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Middle-class mothers’ participation in tutoring for spoken English

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Sociological inquiries on parental involvement seldom consider the investments parents make in themselves to realise educational advantages in their children’s schooling. This gap hides the processes underlying class-making and class-produced privileges. Achala Gupta investigates middle-class mothers’ participation in tutoring and coaching for spoken English in Dehradun, India, focusing on their reasons for soliciting such paid tutoring support.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 23, 2024

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This video video discusses the growing significance and complexities of the middle class, particularly in the context of consumer behavior and education. It highlights that the middle class is the fastest-growing consumer group globally, with 3.2 billion people contributing to annual consumption of approximately $40 trillion. Notably, 88% of the next billion people joining this social class will come from Asia.

The narrative spans across different sociocultural contexts, emphasizing how middle-class parents employ various forms of capital to maintain their social status and enhance their children's educational experiences. The study underlines that in India, the middle class is a contested category with diverse interpretations shaped by historical and economic contexts.

Key findings from the research highlight that Indian middle-class mothers seek English tutoring for three main reasons: to improve their teaching capabilities at home, to reinforce English as a communicative language, and to facilitate better collaboration with school teachers. This video video pursuit is seen as a means to assert their middle-class identity and privilege, despite feeling that they do not fully belong to this group.

The discussion also delves into the intra-class dynamics between traditional and new middle-class families, underlining disparities in educational backgrounds and cultural capital. In conclusion, the study suggests a broader need to investigate parental investments in children's education from a more nuanced perspective, focusing on the efforts of parents themselves, particularly mothers, as they navigate educational landscapes to secure a better future for their children.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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As we know, middle class is the world's fastest

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growing consumer group.

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Um, lots

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of research has been done on this particular group from

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different perspectives, economy, society,

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policy, et cetera.

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Um, we know from these research that middle class

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as a consumer group contributes

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to the total annual consumption

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of approximately $40 trillion.

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Uh, approximately 3.2 billion people belong

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to this social category with expected early edition

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of 140 million.

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Uh, so the main point to consider here is that Asia

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will contribute about 88% of the next billion added

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to social class, as a global category.

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So obviously middle class is a privileged group,

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but much more importantly, it is a diverse group.

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Different concepts of what it means to belong to this group,

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across societies are talked about in a

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variety of a scholarship.

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So, so that was the first point of, context.

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Another context here is the sociology of education.

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So in the field of sociology of education, we know

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that middle class parents use a variety of capital

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to a gain social privilege.

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B, reproduce their advantage, intergenerationally,

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therefore maintaining their class status in society.

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Uh, this was extensively talked about by Boer

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and many other scholars who draw on bo j's work.

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Uh, most notable is Annette Lara's work Unequal Childhoods,

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where she talks about

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how middle class families in the United States use various

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resources to concertedly cultivate

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their children's educational experiences.

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Um, when it comes to India,

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because obviously this is the broader conceptual,

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broader conceptual framework of the study,

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but more empirically speaking in India,

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middle class is a heavily contested category,

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and it can be explained both relationally

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and tentatively rather than in an absolute term

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and in a more defined ways, which means people

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who identify as middle class tend

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to have a substantially different experience

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of being middle class.

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Uh, so two broad categories are traditional middle classes,

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which are often privileged economically, educationally,

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and socio culturally intergenerationally in colonial

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and post-colonial times, new middle classes.

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Um, often this,

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new middle classes really represent, this new group

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of professionals who were not as economically, socially,

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and culturally resourceful intergenerationally,

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but actually emerged as a aftermath most recently due

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to the, opening up of the economy in India in the 1990s.

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So the it boom, et cetera.

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So Indian middle class,

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if you go through the literature, you would find,

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invest heavily in their children's education.

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Uh, in my own work previously I have talked about

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how Indian Middle class consider investment in their

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children's education a necessary to compensate

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for their perceived inability

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to help their children academically themselves.

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Second, they consider it, or it,

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or it could be conceptualized rather as a case

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of exchanging economic resources

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for desired cultural capital.

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Um, and it consolidates their home-based really resources

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to gain their class situated social advantage.

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And I think this is the broader context in which this

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particular study is situated.

