How do parents choose a school for their child? An example of the exercise of parental choice

Morgan, Valerie; Dunn, Seamus; Cairns, Ed; Fraser, Grace

doi:10.1080/0013188930350203

Cited by 16 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 9 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This implies that a segregated school environment per se may play little role in the development of essentialist beliefs about ethnicity categories amongst Israeli children. Morgan, Dunn, Cairns and Fraser (1993) found that five major factors contributed to parents in Northern Ireland choosing to send their children to integrated schools. One of these was indeed political ideology, but others included educational quality, dissatisfaction with their current school, convenience, and mixed marriage.…”

Section: Differences Between Integrated and Segregated Schools In Normentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of essentialist thinking about religion categories in Northern Ireland (and the United States).

Smyth¹,

Feeney²,

Eidson³

et al. 2017

Developmental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social essentialism, the belief that members of certain social categories share unobservable properties, licenses expectations that those categories are natural and a good basis for inference.A challenge for cognitive developmental theory is to give an account of how children come to develop essentialist beliefs about socially important categories. Previous evidence from Israel suggests that kindergarteners selectively engage in essentialist reasoning about culturally salient (ethnicity) categories, and that this is attenuated among children in integrated schools. In five studies (N=718) we used forced-choice (Study 1) and unconstrained (Studies 2-4) categorybased inference tasks, and a questionnaire (Study 5) to study the development of essentialist reasoning about religion categories in Northern Ireland (Studies 1-3 & 5) and the US (Study 4).Results show that, as in Israel, Northern Irish children selectively engage in essentialist reasoning about culturally salient (religion) categories, and that such reasoning is attenuated among children in integrated schools. However, the development trajectory of essentialist thinking and the patterns of attenuation among children attending integrated schools in Northern Ireland differ from the Israeli case. Meta-analysis confirmed this claim and ruled out an alternative explanation of the results based on community diversity. Although the Northern Irish and Israeli case studies illustrate that children develop selective essentialist beliefs about socially important categories, and that these beliefs are impacted by educational context, the differences between them emphasize the importance of historical, cultural, and political context in understanding conceptual development, and suggest that there may be more than one developmental route to social essentialism. Development of essentialist thinking about religion categories in Northern Ireland (and the United States)Psychological essentialism is the belief that natural categories contain an underlying essence that conveys category membership and causes category members to share both observable and hidden properties (Gelman, 2003;Medin & Ortony, 1989). In some cases, essentialist thinking can be useful. For example, using "essentialized" categories for inference provides us with an important tool to reduce the complexity of incoming information to manageable levels, and allows us to organize what we know and make inferences about what we don't know. However, essentialist thinking can also be harmful and lead to overgeneralization or unwarranted assumptions of homogeneity, especially when essentialist thinking is applied to social categories (e.g. Diesendruck, 2013;Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer & Freeland, 2015). In this paper we examine the development of essentialist thinking about socially important religion categoriesCatholic and Protestant-in Northern Ireland, with particular attention toward how school and national context may contribute to differences in the use of social categories to guide inferences.Essentialist...

show abstract

Section: Differences Between Integrated and Segregated Schools In Normentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of essentialist thinking about religion categories in Northern Ireland (and the United States).

Smyth¹,

Feeney²,

Eidson³

et al. 2017

Developmental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Stillman and Maychell, 1986;Petch, 1986;Hunter, 1991;Morgan, 1993;Munn, 1993). All stress a complex picture; however, in this picture the importance of criteria touching the child's happiness at school is prominent.…”

Section: The Literaturementioning

confidence: 93%

Parents in a market‐place: some responses to information, diversity and power

Thomas

Vass

McClelland

1997

Educational Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To assess how far parents value diversity and use the information provided in the new educational market-place, 659 parents were interviewed. There was strong support for testing, especially among parents in non-manual occupations, and 60-70 per cent would use published test results in the hypothetical circumstance of now having to choose a school for their child. Most parents looked at league tables but three-quarters said that the tables had not made them think differently about their child's school. They were overwhelmingly positive about reports and follow-up meetings with teachers. However, parents are equivocal about opting out, and views are moving against the policy. The Parent's Charter had not generally been found helpful. Class-based difference was found in some areas, particularly in interest in governance. Although parents are very positive about their own children's schools and teachers, they seem to value the hard information about their children's progress which recent reforms have provided.

show abstract

“…Three government schools were studied by Echols and Willms (1995) reporting 30 reasons. Morgan et al (1993) examined catholic schools and found five reasons (ideological, educational, dissatisfaction with existing school, convenience and parents' religion) that influenced parents' decision. West et al (1995) chose two government schools for their study and elicited 13 reasons that parents felt were important in their school choice.…”

Section: Review Of Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptions of public education in regional Australia

Goh

2011

IJPP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The purpose of this study is to better understand the negative image associated with public education as compared to catholic and independent schools in Australia. This is done by examining parents' attitudes toward the three school sectors to determine the brand image parents perceive of Australian schools. The data used in this study was derived from 93 parents in Wollongong, NSW. Attitudes were elicited and compared across the three school sectors to examine significance differences between the three school sectors using ANOVA and Bonferroni correction analysis. Results indicate that the three school sectors had significantly different attributes that differentiated each school sector. The results revealed that the brand image of public schools tend to comprise of more negative attributes (e.g., poor academic environment) than positive attributes (e.g., multicultural environment). The literature review and results show that the overall brand image associations toward Australian public schools tend to be less favourable as compared to other school sectors.

show abstract

How do parents choose a school for their child? An example of the exercise of parental choice

Cited by 16 publications

References 9 publications

Development of essentialist thinking about religion categories in Northern Ireland (and the United States).

Development of essentialist thinking about religion categories in Northern Ireland (and the United States).

Parents in a market‐place: some responses to information, diversity and power

Perceptions of public education in regional Australia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About