What is school for? : the roles of academic instruction and social development in the educative process explored through the eyes of parents : the case of a state-funded private school in Barcelona

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What is school for?

The roles of academic instruction and social

development in the educative process explored

through the eyes of parents:

The case of a state-funded private school in

Barcelona

Elena Presas Batlló

Student ID 11127570

Master’s Thesis in Sociology, track: Social Problems and Social Policy

First supervisor: Barbara Da Roit

Second supervisor: Yannis Tzaninis

June 2016

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my long-standing friend Alej, for all the stories she has generously shared over the years, which led to the interests and ideas that originated this project. To her and Arantxa, for their patience, moral and practical support. To Alfonso, for not letting 14.000 km and the corresponding time difference stand in the way of his enthusiastic, inspiring and honest criticism and loyal support. To all the interviewed families, teachers and professionals for their kindness, interest and great willingness to cooperate.

Finally, I owe a deep gratitude to my supervisor, Barbara Da Roit, for her continuous guidance and invaluable input at every single level and stage leading up to the final version.

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INTRODUCTION

Education in Spain is a recurrent subject of public debate and understood as a major social problem (Enguita et al., 2010, p. 9; Prats, 2006). The debate initially revolved around the relationship between education and economic growth, as well as social cohesion and social inequality. However, and mainly due to the limited effectiveness of educational policy to reduce social inequality, for about twenty years now the national debate has shifted its focus towards the issue of quality, which is believed to be more determinant than quantity in shaping the (economic) future of a country.

In particular, on the one hand there is a wide-spread belief that current youth is the highest-educated generation ever, if measured in terms of schooling years or academic certifications. Yet on the other hand, strong critiques of the quality offered in educational institutions (including universities) is also commonplace. More specifically, the latter point refers to the idea that students do not possess the knowledge base needed to meet the demands of current society and a faction of the public opinion considers some of the fundamental competencies developed in formal education worse than in the past, for example as far as reading, oral expression or mathematics goes. As a response to this position, some authors call for the consideration of alternative and normally harder to measure learning outcomes in the evaluation of the quality and the objectives of education, such as sensibility, affective life, the wish to learn, solidarity or moral commitment, to name a few (Pérez-Díaz et al., 2001).

Spanish students perform poorly in international comparative indexes that measure educational systems, such as the OECD well-known Programme for International Student Assessment (OECD, 2016). PISA tests competencies of fifteen year-olds in three academic fields, but other than focusing on students’ intellectual skills, it provides valuable information on schools, in particular with respect to organisational issues, teaching strategies or conditions and aspirations on the students’ side, thereby constituting a powerful tool to qualitatively gauge a given educational system (Enguita et al., 2010, p. 208).

The relative position of Spain in these studies has become, in recent years, one of the most recurrent subtopics of the ongoing debate. School failure and functional illiteracy are way above European and OECD averages (OECD, 2016) and alarmingly high Early School Leaving rates (ESL) (European Commission, 2015, p. 34) represent additional threats to the positive development of the system.

Overall, there is a general feeling of dissatisfaction in terms of the general functioning of education in the country, as well as the educational and instructive results it delivers (Prats and Raventós, 2005, p. 227). Other issues that have long been part of the debate refer to the values that the system should be grounded on (Prats and Raventós, 2005), its structural organisation into three types of schools (public, private and state-funded private schools) and the subsequent real (in)capacity of families to choose the school they consider best for their children (Pérez-Díaz et al., 2001, p. 74).

Against this backdrop, there is an inclination within the public debate and the academic arena to concentrate on specific, superficial problems when exploring the aforesaid dysfunctions, rather than delving into more profound and abstract issues (Enguita, 1998, p. 18; also in Prats and Raventós, 2005).

As a matter of fact, one recurring theme that surfaces by placing the focus of the debate over qualitative aspects, which is not exclusive to the Spanish context, concerns parental involvement in education and the abandonment of their educational role through the delegation to other socialising agents like the school, peer groups or media (Pérez-Díaz et al., 2001).

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In this way, the focus on the family environment constitutes a first source of inspiration for the present work, which attempts to move away from prevalent discussions on the issue and by delving into the very fundamental conceptions of and attributions made to education and schooling across Spanish society.

All social actors, from children to teachers, parents and institutions, that play a part in this system are guided by underlying conceptualisations of education and specific understandings on the role of school. As a result, these conceptualisations underpin each and every inherent aspect in the overall system, satisfactory and unsatisfactory alike. Social meanings, together with values, behaviours and attitudes are primarily learned through the continuous and accumulated influence of parents during childhood (Grønhøj and Thøgersen, 2009, p. 415; Whitbeck and Gecas, 1988) and education-related meanings are no exception to this.

Moreover, a number of surveys show the central position that the family institution still occupies in Spanish society (Pérez-Díaz et al., 2001, p. 66), a consideration that may well intensify the natural influence exerted by the family in educative processes.

In view of the above, the purpose of the present study is to examine underlying beliefs on education held by parents, with a special emphasis on the meanings attributed to school and the educational experiences it boasts.

At the national level, there is extant academic literature on the relationship between families and school and the impact of their interaction in children’s educational processes, as well as the relevance of parental involvement in school and its consequences on children’s academic achievement (Bolívar, 2006; Collet and Tort, 2011; Garreta, 2007; López et al., 2004; Sánchez et al., 2013).

Moving on to the pieces of research that focus on the family environment only, we find one remarkable national study that explores how shifts and changes in belief systems and values impinge upon the family’s functions and the transmission of values in the home environment (Sánchez, 2001).

But, most importantly, two approaches deserve special mention among the reviewed academic literature in the national context. On the one hand, Collet’s (2013) extensive ethnographic work in the region of Catalonia focuses on families with high economic and cultural capital so as to elicit the models, norms and rules that govern their educational practices throughout changing times, thereby shedding light on the parameters that steer socialisation experiences of parents. Not only is the present analysis geographically situated in a location within the context that this author scrutinises, but it also draws on socialisation theory to address the study of education, albeit slightly differently, as it will be detailed later. On the other hand, Pérez-Díaz et al. (2001) draw on the analysis of an extended survey conducted among parents to explore, in broad terms, the contrast between what parents believe to be their responsibilities in education and the effective exercise of these responsibilities, thereby measuring the distance between ideal models and reality (p. 14).

