Abstract:

While some studies have attributed the behavioral problems of left-behind children in China to vulnerabilities such as parent-child separation and lack of family education, few studies have examined whether "problematised" narratives about left-behind children lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy effect, which exacerbates the behavioral problems of left-behind children. Integrating insights from social classification theory, research on teacher attitudes, and studies of anti-school culture, this study proposes a novel conceptual mechanism at the cultural belief level to explain the behavioral issues of left-behind children. Drawing on data from the second and third waves of the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this study employs a series of methods including instrumental variable regression and structural equation modeling to examine this mechanism in causality level. The main findings are as follows: first, teachers tend to hold negative evaluations of left-behind children, which contributes to the emergence of behavioral problems. Second, such negative evaluations make left-behind students more likely to engage in self-defeating resistance and more readily accepted by peer groups that endorse anti-school cultural. Third, teachers' implicit biases and their effects are more pronounced in rural schools. These findings suggest that teachers' differentiated attitudes toward left-behind students play the role of self-fulfilling prophecy. It is worth noting that a major source of the problematizing narratives adopted by teachers lies in the broader public discourse, which tends to frame the issue of left-behind children as a sever social problem affecting China's population quality (or suzhi). The widespread circulation of such narratives in public discourse reinforces a schematic association between left-behind status and behavioral problems in prevealing cultural beliefs. This study underscores the critical role of teachers in the reproduction of educational inequality and provides empirical evidences for the need to resist the problematization of disadvantaged student groups.

Key words: left-behind children, social classification, peer effect, self-fulfilling prophecy, China Education Panel Survey