Välja eller hamna: Det praktiska sinnet, familjers val och elevers spridning på grundskolor

Choosing or ending up: Practical sense, family choices and pupils

A free choice reform of compulsory schools was established in Sweden in the early 1990s. This study is about how families have reasoned and acted in relation to this reform and how their children, as a result, are dispersed to schools.

The study has been carried out in two distinctly different areas in one ofStockholms district councils a middle-class suburb consisting of villas, and anotherarea made up of apartment houses with low income residents of mostly foreign backgrounds. Twenty-one families in different socio-economic positions were interviewed because they had either chosen a popular school or their child had remained in a school that was less favoured. The concepts, practical sense, habitus, capital and distribution, as used by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, constitute the theoretical framework and support the analyses. Interview methods are also borrowed from Bourdieu.

The interviews with families are compiled into chapters based on the familiespractices, that is, to what schools their children are dispersed.

Findings show that the families decisions about schools are not made along rationalchoice models, as assumed. Processes are complex and structural factors are of greatimportance. These factors together with the families resources decide how pupils are distributed to schools. Cultural, or informational capital are most significant. Habitus and practical sense decide how choices are made in the family. Families socioeconomic situation and the circumstances governing choices and decision making about schools vary regarding shortage and necessity on the one hand and the luxury of being ambivalent, on the other. These factors effect what schools the child ends up in. This may have significant implications for the child, since the quality of schools varies extensively. The system produces winners and losers, meaning that an equivalent educational system is difficult to maintain.