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Um, and if I could just tease out

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what it means is, so far what we know is

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that such studies offer, you know,

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valuable insights into various critical

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and various critical social and educational processes.

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Seldom, there is a consideration of experiences

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of parents themselves, about sort

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of holding their own skills in order to help their children.

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It's all about what they do for their children.

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But what I'm trying to do in this paper is what do they do

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for themselves in order to aid and help their children?

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So slightly different take in terms of

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what we know about parental involvement in their child,

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their engagement with their children's education field work

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for which was conducted in the, in India,

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the foothills of Elias.

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Um, I conducted two group interviews involving 12 mothers

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who solicited private tutoring for spoken English.

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And the group interviews were about two, two

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and a half hours long.

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Um, and they were held in tutorial centers

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after the participants scheduled spoken English sessions.

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So this was a deliberate attempt

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because they didn't wanna talk to me about their experiences

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of taking tuition as adults in their homes.

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And so I purposely chose that the site has

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to be somewhere they felt most comfortable.

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So therefore, it was a tutorial center.

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The, the key findings really were that mother's reason

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for subscribing to tutorial, services

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and coaching for spoken English tends to be threefold.

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First is, English proficiency

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for effective home teaching so

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that they can be a good teacher for their kids at home.

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Second is to reinforce English

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as a language of communication.

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And the third was that English tutoring,

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for effective partnership with school teachers.

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So as a synthesis of the main argument, if you will,

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would be that English private tutoring was really seen

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by these mothers as a way to unlock

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urban middle class identity

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and privilege, which they felt they did not

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quite belong to this group.

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And this was their way to say, Hey,

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actually I am middle class.

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So it's to gain social legitimacy of being a middle class,

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given that they did not quite

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feel that they were part of the group.

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So I will just go through each of these three reasons one

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by one just to expand on it.

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Uh, the first one was English proficiency

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for effective home teaching.

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So we know from the literature about the school choice,

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both of the middle class parents, especially

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because I spoke with, middle

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to upper middle class parents, they often

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or not often, they always made sure

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that they were enrolling their children to high fee

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as opposed to low fee private schools, where the medium

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of instruction was always English.

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Uh, teaching at home, was seen by these parents

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as the most valuable form of parenting.

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Um, and so English proficiency was one of the crucial skills

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for them to provide effective teaching

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and learning support to their children at home.

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So if I were to read just one extract from my study, one

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of the mothers, for example, said, when I spent time

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with my kids, I realize

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that English proficiency is necessary for us referring

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to other mothers to be just able

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to engage in their children's everyday subject best lessons,

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as well as everyday learning.

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It is like, I know the topic,

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but don't know how to say things in English.

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I know for example, what group ion is,

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but it does not easily translate into gravity for me.

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Uh, so ion is the, ate handy word for gravity.

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Uh, so this really illustrates how mothers felt

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that proficiency in English would allow them

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to become really effective teachers at home,

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which they thought was really very part of their parenting.

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The second reason was reinforcing English as a language

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of communication.

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So there's always this perceived language gap between

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themselves and their children.

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This was talked about by all the mothers,

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predominantly because they were all,

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learning subjects in English

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and mothers themselves even went to school.

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They all learned those subjects in Hindi or Ular language.

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Uh, for majority of them it was Hindi.

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So it prevented productive

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and constructive interaction interactions about

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school related matters.

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So if mothers wanted to know what the child was doing,

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they wouldn't fully grasp

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because the notes would be prepared in English.

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And when they would speak with their kids,

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kids might use some of the languages

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that they would not really be familiar with.

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So they always felt this language gap was actually becoming

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a gap between them knowing about what is going on in school.

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Uh, so this obviously had negative impact on substantial

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difference in linguistic environment at home

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and at school, meaning the environment,

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linguistic environment in school was English

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and linguistic environment in home tended to be Hindi

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or Ari language, which yeah, really languages.

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So an except from the interview is, so mother says,

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some teachers also think that if we continue talking

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to our kids in Hindi at home, they,

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the children are more likely to struggle to learn how

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to speak English fluently in the school environment.

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So if there is continuity in language at home

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and in school, children are more likely to progress

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with fewer difficulties.

