Kumon or Montessori? It may depend on your politics

Kumon or Montessori? It may depend on your politics

Whether parents prefer a conformance-oriented or independence-oriented supplemental education program for their children depends on political ideology, according to a study of more than 8,500 American parents by a research team from Rice University and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“Conservative parents have a higher need for structure, which drives their preference for conformance-oriented programs,” said study co-author Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “Many parents are surprised to learn that their political identity can affect the educational choices they make for their children.”

Supplemental education programs include private tutoring, test preparation support and educational books and materials as well as online educational support services. The global market for private tutoring services is forecasted to reach $260.7 billion by 2024, and the U.S. market for tutoring is reported to be more than $8.9 billion a year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 100,000 businesses in the private education services industry. Supplemental education program brands are among the top 500 franchises in Entrepreneur magazine’s 2020 rankings, and they include popular providers such as Kumon (ranked No. 12), Mathnasium (No. 29) and Huntington Learning Center (No. 39).

For over five decades, education psychologists have utilized two pedagogical orientations — conformance orientation and independence orientation. A conformance orientation is more standardized and guided, emphasizing lecture-based content delivery, knowledge and memorization, frequent use of homework assignments, standardized examinations with relative evaluation and classroom attendance discipline and rules. In contrast, an independence orientation features discussion-based seminars and student-led presentations, an emphasis on ideas rather than facts, use of multimodal interaction instead of books, and highly variable and unstructured class routines. The two approaches do not differ in terms of topics covered in the curriculum or the specific qualities to be imparted to students.

The research team asked parents about their preferences for different programs framed as conformance- or independence-oriented. In five studies of more than 8,500 parents, conservative parents preferred education programs that were framed as conformance-oriented, while liberal parents preferred independence-oriented education programs. This differential preference emerged for different measures of parents’ political identity: their party affiliation, self-reported political leaning and whether they watch Fox or CNN/MSNBC for news.

“By understanding the underlying motivations behind parents’ preferences, educational programs’ appeal to parents can be substantially enhanced,” Mittal said. “Supplemental tutoring will be a major expenditure and investment for parents grappling with their child’s academic performance in the post-pandemic era. Informal conversations show parents gearing up to supplement school-based education with tutoring. Despite this, very little research exists about the factors that affect parents’ preference for and utilization of supplemental education.”

Mittal cautioned that these results do not speak to ultimate student performance. “This study only speaks to parents’ preferences but does not study ultimate student achievement,” he said.

The paper, “Political Identity and Preference for Supplemental Educational Programs,” which is forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research, was co-authored by professor Jihye Jung of UTSA. It can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437211004252.

To schedule an interview with Mittal or to request a copy of the study, contact Jeff Falk, director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.



from ScienceBlog.com https://ift.tt/3wo3bGn

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Words Matter When Discussing Alcohol Issues: A New Stigma-Free Vocabulary for Better AUD Outcomes

Image
Word choice may seem out of place among the myriad factors that can influence outcomes for a complex condition like alcohol use disorder (AUD). In fact, the stigma created by the language that is used to describe alcohol problems can decrease many people’s willingness to seek help for alcohol problems. It also can affect how people with AUD are treated in all aspects of life. “Stigmas are the negative attitudes toward people that are based on certain distinguishing characteristics,” says National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Director George F. Koob, Ph.D. “More than a decade of research has shown that stigma contributes significantly to negative health outcomes and can pose a barrier to seeking treatment for mental illness or substance use disorders.” In the United States, nearly 90 percent of people with substance use disorders and 35 percent of people with serious mental illness do not receive treatment. In a recent article published in  Neuropsychopharma...
Read more

‘Massive-scale mobilization’ necessary for addressing climate change, scientists say

Image
A year after a global coalition of more than 11,000 scientists declared a climate emergency, Oregon State University researchers who initiated the declaration released an update today that points to a handful of hopeful signs, but shares continued alarm regarding an overall lack of progress in addressing climate risks. “Young people in more than 3,500 locations around the world have organized to push for urgent action,” said Oregon State University’s William Ripple, who co-authored “The Climate Emergency: 2020 in Review,” published today in Scientific American. “And the Black Lives Matter movement has elevated social injustice and equality to the top of our consciousness. “Rapid progress in each of the climate action steps we outline is possible if framed from the outset in the context of climate justice – climate change is a deeply moral issue. We desperately need those who face the most severe climate risks to help shape the response.” One year ago, Ripple, distinguished profess...
Read more

Researchers advance science behind gut health and prebiotics

Image
When it comes to improving human gut health, approaches and the success of these approaches are based largely on an individual’s gut ecosystem: the bacteria present, its diversity and other factors. Therefore, trying to improve gut health through application of prebiotics or probiotics can have wildly variable results based on gut flora composition. Bruce Hamaker , director of the Whistler Center for Carbohydrate Research and Distinguished Professor of Food Science, and Thaisa Moro Cantu-Jungles, his postdoctoral research associate, recently discovered a way to select prebiotic fibers that have the potential to provide improvement of gut health where everyone would benefit. Their study, conducted in vitro, showed an increase in butyrate-producing bacteria with a selected fiber using this new approach. Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid that supports many of the body’s essential functions from regulating the immune system to digestive health. In donors’ gut flora where these bacter...
Read more