| Abstrakt: |
Much educational research in Japan has discussed the impact of the marketization of education through the neoliberal reform of education upon parental school choice. Fujita (2006) introduces the "rich flight" phenomenon whereby relatively wealthy families choose private schools rather than local public schools. However, parental school choice stimulated by the marketization of education is not completely within the realm of the national education system. As Ball and Nikita (2014) suggest, parental school choice has become supra-territorial due to the rapid expansion of the international school market worldwide. While diplomats, missionaries, and expatriate families have traditionally selected international schools, Hayden (2011) notes that the transnational capitalist class, wealthy local families, and global middle-class families are now more actively choosing international schools as well. However, we do not know how the patterns of Japanese families' choice of international schools are classed beyond explanations based on their economic resources (Nakamura 1999). This study, therefore, aims to fill the research gap. The author conducted fieldwork in the kindergarten division of Wakana International School (pseudonym) (hereafter, Wakana Kindergarten) in Tokyo for six months in the early 2010s, followed immediately by semi-structured interviews with 31 Japanese families who had enrolled their children there. Wakana International School is categorized as a "non-traditional international school" (Hayden & Thompson 1995), where most children are Japanese nationals. The findings reveal that most Japanese families using Wakana Kindergarten were capitalists engaged in domestic and global corporate management, professionals such as medical doctors, and elite white-collar workers. In addition, the families' economic resources are higher than those of families choosing ordinary private schools. Japanese parents' reasons for choosing Wakana Kindergarten included 1) the societal conditions of Tokyo, 2) wanting their children to study (in) English, associated with parents' educational and work careers, and 3) dissatisfaction with public and private school education. There was a tendency for less educated families to self-eliminate themselves from the local educational competition due to their perceived disadvantages and choose Wakana Kindergarten as an "honorable substitute" (Brooks and Waters 2009). This study has two contributions. First, while existing research in Japan on parental choice of international schools has primarily employed explanations based on families' economic resources, this case study provides empirical data on how parents' occupations, educational backgrounds, and economic stratification affect their patterns of school choice, leading to the choice of an international school. In particular, this research reveals a classed push factor, particularly for less-educated affluent families, to avoid local educational competition and choose an international school. Lastly, this study suggests future research on educational inequality and parentocracy in order to examine the effect of the marketization of education at the national and global levels, as parents' school choices and educational strategies are also affected by the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
