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Social capital is generally considered beneficial for students’ school adjustment. This paper argues that social relationships among pupils generate social capital at both the individual and the class levels, and that each has its unique effect on pupils’ performance and well-being. The sample in this study consists of 1036 children in 60 first-grade classes in 46 Dutch elementary schools. Multilevel regression results show that a substantial proportion of the variance in school adjustment can be attributed to the class level and that both individual-level and classroom-level social capital have substantial effects on school adjustment. At the individual level, the size of one’s network is more important than its structure. At the collective level, social capital also has a ‘dark side’ because it can have negative effects on adjustment, lowering the academic performance in a class. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The provisions of the Higher Education Act (2004) have renewed interest in widening participation research. Therefore, this paper explores the development of this scholarly field, primarily in the United Kingdom, by examining major trends in the study of higher education. Political debates related to higher education, the prevailing structure of the sector and predominant sociological perspectives have largely shaped the empirical and theoretical concerns of widening participation research. These delimiting factors have resulted in incomplete accounts of the barriers to higher education, which do not fully explore the relationship between students' social characteristics, learning experiences and university careers. Furthermore, contemporary research runs the risk of reinventing the wheel and replicating the mistakes of the past, since there has been a collective act of forgetfulness with respect to earlier contributions. In contrast, this paper provides guidelines to facilitate a holistic agenda for future widening participation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we draw on concepts from policy sociology to analyse the new equity deal for schools in Queensland, Australia. We examine this 'new deal' through an analysis of the language of 'inclusion' and 'educational risk' in key policy documents associated with a major reform of public education in Queensland. In addition, we analyse the interview talk of key policy actors involved in policy framing, carriage and monitoring. We note that globalism has increased rather than reduced social inequity. At the same time, good quality accessible education can play a crucial role in challenging the inequalities produced by global informationalism. In Queensland, Australia, equity is still on the agenda, but in radically new neo-liberal economic ways. The focus is individualistic - each individual needs to be tracked because they are potentially 'at-risk' of 'school failure'. Identification of 'at-risk' students has been devolved to the level of the school and district, and intervention strategies have to be devised at the local level. Stories of success are then to be shared/networked with other schools. We suggest that while 'target group equity' strategies were limited in terms of addressing issues of social exclusion and inequity, the new deal on equity, a market-individualistic approach is an inadequate alternative. In tough times you stick together. ... This was Labor's 'inclusive' society: a social democracy sustained by the wealth-generating power of free markets and economic integration with the world economy, and made strong by a practical ethic of social cooperation and fair distribution. (Watson, 2002, p. 316) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of Ulrich Beck, particularly his concept of the 'individualised individual', is increasingly cited by educational social scientists. As yet, there have been few empirical investigations that consider how applicable and relevant is the notion of the 'individualised individual' in understanding how people make sense of their lives (for an exception, see Reay, 2003 ). This paper considers Beck's assertion that social class is of increasingly less importance as society shifts from a first to a second modernity. Interviews were carried out into the career experiences of a group of academic women working in higher education institutions. The conclusions reached suggest that if Beck's theory is to be useful in understanding contemporary actors in contemporary societies then the critical concepts he introduces need to be articulated by researchers in more complex ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two general groups of methods of calculating achievement gaps (between groups of students in education) in common current usage, similar to those used to calculate social segregation in space and social mobility over time. Each type of method clearly seems valid to its proponents, yet their results in practice are radically different, and often contradictory. This brief paper considers both of these methods and some related problems in the calculation of achievement gaps, in an attempt to resolve the contradiction. The issue is a relatively simple one, but one with significant implications for social researchers as well as commentators in many areas of public policy using similar indicators of performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the complexity of West Indian pupils' adaptations to school Their situation is such that ability, hard work and a commitment to academic achievement may not be sufficient in the struggle for academic success West Indian pupils face the additional barrier of staff ethnocentrism, which must be handled without reinforcing the widespread belief that they represent a challenge to teachers' authority The size