Journal article
Choosing selves: the salience of parental identity in the school choice process
Journal of education policy, v 29(4), pp 486-509
04 Jul 2014
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
With the proliferation of choice policies in education, parents are increasingly positioned as 'consumers' tasked with choosing the 'best' school for their children. Yet a large body of research has shown that the process of selecting a school is far more complicated than policy-makers and researchers often predict. This article uses ethnographic data on middle-class parents in a large city who are considering sending their children to a diverse neighborhood public school to further develop our understanding of school choice. Drawing from sociological research on consumption as a social and cultural process, we examine the intersections between parents' choice of a particular school (i.e. consumption) and their own identity construction. Our data show that the act of choosing a school can become, for parents, a means of expressing and enacting a particular identity. In this case, the intersections between identity and choice pushed many parents - invested in seeing themselves as liberal urbanites - towards an urban public school. We suggest that similar dynamics could have different outcomes for other groups of parents and that the symbolic nature of the school choice decision has broader relevance and merits further study.
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Details
- Title
- Choosing selves: the salience of parental identity in the school choice process
- Creators
- Maia Bloomfield Cucchiara - Temple UniversityErin McNamara Horvat - Temple University
- Publication Details
- Journal of education policy, v 29(4), pp 486-509
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- Number of pages
- 24
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- School of Education
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000337240400005
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84901419387
- Other Identifier
- 991022042268304721
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- Web of Science research areas
- Education & Educational Research