Citizens and/or consumers: mutations in the construction of concepts and practices of school choice

Recent research on school choice highlights the tendency among some White, middle‐class parents to engage with discourses of community responsibility and ethnic diversity as part of their responsibility and duty as choosers and who therefore exercise choice in ways that undercut the individualistic and self‐interested character framing governmental discourses and rationalities around choice. This article contributes to these debates through making visible the ways in which some mothers articulate and combine meanings and practices of choice that register contrasting and sometimes contradictory notions of active and responsible parenting. Drawing on data from a group of mothers of diverse social class and racial backgrounds, I explore how some mothers negotiate their school choice around a number of intersecting positions and relations that work across, as well as within, formulations of public–private, collective–individual, citizen–consumer, political–commercial. Through a consideration of the relationships in practice between these diverse elements, this article questions the analytic value of distinctions between citizen and consumer, community and individual as framings for understanding the motivations and aspirations shaping some mothers' school choices.     

Determinants of Primary School Choice in Malaysia: School Proximity and Ethnicity-Related Reasons

The study examined determinants of primary school choice among parents in Malaysia, and the decision maker and social influences in the school choice. It draws on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 43 middle-class parents from three ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay, and Indigenous). Results showed that school proximity and ethnicity-related reasons are leading factors influencing parental school choice. Medium of instruction, school academic reputation, and feeder to a preferred secondary school appear to be separate reasons but act as a proxy to ethnicity as the primary factor determining the choice of Chinese- or Malay-medium primary school by parents. The results also showed that mothers are more likely to make school choice decisions than fathers, but the reasons for school choice are similar. The primary social influences on their school choice come from friends and education personnel in preschools and schools. The Indigenous parents tend to be more subject to social pressure in making school choices than the Chinese and Malay parents, who mostly enroll their children in Chinese- and Malay-medium primary schools, respectively. However, these findings on school choice and ethnic segregation are limited to this sample and constrained by the socio-political context of the education system.     

Children’s transitions to school: ‘so what about the parents’? or ‘so,what about the parents’?

Children progress through a number of life transitions and each is a pivotal point of development and growth for them, their parents and family members. Through a review of the literature, the Bioecological Model will be used to frame childhood transitions as highly social, contextualised and political. This paper will assert that governments, schools and educators have an increased role in supporting parents with their changing roles, responsibilities and relationships as their child transitions to school and that schools need to provide space for parents to share their own transition to school narratives in order to better understand the effect these stories may have on the transition process for them and their children. Finally, schools and systems will be challenged to engage in a strengths-based approach to support parents at this pivotal time in their own and their child’s growth and development and call for increased research to identify ways in which this can occur within respectful, collaborative and agentic relationships.     

Choosing schools,choosing selves: exploring the influence of parental identity and biography on the school choice process in Delhi,India

Drawing on qualitative interview data from a group of lower income parents in Delhi, India, this paper focuses on the dynamic relationship between parental choice of a particular school and parents’ own identity construction. The data indicate that choice of school is for some parents a symbolic expression of identity, influenced by family dynamics and parents’ educational biographies. The paper outlines the concept of ‘forging solidarities’ and proposes it as an alternative way of understanding school enrolment decisions that recognises the social significance of such choices for the wider family unit. More generally, as school choice mechanisms in various forms become an increasingly important part of the educational landscape in many countries, the findings draw attention to the sociocultural nature of choice in real-world market settings and the contribution of schooling choices to processes of social and educational segregation.     

School choice as ‘motherwork’: valuing African‐American women’s educational advocacy and resistance

This study draws on in‐depth interview data to discuss the school choices and educational advocacy roles of 14 African‐American mothers. The narratives of the study’s participants, who have low‐income or working‐class status, show how race, class and gender factors influence their school choice‐making and their value of education. The author asserts that the mothers’ school choice‐making constitutes an important act of cultural resistance and empowerment called motherwork. Analysis of the study’s findings challenges conventional notions of parent involvement and counters prevalent stereotypes that portray African‐American mothers as uncaring. Attention is given to the inequities that the mothers face in the educational marketplace and how they seek agency. Educators are urged to consider how the mothers perceive themselves and construct their educational involvement roles in order to engage parents in empowering and meaningful ways.     