of this task is examined through the use of detailed case studies of pupils drawn from ethnographic research in a single multi-ethnic inner-city Comprehensive The paper describes the strategies which allowed one West Indian pupil to succeed academically, whilst a group of his peers experienced increasingly conflictual teacher-pupil relations which culminated in academic failure and, in one case, expulsion from the school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates certain aspects of the debate about the causes of unequal educational performance By analyzing two illustrative explanations of performance. It shows that the debate appears to be shaped by a fundamental theme in modern Western culture, the nature-culture opposition. This suggests that the knowledge that we have concerning educational performance is influenced not only by the social and political interests and positions of educators and researchers, but also by more basic cultural concerns, and if we want to understand both educational performance and the debate surrounding it, we need to be aware of this broad influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the long-term association of family socioeconomic status (SES), educational, and labor force outcomes in a regional US longitudinal sample (N = 2264). The results offer insights into the mechanisms underlying the role of family SES in transitions from secondary schooling to early work experiences. It was found that the academic achievement gap associated with SES widens during secondary schooling due in part to course-level tracking. Family SES relates to college enrollment mainly via its association with academic gains in school, but also through family income and father’s occupational status. Family SES is weakly but significantly related to adult offspring’s earnings but more strongly related to occupational status. Educational qualifications and cognitive skills make independent contributions to the explanation of labor force outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notion of ‘competitive excellence’ is an enduring cornerstone of UK educational policy. Most recently, expanding and adapting New Labour’s Academy project with the introduction of free schools, the Coalition’s approach advances and embeds competitive market-based forms of community engagement in education. Responding to this policy paradigm, this paper draws upon history in order to open up the notion of excellence. Through examining alternative practices of achievement and success in histories of community education, I aim to disturb the unquestioned attachment of educational excellence to the ideals of competitive meritocracy. Comparing across two community educational movements – Socialist Sunday Schools (established 1892) and Black Saturday Schools (established 1968) – I explore how achievement and excellence have been mobilised to very different educational aims. In distinct times and circumstances, both of these community initiatives practiced versions of educational achievement that challenged dominant knowledge hierarchies and underlying assumptions of incapability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the corporeal turn in social theory, this paper explores how the body is implicated in pedagogic practice and leaning. Focusing on the body has usually been recognised as part of the regulative rather than instructional discourse in schools. Work has begun to redress the mind–body imbalance through the ‘corporeal device’ developed from Bernstein’s ‘pedagogic device’, the fundamental relay through which social inequalities are reproduced in schools. To properly recognise the way bodies act as pedagogic relays requires a robust understanding of persons as multi-sensorial acting beings. Examples for choreographic pedagogy are used to illuminate the complex and multimodal features of instructional discourse and to suggest how the moving body could be enlisted to enhance students’ access to formal academic discourses and better understand why some young people fail to achieve in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on qualitative data that focus on the educational strategies of middle-class parents of Black Caribbean heritage. Drawing on Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, capital and field, our focus is an investigation of the differences that are apparent between respondent parents in their levels of involvement with regard to schools. We conclude that, within a broadly similar paradigm of active involvement with and monitoring of schools, nuanced differences in parental strategising reflect whether academic achievement is given absolute priority within the home. This, in turn, reflects differential family habitus, and differential possession and activation of capitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Netherlands, educational attainment is the result of a sequence of separate educational transitions. Because of the tracked nature of the Dutch educational system, students do not make binary stay-or-leave-decisions at each transition. After having entered one track of secondary education, students can change tracks during the entire secondary course. The initial track and the secondary school outcome therefore are incongruent for a significant proportion of the Dutch students. As social background partly predicts initial track placement, track changes and successful termination of the course, we suggest distinguishing conditional and unconditional effects of family background in the transition to secondary school outcome. This paper complements findings of previous research by taking into account the tracked structure of the Dutch educational system and the entire sequence of transitions in secondary education. For the empirical analysis, repeated cross-sections from the Family