Cette thèse porte sur les choix de l’école secondaire par des parents immigrants dans le contexte montréalais pour leurs enfants. Elle analyse la façon ils perçoivent le marché scolaire. Elle examine également les logiques d’action, contraintes (réelles ou perçues) et stratégies qui sont au cœur des choix. Elle vise aussi à mettre en lumière les défis et les besoins spécifiques de choisir l’école en contexte migratoire. Pour ce faire, le cadre d’analyse mobilisé conçoit les choix comme le résultat de l’articulation de déterminants individuels et familiaux et d’effets structurels. Il reconnaît aussi que les parents immigrants sont insérés dans des relations familiales et des réseaux sociaux et inscrits dans différentes positions sociales. Plaçant les acteurs sociaux et le sens qu’ils donnent à leurs choix au centre de l’analyse, cette thèse s’inscrit dans une sociologie compréhensive. Les analyses se basent sur trente entrevues semi-dirigées réalisées auprès de parents immigrants de Montréal ayant au moins un enfant fréquentant une école secondaire. Cette thèse illustre que les parents immigrants se positionnent différemment envers le marché scolaire montréalais et vivent diverses expériences. Ces différences s’expliqueraient par des positions sociales distinctes, des valeurs et des visées différentes, des trajectoires de vie diverses, etc. Malgré cela, la thèse met de l’avant l’existence de tendances fortes traversant le corpus. Certaines se rapportent aux effets de l’expérience migratoire sur les choix et à des positions sociales minorisées. D’abord, la majorité a une représentation négative des programmes réguliers au public, les poussant à les éviter. Cette perception est, entre autres, influencée par la présence d’un discours dans l’espace public en défaveur de ces programmes. Ensuite, malgré des positionnements distincts relativement au marché scolaire montréalais, la majorité a choisi l’école secondaire pour des visées de reproduction ou de mobilité sociale ascendante (choix stratégiques). Un sentiment d’impératif caractérise les choix stratégiques, notamment afin d’augmenter les chances que le projet migratoire soit un succès. Certains appartenant à des communautés ethnoculturelles racisées ressentent davantage cet impératif afin de contrer une discrimination systémique perçue sur le marché de l’emploi. Enfin, l’analyse révèle la présence d’un sentiment de méconnaissance du système éducatif du Québec, attribué à l’expérience migratoire, plaçant les parents immigrants devant des défis et des besoins spécifiques en matière de choix de l’école secondaire. Étant proactifs, la plupart ont réduit cette méconnaissance perçue grâce à la détention d’un capital scolaire de niveau universitaire, mais aussi à leurs réseaux sociaux locaux. Or, les parents immigrants sont inégalement informés, mettant en lumière un enjeu relatif à l’équité devant la possibilité de choisir l’école secondaire. La thèse soulève la question du rôle du système éducatif dans cette iniquité. La thèse contribue à l’avancement des connaissances sur les dynamiques à l’œuvre dans le marché scolaire montréalais, ainsi que des effets des modes de régulation du système éducatif québécois les inégalités sociales. Elle contribue également à l’avancement des connaissances sur les rapports des personnes immigrantes au système éducatif du Québec, et à la société québécoise. / This thesis examines immigrant parents’ choice of a high school for their children in Montreal. It analyzes how they perceive Montreal’s school market, and examines the logics of action, constraints (real or perceived) and strategies at the heart of their choices. It also aims to shed light on the challenges and specific needs associated with choosing a school in the host country. The analytical framework mobilized conceives choices as the result of the articulation of individual, familial and structural determinants. It also recognizes that immigrant parents evolve within family contexts and social networks and hold various social positions. Rooted in an interpretative sociology, social actors and the meaning of their choices are placed at the center of the analysis. The analyses are based on data from thirty semi-structured interviews conducted with immigrant parents from Montreal who have at least one child attending a high school. This thesis illustrates that immigrant parents position themselves differently towards Montreal’s school market and have different experiences. These differences are the result of different social positions, values, goals, life trajectories, etc. However, general trends are uncovered in the corpus. Some of these relate to the experience of being an immigrant and/or belonging to a marginalized or racialized group. First, the majority of respondents have a negative perception of regular programs in the public sector, which leads them to avoid these. This perception is partially influenced by the presence in the public space of an unfavorable discourse regarding these programs. Next, despite different positioning towards Montreal’s school market, the majority choose a high school to ensure the reproduction of their social status or to achieve upward mobility (strategic choices). A sense of urgency surrounds these strategic choices, notably in regard to increasing the chances that the migration project is a success. Immigrant parents belonging to a marginalized or racialized group feel this urgency more strongly due to perceived systemic discrimination in the labour market. Finally, the analysis reveals feelings of disorientation in relation to Quebec’s education system, which respondents attributed to their experience as immigrants. These feelings leave immigrant parents facing specific challenges and needs in terms of choosing a high school in the context of Montreal. Because they are proactive in collecting information about high schools and their programs, most can reduce their feelings of disorientation and unfamiliarity. The possession of a university-level diploma is helpful in this process, as are parents’ local social networks. Nonetheless, the analyses show that immigrant parents are unequally informed, highlighting inequalities in the possibility of choosing a high school. This thesis raises the possible role of the education system in the creation of these inequities. This thesis contributes to the advancement of knowledge on the dynamics at play in Montreal’s school market, as well as on the effects of the structure of Quebec’s educational system on social inequalities. It also contributes to the advancement of knowledge on immigrants’ relationship to Quebec’s educational system and to Quebec’s society more broadly.

