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<p>As society becomes increasingly fragmented, the role of education in shaping values has grown more precarious. While citizenship education (CE) agendas take values-explicit approaches to promote specific values, students still have agency in how they engage with citizenship learning. This study draws on James Scott’s concepts of hidden transcripts and everyday resistance to investigate how students navigate the structural tension between top-down political socialization and their bottom-up critical reflections. Taking Chinese CE as a case, qualitative data from 12 students at China’s top universities indicated that, alongside the public transcript aimed at fulfilling institutional requirements, students could develop hidden transcripts characterized by apathy, minimal engagement, alternative interpretations, and informal collusion with teachers. These subtle forms of resistance reflected students’ agency, their efforts to preserve autonomy, assert personal reflections, and tactically adapt to structural constraints. Most notably, such resistance could foster reflexive citizenship that enables students to critically examine their own situation and adjust their perceptions of public affairs, which may inadvertently undermine official CE’s intended ideological outcomes and contribute to a more diverse ideological spectrum among youth in China.</p>

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Everyday resistance and the possibility of reflexive citizenship: a qualitative study of citizenship learning among students at China’s top universities

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月13日

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  • Yihao Li,
  • Jia Jiang

摘要

As society becomes increasingly fragmented, the role of education in shaping values has grown more precarious. While citizenship education (CE) agendas take values-explicit approaches to promote specific values, students still have agency in how they engage with citizenship learning. This study draws on James Scott’s concepts of hidden transcripts and everyday resistance to investigate how students navigate the structural tension between top-down political socialization and their bottom-up critical reflections. Taking Chinese CE as a case, qualitative data from 12 students at China’s top universities indicated that, alongside the public transcript aimed at fulfilling institutional requirements, students could develop hidden transcripts characterized by apathy, minimal engagement, alternative interpretations, and informal collusion with teachers. These subtle forms of resistance reflected students’ agency, their efforts to preserve autonomy, assert personal reflections, and tactically adapt to structural constraints. Most notably, such resistance could foster reflexive citizenship that enables students to critically examine their own situation and adjust their perceptions of public affairs, which may inadvertently undermine official CE’s intended ideological outcomes and contribute to a more diverse ideological spectrum among youth in China.