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.

1. Introduction

In approximately the past 20 (2000–2020); years, the Chinese government has played an important role in promoting the development of vocational education due to the high demand for skilled workers in the manufacturing industry [1]. The number of general universities has increased by about 112% (from 599 to 1270), while the number of higher vocational colleges has increased by about 232% (from 442 to 1468). Moreover, the number of students in general universities has increased by about 301% (from 4.55 million to 18.26 million), while the number of students in higher vocational colleges has increased by 1345% (from 1.01 million to 14.59 million) (data come from the National Bureau of Statistics of China: http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2021/indexch.htm (accessed on 10 September 2021)). It is clear that higher vocational education in China has witnessed enormous expansion in the past nearly 20 years; however, previous studies about Chinese higher education focused more on general universities than on higher vocational colleges, such as rural students’ motivation to attend elite universities or middle-class students choosing to study abroad [2,3,4].

Moreover, there is a stereotype about Chinese vocational college students, and they are treated as “bad seeds” who are lazy, stupid, or fail in academic education. This stereotyping of college students comes partly from their teachers’ perspective [5]. Chinese college teachers’ negative stereotype about their students comes from their teaching experience, and students feel less learning motivation due to their teachers’ teaching attitude [5]. However, on the one hand, this negative argument comes only from teachers’ feelings during class time. On the other hand, even if during the vocational college study period the students have a negative learning behaviour, such as not focusing and listening to their teachers carefully, it does not mean they always have this kind of learning performance. It is important to understand students’ situations and their own perspective on the meaning of learning and what drives their learning behaviours towards academic education.

Bourdieu’s theory of practice will be mainly borrowed and applied in this study, as the concept of habitus has been used to explain individuals’ practice, such as learning behaviour and their academic outcomes [6]. Jarvis argues that the learning process is an interaction between individuals and society [7]. An individual’s habitus is built by his or her personal life experiences [8] and then affects the disposition of behaviours [9].

Therefore, this study targeted the higher vocational colleges in China and explored not only the formation of students’ learning habitus by analysing their past experiences but how their learning habitus influenced their learning behaviours. Through the in-depth interviews of qualitative research, this study offered new insights into the construction of students’ learning habitus and their changes in learning behaviour. The positive learning behaviour of students towards academic education demonstrated that not all vocational college students fit their negative stereotypes.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Habitus, Cultural Capital, and the Education System

Habitus is a concept defined by Bourdieu, which is a set of dispositions from different social groups and is the mental and cognitive structure of how they deal with positions in the social space [10]. The habitus is not discussed independently; normally, it is discussed with another of Bourdieu’s concepts: field. The field is a key spatial metaphor from Bourdieu’s perspective, and it is described as a structured space organised around particular types of capital or portfolio of capital [9]. The types of capital in Bourdieu’s sociology include economic, cultural, and social capital [11]. Here, the field in this study is considered the education system, which is a field of struggle for the control of valuable resources, especially cultural capital [9].

Bourdieu and Passeron argue that the education system is a sorting system that has three key functions: preserve and inculcate a cultural heritage, strengthen the unequal distribution of cultural capital, and legalise the cultural heritage [12]. Various qualitative and quantitative studies have shown that especially middle-class and upper-class parents’ involvement has a positive influence on student’s academic achievements, whether in China [13] or in other countries [14,15]. Lareau explains that the middle-class parental style features “concerted cultivation, where parents provided numerous cultural experiences to improve their children’s academic abilities” [16]. Those different experiences are explained by the terms habitus and capital, especially cultural capital, which provides middle-class children with a natural and comfortable situation at school because the experience at school is similar to that at home [17]. Students from middle-class families have received different kinds of cultural resources and experiences—for example, education practices and communication abilities—from their families [18]. As a result, they can communicate easily with their teachers and are more likely to obtain good academic achievements. Moreover, the teachers at the school have the most cultural capital, and they tend to value and reward students who succeed academically [6]. Moreover, teachers’ personal and professional habitus may affect students’ learning behaviour [19].