Primary school choice - an important mechanism influencing equity in education Jaroslava Simonová Abstract This dissertation describes the process of school choice in primary education and the factors influencing it. Using a qualitative grounded theory design, the work builds on data from 41 interviews with parents from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Parents' decision-making about school choice is shaped primarily by the organizational needs of parents and their inner need to be a "good parent". When being interviewed, parents report a number of criteria, which, according to them, are important in school choice. However, for many of them they fail to obtain relevant and reliable information. Therefore, they may eventually make a decision based on criteria other than those referred to as important, although they are rarely aware of this shift and the change in criteria. There are three unavoidable criteria in decision-making: availability, reputation and the emotions that parents experienced at school during their visit. The child's needs are the important intervening conditions. They play an important role, especially if the parents feel that their child has some particular needs. The parents' experience with the education system and their personality characteristics are also important. The significant...

Capacities of elementary schools in the hinterland of the big cities presents actual problem of Czech educational system and no sufficient specialized attention is paid to it, except it has significant impact to the quality of education in these localities. Moreover it can support the inequalities in education. Therefore this diploma thesis offers complex view of investigated issue. The benefits of this work lies especially in the effort to indicate discussion about this topic, which no experts pay special attention to. The main goal is to describe the research problem, to clarify all the causes and consequences of the insufficient capacities in elementary schools problem and find out what is the extent of the problem in the hinterland of Prague. Primary and secondary data was used to achieve these goals. The overall research concept is based on mixed research technique. This diploma thesis finds out what is the current status of elementary schools education system in the hinterland of the big cities and what are causes and consequences of insufficient capacity problem of elementary schools with both quantitative and qualitative methods. Capacities of elementary schools present quite complicated problem which is caused by various reasons. It is hard to say if elementary schools founders failed in...

Educational systems are complex adaptive systems (CAS). The macroeffects of an educational policy emerge from and depend on individual students' reactions to the policy. However, educational policymakers traditionally rely on equation-based models, which are deficient in reflecting the work of microbehaviors. Using inappropriate tools to make policies may be a reason why there were many unintended educational consequences in history. A proper methodology to design and analyze policies for complex educational systems is agent-based modeling (ABM). Grounded in the theories of CAS and computational irreducibility, ABM is capable of connecting microbehaviors with macropatterns. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the application of ABM in educational policy analysis by constructing an agent-based overlapping generations model with hypothesized inputs to qualitatively represent the environment of the Taipei School District. Four research questions explored the effects of Taipei's 2016 student-assignment mechanism and its free tuition policy on educational opportunity and school quality under different assumptions of students' school-choice strategies. The simulated outputs were analyzed using descriptive statistics and paired samples t tests. The findings, which could hardly be revealed by traditional models, showed that the effects were complex and depended on students' strategies along with the number of choices students were allowed to make; the assignment outcomes for elite students were robust to the mechanism, and the free tuition policy worsened school quality. Although exploratory, these findings can serve as hypotheses and a guide for Taipei's policymakers to collect empirical data in evaluating their 2016 mechanism and tuition policy.

