Session Information
Contribution
The presentation discusses findings from an ethnographic study of “school-swappers” in Brittany, France: these are students who go to a private school and then to a public school and those who move from a public school to a private school.
The French school system is made up of two sectors of education: the public or secular sector and the private sector in which the catholic faith schools represent ninety-five percent. Structural modifications have changed the double schooling system and the place of each sector in French society. Since the 1950s, private education has known institutional transformations which have moved it closer to public education, especially since the 1959 law known as the “loi Debré” with the state contract: private education is identified as a “private service of public utility”. The function of private schooling changed again in the eighties: though its main vocation remained religious instruction, it was being used more and more as a “second chance” by parents of pupils encountering difficulties in public schools (Prost, 1982). At the same time, in a study on family choice, Robert Ballion (1982) observed changes in families’ behaviour: he underlined the increased demand for the best education possible and interpreted it as a “strategy” comparable to the one used by an informed and consumer actor. Reasons of geographical proximity or teachers’ availability also explain the choice of schools by families (Langouët & Léger, 1997; van Zanten, 2009).
A larger part of the private sector is today dominated by state-subsidized and state-supervised catholic educational institutions. In the past and increasingly today with the introduction of more flexible catchment areas, private schools are part of the ordinary school landscape. The reconciliation of the two sectors creates favorable conditions for transfer students. The recourse to “school-swapping” hasn't stopped increasing: approximately 40 % of the students go at least for one year to a private school in France. Although “school-swapping” affects a high proportion of pupils and families, this issue is not widely-explored in the research and when it is addressed; it is often through quantitative and macrosociological methodology (Langouët & Léger, 1994; Reddy, 1994). But why do students change schools? How does each student live the change of school sector? What differences do they perceive? So our research questions the lived school experience of “school-swappers”, focusing particularly on the effects of the schooling context (Duru-Bellat & Mingat, 1988; Dubet & Martuccelli, 1996; Leroy-Audouin & Piquée, 2004). Indeed the context plays a fundamental role and has a strong impact (Hofman, Hofman, & Gray, 2008). What are the conditions for achieving school success? To what extent does the internal organization of education, notably through "relational styles", influence the subjective experience of “school-swappers”?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ballion, R. (1982). Les consommateurs d'école. Stratégies éducatives des familles. Paris : Stock. Dubet, F., & Martuccelli, D. (1996). À l’école. Sociologie de l’expérience scolaire. Paris : Seuil. Duru-Bellat, M., & Mingat, A. (1988). Le déroulement de la scolarité au collège. Le contexte "fait des différences"... Revue Française de Sociologie, XXIX, 649-666. Hofman, R.H., Hofman W.H.A., & Gray, J.M. (2008). Comparing key dimensions of schooling: towards a typology of European school systems. Comparative Education, 44, 93-110. Langouët, G., & Léger, A. (1994). École publique ou école privée ? Les zappeurs d'école. Trajectoires et réussites scolaires. Paris : Éditions Fabert. Langouët, G., & Léger, A. (1997). Le choix des familles. École publique ou école privée ? Trajectoires et réussites scolaires. Paris : Éditions Fabert. Leroy-Audouin, C. & Piquée, C. (2004) Ce que déclarent les élèves de l’école élémentaire et pourquoi. Éducation et Sociétés, 13, 209-226. Prost, A. (1982). Les écoles libres changent de fonctions. In Histoire générale de l’enseignement et de l’éducation en France (pp.413-447). Paris : Labat. Reddy, K.N. (Eds.). (1994). Public and Private Education. An International Perspective. Inde: Academic service of Hyderabad. Reed-Danahay, D. (2007). De la résistance: ethnographie et théorie dans la France rurale. Éducation et Sociétés, 19, 115-131. Woods, P. (1990). L’ethnographie de l’école. Paris : Armand Colin. Zanten (van), A. (2009). Choisir son école. Stratégies familiales et médiations locales. Paris: PUF.
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