Survey Dutch Population (1992, 1998, 2000 and 2003) are used. Multinomial logistic regressions reveal that inequality in the outcome of secondary education is partly explained by the fact that initial track placement is socially selective and because this initial inequality is even enhanced by track changes during secondary education. The remaining 'conditional' effect of parental education, however, indicates that parental education works on top of this selection to prevent drop out. Inequality in secondary school outcome thus is a cumulative result of social background effects in a sequence of educational transitions throughout secondary education. Decreasing inequality over time is entirely explained by decreasing inequality in the transition from primary to secondary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can an explanation of the origins of social disparities in educational achievement be assisted by a critical examination of Bernstein’s sociology? This central question is approached by a consideration of the status of Bernstein’s socio‐linguistic thesis. The focus is on the nature of the explanations provided. The paper asks: What is the explanatory force of Bernstein’s structuralism? What is the relationship between Bernstein’s sociological explanations and Vygotskian psychological explanations? What are the effects for pedagogy of cognitive socialization mediated by language‐use consistent with Bernstein’s theory? The answers to these questions may pose a challenge for sociologists of education engaged with Bernstein’s sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the educational experiences of a group of African Caribbean and mixed ‘race’ young people from the perspectives of their parents. The discussion is set within a national context where children of African Caribbean origin are one of the lowest achieving minority ethnic groups in the UK and are disproportionately one of the highest ethnic groups of children excluded from school. The parents recount a pattern of cumulative negative experiences which for many of the children results in academic underachievement and becoming demotivated to learn, by a system that they feel has rejected them, or imposed exclusion. The story is hardly new but it provides important further evidence that schools need to tackle head-on factors such as low teacher expectations and negative stereotyping of young black people and their contribution to black underachievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a qualitative study about pedagogic practices in the family. The pedagogic code underlying family practices is characterized and related to specific social groups. Students' achievement is discussed in relation to family and school pedagogic practices. The analysis of family pedagogic practice was based on a model derived from Bernstein's theory. The model considers two main dimensions, the coding orientation and its specific realizations in both the instructional and regulative contexts. It provided indicators of the family discursive context and the form in which knowledges and values are transmitted. The model developed allowed a deep and delicate analysis of the family socializing context. The study showed that families differ in their coding orientation and pedagogic practices, and suggested that there are factors other than social groups to determine family's pedagogic practice. It also suggested that specific familial practices may explain children's differential achievement at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines notions of 'educational time' with particular reference to the work of Basil Bernstein. It focuses closely on the 1967 Plowden report as a particularly appropriate policy case study to demonstrate how different constructions of time can exist within the same document. It then develops educational models originally mapped out by Bernstein, arguing that a full understanding of the areas of consensus and conflict among these models is vital if we are to understand how teaching professionals think about the future. The paper addresses the following questions: How does time affects education? What influence does this have on educational outcomes? How does this relate to public policy initiatives? Assuming a tacit, collective understanding of time and the future can undermine the very policy intentions a government might be seeking to promulgate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies which have investigated the influence of education on adult earnings art almost exclusively concerned with men and take hale account of family influences on either education or later earnings Those studies which have information on women's earnings focus on Lender differential rather than differences between women in opportunities and outcomes This paper which examines the influence of education and family background on the midlife earnings of a national cohort of British women born immediately after the Second World War is an attempt to redress this situation. It shows that the few women who net able to take full advantage of the expansion us educational opportunities and achieve high educational qualifications earned significantly more us adult life than less educated females Family background played an important role, both through its effect on early educational achievement and attitude to school work, which in turn influenced the type of secondary school attended and the achievement of educational qualifications, and also by well-educated mothers raising their daughter's career expectations or providing successful role models In adult life, employment characters which indicated a long-term commitment to fill-time work and the decision not to have children, or to delay childbearing, were also important predictors of later economic success in this cohort, but