Study maps educational involution across Jiangsu school ecosystems

A qualitative study of students, parents and teachers in Jiangsu Province finds that educational involution is experienced as an interconnected pressure system rather than a problem confined to individual families or classrooms. In nine interviews spanning primary, secondary and high-school education, participants described escalating effort, family anxiety, competitive comparison, rigid school routines and uncertainty about educational and employment prospects. Analysis using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory found strained interactions among the family and classroom, the relationship between home and school, digital media and school administration, national education structures, and pressures perceived to change as students advance through school.

The researchers define “educational involution” as a system in which students and families invest increasing amounts of time, money and effort in academic competition while receiving progressively smaller returns in valued educational outcomes and experiencing greater stress. The study treats this as a structural condition, distinguishing it from academic pressure understood as an individual experience. Jiangsu was selected as a critical case because it is among China’s most educationally competitive provinces. The authors emphasize, however, that interviews with nine participants in three cities cannot establish national prevalence, average effects or trends across China’s diverse regions.

Participants were recruited through stratified and convenience sampling across Changzhou, Nanjing and Taizhou, with additional snowball sampling through researcher networks. The final sample included one student, one parent and one teacher at each of the three school levels, producing nine in-depth interviews. Teachers had at least 10 years of classroom experience, while students attended public primary, secondary or high schools. Interviews were conducted in Mandarin and lasted from 12 to 52 minutes. The lead author, a native Mandarin speaker, translated the recordings. A hybrid thematic approach organized initial coding around the five ecological levels while allowing subthemes to emerge inductively from the transcripts. This design prioritized interpretive depth and contrast among stakeholder roles rather than statistical representativeness.

At the microsystem level—the environments in which children directly participate—participants described a pervasive atmosphere of high pressure. All nine participants acknowledged that educational involution and intense competition were visible or perceptible around them, whether at school, at home or, for teachers, at work. Parents compared their children’s examination results with those of peers during school pick-up and drop-off, in group chats and in private conversations. Some invested heavily in tutoring and additional exercises, while teachers observed that intense attention to test scores could transfer into classroom expectations and peer comparison. Yet the accounts were not uniformly negative: one primary student said competition could improve scores, efficiency and independence, although it came at the cost of leisure time. The study interprets this mixed response as evidence that intense pressure can become normalized, particularly during earlier stages of schooling, even as fatigue and anxiety accumulate.

Family relationships and communication also shaped students’ experience of competition. Teachers associated supportive family environments—including parental patience, attention to children’s interests and a stable marital relationship—with the confidence and academic performance they observed among stronger students. By contrast, some teachers described distress among children from divorced or single-parent households and discussed how controlling or overwhelmed parents could add to a student’s difficulties. Parent-child conversations were also viewed as consequential, with teachers suggesting that some parents lacked the knowledge, confidence or capacity to communicate constructively. These are observations and associations within the interviews, not evidence that family structure causes academic outcomes. The qualitative material instead shows how family interaction was perceived as part of the immediate setting in which involutionary demands were experienced.

The mesosystem, represented by connections between home and school, emerged as a particularly uneven part of the ecology. Teachers generally welcomed parental involvement but distinguished it from excessive involvement that added pressure to students. Communication in the participating schools was described as largely teacher-led: educators communicated assessment information and expectations to families, while parents sometimes remained passive, overly deferential or unsure how to initiate contact. Work-related separation could also leave a missing link, particularly when rural migrant parents lived and worked in another city. Teachers interviewed in the study associated such absences with weaker communication and, in some cases, an interpretation that parents did not value education. The authors propose that this apparent lack of interest may instead reflect structural constraints beyond parental choice, including labor migration and household separation, rather than a simple neglect of children’s schooling.

Two-way communication was portrayed as a more constructive alternative. When parents shared a child’s interests, personality and experiences outside school, teachers described greater trust, useful knowledge and a stronger sense of partnership. By contrast, parents’ exchange of information about other children’s development intensified anxiety and competition. A primary parent explicitly described exchanging examination results with colleagues and friends as a form of educational involution. The study suggests that home-school links can either reinforce or soften performance pressure, depending on their direction and quality. This is an analytical implication drawn from participants’ experiences, not evidence that any single communication model would reduce involution nationwide or produce a measurable improvement in educational outcomes. The mesosystem analysis also raises concerns about unequal visibility: families that remain connected may receive more attention, while those separated from schools risk being further marginalized.

At the exosystem level, participants pointed to school administration and social media as forces that affect students indirectly. Teachers contrasted student-oriented leadership with management focused primarily on discipline, order and safety. A principal’s decisions about school values, routines, resources and policy implementation were described as shaping pressures that students then experienced in classrooms. Digital media exerted a different kind of influence. Parents and teachers encountered educational content through independently operated accounts and recommendation systems on platforms such as WeChat and TikTok. Participants said that repeated exposure to curated material, including other families’ accounts of their children’s achievements, made comparison difficult to avoid and intensified anxiety. One parent said social media made it almost impossible not to compare a child constantly with others, while a teacher described being unable to stop scrolling educational content. The researchers introduce the term “digital exosystem” for algorithmically shaped environments in which children may not participate directly but which affect caregivers and, through them, family behavior. They also note that these platforms provide useful educational information and examples of more aspirational school leadership, making their role complex rather than uniformly harmful.

At the macrosystem level, every participant connected educational involution to the national college entrance examination, the Gaokao, enrolment pressure, traditional cultural values and competition in the labor market. Participants described advanced qualifications as important for securing employment and viewed the examination structure as making intense educational competition appear difficult to avoid. Confucian traditions linking academic achievement to family honor, social mobility and respect for teachers were also invoked. These cultural and institutional conditions were described as making competition appear unavoidable even when individuals recognized its costs. The study additionally places its analysis in a temporal context, noting the expansion of higher education, the credential pressure that can accompany it, and the 2021 Double Reduction Policy, which sought to reduce extracurricular academic burdens. The interviews did not directly evaluate the policy’s implementation or establish whether it had reduced involution, and the authors describe its wider effect as still debatable.

Across school stages, the apparent source of pressure shifted. Primary participants were more likely to describe parental competition, tutoring and packed schedules, whereas secondary and high-school participants emphasized repetitive school timetables, long attendance hours, fatigue and the loss of passion. One secondary teacher described a daily school schedule running from 7:15 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and linked its repetition to anxiety, fatigue and conflict between short-term examination demands and long-term educational ideals. Because the study was cross-sectional, this pattern represents participants’ perceptions at different developmental stages rather than a tracked change within individual children. The authors conclude that effective responses would need to coordinate family, school, digital and structural influences rather than depend on isolated interventions. They suggest age-sensitive parental involvement, more reciprocal home-school communication, greater attention to digital media, and broader changes to educational assessment and vocational pathways. These are implications proposed by the authors, not interventions tested by the research, and the findings remain exploratory because of the nine-person sample, reliance on researcher networks, focus on one province and limited coverage of regional and digital variation.

Subject of Research: An exploratory qualitative study of how students, parents and teachers experience educational involution across Jiangsu’s school ecosystems.

Article Title: Exploring educational involution: a qualitative study of stakeholders’ perspectives in Jiangsu Province, China

Article References: Jia, X., Garvis, S., & Nakar, S. (2026). Exploring educational involution: a qualitative study of stakeholders’ perspectives in Jiangsu Province, China. Frontiers in Education, 11, Article 1872580. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1872580

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2026.1872580

Keywords: educational involution, Jiangsu education, academic pressure, parental anxiety, school competition, social media algorithms, home-school communication, ecological systems theory, Gaokao examination, China, Exploring, educational