Decision-making about private tutoring for and by science-stream senior secondary students in West Bengal, India : an ecological analysis

Abstract

Middle-class families around the world place great importance on their children’s education and make strategic educational decisions in pursuit of social mobility. Private tutoring is an increasingly essential aspect of these decisions. In India, bachelors’ degrees in engineering and medicine are highly coveted by the middle class due to the social respect attached to them and their perceived promise of financial stability in the labour market. Entrance to top-tier institutions in these fields is extremely competitive, and families invest heavily in private tutoring for smooth transition from school to higher education. This longitudinal qualitative research investigates ways in which family interactions with immediate and distal settings in their education ecosystems shape their decision-making regarding private tutoring. The study is situated in the context of middle-class bhadralok culture in urban and peri-urban West Bengal. The bhadralok is a status group in West Bengal, the emergence of which is associated with India’s colonial history. The study builds on a theoretical framework rooted in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model and theories of socialization and family systems. Although tutoring participation is very high among secondary students in India, and despite West Bengal reporting the highest participation among all Indian states, few studies have focused on tutoring received by this age-group in either West Bengal or India as a whole. Adopting a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the thesis focuses on experiences of senior secondary science-stream adolescents and other actors in their ecosystems to understand families’ tutoring decision-making processes during the two senior secondary academic years (grades 11 and 12) and, for some, a repeat year of tutoring. The study is primarily informed by face-to-face interviews. Among the 115 interviewees, 68 were students among whom 30 were tracked for up to two years and interviewed multiple times. The other 47 interviewees included school principals, teachers, tutors, teacher-tutors, parents, and siblings of tracked student interviewees. Additionally, in the initial phase a questionnaire survey of 356 grade 12 students provided contextual information on students’ tutoring patterns at the research site. Findings revealed that middle-class bhadralok families made multiple tutoring decisions that were shaped and reshaped by complex interactions with their ecosystems over time. Macrosystem interactions culturally socialized families with contemporary bhadralok ideologies (comprising a mix of old bhadralok values and new neoliberal beliefs) that moulded their tutoring decisions. At the exosystem level, families were socialized to make tutoring decisions by formal and hidden curricula of the education system. Microsystem interactions shed light on power struggles that family-members underwent in making decisions. Longitudinal findings revealed the increasing agency of adolescents in leading family decisions exerted through self-socialization and by re-socializing parents to change past decisions. Highlighting the bidirectional nature of ecosystem interactions, the study revealed significant implications of families’ tutoring decisions for mainstream education and for the value systems of present and future generations. Further, using concepts from socialization and family systems theories, the thesis provides an expanded theoretical framework for future research on private tutoring decision-making not only in India but also in other cultures around the world.