However, no research has been found, neither among the national nor the international literature, on parental understandings of education or school. At best, and as cited above, studies that explore the family environment with regards to education concentrate on the impact of the family on children’s academic achievement and learning (Griffiths and Hamilton, 1984), often in connection with parental social backgrounds (Lareau, 1987; Roksa and Potter, 2011) and how these shape differences in their involvement in school (Lareau, 2000).

The primary position of parents in shaping their offspring’s fundamental values and behaviours is well documented, typically through longitudinal and quantitative studies (Grønhøj and Thøgersen, 2009; Kohn, 1977; Min et al., 2012; Pratt et al., 2008; Roest et al., 2010; Schönpflug, 2001; Tudge et al., 2013; Whitbeck and Gecas, 1988).

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In an equally spirited tone, the replication of cultural capital in successive generations (Schönpflug, 2001, p. 174) is a popular research subject too (Dumais, 2015), which has also been addressed from a quantitative standpoint (Kraaykamp and Van Eijck, 2010; Wendelspiess, 2015) and through the comparison between European countries (Van Doorn et al., 2011).

As for parental beliefs and understandings, research has been conducted on conceptions about parenting itself (Respler-Herman et al., 2012) or the significance of socio-cultural parenting resources to everyday social relationships in family life (Gillies, 2005; Gillies and Edwards, 2006), which are not only inspiring to reflect the viewpoint of parents, but also helpful to get a better sense of key mechanisms that unfold in home settings.

At any rate, and despite the suitability of the above literature to narrow down the focus of this project and provide an inspiration to sharpen data collection throughout fieldwork, none of the studies cited explore the specific dimension that the present work aims at capturing, namely parental understandings on education in general and school in particular. Parallel to some of the scholarship cited above, however, this analysis probes beneath the surface of family life to examine covert, taken-for-granted aspects that play out in the home environment. Furthermore, and given the absence of studies that centre on meanings ascribed to education, it will hopefully contribute towards filling a gap in research by exploring a new “content of transmission” (Schönpflug, 2001), rather than analysing the conditions under which this transmission occurs, or the impact of this transmission on children, for that matter.

By shedding light on fundamental conceptualisations and the roles parents ascribe to themselves and to school in their children’s educational process, the present work sets out to make visible the invisible.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Since the concern with the quality of education that characterises the ongoing debate in Spain has to do with the importance accorded to individual freedom (Pérez-Díaz et al., 2001), it is worth stepping back in time and retaking the original discussion on the very purposes and meanings of education, rooted in the development of free individuals, sovereign in the use of their self-understanding and self-determination (p. 15).

The meanings of education are analysed from a plethora of lenses in John Dewey’s (1946) landmark work on liberal theory of education, Democracy and Education. This theoretical approximation helps to organise the thinking on education and some of its philosophical principles constitute an effective tool to structure the present work, considering that its ultimate purpose is to unearth meanings on education inscribed in parental accounts. In a broad sense, education is a necessity of life and a social process that ensures the continuity of social existence through teaching and learning. Rather than being a means to living, education is living (Dewey, 1946, p. 281, emphasis added). Under this consideration, and highly marked off from other lines of thought, one of Dewey’s central arguments is that education should not be perceived as a process in which children are getting ready or prepared, even though they do prepare to cope with the responsibilities and advantages of adult life. Equating education to preparation undermines children’s current status as members of society and neglects the needs and possibilities of their present, thus invalidating the ultimate purpose of the very educative process, which is living a fruitful, rich life with inherent significance. Instead, the educative process is a “continuous reconstruction of experience” (p. 93) whose ultimate outcome should be the capacity for further education (p. 79). Dewey’s work also reminds us of a fundamental dualism that extends to the educational domain and opposes liberal education on the one hand, very much based on a life of leisure centred on “knowing for its own sake” (Dewey, 1946, p. 305) against a utilitarian, professionally-oriented stance, characterised by the absence of intellectual and aesthetic content. In the main, this contrast is identical with the distinction between leisure and work.

Moving on to the different agencies that intercede in the educative process, Dewey goes on to distinguish an informal or incidental mode of education against a formal or intentional one. The former is embodied in the interaction with others and the learning process is based on direct sharing, while the latter is epitomised in direct tuition or schooling (Dewey, 1946, p. 8), where the task of teaching explicit material is passed on to deliberately designed agencies, i.e. schools.

School, as compared to other agents involved in the transmission of education, is regarded as a rather superficial means (p. 5), yet pupils partake in a constant activity that constitutes “a genuine situation of experience” (p. 192) that takes their interest and awakens their desire to clarify the meanings of the transmitted ideas through their application in social life.

In the formal context, the meanings that fill up social life constitute the subject matter. Because of the complexity of social life, these meanings are filtered and organised for transmission from one generation to the next, which is not without problems, as by selecting and transmitting meanings of social life in this way, the subject matter is given value on its own beyond its actual function in social life. Consequently, teachers are liable to identify their main task with the sheer transmission of this subject matter for the pupil to appropriate and reproduce it, even at the cost of neutralising its application outside the classroom (p. 226-7). If, on the contrary, knowledge in school is gained through activities and experiences that do represent the social world, an additional quality is integrated into the transmitted knowledge, which can in turn be transferred into contexts beyond the school. The opposite, that is, the inapplicability of knowledge in settings other than the school, is likely to occur if the social

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environment the school is encompassed in does not conceive of learning as both a need and a reward, thereby dooming the school to work in isolation (p. 417). Thus, for education to be the inherently significant process by virtue of which a desire for continuous growth is created, to echo Dewey, there should be a free interplay between the learning that occurs in and out of school, for which common social interests across the informal and formal settings are required.

Let us take a step back from the above discussions on the notion of education and shift the focus to the broader process in which it accrues and where parents and their beliefs are situated, which is socialisation. While it is on occasion useful to speak of the process of socialisation, this concept encompasses a complex reality because it is not a single phenomenon, but a compound of multiple processes (Handel, 2007, p. 83).