2.2. Influence of Experience on Habitus

Habitus comes from individuals’ early social experiences, mainly from family and schooling experiences [8]. The dispositions of habitus are long-lasting and can be changed through individuals’ social experiences [9]. Bourdieu also defines the concept of habitus as a socialised embodiment, which demonstrates not only that individuals are in the social world but also that society influences individuals [20]. In particular, schooling experience provides a general disposition towards Bourdieu’s cultured habitus [21].

Jarvis’s learning theory has been applied in this study to explain the relationship between students’ learning habitus and life experiences. On the one hand, it has highlighted that the learning process is a social interaction process due to individuals living in a real society [22]; thus, learning is not an individual behaviour but a socially situated process [23]. Moreover, Jarvis discusses that learning always starts with experience, and experience is always social for both adults or children; they all have to transform and give meaning to their sensation or disjuncture [7]. On the other hand, he notes that when we explore learning experiences, we should consider the psychological and sociological aspects of the learning process in tandem [7]. Young students not only have been influenced by their social interaction experience but also frequently seek meaning for their sensations about their new experiences more than adults.

2.3. Influence of Habitus on Behaviours

One key question from Bourdieu’s theory of practice is how the behaviour is regulated but not followed by the rules. He combines three main concepts—capital, habitus, and field—to contribute to the final practice [9].

Habitus normally shapes an individual’s behaviours, and the depositions of habitus are used to choose the most possible behaviours based on an individual’s capital and past experience [9]. Bourdieu mentions that habitus provides individuals with “a feeling of the game”, and the “player” takes part in the practice in the field based on the “strategies” generated from their habitus [24]. Thus, in this context, learning habitus is defined as a set of internalised dominant tendencies that could guide college students’ learning behaviours in the field of education.

By combining Jarvis’s learning theory and Bourdieu’s theory of practice, in this research, the authors demonstrate Chinese higher vocational college students’ habitus in the field of the education system and how their habitus is constructed by their social interactions, mainly from family and schooling experience. Further, with more social experience, students begin to change their understanding of learning from their internalisation.

2.4. Habitus in the Chinese Context

Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, capital, and field has been applied to some Chinese social class research problems [25], such as different social class families’ capital investment and parenting habitus [26], Chinese middle-class families and their children’s motivation to study abroad [3], and social classes’ influence on Chinese students’ college subject choices [27].

Most papers are related to general academic education problems. Few studies discuss higher vocational colleges, and they focus on Chinese higher vocational college students’ stereotype as being “lazy and stupid” from their teachers’ perspective [5]. “Bad students” from second-generation migrant (rural to urban areas) families are guided to choose vocational schools [28]. Are those students really bad, lazy, or stupid, or are they bearing a social stigma? Thus, analysing students’ experience from their own perspective is important to help us to explore their learning habitus and understand their underlying meaning of learning.

In China, higher education includes academic higher education and vocational higher education. In this study, learning habitus is defined as the pursuit of success in academic higher education, which is commonly referred to as “going to university”. We explore college students’ learning habitus through their past life experience, mainly learning experiences, and their perspectives to understand their learning behaviours towards academic education. Jarvis explains that an individual’s learning process is affected by social experience from both internal and external perspectives [7].

The use of the quantitative research method is a well-established approach to explaining the relationship between habitus and educational achievements [6,29] and making a measurement to explore individuals’ habitus [30,31]. Previous quantitative studies, however, listed the factors that influenced individuals’ education achievements, for example, and regarded habitus as a mediation [30]. One possible disadvantage in those research works is the consideration of habitus as a static factor, which displays a result of habitus, not a process [31,32], failing to explore students’ deep thoughts dynamically because an individual’s habitus is shaped over time and is a dynamic process [33].

