Cultural Capital and Parental Involvement

This book uses Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural capital model as a theoretical framework for exploring how students in Beijing and Hong Kong perceive parental influences—their parents’ cultural capital and support—on their participation in musical activities. By studying students’ perceptions of their parents’ cultural capital and support for their musical activities, this book revisits the applicability of Bourdieu’s cultural capital model in the contemporary Chinese context and reveals how inequality in terms of parental cultural capital governs parents’ support and influences the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital, which in turn contributes to inequality in terms of students’ cultural capital.

Siu-hang Kong is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. As a researcher and educator in the fields of education and music education, he has contributed numerous papers to peer-reviewed journals, as well as several chapters. His research focuses on the sociology of music education and explores the dynamic links between social status, cultural capital, and participation in musical activities. Building on his practical and frontline experience in music education, his publications address social inequality in music education and provide implications and recommendations for music educators and parents on overcoming the obstacles created by inequality of social status and cultural capital.