Geographies of shadow education: patterns and forces in the spatial distributions of private supplementary tutoring

Abstract

A growing literature, much of it with cross-national comparisons, employs geographic lenses to secure insights into educational studies. Most of this literature focuses on schooling, though parts address kindergartens and higher education. The present paper, by contrast, employs geographic lenses to focus on the shadow education system of private supplementary tutoring. It is called shadow education because much of its content mimics that in schooling, but the paper shows that many dynamics are significantly different from those in schooling. Insights may be gained not only from physical geography but also from political, economic, cultural and pedagogical geography – and from relationships between them. Intra-national, cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons show forces in a domain that is gathering momentum across the globe and causing significant shifts in the overall nature and role of education.