The Debates on Education are an initiative of the Jaume Bofill Foundation and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, geared to the promotion of social debate on the future of education. [+]
Abstract
The choice of school is a very important part of young people’s lives and something that has been analysed in terms of a wide range of aspects. One of these aspects are the personal barriers: it is the parents who choose the school their children will go to, and they use different strategies when doing so.
In a study involving 137 interviews with Parisian families, Van Zanten concludes that there are four main strategies used by parents when selecting a school.
The two classic strategies are to choose between a state and a private school. In her study, she shows the dynamic in Paris whereby during a child’s school career one in two families will decide to have them study at a private school at some point. The other two strategies that are seen to be important currently are the residential strategy (schools are chosen due to the quality that the neighbourhood they are located in is deemed to have) and the neighbourhood colonisation strategy (people choose the local school because they cannot go anywhere else or because they want to stay).
It is fundamental to take into account the desires parents have for their children. When choosing a school, parents have instrumental aims, which are that their children have access to the best higher education and a good job.
This instrumental dimension with respect to selecting a school contrasts two other dimensions, however. The reflective dimension wants to see the student grow as a person, to gain a critical spirit. The other dimension, which is often that which most contrasts the instrumental, is the expressive. Parents want their children to be happy and safe, which means they often have to choose between this expressive dimension (where their children study close to home, with their friends) and the instrumental dimension (where they go to other, better schools).
Keywordsschool, education, state schools, private schools, middle classes, family
Agnès Van Zanten is a sociologist and research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). She works as part of the Observatoire Sociologique du Changement, a research laboratory associated to the CNRS that forms part of the Paris's Political Studies Institute. She is director of the CNRS's Réseau Analyse Pluridisciplinaire des Politiques Educatives (RAPPE), where she promotes research projects and seminars that involve researchers from France and abroad, as well as young PhD students. She is a member of the strategic committee at France's national research agency and editor of the "Education and Society" collection for Presses Universitaires de France.
She is also responsible for the French Sociology Association's "Training and Education Sociology" subject network and member of the Editorial Board for a number of scientific studies, both in France and abroad. She is also a member of the Editorial Boards of a range of journals: Education et sociétés, Educaçao e Sociedade, European Educational Research Journal, Recherches Sociologiques and Revue française de pédagogie.
Her main areas of interest in terms of research are related to the construction of inequalities and segregations in schools, local educational dynamics, educational policies, comparison of local and national educational systems, and educational sociology research theories, methods, dissemination and reception.
She has published a number of works on her research, over the last five years in particular: Les classes moyennes, l'école et la ville : la reproduction renouvelée, Les nouveaux enseignants. Changeront-ils l'école ?, New Modes of Reproducing Social Inequality in Education: the changing role of parents, teachers, schools and educational policies, Competition and interaction between research knowledge and state knowledge in policy steering in France, La construction des politiques d'éducation : de la centralisation à la délégation au local, Les effets de la compétition sur les logiques d'action des établissements d'enseignement dans six contextes locaux européens, or Les choix scolaires dans la banlieue parisienne : défection, prise de parole et évitement de la mixité.
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