A question of time and place: student tutors’ narrative identities in for- and non-profit contexts in Sweden

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper takes a neo-institutional approach to the increase in supplementary tutoring (ST) in Sweden, understanding it as an ongoing expansion of the institution of formal education. A narrative analysis of tutors’ narrated experiences of for- and non-profit tutoring improves our understanding of how actors animate the cultural clusters of the meaning of formal education in new educational contexts. The narrative identities of stand-by and self-sacrificing tutors illustrate how time and interpretation are crucial aspects of private tutoring in the dominant discourse on the importance of testing in formal education. The paper discusses the re-emergence of ST in Sweden and argues that the social and spatiotemporal settings of for- and non-profit tutoring relate to Swedish mainstream education in different ways, and that non-profit tutoring merits more attention from comparative international research on ST.