A celebrated theoretical treatise in sociology is particularly suited to understand socialisation during childhood, which is the work of twentieth century American sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (Enguita, 1999, p. 12).

Their general theory is framed within the sociology of knowledge, whose core object of analysis is “everything that passes for ‘knowledge’ in society” (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p. 26), including everyday life common-sense knowledge. In this way, their theory explains the social construction of reality through a “sociological analysis of the reality of everyday life” (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p. 33) and it is precisely the emphasis on this level of reality what makes it the most attractive for this thesis, given its purpose of using everyday dimensions as a springboard for the analysis of deeper meanings.

According to their theory, social reality is an ongoing dialectical process characterised by three moments: externalisation, objectivation and internalisation, the latter of which is one of the theoretical pillars of the present project. Internalisation, or the conscious assimilation of the objectivated social world (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p. 78), is identical with transmitting the social world from one generation to the next. An individual cannot possibly become a member of society without the internalisation that is accomplished through socialisation, a concept that the authors define as “the comprehensive and consistent induction of an individual into the objective world of a society or a sector of it” (p. 150). In turn, socialisation is divided into primary socialisation, which occurs in childhood and is a prerequisite for the individual to become a member of society, and secondary socialisation, by which the individual, already socialised, develops in other contexts within her society. Not only is primary socialisation the most influential for an individual, but it also lays the foundations for secondary socialisation.

The objective reality of an individual is contingent on the particular interpretations of reality made by those who are responsible for her primary socialisation, the so-called significant others. In primary socialisation, individuals do not undergo any problems of identification, given that significant others, together with their rules and definitions of situations, are imposed on her. In this way, the child’s internalisation of the significant others’ particular reality is inevitable and the identification with them, automatic. All in all, the world that is absorbed by children through primary socialisation becomes more deeply embedded in their consciousness than that emanating from secondary socialisation counterparts.

Additional internalisations in life occur in secondary socialisation processes once the primary type ends, as socialisation goes on through the lifespan (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p. 166). Secondary socialisation “must deal with an already formed self and an already internalised world” (p. 160) that are bound to endure. This means that whatever new bodies of knowledge are to be taken in through secondary socialisation, they may face a problem of inconsistency vis-à-vis those that are already internalised. In this way, far from being shaped by

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biological factors, learning during secondary socialisation is a function of the very nature and structure of the knowledge that is to be assimilated (p. 160).

The best illustration of secondary socialisation, the authors have it, is the development of modern education, represented by the intervention of specialised agencies or schools (Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p. 166). As opposed to significant others, teachers are viewed as “representing institutionally specific meanings” (p. 161), whose main assignment in children’s socialisation is the transmission of knowledge. Since schools are characterised by anonymous roles and the absence of affective bonds, children’s subjective construction of reality is more strongly defined by the knowledge absorbed in primary socialisation, and the importance of the knowledge gained in school increases the stronger the continuity between existing and new contents. In this way, teacher’s task is to ‘take’ these new contents to the original reality of children, which is the home, through pedagogic techniques whose “degree and precise character” is determined by the child’s motivation for gaining new knowledge (p. 163).

In short, home is childhood’s original reality and all posterior realities are somewhat artificial (p.163) and “less deeply rooted in consciousness” (p. 167).

The foregoing discussion on the relationship between the two socialisation processes assists in understanding how parental beliefs on education influence children’s everyday lives at school. Considering the focus of this thesis, together with the fact that, as recently pointed out, taken-for-granted meanings constitute a vital part of primary socialisation, it is interesting to delve into this interaction by taking the analysis to a deeper, underlying level and explore the aspects that operate within it and reveal the exposure of the school to the profound influence of the home. A useful theoretical concept to study the tacit, taken-for-granted aspects in educational processes is the so-called hidden curriculum.

Simply put, the hidden curriculum refers to the discrepancy between that which is officially taught in educational institutions and what is actually learned by pupils, such as unconsciously transmitted values (Cotton et al., 2013, p. 192).

A host of scholars have worked with this theoretical notion, but the present analysis will take the piece Schooling in Capitalist America as a reference. The book, written by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis in 1976, uses empirical and theoretical evidence to elaborate upon the argument that the structural arrangements that define schools at that time in America, mould students and their personality so as to make them fit into the social relationships that characterise the workplace in the capitalist system. This fitting is brought into being by the emphasis that schools place on certain personal traits, manners and identifications, as well as through the formal configuration of social relationships that occur on the school grounds, ranging from hierarchical relations to “the alienation of the student from the curriculum content” or the imposition of external rewards and dynamics of competition (Bowles and Gintis, 1976, p. 131).

All these instances construct, the authors argue, a hidden curriculum that operates next to the explicit, official curriculum of the school and may not be recognisable by the very social actors of the context in which it plays out. Ultimately, this concealed component reproduces the prevailing social class structure, as the way in which the schooling experience encourages some capacities and disapproves of others does nothing but replicate relationships of dominance and subordination inherent in the workplace and the prevailing socioeconomic model.

This theoretical construct is particularly suited to address the present research project because of its fundamental assumption that the visible, cognitively-based aspects of schooling are only a portion of the social relationships and messages that pervade the educational encounter in children’s everyday life (p. 125). Therefore, it recognises

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the existence of another latent, unexplored part. For the purposes of this project, Bowles and Gintis’ articulation on the hidden curriculum is not as attractive for its specific findings as it is for its prime focus on the experience of schooling, as well as for the conceptual contribution it offers.

In light of the dualism portrayed above concerning socialisation as well as education (primary versus secondary socialisation and formal versus informal modes of education) and the relative importance of the different settings in which education unfolds, it is convenient to explore, firstly, which understandings on the school stem from the home environment and, secondly, the extent to which parental stances and attitudes may be in themselves an element of the hidden curriculum (Cotton et al., 2013, p. 199), with the ultimate purpose of uncovering potential discrepancies between theoretical and practical meanings pervading formal and informal education settings.

In this way, throughout the empirical findings the aforementioned focus on the level of underlying apparatus and day-to-day experiences is shifted to the home environment. That is, the present analysis uses the theoretical structure of the hidden curriculum to analyse parental points of view on education, and most importantly on the role of the school, to bring out a system of intended and unintended messages and meanings that are conveyed in the home environment but refer to what education in general and school in particular are about.

