Middle-class mothers' participation in tutoring for spoken English

A case of unlocking middle-class identity and privilege in contemporary India

Bibliographic Data

ID2922050
AuthorsAchala Gupta (0000-0002-3172-8198, Southampton Education School, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume44
Issue5
Pages739-753
Publication date2023-09-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0159-6306 • E-ISSN: 1469-3739
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01596306.2022.2131738
OpenAlexW4306392700
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited13

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

Coaching · Cultural capital · Geography · Middle class · Political science · Public relations · Social capital · Social class · Social science · Sociology · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities · Law · Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access