Exploring Students’ Learning Habitus from Chinese Higher Vocational Colleges

Abstract

Habitus is a concept from Bourdieu’s theories that plays a key role in explaining individuals’ behaviours. The social reputation and recognition of vocational education in modern China are declining, and vocational college students are bearing a negative stigma, although they have a positive learning behaviour toward academic education. The aim of this study was to examine those students’ previous life experiences, especially in the education field. The main research questions are as follows: (1) How does the individual’s experience construct his or her learning habitus? (2) How does their learning habitus change their learning behaviours? The findings show that the interaction between participants and their parents and teachers mainly leads to the construction of learning habitus, that is, to pursue the success of academic education. Even though they originate from the working class, with less cultural capital and poor academic performance, this does not mean that they have negative learning behaviours. Therefore, it is necessary to give objective and fair evaluations to higher vocational students and address educational inequity problems.