Bowles and Gintis also dedicate part of their theoretical discussion to a dimension that is especially salient in the study of meanings ascribed to education by parents. In particular, the authors maintain that the motivational system implemented in school greatly overlooks the “social benefits of the process of education (learning) or its tangible outcome (knowledge)” (p. 12) by being supported on marks, external rewards or threats (fear to fail). Following this line of thought, towards the end of the present analysis the roles of knowledge and motivational issues across parental conceptions are carefully discussed so as to integrate them within what will be termed the ‘home hidden curriculum’ herein.

As a corollary to the notion of the hidden curriculum, it is convenient to return to the idea that it greatly assists in explaining reproduction of the social, political and economic order through that which is subtly transmitted in the “experiences of daily life” (Bowles and Gintis, 1976, p. 127).

As a matter of fact, the very understanding of socialisation as a process whereby children are introduced into a given culture and society, conforms a reproductive model according to which “agencies of socialisation function to reproduce social class differences within society” (Corsaro, as cited in Wyness, 2006, p. 132).

The hidden curriculum embodies reproductive patterns that can be encompassed in broader systematic theoretical frameworks developed around the crucial role of education to account for social and cultural reproduction. One of such frameworks is Pierre Bourdieu’s theory about the power of formal and informal education to maintain social, cultural and economic status, thereby reproducing social class boundaries. Considering the latter as a disguised function of education is relevant for the purposes of the current project because it adds a macrostructural layer to parental perceptions on the very meanings and goals of the educative process, in its formal and informal senses alike.

In general terms, Bourdieu’s theory equates social life with a “multidimensional status game” (Holt, 2000, p. 216) where individuals are endowed with three different forms of capital: economic, social and cultural. While economic capital is identical with financial resources, social capital consists of relationships, social networks and organisational affiliations.

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manifests in three main ways: embodied, objectified and institutionalised. The former corresponds to skills, dispositions and implicit knowledge, the objectified form stands for cultural objects and the institutionalised materialises in certifications of the existence of the embodied cultural capital.

In view of the focus of this project, special and almost exclusive use of the subconcept of the embodied cultural capital is made throughout, as well of another central notion in Bourdieu’s thought that is partly constituted of this embodied state: the habitus, which, simply put, is an abstracted socio-psychological structure (acquired by means of social experiences, by belonging to different social classes, ethnic groups etc.) that transforms into particular ways of feeling, thinking and acting (Handel, 2007, p. 327; Holt, 2000, p. 216-7). The habitus is “an integral part of the person” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 245) that prompts choices in individuals, thus directing them towards occupations and family situations that will likely be similar to those of their parents or people in their direct milieux. Most obviously, the latter activates reproduction mechanisms across generations (Handel, 2007, p. 327).

The embodied form of cultural capital is also the most useful notion in Bourdieu’s systematic theory to complement the theoretical frameworks developed thus far, as its transmission, occurring rather unconsciously and more disguised than that of economic capital, for example (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 245) is “the best hidden form of hereditary transmission of capital” (p. 246), in tune with the deep, somewhat invisible level of analysis that the preceding theories attempt to grasp. Moreover, not only does the fundamental articulation of cultural capital centre (more or less directly) on education, but its transmission and accumulation continuously accrue over socialisation (p. 246).

Additionally, it is precisely the “hereditary transmission of cultural capital” what Bourdieu (1986, p. 244) believes to be at the heart of reproduction strategies, a perspective that is sharply marked off from functionalist visions of the purposes of education. In effect, cultural capital has a stronger presence in reproduction patterns precisely because of its invisible form of transmission and the complexities involved in observing and controlling its effects (p. 246).

Social capital is another useful construct that fosters social reproduction strategies, as it is linked to membership in a group (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 248) and the concomitant social network connections, which in turn generate value (Gillies, 2005, p. 841). It helps to address the present findings in terms of the social and interactional dimensions that are observed in the educative process, since social relationships also enter the reproduction game the moment certain conscious or unconscious strategies are individually or collectively employed, with a constant effort of sociability, to create a network of relationships that will guarantee and reproduce “usable” social bonds (p. 249).

 

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The preceding literature and theoretical review shows that most of the academic work carried out to date explores, in the main, family influence on academic achievement or the transmission of values, behaviours, cultural capital, etc. Moreover, existing research is rarely centred on the parental side only, but rather on the outcomes of the aforementioned transmissions.

While the focus of this project may indeed be related to academic achievement through motivation (MECD, 2009), this outcome falls out of the scope of the analysis, as academic achievement does not necessarily signal anything about one’s understanding and appraisal of the very act of learning and acquiring knowledge, or about the ways in which education and the roles of school are internalised. Therefore, the research question steering this thesis is the following:

How is the educational process in general and with regards to school in particular understood by parents of primary school children?

In order to answer the latter, the following sub-questions are also addressed:

i. What do parents understand under ‘learning’ in their children’s educational process? a. Which areas of ‘learning’ do they assign to the school?

b. Which areas of ‘learning’ do they assign to themselves?

ii. To which extent are the meanings of education expressed by parents aligned with or opposed to meanings established by the theory?

iii. What are parental beliefs on the intrinsic benefits, rewards and purposes of the instructive function of the school, i.e. the transmission of knowledge?

a. Do these beliefs construct a ‘home hidden curriculum’ about the schooling experience?

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DATA AND METHODS

As the research questions above set forth, this project purports to examine parental interpretations of a particular social world (Bryman, 2012a, p. 380), which instigates the adoption of an interpretivist epistemological stance typical of qualitative research. Such a methodology is most suited when the point of orientation is marked by the researched (Bryman, 2012a, p. 408) and the goal is to unearth their worldview through their eyes and own words (Bryman, 2012a; Creswell, 2009, Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2004).

Face-to-face qualitative data collection methods are particularly suited for those endeavours that address intangible and unmeasurable elements (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 138), which are at the heart of my third research subquestion’s attempt to replicate the theoretical notion of the hidden curriculum, including its implicit nature and subtleties. In fact, literature shows that the underlying assumptions and meanings inherent in the notion of the hidden curriculum are most effectively uncovered through the depth that qualitative approaches can offer (Cotton et al., 2013, p. 195-6).