Addressing Social Difference with Prospective Teachers Who Want “To Make a Difference”

This paper focuses on a cohort of B.Ed. students' understandings about social difference and social justice as recorded in their professional journals in the first semester of third year. It shows that their reasons for choosing teaching as a career, reflections on their school experiences and discussions about future students are grounded in the culture of individualism that is commonplace in Australian society. However, some also acknowledge that class, race, gender and ethnicity shape their lives and their future students' worlds. Furthermore, most were prepared to engage with social justice in their professional journals. Keeping these findings in mind, the paper identifies discursive spaces where teacher educators might work with prospective teachers to promote critical reflection about social difference and facilitate a commitment to social justice in education.     

Between ‘enrichment’ and ‘endangerment’: ‘cultural diversity’ and the politics of belonging in the Berlin school choice discourse

Even though choice is not officially a feature in the German primary school system, some parents intervene in determining which school their child attends. Especially in urban contexts, the informal school market is growing. This demand is based on promises with respect to a certain quality of education as well as on issues that prevail in certain inner city schools. In looking at Berlin, as a global city, this article shows how contrary school choice practices gain traction in the face of ‘cultural differences’ that those practices produce discursively. Cultural semantics are activated with regard to the composition of the student body, when parents chose schools with a bilingual profile, but also when parents engage in the practice of ‘group enrolment’ into schools in inner city hotspots perceived as problematic. Our research shows how school choice practices may become acceptable despite being a public taboo, if parents argue by appeal to ‘cultural differences’.     

School choice in an English village: living,loyalty and leaving

In late modernity, the marketisation of public services has become a global policy phenomenon. In the case of schooling, this has resulted in parents discursively positioned as consumers of education making a choice between providers of education. To date the majority of research on parental choice has focused on the urban; this paper is concerned with the rural. Using ethnographic data collected through interviews (N = 24) and observations in one English village, it explores the ways in which parents engage with primary school choice. The research draws on Bourdieu's interrelated concepts of field, habitus and capital to discuss how the dispositions and resources parents had impacted upon the school choices they made. In presenting its findings, the paper distinguishes between the long-term residents (villagers) and more recent arrivals (newcomers) to suggest a differentiated commitment to place and schooling.     

Every school a school of choice: school choice in Ireland as viewed through American eyes

‘Choice’ and ‘freedom’ as measured by the ability of parents to select their children's schools are deeply embedded in the national ethos of the United States of America. Wealthy American parents have always exercised school choice but minority and lowincome students are often trapped in failing schools. This paper is based on research conducted in a purposive sample of Irish primary schools into the nature of school choice. The authors examine five aspects of the Irish national primary school system that could provide models for American educators, whose vision often stops at the boundaries of the United States: education law, school choice for all, a national curriculum framework, the role of assessment, and the role of parents and educators in the creation of new schools. While arguably the five relate directly to school choice of different degrees, they collectively weave a web whereby school systems in the Republic of Ireland and the USA may productively be compared to the benefit of both.     

School Trouble: A mother's burden

ABSTRACT The desire for parent involvement in children's schooling is based on the assumption that parents play a significant role in children's educational achievements. As a policy goal, parent involvement includes the participation of both mothers and fathers. However, in practice, parent involvement refers more often to the work of women in support of children's schooling. The coordination and supervision of children's educational activities often demands a significant portion of mothers' waking hours, particularly in the case of mothers whose children are doing poorly in school. This article draws on interviews with parents of children who struggled academically in school to examine the effects of 'school troubles' on mothers who, among the parents interviewed for this study, were much more likely to assume the material and emotional burdens for school troubles.     