Therefore, a qualitative research method may be much better to seek patterns of shared meaning among Chinese vocational college students’ learning habitus. All data are collected mostly from personal experience, explaining how the habitus influences Chinese students’ learning behaviours based on their past life and study experiences, displaying the changes in the interviewees’ learning habitus. The main research questions are designed in this study: (1) How does the individual’s experience construct his or her learning habitus? (2) How does their learning habitus change their learning behaviours?

3. Methodology

A qualitative research method was employed in this study. By discussing the participants’ experience, this paper investigates the construction of Chinese higher vocational college students’ learning habitus and how the learning habitus influences their learning behaviours.

3.1. Settings and Samples

Freshmen students in vocational colleges were selected as the investigated group due to their vivid memory of their past life experiences. This study followed the principle of differentiation and selected two schools located in different provinces in China: College A located in Anhui Province and College B located in Jiangsu Province. There is a significant difference in the economic and vocational education development levels between these two provinces. Nineteen students were interviewed until the data reached informational redundancy [34]. Sixteen interview participants were kept, and the remaining three interviewees were eliminated due to individual and technical problems. Since the investigation took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, all interviews were conducted online. Online interviews provided real-time interaction between the interviewer and interviewee and solved the difficulty of data collection due to the local government’s quarantine regulations [35].

The 16 participants were aged between 17 and 20 years old; 9 were female and 7 were male. All participants come from Chinese working-class families based on their parents’ jobs and educational degrees [36]. Most of their parents are factory workers, freelancers, truckers, or some other blue-collar labourers. Only one of the fathers obtained a bachelor’s degree, and more than half (9) of the couples of parents had primary or junior middle school degrees (

Table 1. Profile of the participants.

Pseudonym	Age	Gender	Study Site	Parents’ Educational Background
S1	20	Male	College A	Both: junior middle school
S2	19	Male	College A	Junior middle school/no degree
S3	18	Male	College A	Both: junior middle school
S4	19	Male	College A	Primary school/high school
S5	19	Female	College A	Bachelor/high school
S6	19	Female	College A	Diploma/secondary education
S7	18	Male	College A	Both: junior middle school
S8	19	Female	College B	Both: secondary education
S9	19	Female	College B	High school/junior middle school
S10	18	Female	College B	Both: high school
S11	18	Female	College B	Both: junior middle school
S12	19	Female	College B	Both: diploma
S13	17	Female	College B	Both: junior middle school
S14	18	Female	College B	Junior middle school/high school
S15	18	Male	College B	Both: high school
S16	19	Male	College B	Both: junior middle school

).

3.2. Data Collection

A semi-structured interview approach was adopted to conduct conversation around the core question of “Could you please talk about your impressive learning experience since your childhood?” to gain further in-depth information based on the participants’ answers, which determine other interview questions related to the interviewee’s past experiences [37,38]. A pre-interview was conducted with the two students to ensure that the interview questions were suitable and that the author could gain a detailed understanding of the participant’s past learning experiences.

Each interview lasted 60–90 min, and the whole process was recorded. In addition, all participants were asked to sign an interview consent form and had the interview content and research purpose explained to them. All interviewees’ information was kept confidential, and all names are pseudonyms.

3.3. Data Analysis

All data were transcribed from recordings to texts and translated from Chinese to English by the author within 24 h after each interview. The data were classified by thematic analysis [39], which helped researchers to search patterns of shared meaning among participants’ narrative experience. Data analysis was conducted through both inductive and deductive processes, focusing on three main themes: (1) Which experience influenced participants’ learning behaviours? (2) How have their learning behaviours changed? (3) Why have they changed the learning behaviours in those ways? The theory of habitus guided the data analysis, as the researchers intentionally sought data related to participants’ learning experiences and learning behaviours. The researchers searched for relationships among different themes for an in-depth analysis. The previous experiences with parents and teachers were used to analyse whether the individual’s experience constructs his or her learning habitus. Students’ later life experiences were applied to analyse how their learning habitus influences their learning behaviours and academic education outcomes.

