Changing understandings of “low achievers”: a focused ethnographic approach to academic achievement in China’s new curricular reform

The term “low achiever”, a by-product of achievement-driven societies, can cause panic among parents, educators, and psychologists. At the turn of the millennium, a new curriculum reform (NCR) was initiated by the Chinese government. Unlike previous political initiatives that aimed to boost student achievement, the NCR is intended to create cooperative, harmonious, and autonomous school communities where clear distinctions between high and low achievers is not encouraged. Alignment to the NCR is required to reappraise the burden of standardized testing and reconstruct notions of “low achievers”. This empirical study based on focused ethnographic approach provides an alternative picture of how the understanding of low achievers has been reconceptualized in actual school within the context of the NCR. The findings indicate that instead of ascribing educational attainment to cognitive or intellectual faculties, teachers regard it as a facet of personality, and primary school teachers exercised considerable autonomy in the degree to which they evaluate students. Moreover, instead of considering low achievers as passive children, teachers tend to regard them as active agents and address the development of individual students’ potential.