Navigating Educational Choices. A Field Study on Parental Preferences in Samaipata, Bolivia

Resumen

Bolivia faces challenges in access to and quality of education, key aspects in the discussion on inequality. In the nexus between inequality and education, multiple studies find that parental beliefs shifting across social groups play a pivotal role in shaping children's skills and educational opportunities. With this as our point of departure, our research focuses on parental preferences within education in Samaipata, Bolivia. Concretely, we provide an answer to the following research question: What are the important factors influencing parents’ choice of school for children across various social groups in Samaipata, Bolivia? Our research takes a mixed-methods approach, consisting of qualitative semi-structured interviews, a conjoint experiment, and participant observations. We identify and investigate five key attributes regarding parents’ choice of school for their children. These are: education styles, subjects, monthly expenses, security, and food. Our research revealed a high significance and relation between the attribute’s education style and security for the parents’ choice of school. We further analysed our data by structuring our quantitative findings in social groups divided by gender, income, and place of origin. Combining these findings with the attributes and Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and social field, we map the social field of parents in Samaipata. Here, a key finding of our research was the high presence of social capital among all social groups except for one. This indicates that social capital in the social field of parents in Samaipata is ascribed high symbolic capital and is significant for the parents’ recognition and acknowledgement. Lastly, through a drawing assignment, we find that the preferences of the parents and the children regarding school choice differ slightly.