All in all, the analysis seeks to get at “thick descriptions” (Geertz, as cited in Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2004, p. 5) of certain social realities through the words used by social actors while expressing their everyday experiences, beliefs and actions (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2004). Therefore, and even though participants’ words are naturally linked to broader institutional and cultural contexts or groups (Denzin, 2004, p. 464), this research project gives priority to “probing beneath the surface of phenomena” (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 296) over representativeness. In light of the above, it is most appropriate to subscribe to a case study approach focusing on a specific instance or particular group without pursuing any attempts to generalise beyond its geographical or temporal boundaries, thus allowing for definition (Cohen et al., 2011).

Thirty parents (grouped in fifteen different-sex couples) were recruited for this study. The reason to recruit both the mother and the father was to engender rich data and gain a fuller picture on the vision of education that characterises a given household, as it is made up of the two points of view.

These participants shared the fundamental and distinguishable characteristic of having made a “conscious, strategic and planned choice of a school” (Collet, 2013, p. 181), in particular a state-funded private school in Barcelona, the second largest city in Spain and capital of the region of Catalonia.

It is worth contextualising this kind of school within the overall organisation of educational centres in the country, which can either be completely private, state-funded private or completely public and where 3.8%, 28.4% and 67.7% of the student body at the primary level was enrolled in the academic year 2014-2015, respectively (MECD, 2015, p. 4). Parents who register their children in state-funded private schools (and hence do not opt for the public school that they are allocated to) are typically middle and upper-middle class individuals. They dedicate effort to finding a centre that meets certain quality standards, especially in relation to the school atmosphere, which is highly shaped by the degree of economic discrimination that results from the sheer payment of fees, regardless of their amount (Pérez-Díaz et al., 2001, p. 281-2).

Other inclusion criteria were that the couple had at least one child at the primary school level because of the fact that, at this developmental stage, the main primary socialisation sources stem from the family and the school (Enguita and Levin, as cited in Pérez-Díaz et al., 2001, p. 30; Oetting, 1999, p. 953). In this way, parental accounts were more likely to mirror the norms that dictate primary socialisation experiences of children, which linger on throughout the lifespan.

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Since it is “the fundamental principle for selecting cases and individuals in qualitative research” (Bryman, 2012b, p. 428), a purposive sampling technique was adopted, in particular a snowballing sampling method. Whilst internal and external reliability are met in this study, for it is based on only one researcher’s perspective and it can be replicated in other contexts, external validity or transferability are slightly problematic, as it is typically the case with the use of purposive sampling methods (Bryman, 2012a, p. 418), for the findings cannot be said to be representative of other social settings within the urban, regional or national contexts that participants were drawn from.

The sample was accessed through the use of personal contacts and social networks (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 159). One teacher working at the selected school was initially informed about the project and inclusion criteria for potential participants. She passed this information on to a selection of colleagues, who explained the study to mothers of first, second and third grade children. Those mothers who confirmed their interest in participating were contacted over the phone by the researcher. They were also given further details on the project, which did not disclose certain specifics that could potentially skew their mindsets in the upcoming the interviews and hence challenge the integrity of the research (Cohen et al., 2011).

Meetings were arranged over the phone and there was, quite unexpectedly, an extended willingness to cooperate, most probably owing to the peer group members and familiar contacts that approached participants in the first place (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 159), as some interviews were secured through families who proposed other couples that met the selection criteria (Bryman, 2012a, p. 424).

A total of twenty five couples were contacted, ten of which did not result in interviews either because of difficulties in correspondence after the initial contact or, in most cases, problems with finding compatible schedules to conduct the interview with the two members of the couple, typically due to time restrictions on the father’s side.

The resulting sample was all white and predominantly upper middle class, as measured on the grounds of yearly net income, educational capital and occupation. The latter was inspired by the classifications used in a similar study partially conducted in the same city (Collet, 2013, p. 180).

Almost 60% of the households had a total yearly income in excess of 48.000€ and only 6.7% were below the 24.000€ threshold. The average number of children in the family was 2.5, with a minimum of 1 and maximum of 4.

As for educational attainment, 83% of the interviewed parents had at least some college degree, whereas the remaining 17% held a high school diploma or equivalent certification. Table 2 in the Appendix provides full detail on each participating parent, where characteristics that could potentially lead to recognising participants (e.g. number of children or current occupation) were left out to meet ethical standards of confidentiality and anonymity.

Two interviewing stages preceded the actual data collection. The first focused on six people whose profession was encompassed in the broad field of education (see Table 1 in the Appendix). The second stage was centred on three primary school teachers working at the centre where the sample of parents was extracted.

The purpose of the first round of interviews with academics and other professionals was to prepare for the subsequent conversations with parents as well as to extend bibliographical sources. Throughout the presentation

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of the research project, useful points were raised by these professionals, which allowed for a “tighter specification of the research questions” (Bryman, 2012a, p. 386) and a refined operationalisation of certain abstract concepts. The interviews with three teachers in the second phase partly built on the insights gathered in the preceding conversations with professionals and yielded useful recommendations on how to address the interviews with parents. These were incorporated in the design of the interview guide in combination with the methodological approaches and measures included in other empirical projects addressing education (e.g. Collet, 2013; Kohn, 1977; Lareau, 1987, 2000). Page 53 in the Appendix includes a full detail of the interview guide that resulted from these preliminary conversations and the adjustments that were made as the data collection progressed.

The data collection phase involved a questionnaire that every parent was asked to fill out online, whose response rate was 80% and proved very effective in saving time during the interviews, as no sociodemographic information had to be orally collected. The specific questions included in the online questionnaire can be found on page 54 in the Appendix.

