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Middle-class mothers’ participation in tutoring for spoken English: a case of unlocking middle-class identity and privilege in contemporary India

Middle-class mothers’ participation in tutoring for spoken English: a case of unlocking middle-class identity and privilege in contemporary India
Middle-class mothers’ participation in tutoring for spoken English: a case of unlocking middle-class identity and privilege in contemporary India

Sociological inquiries on parental involvement seldom consider the investments parents make in themselves to realise educational advantages in their children's schooling. This gap hides the processes underlying class-making and class-produced privileges. To address this gap, this article investigates middle-class mothers’ participation in tutoring and coaching for spoken English in Dehradun, India, focusing on their reasons for soliciting such paid tutoring support. It shows that mothers subscribe to these services to facilitate home-teaching, productive communication with their children, and effective home-school partnerships. Mothers’ subscription to private tuition emerges in this context as a source of cultural capital that parents use to unlock their middle-class identity and privilege in the educational landscape. The article argues that English private tutoring is a case of a capital exchange–economic for cultural and social forms of capital–which parents may use to accumulate key resources and produce, maintain, and intergenerationally sustain their middle-classness.

Indian middle-class, home-school relationship, middle-class advantage, parental involvement, shadow education, tutoring
0159-6306
Gupta, Achala
a30fa79d-e9dc-4237-93d4-bdaf8816780a
Gupta, Achala
a30fa79d-e9dc-4237-93d4-bdaf8816780a

Gupta, Achala (2022) Middle-class mothers’ participation in tutoring for spoken English: a case of unlocking middle-class identity and privilege in contemporary India. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. (doi:10.1080/01596306.2022.2131738).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Sociological inquiries on parental involvement seldom consider the investments parents make in themselves to realise educational advantages in their children's schooling. This gap hides the processes underlying class-making and class-produced privileges. To address this gap, this article investigates middle-class mothers’ participation in tutoring and coaching for spoken English in Dehradun, India, focusing on their reasons for soliciting such paid tutoring support. It shows that mothers subscribe to these services to facilitate home-teaching, productive communication with their children, and effective home-school partnerships. Mothers’ subscription to private tuition emerges in this context as a source of cultural capital that parents use to unlock their middle-class identity and privilege in the educational landscape. The article argues that English private tutoring is a case of a capital exchange–economic for cultural and social forms of capital–which parents may use to accumulate key resources and produce, maintain, and intergenerationally sustain their middle-classness.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 28 September 2022
Published date: 17 October 2022
Additional Information: Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords: Indian middle-class, home-school relationship, middle-class advantage, parental involvement, shadow education, tutoring

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 471589
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/471589
ISSN: 0159-6306
PURE UUID: 9aab134e-3510-4334-8058-da02ddff4de3
ORCID for Achala Gupta: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3172-8198

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 14 Nov 2022 17:39
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:07

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