社会杂志 ›› 2020, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (5): 213-236.

• 论文 • 上一篇    

方言能力与流动儿童的学业表现——来自中国教育追踪调查的证据

柳建坤1, 张云亮2   

  1. 1 清华大学社会科学学院;
    2 西南财经大学社会发展研究院
  • 发布日期:2020-10-09
  • 作者简介:张云亮,E-mail:zhangyunliang@swufe.edu.cn
  • 基金资助:
    本研究得到西南财经大学中央高校基本科研业务项目“家庭债务对儿童教育获得的影响研究”（JBK2001033）的资助。

Dialect Ability and Academic Performance of Migrant Children——Evidence from the China Education Panel Survey

LIU Jiankun1, ZHANG Yunliang2   

  1. 1 School of Social Science, Tsinghua University;
    2 Research Institute of Social Development, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics
  • Published:2020-10-09
  • Supported by:
    This study was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in the title of “The Study of the Effect of Family Debt on Children's Educational Attainment”（JBK2001033）.

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摘要： 本文以就读于八年级的流动儿童作为研究对象，考察了方言能力对其学业表现的影响及作用机制。通过对中国教育追踪调查2014—2015学年数据的分析，本研究发现，掌握流入地方言可以显著改善流动儿童的学业表现，但其影响主要体现在语文和英语两个科目上。同时，来自教师和同学的支持是方言能力影响流动儿童学业表现的作用机制。本研究从语言环境的角度揭示了流动儿童人力资本积累的逻辑，为相关部门完善与流动儿童相关的教育政策提供了经验证据。

关键词: 流动儿童, 方言能力, 学业表现, 学校融入, 社会支持

Abstract: Education is a key issue affecting child development. Since the economic reform，the urban migration has continued its expansion in China. With the improvement in economy and transportation，the cost of household migration has fallen continuously，making family migration a prevailing model. Previous studies on migrant children's academic performance have mainly focused on the impact of family background and school environment and have neglected the important role of language environment. Using the data from the 2014 to 2015 China Education Panel Survey，this study examines the influence of migrant student dialect language ability on academic performance and the potential mechanism involved. We find that mastering local dialects can significantly improve migrant students' academic performance in two subject areas of Chinese and English. After checking the issue of estimation bias with various methods of instrumental variables，propensity score matching and sample selection，we find that the conclusion remains valid. The positive effect of dialect language ability does show differences in gender and region. In addition，support from teachers and classmates is identified as the mechanism by which academic performance is enhanced by mastering dialects. The mediation effect results，estimated based on the Bootstrap method，are consistent with the above finding. This study reveals the logic of the accumulation process of human capital of migrant children from the perspective of language environment. It provides references for governmental educational policy improvement for migrant children. This study expands the existing literature in three ways：first，the analysis of social integration in the existing research mainly concentrates on individual weakness at the micro-level and institutional exclusion at the macro-level. However，because dialects reflect both individual ability and macro-environment，this study has expanded the scope of the existing research on social integration. Second，this study introduces a new interpretation for the formation and changes of human capital of migrant children，as well as the interactive role of dialects，from a language perspective，unlike the common approaches of family and school system applied in the existing literature. Third，this study emphasizes the sociological significance of dialects in helping individuals integrate into new places and new cultural environment and accumulate personal capital，a perspective different from the existing literature's mere emphasis on the economic impact of dialects.

Key words: migrant children, dialect ability, academic performance, school integration, social support