The questionnaire offered the possibility to, firstly, micro-aggregate the data on individuals and construct ‘average persons’ (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 92), and secondly, to get a sense of traits that were (not) stressed in respondents’ understandings of children’s education. More specifically, the last three questions were inspired by Melvin Kohn’s distinguished research on parental priorities in the education of their offspring in consideration of the effects of social class and the fathers’ occupation (Enguita, 1999, p. 12). Adding to Kohn’s approach, participants in the present study were required to answer the same question three times, regarding education in general, school environment and home environment respectively, where they selected five traits they considered the “most desirable to inculcate in their children” (Kohn, 1977, p. 18). The broader list of alternatives, which included thirteen attributes or values, varied slightly from one question to the next in order to encompass a broader range of ideas. Following Kohn’s (1977) methodological decision, the limit of alternatives was set on thirteen items, as it suffices to “offer a sizeable range of choice, but not too many to be readily comprehended” (Kohn, 1977, p. 48). Images 1, 2 and 3 in the Appendix show the aggregate responses to these last three questions.

Taking into consideration that face-to-face interaction is the ideal condition to see the world from the other’s eyes and thus acquire social knowledge (Lofland and Lofland, as cited in Bryman, 2012a, p. 399), in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to allow for flexibility and the possibility of incorporating new, potentially relevant themes through “listening and following the direction of the participant/informant” (Law et al., 1998). Interviews took place in the homes of participants in thirteen out of fifteen cases, which enabled a certain degree of observation that was useful to get a glimpse of the objectified cultural capital of interviewees.

Fourteen of them were carried out in Spanish and one in Catalan and they all took place over a three week period, with a length varying between half an hour and two hours. The interviews were recorded with previous signed consent from respondents, which also announced issues such as the nature of the research, its purposes, the protection of dignity, privacy and interests of participants or the benefits of the research, to name a few (Cohen et al., 2011). Recordings were subsequently transferred to a computer and transcribed verbatim with the support of ExpressScribe, a free transcription software. Finally, they were uploaded to Atlas.ti for analysis, which proved very useful to code, create memos and construct broader categories that revealed the most salient themes (Odena, 2013). Overall, these stages helped to “make an interpretation of the larger meaning of the data” (Creswell, 2009, p. 183).

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After an “initial coding process” (Saldaña, 2013, p. 4), out of which the vast majority of the codes emerged, a second round produced a smaller number of codes and merged those which shared some characteristics into categories or “families” so as to pinpoint patterns across the transcripts (Saldaña, 2013, p. 8). Initially, codes belonged to either of these categories: content and form. The latter paid attention to those discursive elements like linguistic strategies or turns in speech (e.g. interruptions, advancing responses before the question was finished) that revealed valuable information beyond words. A total of 151 codes were applied 1272 times across the fifteen transcripts, including those that were deemed irrelevant and hence abandoned for successive stages. Since the ambition underpinning the research questions was the examination of parental perceptions on various fields of their children’s education, the symbolic roles of language had to be brought to the fore, so that a discourse analysis approach was followed in order to understand parental speeches in their particular discursive and interactional contexts (MacMillan, 2005, p. 15).

The foregoing methodological decisions are not without problems. Firstly, snowballing samples are typically associated with sameness and selection bias (Laan and Velthuis, 2013, p. 5), as the initial contact acts as a strong filter of the backgrounds of subsequent participants (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 159). The problems to maintain a diverse sample in terms of cultural and economic capital were not only a result of this particularity of the sampling method, but also of interview cancellations that ended up skewing the sample towards participants in the higher income brackets.

On a cautionary note, which is further discussed in the conclusion, the most important common denominator among participants was, as cited above, the choice of the school. This aspect certainly contributed to the oral accounts being rather uniform, as well as the analysis, where the little degree of variation is not attributable to differences in social class, economic or cultural capital. This fact may also explain that theoretical saturation was achieved with a sample size of fifteen couples.

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FINDINGS

In the following sections, the findings from fieldwork are organised according to different thematic groups. Firstly, a general conceptualisation of education is presented through the elements that were most often remarked by participants when they shared their understandings of education in general, as well as its meanings and goals. Following this introductory section, I go on to explore the shape that these ideas take in practice based on participants’ words on the roles of home, school and after-school activities in children’s education. A synthesising section is devoted to the role of knowledge in the preceding accounts, followed by a discussion that brings the empirical findings and the theoretical framework together.

The meanings and goals of education

What is education?

Generally speaking, parents interviewed for this study understood education as the process throughout which children were accompanied to adulthood. In this guidance, they unanimously attached paramount importance to values, which needed to take root in childhood. Values, to their understandings, alongside other realms like the academic, the spiritual or the material, conformed a toolbox that parents equipped their children with, either directly (in primary socialisation) or indirectly (through the choices they made that in turn determined the secondary socialisation experiences of children).

In addition to the figure of the toolbox, another metaphor was commonly used to describe education from in broad strokes, which was that of a seed that would bear the fruit of children standing on their own feet and providing for themselves in the future.

At any rate, respondents held the belief that this toolbox enabled children to meet the goals of a successful education. By dissecting participants’ accounts on the meanings of education itself, these goals could be slightly distinguished from their conceptual approaches on education.

What are the goals of education?

Towards the end of the interviews, participants were usually asked to explain what a successful education was. Their answers construct an overall idea of what the mission of the educative process is. As advanced above, the boundaries with the very conceptualisation of education are quite fuzzy, but for the purposes of structure and clarity the two will be disentangled at this point.

Starting from the broadest level possible, the ultimate goal of education was to have a fulfilling life, or as put by the totality of participants, and attuned with Collet’s (2013, p. 190) findings on the goals of education across Catalan upper middle classes, ’being happy’. Happiness was predominantly understood as an outcome of education that would manifest in the future. The concrete dimensions nestled in the term ‘happiness’ did not differ much from respondent to respondent and a compilation of the answers is exhibited in groups in what follows, ordered from the most general to the particular.

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The ambiguous notion of being a good person was tantamount to being kind, empathic, respectful, generous and as a result of all of these, being loved by others and feeling loved, wherever they went. Adopting a good attitude towards events in life or taking good care of the relationships with family and friends were also highlighted in this context.

As a whole, being a good person was linked to integrity or having the genuine wish to do the right thing, always in relation to other individuals. As one father stated:

I: What do you mean by being happy? What would that be?

