The shadow education system of reproducing elite status in Bangladesh

• In Event: Perceptions, Practices and Discourses in Education

Proposal

Education has long been regarded as the “great equalizer”. Through a quality education, children of any background are thought to have an equal shot at success. But is this still the case when after the school day ends, students engage in private tutoring?

The use of private tutoring is not a new phenomenon. In earlier eras, tutoring was commonly pursued by prosperous households to help their children keep up with peers, or expand their learning (Ireson, 2004). In recent decades, private tutoring has evolved into a massive global phenomenon; approximately a third of 15-year-olds from 64 countries from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) engaged in private tutoring (Byun et al., 2018). When accessed by only those that can afford it, shadow education can act as a significant (un)equalizer by magnifying social stratifications and diminishing the public education system. Many studies have established the connection between engaging in private tutoring by primarily those of higher socio-economic backgrounds. Research from Brazil (Ventura & Gomes, 2013), Egypt (Sieverding et al., 2019), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Jokić, 2013; Safarzyńska, 2013; Silova, et al., 2006), England (Holloway & Kirby, 2020; Ireson & Rushforth, 2005), Greece (Psacharopoulos & Papakonstantinou, 2005), Hong Kong (Bray & Kwok, 2003), Malaysia (Jelani & Tan, 2012) and Sri Lanka (Pallegedara, 2012) have shown students from more prosperous social classes tend to enjoy more and better quality tutoring alongside their schooling.

In Bangladesh, the penetration of private tutoring also runs deep, with 40% of primary school students and 68% of secondary students receiving tutoring, and participation skyrocketing to over 80% for students in the tenth grade (Nath, 2011). Similarly Hossain et al. (2017) show how in Bangladesh more economically established classes “benefit disproportionately from their ability to pay for private learning, gaining credentials and exam passes that ease them into good professional jobs” (p. 28).

In the comparative education literature, private tutoring is synonymously referred to as shadow education due to its close relationship to regular schooling, and its mimicry of elements of the mainstream education system (Bray, 1999, 2021; Stevenson & Baker, 1992). For example, when the curricula in the mainstream school system changes, so does the curricula in the tutoring classes. If a new subject or component is introduced in the mainstream system to be examined, the same subject or component is offered in private tutoring lessons. As a metaphor, the use of a shadow is quite apt in that it implies that the features of shadow education are much less distinct, understood or regulated compared to those within the mainstream education domain.

This paper, based on the preliminary findings for my dissertation, is an exploration of why students, who already enjoy significant privileges in their education system such as being enrolled in and successfully navigating private schools, engage in shadow education. Through a critical investigation of private tutoring centers as a social site of the reproduction of elite status, this paper aims to broaden the critical discourse on the educational mechanisms through which those of the upper class are socialized. This is in contrast to other research on private tutoring in Bangladesh which narrowly focus on the micro-economic determinants, and quantifiable outcomes of tutoring (Pallegedara & Mottaleb, 2018) or that of English in particular (Hamid, Sussex, & Khan, 2009; Mahmud, 2016; Mahmud & Bray, 2017). These types of studies rely on a quantitative analysis of international large-scale assessments and outcomes, such as data from PISA.

Less attention has been paid to the practices and behaviours of those of elite status, particularly why and how they are engaged in private tutoring when they are already accessing a well-resourced private school (Hartmann, 2008; Sieverding et al., 2019). Neither in the private tutoring nor elite schooling literature have tutoring centers themselves been analyzed as a mechanism that upper classes employ to strengthen their existing privileges in the education system; to learn the hidden curriculum needed to be successful in universities abroad, gain membership into elite circles at home, and acquire the necessary contacts and credentials to maintain their social and economic status. In a context that is understandably dominated by research on those who are marginalized, studying the ways of being of students in elite educational settings (such as the tutoring spaces that cater to these students), and the practices of their tutors is crucial to uncover the social dynamics of inequality across the system. This is the intersection this paper is located.

Due to these centers remaining in the ‘shadow’, or periphery of mainstream education systems, scrutinizing the overall organizing logic of the phenomenon of private tutoring leads to the overarching research question of this study: What is the organizing logic of private tutoring, as a space for educating elite students in urban Bangladesh? Using preliminary finding from my doctoral research, this paper will attempt to answer this larger question, by using the following two sub-questions to guide the work:
1. How do relationships between students, their peers, and their tutors influence the socialization of students as members of an elite group?
2. How do students enact, negotiate, or challenge the reproduction of their elite status in private tutoring spaces?

In its interrogation of the globalization of education and neoliberalism as a political project, this study employs a case study approach with ethnographic elements to undertake a critical analysis of the emergence and use of shadow education. This will be done by focusing on tutoring centers as elite educational spaces, and utilizing participant observation, semi-structured interviews, a social media review and a questionnaire with students, and their tutors and administrators. I will employ a critical realist approach which hopes to connect the behaviours and practices of actors in social settings and the social, economic, and political structures within which those actions occur.

Author

• Nisma Elias, University of Minnesota- Twin Cities