Recourse Activation: Group Differences of Parental Participation in the Tide of Parentocracy

In the tide of paterntocracy sweeping the world, parental involvement in Chinese cities shows its own unique characteristics.Firstly, Chinese parental participation largely revolves around academic achievement and has a strong focus on performance outcome; secondly, parents' engagement in school public affairs is very much underdeveloped but family private sphere has expanded dramatically; finally, the class differentiation of parental participation is largely observed among the three groups of migrants, urban workers and middle class people. Based on a follow-up survey of two junior middle school classes in the same urban district, this article examines the characteristics of Chinese parental participation and the differences in the adaptation by different groups in the context of parentocracy. Chinese urban schools advocate family resource utilization, capability boost and parental responsibility ethics. It enables teachers to place ever higher demands on parental participation in education. In the categori