Carlos : Being good people: that they want to do the right thing and do the right thing. Not only that they do it, but 1

that they want to do it. Being lucky too, of course […]

(b) Capacity to face difficulties

Coming back to the idea of the toolbox that is progressively accumulated throughout education, a small proportion of participants mentioned the possession of the adequate tools to deal with the inevitable difficulties that arise in life, since these parents understood they could not save their children from going through hard times. Thus, the one thing they believed they could do in this respect was to instil in their children the right attitude and values to cope with future troubles.

(c) Self- confidence and determination

Being confident in themselves and hence having a strong determination to take firm decisions on their own, at all levels, was also a rather ubiquitous imperative for happiness (also in Collet, 2013). In particular, this usually referred to the prospective academic and professional fields and participants often rephrased this idea in terms of being free to make one’s choices, as opposed to these being influenced by external pressures.

(d) The right academic and professional career

Happiness was also described as a direct result of tangible processes that were interwoven with the items above, especially confidence. In particular, and in accordance with the previous point, parents also hoped that education would help their children develop what they had inside in a way that, in the future, they would lead an academic and professional career that could bring them realisation and self-fulfilment. As for the academic career path, the conversations elicited both implicitly and explicitly an extended inclination to take a university degree for granted in children’s futures.

As advanced in the data and methods section, participants were asked to fill out an online questionnaire that included one question on the selection of five important characteristics in their children’s educational process (see Image 1 in the Appendix).

A comparison between, on the one hand their answers to the online questionnaire and, on the other, their oral discourses, yields interesting results, as ‘happiness’ and ‘honesty’ were the only two characteristics that were not featured a single time in the responses to item eight in the questionnaire (see page 54 in the Appendix for fuller detail). Similarly, in Kohn’s revised index of parental values ‘happy’ was left out, as “it seemed to be on a different plane from all the rest” (Kohn, 1977, p. 47).

In the case at hand, this omission could be read as a contradiction with the findings presented above, since we find that happiness was described as the ultimate goal of education and yet still completely neglected in the

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questionnaire. A possible explanation for this apparent contradiction is that parents chose characteristics that were semantically more precise than the adjective ‘happy’ and the combination of which leads to happiness. An alternative interpretation would suggest, quite paradoxically, consistency between the oral accounts and the written answers, as the question in the survey may have been interpreted in present terms (which was indeed the intention of its framing). The responses they provided in the face-to-face encounters delineated happiness as a long-term goal or something that would crystallise only once children became adults. In the online questionnaire, participants may have focused on those attributes they valued the most in their children’s educative process at the present moment, so that ‘happy’, given its future-oriented connotations, was indeed less likely to be chosen.

Besides the widespread tendency to transfer the purposes of education into the future, which mirrors Wyness’ (2006, p. 135) conclusions on the predominant tendency to constantly refer to children as the next generation of adults, an idea known as “adult-centrism” (Kitzinger, as cited in Wyness, 2006, p. 135), it is worth noting that very occasionally, participants considered the present when they shared their understandings of ‘happiness’. More specifically, they expressed their wish for children to have a high self-esteem, good relationships and a cheerful, positive attitude throughout childhood. Happy, in this sense, implied a behaviour instead of a desired goal (Kohn, 1977, p. 47).

To conclude, the following quote is a good synthesis of the ideas just presented on the overall mission of education:

Feliu: Well, (education is about) teaching them a way of life that we think is optimal to be able to fulfil themselves as persons who are cheerful, happy, committed, with a spirit of sacrifice and culture of effort. Things that, to me, keep you moving on and being a whole person.

In spite of the preceding explications, the question as to how the seeds and the toolbox (to stay within the two metaphors brought up earlier) look like in practice still remains open. Accordingly, the next sections, which constitute the heart of the findings, seek out to provide a better sense of this by delving into participants’ points of view on a host of issues that play a part in their children’s education. The section is articulated around three broad settings: home, school and concerted cultivation. A more significant proportion of the analysis is dedicated to the discussion of the school environment, in consonance with the research questions and subquestions that guide this project.

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Home

All respondents agreed that the main weight of education fell on the family, which they regarded as “the most important agency of socialisation” (Wyness, 2006, p. 129). Indeed, as supported by 78% of the participants in Pérez-Díaz et al.’s (2001, p. 133) empirical work on parental perceptions across a sample representing the whole country, this environment lays the foundations of education and acquires a sacred character in contrast to other everyday life contexts where education unravels. The interviews disclosed, in a variety of forms, the special position of the family as well some of the particular ways in which this privileged standing is transmitted to children in the context of primary socialisation.

On the one hand, not only did participants consistently spell out their views on the supreme importance of the family in one’s life and on how everything infused in the home would constitute the baggage that children would carry to other settings, but they also expressed how crucial it was to appreciate this institution and to take good care of it. Returning to the ingredients of happiness, the following quote is of particular importance because one female participant framed the fundamental role played by the family in terms of, precisely, happiness:

Camila: We believe that the family is primary in life. It is a fundamental value for happiness, whether or not they (the children) build a family later on. If they are alone, then they will turn to their parents’ or siblings’ families, right? They will always have a family. Therefore, the value of the family, which is not explained, as it is just the everyday experience…that may be what secures, at least we believe so, a person’s happiness.

On the other hand, these ideals on the role of the family were backed up by narrations on a number of everyday practices ranging from family logistics on weekdays and weekend to holiday plans, which added a layer of meaning and helped to understand the actual part played by family in children’s everyday realities. In consonance with this, respondents were also asked about the allocation of their free time and their individual interests and hobbies, so as to gauge their dedication to the family and the children.

Firstly, a close look on the weekly routine and daily family life revealed a general inclination among parents, and in particular mothers, to be highly involved in their children’s routines at various levels, ranging from taking them to and picking them up from school to overseeing their homework or playing with them.

Eating dinner together, in spite of the practical difficulties in reconciling typical working hours with children’s schedules, was something that most families strived for. By and large, dinner time represented the only moment where the whole family could get together amidst the weekly routine, as opposed to weekends, where they stuck together in whatever they did. Common weekend plans included running errands, going out for walks, biking or meeting with other members of the extended family or friends with children on a regular basis.

