Learning Beyond the School Walls: Trends and Implications

Abstract

Academically-focused learning activities beyond formal schooling are expanding in myriad forms throughout the world. This diverse realm of learning activities includes private supplementary education purchased by families such as private tutoring, online courses, cram schools, and learning center franchises. Some public schools also provide academically oriented after-school programs beyond their formal curricula. This review identifies factors relating to students, families, schools, and educational systems that affect participation in supplementary education. Macro forces are also related to the proliferation of learning activities outside of formal schooling. We discuss implications of this trend for educational stratification as well as challenges it creates for families and formal educational systems. Finally, we suggest promising new avenues for data collection and empirical research.

Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments

“…This work has shown cross-national growth over time in the dedication of private expenditures to extracurricular enrichment (e.g., Bray, 1999) and recent work has begun to examine the macro-social correlates of this phenomenon (Park et al, 2016). Our results disaggregating financial investments into a component that includes lessons and activities shows that class divides in this form of investment on "shadow education" are indeed shaped by macro-social context -in particular, by income inequality, as hypothesized by Park et al (2016).…”

“…Figure 1 presents the large increase in national income inequality from 1975-2013 (the time period examined in our empirical analysis) as captured by the Gini index. Indeed, scholars have noted this correspondence and alluded to the possibility of a causal relationship between income inequality and widening class gaps in parental investment (Kaushal, Magnuson, and Waldfogel, 2011;Duncan and Murnane, 2011;Kornrich and Furstenberg, 2013;Kalil, 2014;Park et al, 2016). Rising income inequality could cause wider gaps in parental investments of money and time by both increasing the amount of disposable income available to high-income households to spend and/or by changing high-or low-SES parents' decision-making about their allocations of money and time.…”

Private tutoring in a high socio‐economic secondary school in Israel and pupils’ attitudes towards school learning: A double‐edged sword phenomenon

“…As more affluent parents can provide PT compared to less affluent ones, PT can have implications for social inequality, as found in diverse countries (e.g. for Cambodia—Bray et al ., ; for other countries—Park et al ., ).…”

“…South Korea or Israel; Addi‐Raccah & Dana, ). Thus, PT is a significant phenomenon that exposes pupils to academic experiences and learning opportunities outside of schools (Baker et al ., ; Park et al ., ), which can create challenges for the formal educational system and affect it.…”

A two‐level study of predictors of private tutoring attendance at the beginning of secondary schooling in Germany: The role of individual learning support in the classroom

“…Studies on the demand factors of private tutoring mostly focus on student and family characteristics, and sometimes also on characteristics of the education system. However, one can argue that the high demand for private tutoring is an implicit criticism of the instructional quality of a school system, a specific school or a specific classroom (Dang & Rogers, ; Bray, ; Haag, ; Park et al , ). Demand for private tutoring would decrease if students in school received more individual support.…”