Professional legitimacy in flux: academic tutors in a time of uncertainty

Abstract

Institutional analysis typically assumes professional newcomers use strategic isomorphism to craft a legitimation project. A qualitative study of 31 tutors and their respective clients and managers in Beijing indicates how this project is continually in flux, predicating the life stages of its practitioners. Using the dyad theory of legitimacy, we find that tutors’ professional legitimacy is anchored to their ability to meet the immediate expectations of clients when they regard performance boosting as a single-dimensional priority. The tutor–parent relationship is purely market-based and reputation-driven. A tutor’s professional knowledge plays a minor role in winning parents’ approval as it has been routinized by and embedded in the techno-managerial tutoring agencies. Faced with uncertainty in teaching, tutors are increasingly resorting to ancillary services to retain clients. From this perspective, tutors are being reduced to replaceable service workers. The legitimation project is transient and beyond the grasp of individual tutors.

Acknowledgments

The first and second authors contributed to this paper equally. We express our gratitude to all the tutors we have interviewed. This research has been approved by The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Survey and Behavioural Ethics Committee, Reference No. SBRE-18-577.

Notes

1 The general theory is in Abbott (1988). The term “defensible position” is from Abbott (1995, 860).

2 There are many examples in the professional world. Successful projects include medicine (Freidson 1986), law (Liu 2017), and business education (Khurana 2007); unsuccessful attempts are numerous. Abbott (1988) documented several extinct types.

3 We did not replace laoshi with either “tutor” or “schoolteacher” in this paper because the difference between the two labels vanishes in oral, daily usage. As discussed throughout this paper, while the names might be the same, tutors’ tasks are narrower and distinctive. It should be noted that SEOs never corrected parents for calling tutors laoshi, a clear tactic to elicit the cultural symbolism behind schoolteachers.

4 As a promotional strategy, most SEOs would offer free trial classes to parents, either online or in person. Trial class is mostly due to competition among SEOs. With many choices at hand, parents can easily “shop around” for the preferred one.

5 According to our knowledge, there are no statistics on these issues. Our impression is developed based on interaction with interviewees over the years. They switched from one SEO to another frequently.

6 The link between motherhood and education is attracting many researchers. See Goel (2021) for an overview and Yang (2018) for a case in China.

7 The terms vary depending on the SEOs. Common references include “xubao lyu,” “xuban lyu” or “shengban lyu.”

8 Another parent, Ms. Dou, corroborated Mr. Tao’s comment, “There are too many SEOs. … They have to coax me, to make me happy. I cannot do the same in public schools. I coax the schoolteacher.”

9 It is worth noting that after our examination of the lesson plans and curricula system of one major SEO, we could not find the term “tifen” (performance-boosting). The tutors told us this is because China’s Advertising Law prohibits the display of such terms in any published materials. Thus, frontline practitioners will use other ubiquitous phrases, such as “precision analysis” (jingzhun fenxi), to appeal to parents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dongdong Pan

Dongdong Pan is an assistant professor at the School of Education, Shanghai Normal University. His research focuses on the identity and labor process of academic tutors in China.

Yisu Zhou

Yisu Zhou is an associate professor at the University of Macau’s Faculty of Education. Zhou is also a sociologist. He has researched diverse areas of people and institutions in the educational setting. Zhou’s research stems from his lifelong interest in understanding people and places, which he formally developed since his days as a rural schoolteacher after college. Zhou’s current project investigates various aspects of the teaching profession.

Seung-Hwan Ham

Seung-Hwan Ham is an associate professor of education at Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea. His current research aims to identify the characteristics of effective policies and leadership practices for educational and social inclusion of diverse students. His papers have appeared in many journals not only in education but also in the social sciences broadly, including American Journal of Education, Journal of Teacher Education, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Policy Studies, and Social Policy & Administration. He is currently serving on the editorial boards of several renowned journals, including Journal of Educational Administration, Frontiers in Education, and Multicultural Education Review.