Choosing selves: the salience of parental identity in the school choice process

With the proliferation of choice policies in education, parents are increasingly positioned as ‘consumers’ tasked with choosing the ‘best’ school for their children. Yet a large body of research has shown that the process of selecting a school is far more complicated than policy-makers and researchers often predict. This article uses ethnographic data on middle-class parents in a large city who are considering sending their children to a diverse neighborhood public school to further develop our understanding of school choice. Drawing from sociological research on consumption as a social and cultural process, we examine the intersections between parents’ choice of a particular school (i.e. consumption) and their own identity construction. Our data show that the act of choosing a school can become, for parents, a means of expressing and enacting a particular identity. In this case, the intersections between identity and choice pushed many parents – invested in seeing themselves as liberal urbanites – towards an urban public school. We suggest that similar dynamics could have different outcomes for other groups of parents and that the symbolic nature of the school choice decision has broader relevance and merits further study.     

Navigating a treacherous game: conceptualising parental engagement in contemporary Queensland schooling

Parent engagement in schooling has long been held as a vital component of the successful navigation of the schooling process and, consequently, governments often invite such engagement via policy implementation. However, at times, contestation arises about parent engagement, with some parents seemingly ‘crossing the line’ when attempting to be involved in their children's schooling. This paper investigates the possibility of parent engagement in schooling in Queensland, Australia, conceptualising it as a game of social and systemic practice. The author examines this notion using an example of contestation between parents at a regional government school and the education authority. Policy directives about parent engagement are explored, with the rhetoric of such policy applied to the example in question. The work of Bourdieu and Foucault is used to argue that the invitation to parents to engage is framed and thus often misrecognised, resulting in unintended conflictual relationships between parents and governing authorities.     

Gender Issues in Parental Involvement in Student Choices of Higher Education

This article explores gender, social class and ethnic issues in parental involvement in students' choices of higher education. It draws upon interviews with students and their parents, who were a small group of an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study of students' higher education choice processes in the UK. Gender was highly significant in several respects, illustrating changes in higher education over the last 20 years, whereby more women than men now enter higher education. Most of the interviewees were female. They were mothers and daughters who were thinking about higher education. The article explores first how gender is inflected in choice processes--from whether students choose to involve their parents in the study, to their parents' characteristics, to the forms of involvement revealed. Different facets of involvement are considered--interest, influence and support, investment and intrusion. Secondly, the article provides illustrations of girls' collaborative approaches to the choice processes, in which some of their mothers also engage. This is contrasted with boys' perspectives and those of fathers who were interviewed. This illustrates how gender is woven through social networks across the generations. Parental involvement varied in terms of gender, educational and social backgrounds, or notions of 'institutional' and 'familial habitus'. Finally, the authors reflect upon why gender is salient in how young people and their parents think about their involvement in choosing universities and relate this to changes in higher education policies and practices.     

School Choice as a Bounded Ideal

School choice is most often viewed through the lens of provision: most of the debate on the issue searches for desirable ways to offer vouchers, scholarships or other tools that provides choice as a way to achieve equality and/or freedom. This paper focuses on the consumer side of school choice, and utilises behavioural economics as well as ethnographic and network studies to consider ways to structure choice which respond to actual cognitive and social processes of choice. These empirical studies give scholars and policy-makers who grapple with school choice a perspective that should affect the principled design of these programs as well as their execution. The paper considers the ways in which actual choice processes should affect current visions of school choice. It concludes with recommendations concerning the design of choice sets and the accessibility of information regarding choice, which together can assist school choice policies in better fulfilling their promise of equality and freedom.     

