published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

First, from the distributive justice perspective, strong perceptions of distributive injustice are found among undergraduates from national minority and lower-middle and lower classes. The perceptions of distributive injustice can further be differentiated into injustice in educational accesses, educational processes, educational outputs and educational outcomes. Both undergraduates from national minority and from lower-middle and lower classes have registered strong sense of "accumulative distributive injustice" in their educational-advancement experiences. Attributions of educational distributive injustice to disparities of educational resources among regions have also been revealed in this study. However, educational injustice attributed to gender differences seems to be insignificant among perceptions of the subjects under study. / Second, from the relational justice perspective, the perceptions of educational injustice among undergraduates are investigated and categorized in accordance with Young's framework of relational injustice, namely exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. It is common among undergraduates from national minority and lower-middle and lower classes to have relatively strong sense of relational injustice relating to cultural imperialism and violence. However, the experiences of violence revealed are mostly in the form of symbolic rather than physical violence. They also have substantive sense of relational injustice pertaining to marginalization and powerlessness. Experiences on exploitation are rarely reported among subjects from national minority and lower-middle and lower classes. This study finds that perceptions on relational injustice attributed to gender differences are insignificant among female subjects. / Social justice has risen to be one of the major social issues in Chinese mainland. As attainment of higher education has become one of primary determinants of attainments in social status among future generations, justice in higher education has therefore constituted as one of the areas of concerns among scholars in the field of Chinese education. / Third, differences in ethnicity and class have been revealed as the primary contributing factors to the perceptions of educational injustice among the subjects under study. Perceptions of educational injustice reported by undergraduates from national minority are mainly concentrated on subjects who are Islamite and Tibetan Buddhist from Xinjiang and Tibet. Among subjects of lower-middle and lower classes, subjects from rural areas have relatively stronger sense of injustice than those of comparable class backgrounds from urban areas. Therefore, it seems that disparities in class position and regional differences seem to have crystallized and asserted reinforcing effects on students' perceptions of educational injustice. / This study focuses on a group of the undergraduates from disadvantaged social backgrounds. It investigates their perceptions on educational injustice that they have experienced during their studies. The perceptions of injustice will be studied from the perspectives in both the distributive and relational justice. This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the perceptions of justice among students of higher education in Chinese mainland. Twenty-two undergraduates from disadvantaged social backgrounds have been selected to be subjects of the study from four universities in Nanjing city of Jiangsu province. From the data collected, the following major findings are revealed. / This study has contributed to the scholarly discourses on distributive and relational justice by injecting first-hand qualitative data generated from the context of higher education in Chinese mainland. Furthermore, this study has provided some deep descriptions of the perceptions and experiences of educational injustice in a group disadvantaged background undergraduates in Chinese mainland. It is hoped that these data may help policy makers in formulating educational policy in the future. These data may also sensitizing teachers and other persons working in higher education sectors to address the perceptions and experiences of injustice among undergraduates from disadvantaged social backgrounds. Lastly, it is hoped that the study may be viewed as one of the tiny efforts that have been accumulated over the years by educators all over the world to constitute a relatively more equal and just educational system in human societies. / 钟景迅. / Adviser: Wing-kwong Tsang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-307). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Zhong Jingxun.