The purpose of the study is to create an understanding of the continued stratification within the school in relation to the school choice. Through understanding parents' motives behind choice and non-choice of a segregated school and differences between those motives. The study is qualitative interview study based on eight interviews with parents that live in a segregated area and have children that go to elementary school. This segregated area is in a medium sized city in Sweden. Theories that have been used are Jenkins social identity, Skegss disidentification and respectability and Marinis social values and norms. The results of study show that parents justify both choice and non-choice of school with what they consider to be the right social context for their children. It is important what student composition the school has for their children to feel group affiliation, but also because there is a fear of exclusion. As for differences in motives, parents choose to not choose the nearby segregated school because they do not want to be associated with the notion that exists about the area´s parents. This shows that the free choice of school can also be understood based on the parents´ identity- creating practices.

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Given the many school choices available to parents, there is a need to understand the reasons parents of a child who is gifted choose to keep their child in his/her current school. Parents* satisfaction with their child*s school and their academic growth is essential to continued enrollment of the child in that school (Abdulkadiroglu, Angrist, & Pathak, 2011; Van Tassel-Baska, 2006). The parents* decision to keep their child who is gifted enrolled in their current school may be influenced by factors within the school as well as those factors outside of the school. The purpose of this study was to research factors that may influence the parents* decision to keep their child who is gifted enrolled in their current school. The research studied parental perceptions of academic support, social and emotional support, and principal support for gifted education for their child who is gifted and the parents* willingness to keep their child who is gifted enrolled at their current school. The target group in the study was parents of children who are gifted and enrolled in a very large urban school district but did not include parents of children who are gifted and also have a disability. The research included the analysis of a survey and follow-up interview questions with parents of a child who is gifted and enrolled in the very large urban school district. There were 683 survey responses out of 4,401 total parents surveyed with a return rate of 16%. The low return rate is considered a limitation of the study and it is recommended to conduct additional research on the majority of parents who did not participate in the survey. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 10 randomly selected parents of children who are gifted and enrolled in the very large urban school district. The survey and interview data was coded and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics. There were two research questions that guided the development of the research process and the analysis of data. The first question focused on indicators of parent satisfaction that included academic needs met, social and emotional needs met, and principal support for gifted education. The survey and interview data yielded mixed results with parents split between the belief that their child*s academic needs were met, social and emotional needs were met, and that their child*s principal was supportive of gifted education. The second research question considered the relationship between the three indicators of parent satisfaction and the parents* willingness to consider enrolling their child in a school solely for students who are gifted. The results showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between the parents* belief that their child*s academic needs were met and the parents* consideration to send their child to a school solely for students who are gifted. However, there was a lack of evidence to establish a relationship between parent*s belief about their child*s social and emotional needs or the parents belief that their child*s principal was supportive of gifted education. The implications of the study are numerous. There are enough parents willing to consider sending their child to a school solely for students who are gifted to support opening the school. The majority of the survey participants had elementary school children; therefore, consideration should be focused on opening an elementary school for students who are gifted. Long range planning is needed to determine how to support the school for students who are gifted as well as the impact of transferring the students from one school zone to the school for students who are gifted. The literature reflected the diverse nature of the parents* satisfaction with academic support, social and emotional support, and principal support for gifted education and revealed that when the parents* are satisfied it does not guarantee that the parent will keep their child enrolled in their current school. The need for on-going communication between the school and the parents are critical to keeping the student enrolled in their current school. Further research is needed to determine the beliefs of parents with children who are gifted and identify themselves as Black, Hispanic, Asian, or another race since the majority of the survey participants were White. More research is also needed to determine the reasons why large numbers of parents would consider sending their child to a school solely for students who are gifted regardless of their satisfaction levels with school support. In addition, further research needs to be conducted to determine why parents would choose to keep their child enrolled in their current school when the parents believed their academic or social and emotional needs were not met or their principal was not supportive of gifted education.

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