Spatializing a global education phenomenon: private tutoring and mobility theory in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

Along with the dramatic expansion of private tutoring around the world, a significant body of literature has been produced to understand this phenomenon. While many studies consider the issue of geographic location, the spatial dimension tends not to be a central focus of private tutoring studies. In contrast, the present essay applies mobility theory to research from Cambodia, where private tutoring is essential to student success. It does so in order to place private tutoring provision into a broader perspective that includes but moves beyond the economic dimensions of supply and demand and the sociological dimensions of economic, cultural, and social capital to include consideration of how private tutoring provision is constrained by a multidimensional spatial field of possibilities and how private tutoring participation is enabled by one’s position and abilities in relation to that field. The paper argues for increased attention to ‘spatial capital’ in studies of private tutoring and education generally.

KEYWORDS:

• Private tutoring
• shadow education
• Cambodia
• mobility theory
• spatial analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Private tutoring is often referred to as ‘shadow education’ because it frequently mimics and complements the official curriculum (Bray 2017). However, we avoid this term in the present paper because private tutoring in Cambodia does not so much imitate the official curriculum as it does constitute an important part of it, as will be further discussed.

2. As can be seen, the issue of interest here is provision of – and engagement in – a service (private tutoring) from a mobility perspective; this focus is distinct from studies that focus on policy mobility, or how and why policies move globally. For more on the latter, see Gulson et al. (2017) and McCann and Ward (2011).

3. Assuming US$1 = 4,035 Riels (Exchange-Rates 2011).

4. For reference, the average monthly household income in Cambodia is USD$91/month, as of 2015 (CEIC 2018).

5. For a broad overview of the diverse forms of private supplementary tutoring and definitional debates, see (Bray and Kobakhidze 2014).

6. It must be noted that the majority of teachers charge different fees based on the families’ abilities to pay, and some students with extreme financial difficulties can receive free tutoring (Bray et al. 2018).

7. The focus on agentic individuals (as opposed to objects) and the implicit assumption of the stability of contextual relations in space (as opposed to a focus on shifting assemblages) sets the mobility perspective apart from actor-network theory, another spatially oriented theory that has recently received attention (Latour 1999).

8. The larger project used both quantitative and qualitative methods in order to understand the factors that affect student continuation from elementary school to lower secondary school. The lead author of the present paper was responsible for the qualitative portion of that larger study. In the course of the first round of data collection, the importance of private tutoring became obvious, and thus subsequent rounds of data collection entailed additional attention to this issue. For more information and findings related to the larger study, see Authors (2014, 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Notes on contributors

D. Brent Edwards

D. Brent Edwards Jr. is Associate Professor of Theory and Methodology in the Study of Education.

Hang Le

Hang Le is a PhD candidate in International Education Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Manca Sustarsic

Manca Sustarsic is a  PhD candidate in Global and International Education at the University of Hawaii.