did not explain the prior effects of education and family background. Advanced educational qualification were the key to economic success for women born in the early post-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the 'the social class attainment gap' in education has become a government priority in England. Despite multiple initiatives, however, little has effectively addressed the underachievement of working-class pupils within the classroom. In order to develop clearer understandings of working-class underachievement at this level, this small research study focused on local social processes by exploring how secondary school teachers identified and addressed underachievement in their classrooms. Our analysis shows how teachers' identifications of underachieving pupils overlapped with, and were informed by, their tacit understanding of pupils' social class position. While many teachers resisted the influence of social class, they used stereotypes to justify their practice and expectations, positioning pupils within educational and occupational hierarchies. This, we conclude, suggests the need for more systematic attention to the micro-social processes that provide the conditions through which working-class underachievement is produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I aim to determine whether, in view of the trend of educational expansion in recent decades in Brazil, the role played by schooling in the labor market of Brazilian major metropolitan regions has changed, becoming positional rather than absolute. To this end, I analyze the influence of schooling on people's income and occupational status. Based on data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD-IBGE) for years 1995, 2005 and 2015, I compare ordinary least squares models that use absolute and positional measures of schooling. The results show that the explanatory power is greater for positional measures than for absolute ones, and that this advantage has increased over recent decades. As a result, it is argued that although educational expansion possibly makes the chances of access to a certain absolute schooling level less unequal, it also ends up undermining the opportunity structure related to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using newly available data from the Trajectories in Education and Careers Study, the first longitudinal study on a representative sample of high school students in Russia, we examined the importance of investments in human and cultural capital on students' mathematics and reading standardized examinations, as well as on the likelihood of matriculation into a selective institution of higher education. Studying mathematics and the Russian language on one's own for more than a year was positively and significantly associated with standardized scores and with an increased likelihood of matriculating into a selective university. A higher number of books at home was also associated with an increased likelihood of matriculating into a selective university. The findings are discussed within the particular institutional context of the Russian educational system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has shown that students from less educated families are less likely to study both science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and arts and humanities subjects. This article used a large representative sample of university students in England to explore the relationship between students' enjoyment, perception of ability and socio-economic disparities in subject choices. Although these attitudes differed by students' parents' education level, and were associated with subject choices, disparities in choices persisted when accounting for these differences. Students with less educated parents were less likely to choose arts and humanities and more likely to study social sciences, law and business, over STEM, even when their enjoyment and perception of ability in subjects were similar. Students whose parents had higher levels of education were more likely to choose STEM over arts and humanities as their enjoyment of STEM increased, suggesting different underlying processes informing student choices by social background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the theoretical foundations, methodological approach and results of a school support project involving 154 primary school pupils, with low academic performance, in a region of Catalonia (Enxaneta Project). Drawing on the later work of Basic Bernstein, specifically his notion of pedagogic device, the project is based, on a theoretical level, on the use of the notions of classification and framing and of distributive, recontextualising and evaluative rules to analyse the dominant pedagogic practice and propose alternatives. Methodologically, the project works through an intense, professional mentoring with children and families. It is based on mixed pedagogies with four objectives: a) to question the current school pedagogic practice characterised by a regulatory discourse that generates inequalities in its link between power, knowledge, pedagogic identities and forms of consciousness; b) to enable families to enter the school physically and symbolically and share it with mentors and teachers; c) to improve teacher expectations towards children and families; d) to reduce or subvert, as the final goal, initial inequalities. The results obtained (quasi-experimental design) enable us to affirm that the Enxaneta children improve significantly more than the non-Enxaneta children in linguistic and mathematical tests, but not in school marks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines gender gaps in academic performance (grades in mathematics and reading) between boys and girls of ninth-grade elementary schools in the Czech Republic. Our