‘Tutored within an inch of their life’: morality and ‘old’ and ‘new’ middle class identities in Australian schools

Butler, Rosemary; Ho, Christina; Vincent, Eve

doi:10.1080/1369183x.2017.1315867

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…This was also the case with the ‘soft individualism’ described by Kusserow (2004), in which de‐emphasising competition and promoting pro‐social values had become normal for the parents and teachers of more affluent middle‐class children in the US. Similar patterns were observed by Reay (2008) in the UK and by Butler, Ho and Vincent (2017) in Australia. ‘Soft individualism’ is not necessarily inimical to neoliberalism since neoliberal ideology makes a range of promises beyond mere material comfort, ranging from self‐efficacy and self‐fulfilment to self‐expression and self‐actualisation (Dardot and Laval, 2014; Brown, 2015).…”

Section: Three Theoretical Paradigmssupporting

confidence: 80%

“…When American parents give their children non‐contingent praise and tell them they are unique and wonderful human beings (Sorkhabi, 2005; Ochs and Kremer‐Sadlik, 2015), they are drawing on their awareness of sentimental individualism. They are also doing this when they pass on pro‐social values (Bellah et al , 1985) and when they assert their faith in their children’s abilities, and the importance of their happiness, in opposition to neoliberal individualism (Butler, Ho and Vincent, 2017).…”

Section: Three Theoretical Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parents, individualism and education: three paradigms and four countries

Fevre

Guimarães²,

Zhao

2020

Review of Education

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The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is an important indicator of the increased global importance of education. It defines the goal of education at the level of the child rather than the state, the community or household. The requirement that each child be treated as an individual who can expect to see their 'personality, talents and mental and physical abilities' fully developed, is an example of the individualism which features in three important theoretical paradigms for understanding the rise of education and training. We compare accounts of the global growth of education produced by functionalism, neoinstitutionalism and political economy with the help of qualitative research on children's experience of parental influences. The research is drawn from semi-structured interviews with millennial graduates in Portugal, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It reveals weaknesses in the paradigms which are related to the way each theorises individualism and the role it plays in parental influence on education. The functionalist and neoinstitutionalist conceptions of individualism limit the usefulness of these paradigms for understanding changes in the way families around the world prepare children for education. The political economy paradigm is more promising; however, an approach which identifies only one, neoliberal, version of individualism has limited purchase on international differences in parental influences and the way these influences are changing. An approach which can draw on the contrast between a cognitive individualism associated with neoliberalism, and sentimental individualism which originates in social movements, is more promising.

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Section: Three Theoretical Paradigmssupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Three Theoretical Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parents, individualism and education: three paradigms and four countries

Fevre

Guimarães²,

Zhao

2020

Review of Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In this context, white children's friendships with ethicised Others were viewed as accumulative assets to a child's white middle-class identity (Reay et al 2007). Butler, Ho, and Vincent (2017) have likewise shown how, for middle class white parents in this same research sample, ideals of 'community', as well as advocating for 'worldliness', 'real world exposure', 'diversity' and communitarianism, all rewarded the middle-class self at the expense of specific Others (non-white and nonmiddle class). Returning to the rural example from Wilding and Nunn (2018), it is clear that the co-production of multiculturalism in Hometown is an unequal space of meanings and definitions that shape intercultural encounters.…”

Section: Pathways Forward and Future Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 65%

Centring settler colonialism in rural Australian multicultures: race, place and local identities

Butler

Ben

2020

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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In the current age of rural mobilities and economic restructuring, the ethnic and racial compositions of rural towns across Anglosphere nations of the Global North have significantly transformed. As a result of these changes, the conditions which support rural multicultures are increasingly relevant to scholarship and policymaking. 'Everyday multiculturalism' and 'convivialities' have become key approaches within such research in rural environments. These perspectives offer important insights into understanding complex social relationships, reciprocities and circumstances of belonging in rural places. However, as UK-based critiques argue, a focus on 'everyday multiculturalism' and 'convivialities' may also risk obscuring how colonial legacies have shaped and informed racialised and classed hierarchies of belonging in distinct contexts. In this paper we turn these critiques to settler colonial Australia and its increasingly diverse rural towns. We bring together emerging literature in the study of rural migration with scholarship from Indigenous studies and anthropology on Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal rural social relations. Working at the intersection of these bodies of works, we argue that the histories and structures of settler colonialism be centred in research on rural multicultures, as these legacies and ongoing conditions shape social relationships in contemporary rural Australia.

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“…Other issues noted were the potential for contagion introduced by tutoring (echoing a similar thought to Gee), while a negative impact on quality of life was also noted due to the tutoring and emphasis on extra-curricular activities, which were described as excessively competitive and instrumental in approach. These views were similar in nature to the negative perceptions of tertiary educated parents towards high-achieving Asian students in a gentrifying area (Butler, Ho and Vincent, 2017), who themselves placed a greater emphasis on local community and reciprocity.…”

Section: Hyper-selectivity and Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 71%