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The purpose here was that was that mothers wanted

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to make their children's life a little bit easier

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and parents said this would be the remedy, so

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therefore they subscribe to private tutoring.

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The third reason was that English tutoring

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for effective partnership with school teachers.

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This sort of ex extends from the point

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that I raised just now.

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Um, so when we talk about school choice again in India,

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we see that educators' ability to communicate in English

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to train children in a culture of sharing

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and exchanging ideas in English.

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So this is why, the school choice of choosing a,

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a school that serves English as a medium of instruction.

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Um, however, this culture disparity

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between the school teachers and mothers,

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because mothers cannot communicate in that language,

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produced an interesting intra class dynamic.

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Now, why intra class dynamic is

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because whilst mothers claim

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to be middle class school teachers were also middle class.

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But the point here is that they both belong

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to different strands of middle class.

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They became middle class very differently, in other words.

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Uh, so the extract reads.

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Um, sometimes I also struggle

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to understand when teachers speak English fluently.

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Some teachers pronounce words differently from

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how many people I know would pronounce them

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even if they were communicating in English.

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So I just do not know what they're saying.

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This is incredibly challenging

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because I sometimes miss out on in important information.

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So this accent part is really important.

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Um, language ability for the traditional middle class

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to be able to communicate ideas fluently in English was very

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much inherent to their middle class identity, not so much

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for many groups in new middle class category.

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And so it shows the intra class dynamic

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and the disparity in how one becomes middle class.

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This paper basically signifies that tutoring could be used

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for unlocking a class identity.

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So in this case, mothers were using tutoring

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for unlocking urban middle class identity for themselves.

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Uh, it speaks to the contemporary understanding

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of middle class identity

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and privilege, broadly speaking outside of India,

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because just like in India,

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the way in which one becomes middle class is increasingly

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becoming much more diverse than used

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to be the case in the past.

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Uh, so therefore the new research agenda could be

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to really map those trajectories

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and see to what extent does it result into the kind

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of advantage in education and sports

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and health in other fields as well.

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Um, so that would be one way to approach it.

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The second is that what I try

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to touch on in this paper is under examine territory

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of parental investment in their children's education.

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So I try to move away from the discussions on parental

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investments from the lens of educational choices

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that parents make for their children

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to parental investment in themselves.

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Um, overall, the purpose of mothers to seek tutoring

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for spoken English was

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to ensure their children had sufficient resources

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to achieve their full academic potential.

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And so future research can examine what is going on at home

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rather than just looking at what is going on in

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between schools and home

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or just what is going on in the school.

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So that's the second contribution

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and sort of draws line for what could be done in the future

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with regards to research projects.

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The third point that I try to highlight in this paper is

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to signify middle class mothers' efforts

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to unlock their social class identity.

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Class identity is not always given,

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and that's what I try to sort of tease out, especially

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through that intra class dynamic between school teachers

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and parents both belong to middle class.

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They're very different kind of middle class.

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Uh, so many middle class mothers realize

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that they are economically middle class,

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they've got money still.

14:14.335 --> 14:17.705
They lack that critical cultural resources such

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as English proficiency, which traditionally,

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was associated with being middle class in India.

14:26.235 --> 14:29.815
So that shows how trajectory could be really important.

14:30.005 --> 14:33.575
Signifier to the, to inform whether

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or not you actually feel you belong to the group, you belong

14:37.375 --> 14:38.695
to a group is a different question.

14:39.075 --> 14:41.055
You feel you belong to a group is another.

14:41.675 --> 14:45.015
And so if future research could tease out those kind

14:45.015 --> 14:46.055
of differences and

14:46.075 --> 14:48.415
how those differences are experienced on the ground,

14:48.925 --> 14:50.775
that could be a interesting project

14:50.875 --> 14:53.245
In and of itself, particularly to elicit

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how then educational advantage

14:56.305 --> 14:59.685
and disadvantage, look like even

15:00.425 --> 15:02.845
in a very diversified format within

15:03.625 --> 15:05.085
one particular social class.