3.4. Rigour

In order to ensure the trustworthiness of this study, four procedures were conducted. First, the interview outline was constructed under the guidance of two professors and modified according to the researcher’s self-assessment and the respondents’ feedback after a pre-interview with two students. Second, in the process of data collection, two voice recorders were used, and the interviewees were ensured to be free and stay in a quiet and independent environment. Third, the data analysis was conducted by two researchers, and the coding result was compared, revised, and reviewed by experts. Finally, the participants were asked to read the transcribed interview content and gave feedback as to whether the content matched their original meanings.

4. Findings

Participants’ life and learning experiences in this study fell into these main groups: parents’ related experiences that guide individuals’ original taste for academic education; teachers’ related experiences that strengthen students’ aspiration about academic outcomes; personal experiences about academic learning obstacles; and social interaction experiences, such as part-time summer job experience. The research findings are presented in Figure 1. Various experiences indicated that students’ learning habitus was developed at an early age in their life, and their positive learning behaviour in academic education mainly came from their parents’ guidance and teachers’ encouragement. However, “habitus is durable but not eternal” [40]. With the accumulation of numerous personal experiences, students began to have their own feeling and understanding about academic education gradually. Most had learning difficulties, which decreased their positive learning behaviour in academic education. Students still have a common recognition: a higher education credential is pivotal to them for future job seeking. All participants, therefore, constructed their learning habitus and drove their learning behaviour with reference to their experiences related to social interactions.

4.1. How Does the Individual’s Experience Construct His or Her Learning Habitus?

The learning process has been treated as a social interaction process [22], and human beings’ early social experience comes mainly from family and schooling [8]. Based on the analysis of interview content, this section discusses the formation of learning habitus under the influence of individuals’ previous family and schooling experiences.

4.1.1. Parents’ Educational Aspirations and Practice

Parents’ educational aspirations and cultural practices generally already happened at an early age of childhood (during the first-grade year) and affected their children’s dispositions later [32]. In this study, all participants discussed their learning experience since their primary school period, and most study hard and have positive learning behaviour toward academic education. During this period, parents’ education played an important role in helping the children and building their learning habitus.

On the one hand, parents’ educational aspiration gave academic education important significance and built their children’s learning habitus, such as active learning habitus. One student (S12) mentioned that he did not know how he obtained cognition about learning, but his parents’ encouragement to study hard and go to university, in the end, affected him to study hard during his primary and middle school periods.

On the other hand, parents’ educational practice, such as providing extracurricular instruction opportunities and accompanying homework, was to improve academic performance and prepare for academic education, which shaped their children’s learning habitus. One student (S5) noted that when she was in junior middle school, her mother was recommended by a friend to send her to an extracurricular institution that was good for improving English academic outcomes. Another student stated:

“Since I was in primary school, my father began to be responsible for my homework. He checked my homework every day. When he found that I made some mistakes, he always punished me.”

(S13)

These educational practices of parents construct students’ learning habits, making them study harder. However, the effects of parents’ educational inspiration and practice in forming their children’s learning habitus is limited, because all participants come from working-class families, and their parents normally have lower cultural capital, such as lower educational credentials. At the beginning of their children’s education, all parents transferred their higher educational aspirations to their children and helped them to improve their academic outcomes. With the growth of the children, the parents could not support their children’s academic education gradually due to their limited cultural capital. Most participants in this study talked less about their parents’ educational support in the post-secondary education stage. Instead, students explained that they obtained more support from teachers later.

4.1.2. Teachers’ Educational Guidance and Encouragement

In the Chinese social background, from the historical perspective, academic education was always the first priority, influenced by traditional Confucianism [41]. From the modern perspective, during the Chinese nine-year compulsory education period, academic achievement is one of the most important indicators assessing students’ educational attainment [42]. Students in China inherit academic education expectations primarily from their parents at the beginning of their life. When they went to school, they began to have interactions with teachers.