analysis is based on 2003 data from the Programme for International Student Assessment, encompassing the academic performance and family background of ninth-grade pupils. Similar to research on other countries, we find that girls strongly outperform boys in grades in Czech language, but that this gender gap is not explained by measured ability in reading nor on family background or student attributes. We also find gender bias in mathematics grades, after controlling for measured ability and other factors. Girls are also substantially more likely than boys to apply to secondary grammar schools, as well as aspire to a college education, even after controlling for measured ability. We put forward a number of theoretical perspectives that shed light on the possible causes of these empirical findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Through the lens of post-structural agency, this article focuses on how self-identified smart girls strategically negotiate their academic identities within the gendered terrain of the school. Based on interviews with 51 smart high school girls in Canada, our analysis complicates current narrative of girls’ easy achievement in school. Participants discussed balancing the hazards of being overly academic with the rewards of academic success. In response to this tension, girls carefully and consciously performed ‘smart girlhood’, drawing on resources that are more available to some girls than others, and indicating that girls’ academic success is neither easily embraced nor unambivalently accepted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Educational under-achievement by a section of the Maori population is a persistent problem for New Zealand. This article is a theoretical examination of the practice and consequences of a culture-based curriculum that is promoted as the solution. We develop the argument that not only is the ‘cultural solution’ at odds with the complex social reality in New Zealand, but it is itself a contributor to educational under-achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Selective and comprehensive school systems vary in both the degree and timing of selection. To study the consequences of such variation, cross-national comparisons are usually undertaken. Given that cultural differences between countries affect pathways and outcomes, apportioning causal influence in such studies can be difficult. In 1970s Britain, selective and comprehensive systems coexisted. This enables us to compare the influences of organisational arrangements without the complication of national cultural differences. We analyse, for children of various abilities, while taking account of gender and class, the effect on achievement of experiencing comprehensive or selective schooling. Assuming that contextual and individual factors work conjuncturally in producing outcomes, we employ Ragin’s configurational Qualitative Comparative Analysis. By treating cases in the National Child Development Study as configurations of factors, we are able to analyse the sufficient and necessary conditions for achievement. We find that system differences affect only some high-ability children’s educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to address concerns about schools as locations where students grapple, materially and subjectively, with class-based notions of femininity, the promotion of heterosexuality and the support of hetero-normative, middle-class families against, and in contrast with, their own working-class families, identities and experiences. Two interconnecting but relatively neglected issues in education, those of sexuality and class, are addressed in order to highlight the interconnections in living out these often analytically separated categories. While the classed, gendered and sexualised aspects of schooling have been explored by several commentators, often these do not combine in such a way to cast light upon the interconnecting inequalities faced by working-class lesbians, or the outcomes of these. This piece draws upon the findings of an empirical ESRC-funded project 'Working-class lesbians: classed in a classless climate'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the implications of human mobility specifically the presence of refugees in a particular state towards the quality of education that the children of refugees get. Human mobility and forced migration have resulted to cultural and social differences as well as disparity in statuses and access to basic services and rights. In the United Kingdom, there are at least 60,000 refugee and asylum-seeking children of compulsory school age with underdeveloped educational programs due to lack of educational research on their behalf.

This study examines the impact of a country's security unrest on student retention. It draws on the key factors that influence retention worldwide, adopts Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital and also brings in concepts related to terrorism and security unrest traditionally absent from theories on student retention. Based on a case study carried out in Israel on 50 full-time undergraduate students, this study suggests that the difficulties created by a country's political environment alone do not play a significant role in student retention. However, when coupled with the salient features that negatively impact retention worldwide, difficulties created by a country's security situation may increase tendencies to leave or consider leaving higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of social differences in educational achievement as a social fact presents the sociology of education with a challenge to which it has responded with indifferent success. It is argued that contemporary explanations that dismiss the existence and relevance of differences in cognitive performance arising