‘Tomorrow's Schools’ in New Zealand: from social democracy to market managerialism

This paper uses one national case to illustrate how diverse ideological agendas of central state agencies contest the discursive space within which major education policy reforms are developed. In Aotearoa New Zealand in 1988, ‘self‐managed’ schools were promoted ostensibly to allow parents more say in their children’s education and local school administration. The Tomorrow’s Schools reform policy texts included an existing social democratic partnership rhetoric, positioning principals as professional leaders working collaboratively with elected parent boards of trustees. However, the new ideology of ‘parental choice’ of school within a local schooling marketplace, underpinned by a chief executive or market managerial model of principalship, was later operationalised through mechanisms of ‘steerage’ from the centre. To explain this shift, we examine selected policy text pre‐cursors to the reforms and identify how contrasting forms of ‘principal’ and ‘teacher’ identity emerged within social democratic, neo‐liberal and market managerial ideologies. We further show that while radical (Treasury) market liberal arguments for labour market deregulation and consumer choice failed to gain widespread support, the State Services Commission preferred market managerialist strategies for promoting public accountability of schools (based on aggregate student achievement outcome data and centrally determined national educational priorities) were successfully embedded during the 1990s.     

Participatory pedagogy for empowerment: a critical discourse analysis of teacher–parents’ interactions in a family literacy course in London

This paper revisits and discusses some of Paulo Freire’s theoretical tenets for participatory education suggested as part of a critical approach to the education of adults. Through data collected during a family literacy programme, the author analyses her discursive interactions as an adult education tutor with parents as learners. These discourse practices are analysed using critical discourse analysis and are discussed against Freire’s principles for participatory pedagogy. The author’s decision to insert the analysis and discussion of her classroom practices within these theoretical frameworks lies on their focus on language and their alleged commitment to the transformation of discursive practices that reinforce unequal power relations in society. The findings of the study indicate the presence of authoritarian discourse that does little to change the power relations within the classroom. The author posits that despite managing to give rise to a discussion of themes related to parents’ advocacy and language awareness in their interactions within their children’s school, a deeper realisation and discussion of these issues was hindered by her failure to challenge the order of discourses present in her interactions with parents. The author concludes by suggesting that there is a need for teachers to closely re‐evaluate the features of their own discourse practices if immigrant parents attending family literacy courses are to be given a voice within the classroom as a first step towards raising their prospects of advocacy and empowerment in wider social contexts.     

Social Relationships and School Readiness

Definitions of school readiness tend to focus on social and academic competencies that children are presumed to need to start school ready to learn. However, a child-focused definition of school readiness is limited because it neither identifies processes that lead children to acquire these competencies, nor does it recognize children's dependence on opportunities within settings that support development of these competencies. The model of school readiness presented in this article broadly defines school readiness as a function of an organized system of interactions and transactions among people (children, teachers, parents, and other caregivers), settings (home, school, and child care), and institutions (communities, neighborhoods, and governments). We propose that the primary mechanisms through which children acquire readiness-related competencies are social relationships children form with peers, parents, and teachers. This perspective on school readiness, emphasizing the mediating role of relational processes, offers guidance for designing interventions to improve school readiness through strengthening relationships between parents and children, parents and teachers, and teachers and children.     

Do child care subsidies influence single mothers’ decision to invest in human capital?

A child care subsidy is one of the most effective policy instruments to facilitate low-income individuals’ transition from welfare to work. Although previous studies consistently find that subsidy receipt is associated with increased employment among single mothers, there is currently no evidence on the influence of these benefits on the decision to invest in human capital. Using data from the Kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, this paper examines the impact of child care subsidy receipt on the likelihood of engaging in education and job training activities. We identify the impact of subsidy receipt by exploiting plausibly exogenous geographic variation in the distance that parents must travel from home in order to reach the nearest social service agency that administers the subsidy application process. Results suggest that child care subsidies encourage single mothers to engage in human capital investment. In particular, our instrumental variables estimates imply that subsidy receipt increases the likelihood that a single mother enrolls in courses at a school or university by 13 percentage points and participates in a job training program by 8 percentage points.     

A choice theory teaching and learning model for working with children of prisoners

The prison population has increased substantially in countries around the world and significant numbers of these prisoners are parents. Children of prisoners experience separation from the imprisoned parent. The separation and precursors to the separation often diminish these children's social‐emotional and educational well‐being. In this paper, the social‐emotional and educational functioning of children of prisoners is examined. Additionally, choice theory is described as a relevant theoretical teaching and learning model to facilitate the children's school‐related functioning.