This article provides a Bourdieusian analysis of middle-class parents' investment in private schooling and shadow education (tutoring support) in India, thus contributes to the scholarship of class-based educational advantage. It unveils parents' aspirations for their children's education and investigates how these aspirations shape the demand for…

This qualitative case study provides an analysis of the structuring of middle-class aspirations at one rural university in the United States. Using a Bourdieusian framework offered by Zipin and colleagues, findings suggest that although student participants in our study are similarly positioned relative to social class background, those from…

Previous studies have associated participation in higher education with the formation of middle-class advantages. Studies have shown that graduates from affluent family backgrounds gain more advantages from graduate degrees and secure better job opportunities than their less privileged counterparts. Drawing on the Bourdieusian framework, this…

This study explores the complex emotional landscape of Chinese middle-class parents in educational investment, focusing on the paradoxical interplay of confidence and anxiety. Through in-depth interviews with 16 parents in Nanjing, we employed Bourdieu's concepts of illusio and 'capital' to examine how personal emotions, family resources, and…

This qualitative study employs a Bourdieusian framework to explore how urban middle-class parents in Pakistan support their daughters' education while transmitting cultural capital. Parents emphasize "talim-o-tarbiyat," referring to education and nurturing. I argue that, owing to the availability of educational resources and the…

In this article we make an argument for the importance of embodied cultural capital in the generation of class advantage through private school students' access to Oxbridge. Private schools in England continue to reproduce advantage (Variyan 2019), however, establishing exactly how students are advantaged through private schooling is not…

While many school choice studies focus on individual parents' preferences, we simultaneously address the structural context within which families make decisions and the strategies they develop in response. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 24 Black middle-class parents of young children, we demonstrate that they sought well-funded, academically…

Despite the rhetoric of 'we are all in this together' during the COVID-19 pandemic, not all families experienced schooling disruption in 2020-2022 equally. Middle-class parents typically enjoy significant advantage over parents in working-class occupations. To illuminate class-based differences in parental engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic,…

Using a comparative case study, this paper explores the pedagogic practices for regulating behaviour in two Norwegian primary school classrooms with social compositions that become increasingly contrasted due to an increasing school segregation. Based on classroom observations and teacher interviews and using Bernstein's concepts of 'framing' and…

Education research demonstrates that positive and trusting family/school relationships support academic achievement but for many Indigenous parents in Canada legacies of residential schooling have made it difficult to develop strong bonds with schools and teachers. Drawing on interviews with 69 Indigenous parents and eight non-Indigenous parents…

Parents' happiness orientation has garnered early attention in school choice studies but has not been cautiously examined. Drawing on Aristotle's framework of Eudaimonia and Hedonia, along with Ahmed's concept of the happiness promise, this study transcends a perspec­tive of preference and examines how parents understand and pursue happiness in…

The gradual restructuring of the political economy of Turkey after the 1980s has changed the positioning of the middle class and the importance of its social, economic, and cultural capitals. In particular, lowering the quality of public education through systematic privatization and Islamisation has constituted a significant threat to this class'…

Studies have highlighted the growing phenomenon of 'concerted cultivation' wherein middle-class parents are enrolling their children into multiple paid-for organised leisure activities as a way of cultivating their skills and reproducing class advantage. In unpacking the class disparities in children's organised leisure participation, researchers…

This paper illustrates the influence of a new national assignment system (NSAS) on Chilean middle-class advantage. This system was designed to increase educational equity by changing the previous school admission "rules" that were prejudicial against low-income students. We use Bourdieu's conceptual tools, drawing on concepts of capitals…

The acquisition of cultural capital can only be understood in the light of the formation of habitus, including the socialisation process, and in the context of the field in which any such capital has value. Yet, the relation between cultural capital and habitus is seldom discussed in research. Drawing on the data from focus groups with 96 students…