Private tutors' perceptions of mixed identities and negotiated roles : a sociocultural investigation in Zhengzhou tutorial centres, China

Abstract

Situated in the context of Zhengzhou, the capital city of China’s Henan Province, this qualitative study examined various types of identities that private tutors perceived, and diverse sociocultural factors related to the development of these identities. The framework of this study draws on research on shadow education and theories about identity formation. The theoretical discussion was primarily built on the sociocultural approach. In its theoretical analysis of the qualitative data, this study followed the sociocultural theory’s conceptualisation of mediated identity formation with advances in highlighting the influence of individuals’ agencies in the process. The study illuminates new areas of an expanding field of study. Over the past few decades, research on private supplementary tutoring, or its well-known alias as shadow education, has received increasing attention both in China and across the globe. Many researchers have documented its development, surveyed the scale of student participation, and analysed the reasons for the demand. These research efforts have laid valuable grounds for the design of this study, but they have leant heavily on the receiving end of shadow education. Few existing studies have looked at the phenomenon from the providers’ perspective, and even fewer have examined the roles of private tutors in tutorial centres and their understanding of their professional identities. To address this research gap, this study investigated private tutors’ perceptions of identities based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 33 private tutors from 7 tutorial centres in 2016 and 2017. It also draws its qualitative data from observations made in the surveyed venues and a range of related public documents. The findings of this study revealed that the various roles perceived by the tutors fell into two central domains, which comprised educational identities and business identities, with sub-identities and variants under each domain. The tutors’ i overall identities in tutoring involved both integrations of sub-identities and compromises between identities. Further analysis of private tutors’ perceptions of identities indicated three approaches that they used to conceptualise their roles in private tutoring. There were identities represented in tutors’ institutional positions, identities portrayed in tutors’ discourses, and identities shared among tutors as their common roles. The findings also highlighted the connections between the development of tutors’ perceptions of identities and broader sociocultural contexts. The analysis further explored how different levels of personal, institutional, and sociocultural factors were associated with private tutors’ changing roles in tutorial centres. The study offers insights into the complexity of private tutors’ identities in the tutoring industry in Zhengzhou and more broadly in China as they manoeuvred to fulfil both educational and business roles. It has illuminated the implications of potential conflicts among tutors’ multiple roles as well as the integrated educational and business purposes of shadow education. This thesis addressed an understudied research area and its exploration of the tutors’ identities can serve as the basis for basis for future studies and policy practice.