Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Researching private supplementary tutoring. Methodological lessons from diverse cultures

2021; Akadémiai Kiadó; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1556/063.2021.00028

2064-2199

Magdolna Chrappán,

Diverse Education Studies and Reforms

Can we promise money for completing a questionnaire?What happens if a researcher's physical integrity might be endangered in the field or could a researcher of the opposite sex interview in an Islamic country?What should we do if we have to interview under trees, in noise, or if the principal of the selected school considers the otherwise approved questionnaire politically sensitive and does not allow the researcher into the institution?In the study volume edited by Mark Bray et al., the authors talk about the methodological peculiarities and difficulties with full openness which often appear in the course of the research but are rarely discussed.There is a common thread behind the volume: the two most influential researches on the topic are the socalled Hong Kong Research and the Hong Kong Questionnaire.The comprehensive research on private tutoring/shadow education/out-of-school education (the conceptual framework is flexible in the volume as well) was conducted by a research team at The University of Hong Kong (led by Mark Bray).The research design and instruments developed by them were later adapted in several countries, and the methodological lessons from these researches are summarized in the volume.The Hong Kong-research and its adaptations are of particular importance because "research lagged behind the expansion and diversification of the phenomenon"as editors said in the introduction (p.3.).Research has been conducted in far more countries than the number of studies included in the collection, we can read a general overview of them.Studies in other, predominantly Asian countries have been written with the same goals in mind: "the book is about research methodology, and the chapters display diversity in the cultures of research approaches" (p.4.)Each study emphasizes the search for equilibrium, which is a common feature of adaptations: how long the original research design and methodology can be kept in order to compare the results, and what are the peculiarities within a country that require research to be tailored to that country.Each study provides an accurate answer to this question, and the reader encounters