Author Description

The so-called shadow education system of private supplementary tutoring has become a global phenomenon but has different features in different settings. This book explores the ways in which teacher-tutors' beliefs, social norms, ideals about professionalism, and community values shape their economic decisions in the informal shadow education marketplace. Through theoretical lenses of economic sociology and anthropology, this study uncovers strong social and moral embeddedness of the shadow education market in social relationships, cultural norms and moralities in post-Soviet Georgia. The book questions some of the basic assumptions that the predominant neoliberal discourse promotes worldwide. The book is based on Kobakhidze's PhD dissertation, which won the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Gail P. Kelly Outstanding Dissertation Award.