Factors and Structure of Parents’ Educational Consciousness in Lao PDR: A Case Study of Vientiane Capital

Abstract

  

  In Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos), the educational gap is widening between urban and rural areas, in terms of learning outcomes and internal efficiency in primary education. However, as commonly observed in other developing countries, monetary factors are not the leading cause behind Lao parents’ decision to stop their children’s schooling and learning. Looking at the educational situation of Laos from previous research and the household survey data, it is inferred that parents lack full understanding of the benefits, importance and necessity for sending children to school. In other words, it can be said that the educational gap is created mainly by varying degrees of parents' ideas, values, orientations, attitude towards education in school, which collectively form “educational consciousness”.

  Up to date, previous research on educational gap in industrialized countries have discussed the differences between “high – low” expectation for educational level, by asking “which educational level would you like your child to receive?” prescribed by the socioeconomic background. The differences in expectation are discussed in the framework of creating educational gaps. Previous research on such educational gap is built on the premise that academic ability and studying habits are most important. Kataoka (2018) pointed out that such a premise is “bad habitus of researcher sunk into the psyche of them”.

  Therefore, this research attempted to understand educational consciousness not only as “academic ability” and “progression to further education” but also more pluralistically by using social consciousness theory. According to Kikkawa (2014), social consciousness theory is a field dedicated to elucidate the influence that the social structure exerts on social consciousness. The definition of social consciousness is “consciousness shared among members of the social group”. Applying the social consciousness to this research, educational consciousness can be understood in the framework that is shared in the social group to which each parent belongs, while at the same time it is subjective thinking and values from parents' school education.

  From this background, this research raises fundamental questions as to what kind of factors the educational consciousness in Laos is composed of and how it is different between urban and rural areas. By answering these questions, this research aims to clarify the characteristics of parents' educational consciousness in Laos, focusing on the differences in regionality between urban and rural areas. The significance of this research is that it analyzes the educational consciousness categorized by different social groups, most importantly urban and rural areas, as opposed to focusing exclusively on economic situation and the social status of families and individuals, so as to reveal the actual situation of regional disparity in Laos.

  The data of this study is collected from interviews conducted with 96 parents residing in Vientiane Capital, whose children are in the fifth grade in primary education. This study focused on the educational consciousness accumulated from their actual experiences regarding how to interpret school education in Laos. For the interview method, semi-structured interviews incorporating laddering techniques were used. By using laddering techniques, it is possible to understand sensuous value by asking the basic question "why do you send your children to school?", abstract values by asking" why is your answer to the first question important?”, and concrete values by asking " what are the prerequisites to achieve your answers to question 1 and 2?".

  The research found that the constituent factors of educational consciousness in Laos ranged from answers that are commonly reported in other highly (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)