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The emotional power of educational branding: exploring parental decision-making in South Australia’s preschool choices
Journal article   Peer reviewed

The emotional power of educational branding: exploring parental decision-making in South Australia’s preschool choices

Valentina Bertotti
Discourse, Vol.46(5), pp.583-597
2025

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#4 Quality Education

Source: InCites

Abstract

preschool discursive analysis early childhood marketisation affect theory neoliberalism Early childhood education
While some research has focused on the implications of choice discourses in childcare settings, insufficient attention has been paid to how parental figures of preschoolers are activated and summoned through contradictory discourses which position them as both rational and emotional. Through a qualitative analysis of twenty parent questionnaires, this paper captures the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion flowing from these processes, and the transformation of the preschool sector in South Australia. Using an affective-discursive analytical approach, the research highlights how language, discourse and imagery are powerful tools that engage peoples' feelings and emotions within a broader classed, raced, and gendered social environment. Its contribution to knowledge, therefore, rests in its effort to broaden our understandings of the meanings and practices of parents choosing a preschool for their child, by adding affect theory to what otherwise might be 'only' a discursive analysis of the wider macroeconomic and political trends linked to neoliberalism.

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