Alternative Forms of Education in the Context of Trusting the School

Abstract

 The authors are exploring the problems of parents’ choice of alternative forms of children’s school education (family education as well as correspondence one) in the context of demonstrating confidence in educational institutions. A sociological approach is used to study educational strategies chosen by parents for their school-age children. Social trust is examined with account of its multi-level structure (interpersonal personalized trust, interpersonal depersonalized trust, institutional trust). The authors identified positions of parents on the basis of a survey of citizens who chose a family / correspondence forms of school education for their children. Data interpretation involved methods of description, comparison, and frequency analysis. The paper presents reasons for choosing the family / correspondence forms of education, ideas about the advantages and disadvantages of the choice made, evaluation of the school education system as a whole (institutional trust, generalized trust), and evaluation of personal experience of interaction with the school system (personal depersonalized trust).