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Alternative teacher preparation programs have triggered global debates. This study analysed 16 fellows of an alternative teacher preparation program who entered rural schools located in China—a high-stakes testing context—with a strong disposition toward quality-oriented education. Drawing on Bourdieu's sociology, we revealed four forms of fellows' responses to the tensions between quality- and examination-oriented education: (1) Resistance to examination-oriented education; (2) "Betrayal" of quality-oriented education; (3) Reconciliation of the two educational orientations; and (4) Confusion about both. Pursuant to these findings, we suggest that program recruitment and training keep some distance from the "star fellow" narrative and develop localised materials to prepare fellows for the real-world challenges. Our paper situates EGRT fellows in coexisting and competing educational orientations, calls for more studies to construct global alternative teacher preparation as a space of contestation, and ignites more discussion regarding what educational quality is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of livelihood transitions is conducive to poverty reduction and rural development. This study used three-wave panel data to quantitatively examine the livelihood transitions of Chinese rural households during two 2-year periods. The households were categorized into 5 livelihood strategy clusters depending on their income composition. The distribution of households among livelihood strategies exhibits a gourd-shaped structure and presents 2 trends, namely, the transition from on-farm strategies to off-farm strategies and an increase in non-labour households. The most common transition happens between the wage-employment-oriented strategy and the farming-oriented strategy, and the half-farming-and-half-employment strategy has the strongest mobility. Continuously, households with primary livelihood activities tend to persistently employ a strategy as the time spent on that strategy increases. From the perspective of poverty reduction, it is vital to understand the transition directions of farming-dependent households, and it is essential to promote slow but stable upward mobility. Farmland area and investment in farming have a negative effect on upward mobility, indicating the need for a more efficient agriculture operation mode, such as agriculture industrialization. The effect of labour migration is double-edged, and promoting the employment of members who have been left behind is crucial. In addition, the positive effects of network usage and education level of labors highlight the importance of improving the infrastructure and providing skill training in rural China. By analysing the livelihood distributions and transitions of rural households, comparing the disparities of the livelihood distributions and transitions of poor and non-poor households, and investigating the determinants of livelihood transitions, this paper aims to highlight the implications of these issues for poverty reduction in rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the effect of a free compulsory education reform in rural China on the incidence of child labor. We exploit the cross-province variation in the rollout of the reform and apply a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the causal effects of the reform. We find that exposure to free compulsory education significantly reduces the incidence of child labor for boys, but has no significant effect on the likelihood of child labor for girls. Specifically, one additional semester of free compulsory education decreases the incidence of child labor for boys by 8.3 percentage points. Moreover, the negative effect of the reform on the likelihood of child labor is stronger for boys from households with lower socioeconomic status. Finally, the free compulsory education reform may induce parents to reallocate resources towards boys within a household and thus may enlarge the gender gap in human capital investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]