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Multicultural desires? Parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children

This paper considers the ways in which parents talk about choosing secondary schools in three areas of Greater Manchester. It argues that this can be a moment when parents are considering their own attitudes to, and shaping their children's experiences of, multiculture. Multiculture is taken as...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Byrne, Bridget, de Tona, Carla
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BlackWell Publishing Ltd 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4244115/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25506091
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12076
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author Byrne, Bridget
de Tona, Carla
author_facet Byrne, Bridget
de Tona, Carla
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description This paper considers the ways in which parents talk about choosing secondary schools in three areas of Greater Manchester. It argues that this can be a moment when parents are considering their own attitudes to, and shaping their children's experiences of, multiculture. Multiculture is taken as the everyday experience of living with difference. The paper argues that multiculture needs to be understood as shaped not only by racialized, ethnic or religious difference (as it is commonly understood) but also by other differences which parents may consider important, particularly class and approaches to parenting. We stress the need to examine what parents say about schooling in the context in which they are talking, which is shaped by local areas and the experiences of their children in primary schools. Based on interviews with an ethnically mixed groups of parents from different schools, we show how perceptions of the racialized and class demographics of schools can influence parents' choice of secondary schools. The paper also argues that attention needs to be paid to the ways in which terms such as ‘multicultural’ and ‘mix’ are applied uniformly to very different contexts, be they particular schools or local areas, suggesting there is a paucity of language in Britain when talking about multiculture.
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spelling pubmed-42441152014-12-10 Multicultural desires? Parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children Byrne, Bridget de Tona, Carla Sociol Rev Original Articles This paper considers the ways in which parents talk about choosing secondary schools in three areas of Greater Manchester. It argues that this can be a moment when parents are considering their own attitudes to, and shaping their children's experiences of, multiculture. Multiculture is taken as the everyday experience of living with difference. The paper argues that multiculture needs to be understood as shaped not only by racialized, ethnic or religious difference (as it is commonly understood) but also by other differences which parents may consider important, particularly class and approaches to parenting. We stress the need to examine what parents say about schooling in the context in which they are talking, which is shaped by local areas and the experiences of their children in primary schools. Based on interviews with an ethnically mixed groups of parents from different schools, we show how perceptions of the racialized and class demographics of schools can influence parents' choice of secondary schools. The paper also argues that attention needs to be paid to the ways in which terms such as ‘multicultural’ and ‘mix’ are applied uniformly to very different contexts, be they particular schools or local areas, suggesting there is a paucity of language in Britain when talking about multiculture. BlackWell Publishing Ltd 2014-08 2013-09-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4244115/ /pubmed/25506091 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12076 Text en © 2013 The Author. The Sociological Review © 2013 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Byrne, Bridget
de Tona, Carla
Multicultural desires? Parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children
title Multicultural desires? Parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children
title_full Multicultural desires? Parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children
title_fullStr Multicultural desires? Parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children
title_full_unstemmed Multicultural desires? Parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children
title_short Multicultural desires? Parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children
title_sort multicultural desires? parental negotiation of multiculture and difference in choosing secondary schools for their children
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4244115/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25506091
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12076
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