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Building on the first cross-national study that had demystified various assumptions about the worldwide use of shadow education two decades ago, we analyze data from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment to examine the cross-national pattern of the use of shadow education by families in 64 nations and use improved statistical estimation methods. Focusing on fee-paying out-of-school classes, we find a continued, and likely an intensified pattern of the cross-national use of shadow education in the contemporary world. Approximately about one-third of all 15-year-old students from 64 countries/economies across the world use this form of shadow education. Students of higher socioeconomic status, females, and students in urban areas and general programs are more likely to use fee-paying services, while families and students turn to these services to address academic deficiencies in general. In addition, students from poorer countries more extensively rely on shadow education than students from wealthier countries after controlling for other variables. Students in South-Eastern and Eastern Asian countries are more likely to pursue shadow education than their counterparts in many other regions. Implications of these findings for theories of education and society as well as for educational policy in relation to shadow education are discussed.

This study systematically maps the research trends in the domain of “shadow education” over the last 40 years using metadata extracted from the SCOPUS database. The results reveal that the outputs of shadow education research have grown exponentially within the last decade. Bray and his colleagues from the University of Hong Kong, East China Normal University, and the Education University of Hong Kong have been the most prolific and influential research team. They are followed by Park and Byun from the USA, who have mostly worked on East Asian contexts. The USA, Hong Kong, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China, have been the main sources of contributions and the University of Hong Kong has been the leading university in this field. Educational studies, economics, psychology, linguistics, and sociology have been the main disciplines researched within shadow education. Shadow education studies have revealed how shadow education can be a major instrument for maintaining and exacerbating social inequalities. They have also largely focused on the tangible (quantifiable) benefits related to improving students’ examination results. This study’s results stress the importance of regulating the private tutoring market, suggesting areas for ongoing research.

Shadowing is a form of non-participant observation that entails following and observing research participants as they go about their everyday business. It offers a possibility to gain in-depth insights into individuals’ actions, roles, and personalities, as well as their social relations and environments. However, shadowing remains – as do other observational and ethnographic methods – largely unfamiliar within the field of higher education research. As a result, a methodological – and, consequently, knowledge – gap has formed: while document, policy, survey, and interview analyses offer insights into how things should be done or are said to be done, few studies offer an understanding of how things are actually done. Based on my experience of shadowing heads of departments at an English university, I discuss the strengths of the method and warn about the issues one has to carefully navigate when conducting shadowing, with a particular focus on carrying out such research in higher education environments. The chapter advocates for a wider use of shadowing among higher education researchers, concluding that our understanding of higher education dynamics can benefit most from this method when it is combined with other data collection techniques.

Shadow organizing refers to the emergence of parallel arrangements that sit alongside and imitate mainstream or conventional ways of organizing. It can be a response to challenges that require new ways of working without abandoning what is valuable about conventional arrangements. However, the processes through which shadow organizing is accomplished are not well understood; there is a need to go beyond traditional notions of mimicry and metaphor. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper demonstrates how a Tardean approach to imitation can address this gap. It deploys imitation as an explanatory concept, based on contemporary readings of Tarde, as well as understandings of organizing as an unfolding process. Child and Family Centres in Tasmania (Australia), are used as an example of shadow organizing, delivering integrated health and education services in an emerging parallel arrangement.

The analysis highlights an imitation dynamic which is far from straightforward mimicry. Rather, it comprises repetition and generation of difference. This dynamic is conceptualized in Tardean fashion as three patterns: the imitation of ideas before expression; the selective nature of imitation; and insertion of the old alongside the new.

The paper moves beyond metaphors of shadow organizing, and understandings of shadow organizing as mimicry. Conceptualizing imitation in an alternative way, it contributes fresh insights into how shadow organizing is accomplished. This enriches and expands the conceptual apparatus for researchers wishing to understand the betwixt and between of shadow organizing.

The purpose of this paper is to compare two UNESCO reports on educational development in Cambodia, one from 1955 and the other from 2010, in order to understand how the global education development agenda has impacted shadow education.

The study is conducted through a textual comparison of two UNESCO reports written 50 years apart.

Although the educational problems facing Cambodia were similar in both reports, the recommendations differed in important ways. The 1955 report advised the country to expand slowly access to education in order to maintain quality, while the 2010 recommended quickly expanding access. A major difference found in the reports regarded the issue of fees in schooling, which did not appear in 1955. School fees in Cambodia are typically extracted through the system of private tutoring, known in the academic literature as shadow education. Such an insight, this paper argues, suggests that the difference in development approach between the two reports is one of the reasons shadow education has flourished in the country.

Through a historical comparison of development efforts in one country, it becomes clear that the education development agenda is partly to blame for the rise of shadow education.

This chapter aims to offer a focussed critical discussion of the combination of two qualitative data-collection methods used in a longitudinal multiple case study investigating the impact of intra-European mobility on the students' linguistic and intercultural development. The participant being the main (and often the only) source of data in higher education research, this chapter will centre on the use of shadowing as a data-collection strategy and on how this offered an other-report that favoured the co-construction and negotiation of meaning between the researcher and the research participant(s) in the narrative interview. Based on our experience shadowing and interviewing undergraduate students, we will stress: (1) the advantages of combining the direct and first-hand nature of the experience of the researcher with the participants' accounts of their experiences and (2) the need to not only rely on the participants' self-report(s) but also obtain an other-report about the phenomena being studied.

In this chapter we draw on research from Canada to develop a framework for understanding the variety of forms of supplementary education and their position within broader organization fields of education. The chapter asks: What is the nature and organizing logic of supplementary education in Canada? and, How does supplementary education relate to public schools in Canada?

Data come from a variety of secondary sources.

Distributed between three relatively autonomous settings – state, market, and nonprofit – supplementary education exhibits tremendous variety in its use value to parents, instructional content, and organizational form. Supplementary education is popular among Canadian parents and appears to be growing, yet it has failed to fundamentally alter the technical core of Canadian schooling, processes that stratify students, and child and family usage of their time or income. Supplementary education’s inability to penetrate these processes reflects its peripheral position within the broader organizational field of Canadian schooling.

The adoption of an organizational field approach generates new ways of thinking about determinants, forming and organizing logics of supplementary education both nationally and comparatively.