Private Tutoring Across the Mediterranean: Power Dynamics and Implications for Learning and Equity

by Mark Bray (Editor), André Elias Mazawi (Editor), Ronald G. Sultana (Editor)

Private tutoring-supplementary, out-of-school instruction offered at a fee to individuals or groups-represents a substantial household expenditure, even in systems that claim to have free public education. It plays out across, alongside, and even within some school systems. Emerging as a 'shadow education', private tutoring now operates as a system and industry crossing national, regional, and social-class boundaries. Private tutoring is provided through different modes of delivery including the internet. Policy makers, parents, teachers, trade unions, corporations, community associations, and students are implicated in the private tutoring industry. The debates over private tutoring are therefore part of the larger struggles over the ends of education in just and equitable societies. The authors in this volume address diverse national settings of private tutoring across the Mediterranean, and examine its political, economic, social, and cultural underpinnings. They draw on a range of conceptual frameworks, and deploy a variety of research methods to problematize the multifaceted relationships between tutoring, learning, and equity. The volume captures a multiplicity of voices, and focuses on some of the central challenges facing education in pluralistic societies

228 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2013

About the author

Mark Bray is a historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe who was one of the organizers of Occupy Wall Street. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Critical Quarterly, ROAR Magazine, and numerous edited volumes. He is currently a lecturer at Dartmouth College.