Moreover, the conversations also suggested that parents did not see a separation between their own lives and that of the family in relation to leisure: they hardly ever engaged in plans on their own and concurred that, whatever free time they had, it was dedicated to the children. It should be said, however, that due to the selection criteria applied in this study (see Data and Methods section), children that were referred in these accounts were still highly dependent on their parents because of their young age, which may lead to overstate the incidence of the family in their educational process.

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not difficult to identify the centrality of the family, which will be further conveyed in the remainder of the analysis both through straightforward and more subtle elements.

Bearing the focus of this project in mind, the most important point concerning the role of the family revolves around its interplay with children’s schooling experiences. As it will be shown in the next section, the analysis of the discourses of participants reveals a somewhat subordinate position of the school with respect to the home, which comes to light through, firstly, the opinions they hold on the realities that affect the school and, secondly, the particular ways in which they (say they) experience these.  

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School

It is of utmost importance to highlight a point that came up again and again in the conversations and will surface through the remainder of the analysis: the condition of coherence between family and school life. As discussed in the previous section, parents understood that whatever children learned and saw at home was transferred into other contexts in their lives. According to parents, other socialising agents (in particular the school) served to reinforce the educational task undertaken at home, thus implying that home and school were supposed to be on the same boat and row in the direction dictated by the former.

Perceived as an extension of the family environment, school was expected to strengthen what children learned from their families, rather than adding to it. Examples abound of the various ways in which participants spelled out this idea, which was present in all fifteen interviews:

Esther: I think that the foundations (of education) need to stem from home. […] And then, of course, you need to choose a school according to your principles, your values, your way of doing.

Even though the message is essentially the same, these rather vague terms take on a more defined form in this mother’s speech:

Diana: Well, I think it is important that in school they see something similar to what they see at home. I wouldn’t understand enrolling my children in a school where they don’t transmit at all what I do. So I think that the school we take our children to and our education advance quite hand in hand.

Not only does the following quote recognise the primacy of the family, but it also alludes to a direct consequence that derives from it, which is the hierarchical standing between home and school in the educative process: home is the leading context in education and school is supposed to follow suit.

Feliu: […] We actually cannot delegate too much in schools, because the task of educating our children is ours, not the school’s. […] I can indeed ask the school to teach them certain contents or whatever, as well as a coherence with that which we want. But the task is ours. […] I educate, as a parent. Everything they (school) do is reaffirm what we work on, but I cannot delegate; it’s a mistake. And people are increasingly doing so: they delegate. […]

Finally, one father talked about the hypothetical case where this synchrony was absent, which brings out, once again, their perceived importance of this alignment:

Pol: […] If we weren’t aligned in this respect (values), we would have a problem. A problem of friction and clash: that the gears wouldn’t run. They tell you one thing at home and a different one in school, so that one needs to give children too many explanations on things that are difficult to explain, because they are not congruent. So I suppose that this is the idea: that we are aligned and complement each other.

Most interviews commenced with the following question: ‘If your children were to ask you why do they need to go to school, and what for, what would you tell them?’

The immediate answer from all couples, mothers and fathers alike, was unanimous: to learn.

This reaction was followed by an elaboration on the particular meanings of learning, and the variation within the discourses has helped to map out all the dimensions that conform this term, which for the purposes of simplicity and structure I have divided into two broad blocks. What will be referred to as ‘the social block’ herein encapsulates all those elements mentioned by parents that play out at the social or human level (humane

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education and training in fundamental values, as they frequently termed it). The traits within this group refer to, broadly speaking, learning to socialise, to establish good relationships with other children and people in one’s surroundings, acquiring manners, behaving well, developing certain attitudes and consolidating values.

Conversely, what has been termed ‘the academic block’ refers to the formal or instructive function of the school, that is, learning purely academic contents and gaining knowledge.

It is interesting to note that this split within the meaning of ‘learning’ ties the points of previous sections together, as it is, most naturally, attuned with the general discussions on education introduced above. In particular, the values that parents underlined in their descriptions of the essence and purposes of education roughly constitute a block on their own, which is in turn tightly linked to the preponderance of the family in the educational process and the sought coherence or synchrony between home and school. This connection will surface later in the analysis in a variety of forms.

As parents understood it, given that children spent long hours in school (from 9am to 5pm from Monday to Friday), it was crucial that the schooling experience, and therefore the school centre, offered this duality so that children were taught on both levels (the social and the academic). However, parents did not accord equal importance to the two blocks and this is precisely the backbone of the present analysis. In fact, the social block, namely the one rooted in values, attitudes and behaviours, was favoured over academic instruction, both in education in general and in school in particular. In what follows, this general conclusion will be substantiated by the consideration of a wide array of themes and the focus on the multiple ways in which it expressed within each theme.

The first and more explicit manner in which this priority manifested was found in participants’ answers on the educational role that they believed to correspond to the school.

When delving into this issue, their discourses mostly centred on the coherence advanced above, i.e. that school should not contradict parents’ job in education, especially with regards to the transmission of values. School was often regarded as a setting in which children received further real-life inputs that would add to their social development, such as the exposure to interaction with people their age. The latter was often given as a reason for children having to go to school. When the multilayered meaning of the word ‘learning’ was inspected, parents typically spelled out the assimilation of values in the first place, while they mentioned the transmission of academic contents almost in passing, if not left out.

The fragment below corresponds to the conversation that followed from the opening question on why children have to go to school, where the respondent was challenged on the specific meanings of learning. Whilst learning was, to his understanding, a compound of things, his words unambiguously reflected the salience of values in this composition:

Jaime: […] To study, because we all have to study. To learn more than what parents can teach. I: Like what?

Jaime: First values. Respect.[…] Mostly values. First values and then that they have fun as well. And they have to learn.

I: And if they asked you: learn what?

Jaime: Learn what? Well, to sum and subtract, to read and understand that piece of reading. Because they all go for this. And only after that they will decide what to do.

Moreover, not only did parents deemphasise the importance of academic instruction by simply omitting it in their discourses and concentrating on the weight of values or behaviours, but many also openly stated what they praised the most in education in general and formal education in particular: the social development of the child.

What is school for? : the roles of academic instruction and social development in the educative process explored through the eyes of parents : the case of a state-funded private school in Barcelona