Teachers have been proven to be a group that has more cultural capital, and they prefer to value it and reward students who possess it [6]. As teachers, they explicitly or implicitly give academic education guidance to every student, which influences students’ learning habitus. One student remarked:

“When I was in grade 8, I was not good at Chinese. My teachers always discussed with me and encouraged me to study hard and go to a good-ranking general high school. After the teacher’s guidance in learning methods, my exam score improved, and I have more learning motivation.”

(S11)

In addition, almost all the participants indicated that teachers always gave educational encouragement about good results, such as having a comfortable life, brought by hard study. As one student commented:

“I thought my junior middle school teacher was a liar (laughing). She told me if I study hard, I can go to a good general high school. I will have a more comfortable life, with more extracurricular recreational activities… and the teachers in high school were the same. They had a similar saying: study hard right now, and you will have an easy life in the future.”

(S12)

In summary, at home, parents always made educational inspiration and practice, including giving meaning to academic education and transmitting their higher academic education expectations to their children. At an early age, individuals received a signal about academic education from their parents’ related experiences. When they went to school, most teachers also gave educational guidance and encouragement to explain the importance of academic education and good learning achievement. Thus, most students’ positive learning behaviour towards academic education came from their interaction with family and schooling experience, which played an important role in the formation of learning habitus.

4.2. How Does Students’ Learning Habitus Change Their Learning Behaviours?

In the field of the education system, most individuals pursue academic education, influenced by their parents and teachers, and constructing their learning habitus. The result is that not everyone chooses academic education, and numerous students still choose vocational education, which can be explained by learning habitus changing learning behaviour. The choice is the core function of an individual’s habitus, which means that the habitus guides individuals to choose the relatively possible successful learning behaviours [21].

4.2.1. Trying to Remove the Individuals’ Learning Obstacles

Most participants in this investigation stayed at the general high school to pursue an academic education at first, but in the end, their poor final academic outcomes led them to higher vocational colleges. In other words, they studied hard for a higher academic education, and vocational education was their second choice. However, according to the participants’ experience during their normal academic education learning period, they already had some learning obstacles. When the students began to have learning difficulties, they could not find an appropriate method to resolve their learning problems, so they tried to find other possible learning practices. One student (S3) discussed his situation: when he did not want to study anymore, he chose vocational high school because he believed vocational education had a lower requirement than academic education. Another student interviewee reported:

“My academic outcome was always good until I went to high school. Gradually, I could not catch up with my mathematics and English courses, and I began to give up learning those courses. I remember one time I got a very poor exam score, and I felt that maybe academic education was not suitable for me. I could not obtain a sense of achievement from my study, so then I lost my learning motivation.”

(S11)

4.2.2. Trying to Access Academic Education in Other Ways

No matter whether participants were later in general high school with lower academic outcomes or in vocational high school, the interviewees in this study explained that some teachers still encouraged them to pursue academic education and shared information with them about any possibilities of attending a university. From childhood to adolescence, those students’ surroundings gave important meaning to academic education for them. The desire for academic education faded but did not disappear when they were in a situation where they had lower academic achievement; however, when they found other possible ways to access an academic path, they tried it without hesitation. Two students shared their views:

“When I was in a vocational high school (his major was football), I was confused because I did not know my future…Until one of my teachers told me even though I was here I still had opportunities to go to university in the end if I studied hard and trained hard. This teacher was responsible too much for my academic and football training outcomes. He was my football coach, and he could teach me mathematics. He told me that he really hoped that I could go to university and he would try his best to help me. With his encouragement, I felt hope at that moment, and I study and train hard because I believe that I have a future.”

(S1)

“After one semester of study at my high school, I chose to be an art student and began to learn art. My teacher told me learning art was another way to go to university due to its lower requirement for academic outcomes. At the beginning of learning art, my heart was eager to succeed, and I really believed that I also had an opportunity to go to university.”