Exploring Diversity in the Global Middle Class

00:00:00 - As we know, middle class is the world's fastest growing consumer group. lots of research has been done on this particular group from different perspectives, economy, society, policy, et cetera. we know from these research that middle class as a consumer group contributes to the total annual consumption of approximately $40 trillion. approximately 3.2 billion people belong to this social category with expected early edition
00:00:33 - so the main point to consider here is that Asia will contribute about 88% of the next billion added to social class, as a global category. So obviously middle class is a privileged group, but much more importantly, it is a diverse group. Different concepts of what it means to belong to this group, across societies are talked about in a
00:01:04 - So, so that was the first point of, context. Another context here is the sociology of education. So in the field of sociology of education, we know that middle class parents use a variety of capital to a gain social privilege. B, reproduce their advantage, intergenerationally, therefore maintaining their class status in society. this was extensively talked about by Boer
00:01:37 - most notable is Annette Lara's work Unequal Childhoods, where she talks about how middle class families in the United States use various resources to concertedly cultivate their children's educational experiences. when it comes to India, because obviously this is the broader conceptual, broader conceptual framework of the study, but more empirically speaking in India,
00:02:10 - and it can be explained both relationally and tentatively rather than in an absolute term and in a more defined ways, which means people who identify as middle class tend to have a substantially different experience of being middle class. so two broad categories are traditional middle classes, which are often privileged economically, educationally,
00:02:41 - and post-colonial times, new middle classes. often this, new middle classes really represent, this new group of professionals who were not as economically, socially, and culturally resourceful intergenerationally, but actually emerged as a aftermath most recently due to the, opening up of the economy in India in the 1990s.

Unlocking Middle Class Identity Through Education

00:03:10 - So Indian middle class, if you go through the literature, you would find, invest heavily in their children's education. in my own work previously I have talked about how Indian Middle class consider investment in their children's education a necessary to compensate for their perceived inability to help their children academically themselves. Second, they consider it, or it,
00:03:41 - of exchanging economic resources for desired cultural capital. and it consolidates their home-based really resources to gain their class situated social advantage. And I think this is the broader context in which this particular study is situated. and if I could just tease out what it means is, so far what we know is that such studies offer, you know,
00:04:13 - and various critical social and educational processes. Seldom, there is a consideration of experiences of parents themselves, about sort of holding their own skills in order to help their children. It's all about what they do for their children. But what I'm trying to do in this paper is what do they do for themselves in order to aid and help their children? So slightly different take in terms of what we know about parental involvement in their child,
00:04:46 - for which was conducted in the, in India, the foothills of Elias. I conducted two group interviews involving 12 mothers who solicited private tutoring for spoken English. And the group interviews were about two, two and a half hours long. and they were held in tutorial centers after the participants scheduled spoken English sessions. So this was a deliberate attempt
00:05:17 - of taking tuition as adults in their homes. And so I purposely chose that the site has to be somewhere they felt most comfortable. So therefore, it was a tutorial center. The, the key findings really were that mother's reason for subscribing to tutorial, services and coaching for spoken English tends to be threefold. First is, English proficiency
00:05:47 - that they can be a good teacher for their kids at home. Second is to reinforce English as a language of communication. And the third was that English tutoring, for effective partnership with school teachers. So as a synthesis of the main argument, if you will, would be that English private tutoring was really seen by these mothers as a way to unlock urban middle class identity and privilege, which they felt they did not