as a consequence of class variation in socialisation are likely to misrepresent the real causes of inequality/difference. The substantive discussion, organised around six questions dealing with the explanatory capacity of this concept, suggests that a satisfactory theory of inequality of educational opportunity will need to concern itself with the effects of socialisation on cognition. Some implications for educational practice and policy-making are briefly noted in conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to identify and re-present the experiences and views of a sample of children who have been 'missing' from education, and those of their parents/carers. Access to this hard to reach population has been possible as a result of an innovative interventionist tracking system, responding to pupil mobility, developed by the Education Authority in the fieldwork area. Semistructured interviews were conducted with parents/carers, children and young people with the aim of obtaining a demographic profile of families and eliciting a chronology of factors that participants saw as contributing to a child going missing from school systems. Three distinct life-course groups emerged from participants' accounts illustrating different degrees of disengagement from external systems. The authors conclude with a discussion of the different challenges each life-course group presents, for education policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the 'sociology of pedagogy', the present article addresses a continuing challenge for teachers and policy-makers. The challenge is how to encourage disengaged learners to take up offers of educational success. The article brings important theoretical frames from the sociology of pedagogy into current research debates about 'productive pedagogies'. Focusing on the social relations of pedagogy, the article promotes a theoretical and empirical imperative to look keenly to the insights provided by students to construct clearer solutions to the challenge of providing engaging pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the appearance of Bowles & Gintis' (1976) 'correspondence thesis', neo-Marxist theorizing about educational change has gone in several directions. Different approaches have emphasized capitalist reproduction requirements, contradictions between these requirements and the democratic state, hegemony theory and processes of class formation. While studies with affinity to a Marxist problematic of subordination and oppression have become more theoretically open and empirically grounded, some of the core explanatory ideas of the historical materialist perspective tend to have been ignored or dismissed. In consequence, the main conceptual, empirical and theoretical limitations of the correspondence thesis are being repeated, notably in arguments about a 'post-Fordist' form of education. After a discussion of the contemporary relevance of historical materialism's core ideas for explaining educational change, the limited foci of neo-Marxist theories of education are critically reviewed. Some suggestions are then made for overcoming these persistent limitations--most notably a hyper-rationalistic image of education and a lack of direct attention to both production relations and educational relations per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis concerns the way in which socio-economic disadvantage affects the educational performance of children from different ethnic groups Nationally representative data was provided by the 10 year follow-up survey of the Child Healt and Education Study The effects of nine indicators of socio-economic disadvantage on the intelligence, and reading test scores of United Kingdom, West Indian and Asian children were investigated Differences were found between these groups of children in terms of the relationships between the disadvantage indicators and the test scores The most striking result was the lack of sensitivity of the West Indian children's test scores to socio-economic conditions Attention was focused on this phenomenon, the analysis being repeated using United Kingdom and Asian children who had been matched with the West Indian it was found that, unlike Asian and United Kingdom children, the test scores of West Indian children did not show any statistically significant relationships between the nine criteria of socio-economic disadvantage Subsequent analyses indicated a relationship between mother's social class and also mother's age and reading attainment in West Indian children Various methods of explaining these results are discussed It is suggested that further research should be pursued which investigates first whether different measures of socio-economic disadvantage are relevant to West Indians, and secondly whether other non-socioeconomic dimensions of disadvantage may help to explain the unique position of West Indian children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the developing debate about the aims and nature of multiracial education in the UK, the substantive issue about the educational performance of ethnic minority pupils figures prominently This article challenges many of the conventional wisdoms about the differential performance of White, Asian and Afro-Caribbean pupils, firstly by looking at the way in which the notion of 'underachievement' has been conceptualised in both research studies and reviews of literature Secondly, by examining critically the ways in which the `evidence' for black underachievement has been generated and presented. It is concluded that a neglect of certain methodological and conceptual issues in this area has not only led to impoverished analyses but also to the perpetuation of stereotyped images of the intellectual potential of black and Asian pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]