Education and parenting are popular topics on social media. In China, it is now common practice for parents to discuss and share education-related information in WeChat, a premier Chinese social media app. In order to understand parents' educational aspirations in WeChat and the way parents fulfil their parenting responsibilities, this research used virtual ethnography to study a WeChat parents group named Little MBA. Focusing on parents' textual conversations and posts shared in the group, this article demonstrates how Chinese parents constructed their own image of British education to express their views on and aspirations for the education their children received in China. In Little MBA, three features of British education were constructed, including emphasis on character building, cultivation of entrepreneurship and influence of aristocratic education. In the process of presenting their version of British education, these parents were using Chinese notions like fuyang (cultivation with abundance) and qiongyang (cultivation with deprivation) to understand and reproduce the meaning of British education in their own context. Their constructs of British education were understood as a way to fulfil their parenting responsibilities transferred from the state. The ambiguous image of British
Purpose During the past decades, China has seen a rapid urbanization which has (re)shaped not only its city landscape but also (re)created public space where children live, play, and learn. However, little research has focused on how urban public space influences young children's learning and development and how parents navigate children's development in the public space. Therefore, this research aims to study how public space influences parents’ engagement with their young children. Design/Approach/Methods This study is informed of Bronfenbrenner's Processes, Person, Context, and Time (PPCT) model which sees children's learning as complex and multilateral interactions among various stakeholders including schools, families, and environment. It employed ethnographic approach to study the interactions between children and their parents in a public playground in a Western Chinese city. Findings It found that parents realized public space had been reshaped by urbanization. While they accompanied their children to play, they actively monitored children's safety and cultivated children's physical and social development. In this process, male parents tended to contribute more than they would do in other settings. Originality/Value This study fills the gap by providing a nuanced study exploring how parents fulfill their responsibilities in an integral space of children's development which has rarely been explored.
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