School-market-emotions as ideology: An autoethnography of researcher-parental conundrums

The aim of this paper is to investigate how relations between education and emotions can be explored through an autoethnography of researcher-parental experiences of school marketisation. A further objective is to suggest a methodological approach for deepening the understanding of how school-market-emotions are inherently shaped by ideology. The two authors identify and analyse their emotions while being approached as consumers of education for their own children. They use critical concepts from a post-Marxist tradition to connect the hyper-abstract impersonal structure with their deeply personal experiences and emotions. By moving between the positions as both parents and researchers, the authors reflect on shared and disparate emotions when social class and public and private values come into play. The paper builds on insights from autoethnographic research that utilises personal experiences as the means to explore researcher-parental conundrums in a critical manner.