Research questions:

How can the existing methodologies examining the phenomena of school choice be augmented to more effectively examine parent choice factors? 

What methodologies and approaches are available from the European context to examine the school choice in the Australian context, and how does the Australian context inform research into the European sphere?  

Why are Australian parents enrolling their children in non-government religious schools in such high volumes, and what are the social and political impacts, and likely impacts drawing from understanding the European experience?

Description

Research into school choice has been prolific in recent years, including studies of European school choice. (Agasisti, 2023; Maranto and Shakeel, 2021; Mohme, 2017; Maussen and Bader, 2015; Agasisti, Barbieri, and Murtinu, 2015; Melo, 2013; European Court of Human Rights, 2011). However. researching the of issue of school choice in general, and religion in school choice in particular, needs further methodological frames to effectively gather data from a key sample: parents.

One of the primary methods for researching this topic has been political economy approaches, connected to school reform research movements. These have been driven both by critical theory approaches (Verger, Fontdevila and Zancajo, 2016; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010), and neoliberal approaches (Agasisti, 2023; Agasisti, Barbieri, and Murtinu, 2015). The focus on political economy, and ‘Hard drivers’ rather than ‘Ideation’ factors, and ‘external’ rather than ‘internal’ factors, (Verger, Fontdevila, and Zancajo, 2016) have tended to underrepresent the complex and difficult to obtain field of parent choice factors. This is particularly relevant to the role of religion, leading in turn to less coherent theories and methods for gathering and analyzing parent data in the school choice debates.

The unique Australian context provides a lively comparative case for examining school choice, particularly with reference to global factors and the European experience. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2022 total Australia non-government school enrolments were 35.6%, k-12; at the secondary level, just over 40% of enrolments were in non-government schools (ABS, 2022). By comparison, the OECD average non-government proportion of schools in a national education system is 18%. Australia ranks third highest compared to other Western nations for non-government school enrolments, over 90% being Christian- affiliated, but with a rising Islamic school population (OECD, 2018). These statistics, however, seem divergent from the dominant educational narrative of centralized state education still prevailing as normative amongst both politicians and sub-policy ‘heterarchies’. (Jessop, 1998; Ball, 2012). The clash between actual enrolment trends and the older normative discourse is causing considerable political and public energy and friction, a debate in which the author has played a public part in both media and policy. One of the key drivers of these enrolment trends is parent choice. 

This paper surveys a range of European nations’ approaches to school choice, including religion, using a political economy model (Verger, Fontdevila and Zancajo, 2016), and the paradigms of ‘hard drivers’ vs ‘ideation’/ ‘External’ vs ‘Internal’, but also adding the 'hard driver' of organizational theory to the suite of paradigms to examine the influence of agile structures of non-government schools (Bush, 2015).

Choice reasons are then explored from parent perspectives, based on survey samples drawn from 3 recent studies (n=12,095), including the author’s own earlier unpublished study of parents at Anglican schools (n=3500) (Hastie, 2022; Christian Schools Australia, 2023; Independent Schools Queensland, 2021).  Hence the broader field of school choice studies is augmented with three additional ‘Ideation’ elements: ‘choice architecture’ from behavioural economics (Madrian, 2014; Thaler, Sunstein and Balz, 2013), Moral Foundations Theory (Haight, 2006; 2007), and Pneumatological Imagination (PI) as a mode of examining complex personal religious motivations of parents (Yong. 2017).

Cultural Political Economic Framework (Verger, Fontdevila and Zancajo, 2016) 'Choice architecture’ methodology (Madrian, 2014; Thaler, Sunstein and Balz, 2013), Moral Foundations Theory (Haight, 2006; 2007) Bush's 'four pillars' of organizational leadership (Bush, 2015) Pneumatological Imagination Theory (PI) as a mode of examining religious motivations (Yong. 2017). Heterarchies studies (organizational forms located between hierarchical structures and market exchanges and resulting in structures and relationships of governance outside of but in relation to the state [Jessop, 1998; Ball, 2012), and sub policy analysis (Sabatier, 1999) Explanatory sequence design mixed method, case selection variant (Creswell and Clark 2018:82): Large scale convenience sampling of parent perspectives, based on survey samples drawn from 3 recent studies (n=12,095), including the author’s own earlier unpublished study of parents at Anglican schools (n=3500) (Hastie, 2022; Christian Schools Australia, 2023; Independent Schools Queensland, 2021). The study expands in the next 6 months to include further surveying, and an array of case selection variant interviews.

The paper concludes that researching the of issue of school choice in general, and religion in school choice in particular, needs further methodological frames to effectively gather parent data: several of these are explored and proposed. The paper concludes that the Australian education policy space needs several of the developed approaches to examining school choice already developed in the European context. The paper demonstrates that religion is a relatively ambiguous factor in Australian school choice, nested amongst six other key drivers. The broader study expects to find - amongst other factors- a growing connection between religious school choice and fear of progressive social policies amongst secular parents, as well as a religious schools as sites of a new fusion of capitalist agency and religiosity, with untested and far reaching consequences for education and society.

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