Navigating Middle-Class Identity Through English Proficiency

00:06:18 - And this was their way to say, Hey, actually I am middle class. So it's to gain social legitimacy of being a middle class, given that they did not quite feel that they were part of the group. So I will just go through each of these three reasons one by one just to expand on it. the first one was English proficiency for effective home teaching. So we know from the literature about the school choice, both of the middle class parents, especially because I spoke with, middle
00:06:52 - or not often, they always made sure that they were enrolling their children to high fee as opposed to low fee private schools, where the medium of instruction was always English. teaching at home, was seen by these parents as the most valuable form of parenting. and so English proficiency was one of the crucial skills for them to provide effective teaching and learning support to their children at home.
00:07:26 - of the mothers, for example, said, when I spent time with my kids, I realize that English proficiency is necessary for us referring to other mothers to be just able to engage in their children's everyday subject best lessons, as well as everyday learning. It is like, I know the topic, but don't know how to say things in English. I know for example, what group ion is, but it does not easily translate into gravity for me.
00:07:58 - so this really illustrates how mothers felt that proficiency in English would allow them to become really effective teachers at home, which they thought was really very part of their parenting. The second reason was reinforcing English as a language of communication. So there's always this perceived language gap between themselves and their children.
00:08:29 - predominantly because they were all, learning subjects in English and mothers themselves even went to school. They all learned those subjects in Hindi or Ular language. for majority of them it was Hindi. So it prevented productive and constructive interaction interactions about school related matters. So if mothers wanted to know what the child was doing, they wouldn't fully grasp
00:08:58 - And when they would speak with their kids, kids might use some of the languages that they would not really be familiar with. So they always felt this language gap was actually becoming a gap between them knowing about what is going on in school. so this obviously had negative impact on substantial difference in linguistic environment at home and at school, meaning the environment, linguistic environment in school was English and linguistic environment in home tended to be Hindi

Language, Tutoring, and Middle Class Identity

00:09:31 - So an except from the interview is, so mother says, some teachers also think that if we continue talking to our kids in Hindi at home, they, the children are more likely to struggle to learn how to speak English fluently in the school environment. So if there is continuity in language at home and in school, children are more likely to progress with fewer difficulties.
00:10:02 - to make their children's life a little bit easier and parents said this would be the remedy, so therefore they subscribe to private tutoring. The third reason was that English tutoring for effective partnership with school teachers. This sort of ex extends from the point that I raised just now. so when we talk about school choice again in India, we see that educators' ability to communicate in English to train children in a culture of sharing
00:10:34 - So this is why, the school choice of choosing a, a school that serves English as a medium of instruction. however, this culture disparity between the school teachers and mothers, because mothers cannot communicate in that language, produced an interesting intra class dynamic. Now, why intra class dynamic is because whilst mothers claim to be middle class school teachers were also middle class. But the point here is that they both belong
00:11:06 - They became middle class very differently, in other words. so the extract reads. sometimes I also struggle to understand when teachers speak English fluently. Some teachers pronounce words differently from how many people I know would pronounce them even if they were communicating in English. So I just do not know what they're saying. This is incredibly challenging because I sometimes miss out on in important information. So this accent part is really important.
00:11:39 - to be able to communicate ideas fluently in English was very much inherent to their middle class identity, not so much for many groups in new middle class category. And so it shows the intra class dynamic and the disparity in how one becomes middle class. This paper basically signifies that tutoring could be used for unlocking a class identity. So in this case, mothers were using tutoring
00:12:13 - it speaks to the contemporary understanding of middle class identity and privilege, broadly speaking outside of India, because just like in India, the way in which one becomes middle class is increasingly becoming much more diverse than used to be the case in the past. so therefore the new research agenda could be to really map those trajectories and see to what extent does it result into the kind

Reevaluating Parental Investment in Education

00:12:42 - and health in other fields as well. so that would be one way to approach it. The second is that what I try to touch on in this paper is under examine territory of parental investment in their children's education. So I try to move away from the discussions on parental investments from the lens of educational choices that parents make for their children to parental investment in themselves. overall, the purpose of mothers to seek tutoring
00:13:14 - to ensure their children had sufficient resources to achieve their full academic potential. And so future research can examine what is going on at home rather than just looking at what is going on in between schools and home or just what is going on in the school. So that's the second contribution and sort of draws line for what could be done in the future with regards to research projects. The third point that I try to highlight in this paper is
00:13:48 - to unlock their social class identity. Class identity is not always given, and that's what I try to sort of tease out, especially through that intra class dynamic between school teachers and parents both belong to middle class. They're very different kind of middle class. so many middle class mothers realize that they are economically middle class, they've got money still. They lack that critical cultural resources such
00:14:23 - was associated with being middle class in India. So that shows how trajectory could be really important. Signifier to the, to inform whether or not you actually feel you belong to the group, you belong to a group is a different question. You feel you belong to a group is another. And so if future research could tease out those kind of differences and how those differences are experienced on the ground,
00:15:03 - In and of itself, particularly to elicit how then educational advantage and disadvantage, look like even in a very diversified format within one particular social class.

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