariate analyses indicate that childrenʹs early aspirations and performance matter for later outcomes. We close by discussing the most significant strengths and weaknesses identified among the school resources discussed in part one, and the most significant supports and hindrances to favorable educational outcomes considered in part two. Emily Hannum Educational Provision and Access http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/16 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/16 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:33:05 PST A central task of educational researchers has been to uncover factors that improve student academic achievement. Research in both developed and developing nations during the past few decades has analysed the links between educational outcomes and school physical resources, teacher quality and children's demographic and family background. Importantly, research on teacher and school effects in developing countries has focused on factors such as human capital, economic resources and physical infrastructure, the so-called input factors in the "black box" production function model of school outcomes. Fewer studies have focused on the "softer" classroom process factors that might be seen as important mechanisms of the production function, such as teaching style, the quality of teacher-student interactions and student academic engagement. Xuehui An Educational Provision and Access http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/15 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/15 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:33:01 PST More than 2 decades of economic reforms have brought great improvements in the quality of life for women and girls in China. Despite these improvements, in some areas, cultural values and norms concerning gender roles and traditional family structures still influence the values attached to sons and daughters and create strong incentives for son preference (Croll 2000; Li and Lavely 2003). The most striking evidence of the priority parents place on sons is demographic: the "missing girls" phenomenon of abnormally masculine sex ratios at birth. This phenomenon has become more extreme in the economic reform period (Banister 2004). Yuping Zhang Gender Stratification http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/14 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/14 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:32:56 PST Numerous empirical studies from developing countries have noted that parental education has a robust and positive effect on child learning, a result that is often attributed to more educated parents making greater investments in their children's human capital. However, the nature of any such investment has not been well understood. This study examines how parental education affects various parental investments in goods and time used in children's human capital production via an unusually detailed survey from rural China. It is found that more educated parents make greater educational investments in both goods and time and that these relationships are generally robust to a rich set of controls. Evidence suggests that making greater investments in both goods and time stems both from higher expected returns to education for children and from different preferences for education among more educated parents. A second key finding is that the marginal effect of mother's education on educational investments is generally larger than that of father's education. Tanja Sargent Educational Provision and Access http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/10 http://works.bepress.com/emily_hannum/10 Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:42:51 PDT Emily C. Hannum Educational Provision and Access