(S7)

4.2.3. Trying to Obtain a Higher Education Credential

A few participants mentioned that life in vocational high school was very boring, so they had some experience outside of their high school, such as a short summer job experience. This experience helps individuals find another meaning in higher education, since without a higher education degree, they may only find manual labour job positions, which are tiring. Therefore, some students still stay at school, driven by external factors—for example, obtaining a higher education credential to find a more decent job, although they think learning is meaningless. As one student said:

“If I did not stay at school, at that moment I did not know where I could go and what I could do. I was so helpless; if I found one path, I would definitely drop out. Later, I found a summer holiday job position and became an assembly line worker in a factory. That experience made me feel too tired, and then I had to go back to school to pursue a higher education credential even though I still believed that study was useless.”

(S3)

Participants in this study have had various experiences, and it is obvious that their positive beginning learning habitus towards academic education was built by their interaction with parents and teachers. With their growth, their interactions with the whole society increased, and their experience has expanded. They have their own understanding and meaning regarding academic education. For example, they felt that their academic learning ability was not enough to support their academic education study, or they recognised the importance of a higher education degree due to their part-time summer job experience. However, before they chose the final higher vocational education, some participants seemed to give up their academic education. If they find any possible method that leads to access to higher academic education, they are still willing to try.

5. Discussion

This study explored the formation of learning habitus, which is influenced by one’s parents and other related groups, such as teachers’ education and cultural experiences [19]. Specifically, students received the meaning of success from their parents and teachers: higher education was the normal way to obtain a decent job position. As time changed, the students experienced more regarding real learning problems, and they explored the best way to be successful in the field of learning. Therefore, some students’ learning habitus changed, and they did not study hard for academic education anymore; they believed that vocational education could help them pursue higher education. However, if students found some unusual way to win success in higher academic education, they would change their learning behaviours without any doubt. These findings are consistent with Bourdieu’s theory that habitus is a product of early socialisation experience, especially family experience, and it will continuously be reconstructed by an individual’s social interactions [9,43] instead of being set in stone and time and should be treated as a basic element to be considered related to habitus [9].

The study also identified capital as one of the key factors for learning habitus, especially cultural capital, which has been proven to influence an individual’s academic achievement, whether in China [4,36] or in other countries [15]. The distinction between higher vocational and academic institutions further strengthens the gap in cultural capital, since the Chinese education system deifies academic education, which has a higher requirement for cultural capital. Previous researchers have explained that economic capital plays a role in Chinese society; however, they have argued that there is not a stable class distinction in China, and Chinese individuals do not construct a stable class habitus [26]. This study focuses on the relationship between habitus and education behaviours in Chinese working-class students, as almost all participants mentioned little about economic resources. On the contrary, participants pointed out that they formed a positive meaning of academic education and obtained cultural guidance that initially came from their interactions with family and school. Lareau and Weininger explain that different parenting styles have different influences on students’ educational achievement. Middle-class parents’ strategy of “concerted cultivation” has more positive influence than working-class parents’ strategy of “accomplishment of natural growth” [44]. All interviewees in this study come from the working class, and their parents’ cultural capital, such as their parents’ education credentials, are not at a high level, which could be one reason why they have poor final academic outcomes. Even though the parents guided their children with positive behaviour toward academic education at first, they did not have enough cultural capital to support their children’s educational achievement later. Most parents had less cultural capital than the teachers, due to the teachers all having a higher education degree. Instead of a concerted cultivation strategy, the parents transmitted their education totally to the teachers, who provided some message for students and encouraged them to pursue higher academic education as much as they can.

