Being strategic, being watchful, being determined: Black middle-class parents and schooling

Abstract

This paper reports on qualitative data that focus on the educational strategies of middle-class parents of Black Caribbean heritage. Drawing on Bourdieu's key concepts of habitus, capital and field, our focus is an investigation of the differences that are apparent between respondent parents in their levels of involvement with regard to schools. We conclude that, within a broadly similar paradigm of active involvement with and monitoring of schools, nuanced differences in parental strategising reflect whether academic achievement is given absolute priority within the home. This, in turn, reflects differential family habitus, and differential possession and activation of capitals. IntroductionMost UK-based research on the educational experiences of Black Caribbean children has focused on schools and the wider context of education policy. By contrast, in this study (ESRC R062231880), our main analytical focus is on homes rather than schools; that is to say, we are foregrounding the way in which parents view and interact with schools, and strategise about education. We should be clear, however, given the long history of deficit understandings of Black families (for elaboration, see Reynolds 2005), that we are not aligning ourselves with research or policy that seeks to blame parents for the underachievement of their children. Rather we are interested in the way in which Black Caribbean middle-class families deploy their social and cultural resources in support of their children's education. Our aim is to explore and analyze the educational perspectives, strategies and experiences of Black Caribbean-heritage middle-class families, carefully attending to the intersection of race and class in relation to their interactions with schools. The primary aim of the research is to identify the complexities of advantage

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