Abstract
In the Czech education system, it is common for pupils to supplement their school education by private tutoring, that is paid for by parents and concerns academic school subjects (Bray, 2021). The existence of private tutoring (PT) has been explained in the scholarly literature by a combination of various factors at the micro, meso and macro levels. However, only a little research attention has been paid to parents as final decision-makers in this matter. In particular, understanding the dynamics of parents' demand for private tutoring over time and the factors that influence it is limited. So far, only one study (Liu & Bray, 2020) has examined how the demand for private tutoring by parents arises over time, expands, attenuates or terminates. It also identified various factors (such as price, time resources, pupils' school results) that influence this process of parental demand for PT.
Thus, the overall goal of the research is to construct a comprehensive (grounded) theory that would explain the parents' decision-making process for using (or not using) various types or forms of private tutoring in relation to various life situations, circumstances, attitudes and contexts.
The paper presents the results of a qualitative probe into parents' thinking about procuring private tutoring for their children. The research is carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews with parents who have recently arranged private tutoring for their child (or are seriously considering to do so). Parents who fulfill the basic criteria (their children attend 5th to 9th grade of primary school or lower grade of multi-year grammar school and have recently provided them with private lessons or courses) are selected according to the principle of maximum variation to assure the diversity of the sample. So far, parents, especially from larger cities, have been included in the sample; in the future, the research will also focus on parents from smaller cities or the countryside.
The central motive of the parents interviewed so far is dissatisfaction with the teaching of a particular subject at school. Especially in English, parents perceive that there is a lack of opportunities for conversation and practice. Some parents associate their motivation with a sense of their own inability to use a foreign language and an effort to keep their child away from having the same problem, so they choose a variety of foreign language activities for the child from an early age, including tutoring, to help them master the foreign language. From their point of view, school teaching of a given subject often becomes a "waste of time". Different motivations are associated with tutoring aimed at entrance examination preparation.
As the sample grows, the authors expect to uncover greater variability in the mechanisms related to parental decision making in the matter of private tutoring. They plan to include also parents from small towns and rural areas, which will likely increase the variability of the sample and findings.