The findings further showed that the dispositions of habitus guided individuals to choose the most possible success behaviours based on their resources and past experience [9]. The interviewees’ learning behaviours in this study have changed as they have grown upl from when they were young, all of them studied hard for academic education. With their interactions with parents and teachers, they perceived the successful meaning of academic education and the failure meaning of vocational education. During this period, their learning habitus was to make use of learning strategies to pursue the success of academic education. The first educational division for Chinese students was after their nine years of compulsory education; students with poor academic outcomes, because of their learning barriers, chose vocational high school. The second educational division for Chinese students was the college entrance exam; students who studied in vocational schools preferred to choose higher vocational colleges directly because they experienced that their probability of success to go to university was not very high. While the other interviewees were mostly from general high school, they went to higher vocational colleges after they failed the final college entrance exam. In a word, students’ learning behaviours are based on the extent to which they believed that they could obtain success in academic education. These findings align with Bourdieu’s theory of practice, which explained that individuals’ behaviours are influenced by the habitus and field; individuals took part in a game in a specific field, and habitus influenced their strategies to win the game, guided them to choose to continue or to drop out of the education system, and determined which type of education to pursue, all of which rely on the students’ social group’s likelihood of academic success [9,22,33]. Students in the field of learning have different learning behaviours to win the game of education.

Bourdieu’s theory of practice, habitus, capital, and field has been applied to explain some education inequality problems. Chinese education has been affected by traditional Chinese culture, especially Confucian culture; therefore, the deified culture in the field of education is academic education. All Chinese people hope their children can learn more and longer. At the same time, they prefer academic education over vocational education due to the value of academic education, which is conveyed by the “promotion of the ablest” [45]. The higher education system distinguishes students into academic or vocational institutions by their academic achievements, and the labour market distinguishes decent job positions and physical job positions mainly based on higher education credentials [13]. The Chinese education system also contributes to maintaining the privilege of academic education, which strengthens the unequal distinction among youths.

In addition, to confirm the applicability of Bourdieu’s theory of practice, habitus, capital, and field to students in Chinese higher vocational colleges, this study tries to change the negative stereotype of Chinese vocational education college students as “bad seeds” and “stupid and lazy youths” [5], which comes mainly from outsiders, not from the students themselves. In this study, almost every participant has a positive learning behaviour toward academic education from their interactions with parents and teachers. Jarvis demonstrates that the learning process is a constant interaction between individuals and society [22]. Students continuously update the meaning of learning based on their numerous life experiences. When they encountered learning obstacles and temporarily obtained bad academic results in the real learning context, they still desired to pursue higher academic education if they found other possibilities to achieve success. Even though they failed in their academic education, their learning experience shows that they are not lazy.

6. Conclusions and Implications

In this study, a qualitative research method was applied to explore Chinese vocational college students’ previous life experiences. The students’ learning habitus was constructed initially by their interactions with parents and teachers, which instilled in them a positive learning behaviour toward academic education. With their growth, more social interactions contributed to understanding the important meaning of higher education. According to this study, Chinese students from vocational colleges are not bad, lazy, or stupid. On the contrary, their learning habitus makes them willing to study hard and pursue a higher academic education credential if they believe it is possible. They mostly approved of the positive value of academic education, and their learning habitus tends to choose possible successful learning behaviours.

With the increasing number of vocational college students in the Chinese higher education system, their stereotypes should be corrected, as they do not deserve this kind of slander. Moreover, those students’ past experiences indicated that they were still working hard, and their learning behaviours were positive. Bourdieu’s practice, habitus, capital, and field theory contributes to explaining these students’ poor academic outcomes in the Chinese context. The students all come from working-class families, who possess less privileged cultural capital. Cultural capital has been checked as a positive influence on students’ habitus and academic outcomes in China [34]. The Chinese education system is a kind of unequal sorting system and reinforces the important role of cultural capital in academic success. Thus, vocational education and students’ unequal social status should receive attention from education policymakers.

This study was conducted during the Chinese COVID-19 pandemic. Although all interviews were conducted smoothly online, they still cannot overcome some problems, such as the lack of rapport building that could be achieved through face-to-face interviews. Participants are less likely to open their minds and share deeper information because they need to talk about their private experiences. Moreover, the scope of this study was limited to data that cannot represent all Chinese vocational college students’ situations. However, this study proves that not all vocational college students fit their negative stereotypes.