About
is a lecturer in Southampton Education School at the 黑料社. Achala is a member of the editorial board of the British Sociological Association's flagship journal, Sociology.
Achala is a sociologist of education and has published research articles on , , , as well as , the of, and , private tutoring in India. Achala has also contributed to the by exploring how students are socially constructed in Denmark, England, Ireland, Germany, Poland, and Spain.
Affiliations:
Centre for Research in Inclusion
Leadership, effective education and policy
The India Centre for Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development
KEY ROLES
- Co-director, Centre for Research in Inclusion | 黑料社 (March 2024 - present)
- Programme coordinator, Southampton Education School Research Seminar Series (January 2023 - present)
- Ethics Reviewer for research conducted by students and staff in the Faculty of Social Sciences (July 2021-March 2024)
- Academic Integrity Officer (BSc, PGCE primary and secondary, MSc Army programmes) for the Southampton Education School (July 2021-August 2022)
Member of the associations:
- UK鈥檚 Higher Education Academy
- British Educational Research Association
- Comparative and International Education Society
- British Sociological Association
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Research
Research interests
- Sociology of education
- Shadow education
- Educational inequality聽
- Social mobility聽
- Comparative research聽
Current research
Achala鈥檚 research focuses on investigating educational issues sociologically. Her current interests include education delivery systems (formal and supplementary) and schooling practices in Asia, and students鈥 aspirations and transition into higher education in Europe.
Key publications
1. on schooling, parenting, teacher identity and shadow education in India:
- Gupta, A. (2023). Revisiting educational advantage and social class: A Bourdieusian analysis of middle-class parents鈥 investment in private schooling and shadow education. British Journal of Sociology of Education. DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2022.2126824. []
- Gupta, A. (2023). The nature and scope of English private tutoring: an analysis of the shadowing process and middle-class identity in globalising India. In K. Yung & A. Hajar (Eds.) International Perspectives on English Private Tutoring: Theories, Practices and Policies, Hong Kong: Palgrave Macmillan. []
- Gupta, A. (2022). Middle-class mothers鈥 participation in tutoring for spoken English: A case of unlocking middle-class identity and privilege in contemporary India. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2022.2131738. []
- Gupta, A. (2022). A 鈥楽hadow education鈥 timescape: An empirical investigation of the temporal arrangement of private tutoring vis-脿-vis formal schooling in India. British Journal of Educational Studies. DOI: 10.1080/00071005.2021.2024137. []
- Gupta, A. (2022). Social legitimacy of private tutoring: an investigation of institutional and affective educational practices in India. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 43(4), 571-584. []
- Gupta, A. (2021) Exposing the 鈥榮hadow鈥: An empirical scrutiny of the 鈥榮hadowing process鈥 of private tutoring in India, Educational Review. DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2021.1931038. []
- Gupta, A. (2021). Teacher-entrepreneurialism: A case of teacher identity formation in neoliberalizing education space in contemporary India. Critical Studies in Education, 62(4), 422-438. []
- Gupta, A. (2020). Heterogeneous middle-class and disparate educational advantage: parental investment in their children鈥檚 schooling in Dehradun, India, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 41(1), 48-63. []
2. on education policy enactments (Double Burden Reduction policy) in China:
- Gupta, A. & Zhao, X. (2023). Teachers鈥 work under responsibilising policies: An analysis of educators鈥 views on China鈥檚 2021 educational reforms. Journal of Education Policy. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2023.2236067. []
3. on constructing higher education students in European countries (England, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Poland and Spain):
- Brooks, R., Gupta, A., Jayadeva, A., Lainio, A. and Lazetic, P. (2022) Constructing the Higher Education Student: Perspectives from across Europe, Bristol, Policy Press. []
- Gupta, A., Brooks, R. and Abrahams, J. (2023). Higher education students as consumers: A cross-country comparative analysis of students鈥 views in Europe. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2023.2234283. []
- Brooks, R., Gupta, A., Jayadeva, S., Abrahams, J., & La啪eti膰, P. (2021). Students as political actors? Similarities and differences across six European nations. British Educational Research Journal, 46(6), 1193-1209. []
- Brooks, R., Gupta, A., Jayadeva, S., Abrahams, J. (2021). Students鈥 views about the purpose of higher education: a comparative analysis of six European countries. Higher Education Research & Development, 40(7), 1375-1388. []
- Brooks, R., Abrahams, J., Gupta, A., Jayadeva, S. & La啪eti膰, P. (2021). Higher education timescapes: temporal understandings of students and learning. Sociology, 55(5), 995-1014. []
- Brooks, R., Gupta, A., Jayadeva, S. (2021) Higher education students鈥 aspirations for their post-university lives: evidence from six European nations, Children鈥檚 Geographies (Special Issue: 鈥楾he Place of Aspirations鈥: Young People鈥檚 Socio-spatial (Im)mobilities). DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2021.1934403. []
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Current research
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Supervision
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Teaching
Dr Achala Gupta teaches various modules across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Southampton Education School:
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BSc Education (2021-present) |
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MSc Education (Army) (2021 and 2022 cohorts) |
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MSc Education |
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Achala leads the MSc Education Module, Education and Society, previously known as The Social Context of Education and Lifelong Learning (2022-23-present) and BSc Education and Education Psychology module, Internationalisation and Education (2023-24-present).
She also supervises and examines BSc, MSc and MSc Army, and PhD dissertations on topics concerning educational inequalities, shadow education, and international students.
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Biography
is a lecturer at Southampton Education School, 黑料社.
Before joining the 黑料社, Achala worked as a Research Fellow (at UCL Institute of Education and the University of Surrey) on an ERC-funded Eurostudents project (led by ). This comparative study aimed to investigate the various ways in which students are made sense of within the European higher education sector.
Before joining the Achala was based at the Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore as a Research Associate on another comparative project that focused on Global Asian Universities and International Students鈥 Mobilities (in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and China).
Achala鈥檚 doctoral research was an institutional ethnography that examined practices in the formal education system from the vantage point of private tutoring (鈥榮hadow education鈥) in contemporary India (see, Gupta, 2019; 2020; 2021 for discussions on this topic).
Prizes
- British Journal of Sociology of Education Best Early Career Article (shortlisted) (2020)
- CIES Higher Education SIG鈥檚 Best Book Award (2024)
- British Journal of Sociology of Education Best Early Career Article (shortlisted) (2020)
- CIES Higher Education SIG鈥檚 Best Book Award (2024)
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Prizes
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