Coached habitus
Mapping the role of shadow education in shaping students' educational trajectories
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7148641 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Achala Gupta (0000-0002-3172-8198, Southampton Education School University of Southampton Southampton UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 514-532 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Educational Research Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0141-1926 • E-ISSN: 1469-3518 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/berj.4085 |
| OpenAlex | W4403790813 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 35 |
Studies have shown how family (typically parents) and formal institutions (specifically schools and universities) shape individuals' dispositions—or habitus . However, other sites of academic socialisation, such as tutoring centres and coaching institutions (collectively forming a shadow education system), are seldom scrutinised for their role in this process. To address this gap in scholarship, this paper draws on interviews with 30 Indian students who narrated their experiences of shadow education in its diversified form, from schooling and higher education to moving to the United Kingdom for advanced education. The discussion of the research findings unveils how shadow education experiences impact students' (academic) dispositions throughout their scholastic lifespan, thus aiding in nurturing academic selves (in early schooling years), cultivating competitive selves (during the transition to university), harnessing enterprising selves (when transitioning within and from university education) and developing transnational selves (as students prepare for international mobility). A synthesis of these empirical realities culminates in introducing a new concept of coached habitus that accounts for the role of shadow education in orchestrating the practices by which students may inculcate specific values, beliefs and habits aiming to prepare them to navigate increasingly competitive educational fields throughout their academic trajectories successfully. The paper argues that shadow education is a key site for habitus formation, particularly in contexts such as India and other Asian countries where non‐formal education is inextricably entwined with everyday schooling experiences
Cultural capital · Educational research · Habitus · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Shadow (psychology) · Social science · Sociology · Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities · Higher Education Learning Practices · Psychology
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Lifting the lid on mathematics grinds at secondary level in Ireland
Shadow education in rural Kazakhstan
The Scope and Dynamics of Shadow Education Among Selected High School Students in Izmir, Türkiye
Fee-charging private tutoring and educational inequality
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The nature and implications of shadow education for displaced Syrian secondary students in Türkiye
Shadow education as a third space
Examining the nature, effectiveness and implications of shadow education in rural Kazakhstan
Re-Centring the School Context in Policy Enactments
National Differences, Global Similarities
Unequal Childhoods
The origin of universal shadow education
School systems as breeding grounds for shadow education
Exposing the “shadow”
Outline of a Theory of Practice
An Invitation to Qualitative Fieldwork
Teacher-entrepreneurialism
The social practice of international education
Shadow Education in India
Admission Olympics
Researching across languages and cultures
Outsourcing mothering for schooling
Extracurricular participation and young children's outcomes in Hong Kong
Well-founded social fictions
School socioeconomic compositional effect on shadow education participation
Revisiting educational advantage and social class
Heterogeneous middle-class and disparate educational advantage
Shadow Education, American Style
A ‘Shadow Education’ Timescape
Schooling inequality
It's all becoming a habitus
Evidence-based peer-tutoring program to improve students' performance at the university
Social legitimacy of private tutoring
Making a Difference
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 12 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |