Responding to uncertainty: examining Hong Kong parents’ perceptions of private tutoring through the lens of timescapes (Responder ante la incertidumbre: un análisis de las percepciones parentales de las clases privadas en Hong Kong a través de la lente de los cronopaisajes — timescapes)

Abstract

This paper explores how parents in Hong Kong perceive the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of academic and non-academic private tutoring (PT) for their children, using a thematic analysis of interviews with 80 parents from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. We seek to understand the role of PT in parents' thinking about their children's learning and developmental needs in uncertain times, which foregrounds parents' temporalities in the face of disruption. We find that maintaining pre-pandemic PT levels was the most common attitude for almost half of the sample, followed by roughly similar groups of parents who increased or decreased their use of PT. Parental perceptions of the functions of PT converged on three main uses: mitigating the effects of schooling disruptions, making productive use of newfound free time and providing a sense of normality. Using a timescapes lens, we identify temporal elements in how PT factored into parents' experiences and perceptions of managing 'gained' and 'lost' time, adapting to remote learning, avoiding health risks and reflecting on inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. RESUMENEn este artículo se explora cómo perciben los padres en Hong Kong el impacto causado por la pandemia de COVID-19 en el uso de clases privadas curriculares y extracurriculares para sus hijos (CP), a través de un análisis temático de entrevistas con 80 padres y madres de distinto origen étnico y estatus socioeconómico diverso. Buscamos comprender el papel de las CP en el pensamiento de los progenitores sobre las necesidades de aprendizaje y desarrollo de sus hijos en tiempos de incertidumbre, lo que pone en primer plano aspectos vinculados a los tiempos de los padres frente a la disrupción. Mantener los mismos niveles de CP que antes de la pandemia era la actitud más habitual de la mitad de la muestra, mientras que la otra mitad se dividía en aproximadamente el mismo número de padres que incrementaron ARTICLE HISTORY

Shadow education: new areas of inquiry in teaching, learning and development (Educación en la sombra: nuevas áreas de estudio sobre enseñanza, aprendizaje y desarrollo)

“…This empirical paper unveiled the experiences of parents regarding how they employed private tutoring for their children to manage the gained and lost time, adapt to remote learning and avoid health risks. The study also sheds light on the educational inequalities caused by private tutoring during the pandemic period (Tsaloukidis & Kobakhidze, 2023).…”

“…It provides a comprehensive overview of international research on shadow education in the last three decades, introducing the main ideas behind the concept of shadow education and outlining the development of the field for the readers of JSED (Bray, 2023). The following four articles provide new empirical evidence on central issues within this special issue’s thematic focus, from the perspectives of four Asian societies: South Korea (Byun et al, 2023), Mainland China (Kwok & Wang, 2023), Hong Kong (Tsaloukidis & Kobakhidze, 2023) and India (Bhorkar, 2023).…”

“…However, the article by Byun et al (2023) in this issue and some recent studies in the field (e.g., Entrich, 2021) indicate that these negative perceptions of the consequences of shadow education may not necessarily be accurate. There exists great yet unaccounted diversity in educational practices outside formal schooling (Bhorkar, 2023) and constant transformation in response to social and educational change at the national level, for example, in response to policies regulating private tutoring such as the double reduction policy in China (Kwok & Wang, 2023), or in response to global developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Tsaloukidis & Kobakhidze, 2023).…”

“…Presenta un panorama completo de la investigación internacional sobre la educación en la sombra durante las últimas tres décadas e introduce las principales ideas tras el concepto de la educación en la sombra, delineando el desarrollo de este campo de estudio para los lectores de JSED (Bray, 2023). Los siguientes cuatro artículos presentan nuevas evidencias empíricas desde la perspectiva de cuatro sociedades asiáticas: Corea del Sur (Byun et al, 2023), China continental (Kwok & Wang, 2023), Hong Kong (Tsaloukidis & Kobakhidze, 2023) e India (Bhorkar, 2023).…”

“…Este estudio empírico revela las experiencias de padres sobre su uso de las tutorías privadas para gestionar el uso del tiempo ganado y perdido de sus hijos, adaptarse al aprendizaje remoto y evitar riesgos sanitarios. El estudio también arroja luz sobre las desigualdades educativas causadas por las tutorías privadas durante el periodo de pandemia (Tsaloukidis & Kobakhidze, 2023).…”