"Giving a Good Education”

: Education Quality, Parenting and Fatherhood in the Narratives of Parents in Chile

Abstract

This thesis examines the family-education relationship in Chile, focusing on the challenge of giving a good education. This parental challenge involves ensuring education quality and their children's present and future well-being while meeting the demands of being a “good parent”. Chile is a paradigmatic case of neoliberal education policies, characterised by privatisation, competition, and school choice, thereby positioning parents at the core of the education system.
In order to examine the complex interplay between parents’ experiences and societal pressures in this challenge, the thesis combines three different lenses: the notion of test (Araujo & Martuccelli, 2012a; Martucelli, 2007), a poststructural stance, and the idea of educations as plural (Collet & Tort, 2017). Particularly, the thesis examines how parents articulate meanings and practices of education quality. Recognising the political character of these articulations, education quality is approached as a floating and empty signifier whose meaning is always in dispute (Laclau, 2007, 2014). This thesis also focuses on the giving part of the good education test, examining how families deal with the associated burden of physical and emotional work. Considering that these responsibilities have historically fallen on mothers, along with the prominent discussion on gender equality in the country, this thesis examines the fathers' position in this challenge.
The study analyses parents' narratives to understand the multifaceted elements shaping the good education test. Based on qualitative research encompassing multiple interviews with 20 families, this study focuses on parents in La Florida, a southern district of Santiago with an extensive educational offer. This context provides an ideal window to explore the dynamics of the Chilean education market (Ramos et al., 2022). The findings reveal a diverse and nuanced array of meanings of education quality/good education, extending beyond mere academic outcomes to include various facets of schooling, the education "given at home", and engagement in intensive parenting. Moreover, these understandings of education quality are intricately intertwined with segregation practices. The thesis argues that the meanings and practices articulated by parents regarding education quality/good education are not only a result of the governmental dispositif established in Chilean education policy. Instead, education quality, as an empty and floating signifier, is itself a powerful tool of this dispositif, mobilising self-regulation through logics of responsibilisation and comparability. These logics promote the individualisation of the education-family relationship, reinforcing segregating practices and traditional gendered distribution of education labour within families. Drawing on this finding, this thesis contributes to the critical interrogation of education quality, highlighting its political character in everyday life and the complex relationship between policy and parents' behaviours.

Date of Award	18 Jun 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Sponsors	Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo
Supervisor	Julia Paulson (Supervisor) & Arathi Sriprakash (Supervisor)