Learning from each other: Expanding and deepening international research on shadow education

Abstract

Research on private supplementary tutoring, widely known as shadow education, has a long history but only gathered intensity during the present century. This research has shown much diversity in the scale and nature of shadow education, but further mapping and analysis is needed to reduce gaps in understanding and to keep up with changes. The collection of articles in this special issue of the journal presents insights from parts of Africa, Asia and Europe; and this introductory essay juxtaposes these insights with Hungarian research. The domain of shadow education has many tensions, with both positive and negative implications for individuals, families, the field of education, and societies as a whole. International research helps with understanding these tensions, and in due course with appropriate action to address them. In the process, much can be learned from counterparts in different systems, countries and cultures, not only about the nature and impact of shadow education but also about methodological approaches to research.

Variegated Roles of and Relationships Between Private Tutoring and Schooling: Insights From the State of Maharashtra, India

“…Thus, delineating the roles of PT and the resulting relationships between tutoring and schooling into complementary, accommodating, competing, and substitutive ones has offered nuanced insights into the complexities of the relationships between schooling and tutoring. While the current body of PT literature consistently cautions against treating schooling and tutoring as mutually exclusive phenomena (e.g., Bray, 2009, 2021a; Bray, Kobakhidze et al, 2019; Győri & Bray, 2021), this section has illuminated some ways in which the relationships between the two depend on and implicate one another in a non-linear, cyclic manner.…”