We are living in a time of tremendous uncertainty for our children’s future. The lingering COVID-19 pandemic, the rapidly changing policy environment, the foreseeable economic recession, and the clashing cultural repertoires, have fundamentally reshaped our educational institutions, generating long-lasting impacts on individual educational trajectories and outcomes as well as on social inequality and mobility. In Chinese societies, as in societies elsewhere, children, parents, teachers, and schools have to accommodate the unintended consequences of school closure, policy changes, and other interruptions during the time of uncertainty. Although new strategies and practices have been adopted to facilitate student learning, widening inequality impends to disrupt our educational systems and to leave many children behind.

Against this backdrop, Chinese Sociological Review (CSR) invites papers for a special issue on Growing Up in a Time of Uncertainty: Rethinking Education and Inequality in Chinese Societies and Beyond. This call invites authors to submit papers that consider various aspects of the relationship between education and inequality under a time of uncertainty in Chinese societies, preferably with a global and comparative perspective. We encourage submissions from various sectors, countries (areas), and disciplines. Both empirical (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods) and theoretical studies are welcomed.

We are particularly interested in papers that explore the following questions:

• What impact do the pandemic, policy changes, economic recession, and cultural shifts have on the future of primary, secondary, tertiary, and post-tertiary educational systems? How do these changes alter the existing educational inequalities and generate new ones at the individual, organizational, and national levels?
• What are the macro-, meso-, and micro-level social mechanisms that can explain the emerging educational inequalities given the institutional transformations in response to those uncertainties?
• What are the emerging strategies and practices adopted by families and schools that can help to close the gap in educational outcomes and build more equitable educational systems during the time of uncertainty?

We also welcome research addressing the following themes:

• Chinese Meritocratic Educational Systems
• Cultural Capital in Non-western Contexts
• Policy Changes and Shadow Education
• School Choice in Chinese Societies