Search

The article analyses the main benefits of a Portuguese programme, launched in 1996, which was designed to support schools in segregated districts (TEIPs). The first part of the article presents a theoretical framework, before moving on to the main features of the TEIP programme in contemporary Portuguese society and education. An explanation of the methodological procedures applied in the research is also included. In the second part of the article, the main results are discussed. In broad terms, the programme succeeded in reducing violence patterns and drop-out rates. On the other hand, an improvement in academic outcomes is slow and the links to local communities and the labour market are variable and, in both cases, highly dependent of local variables. In the conclusion, the authors systematise the opportunities and challenges of such a "territorial approach" and point out some key factors in enhancing its success.

This paper argues that processes of marginalisation experienced by white working-class students provide insight into systemic problems with the English education system. White British students eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) are a low attaining group. This research investigates factors affecting their engagement and achievement. Fieldwork in three comprehensive secondary schools in a London borough used qualitative methods to gather data on the perspectives of staff, students and parents. Using Bourdieu's conceptual tools to guide the analysis, the study found that performance pressure and funding cuts can result in an institutional habitus which privileges academic attainment, side-lines the social and emotional aspects of learning and misrecognises working-class capitals. Such habitus fosters pedagogic practices which reduce levels of felt safety and limit opportunities to actively engage and exercise agency in the classroom. These conditions often make fragile the learner identity of white working-class students (and others) and prompt disengagement from school.

The educational disadvantages of migrant students are a persistent problem in many Western countries. Against this background, policymakers often call for more diversity in the teacher workforce, arguing that migrant students might benefit from being taught by migrant teachers. Despite the popularity of this claim, there is almost no research-based rationale for increasing the diversity of teachers in Europe. This paper is a step toward filling this research gap for Germany, aiming to assess whether migrant teachers reduce ethnic educational disadvantages. Our analyses are based on a nationally representative large-scale assessment of ninth graders that provides information on the migration status of both students and teachers, with achievement tests and teacher-assigned grades in German as dependent variables. The results run contrary to widely held expectations, indicating little evidence that migrant students benefit from being taught by migrant teachers.

The study draws on the theory of 'migrant optimism' and anticipated discrimination to examine whether a gap in educational expectations and achievement exists between immigrant and native students in Qatar and explores whether the impact of educational expectations on educational achievement is contingent upon the migratory status of students (migrant or native students). It utilizes data on students aged 15-16 obtained from the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The results show that migrant students have higher educational expectations and achievement than Qatari students, while female students in all groups enjoy better performance and hold higher educational expectations. The results also show that the gender gap among Qatari students is bigger than the gender gap among migrant students. Educational expectations have a significant and positive impact on achievement among Qatari and migrant students alike. These results and their theoretical implications are further discussed in the paper.

Asian migrant students are typically considered as educational paragons in the West. They have been shown to surpass other students in standard indicators of educational success. However, viewing this success with a purely ethnic framework is inadequate and essentialising. It conflates the experiences of various groups into a homogenised 'Asian' category and ignores the crucial role played by other properties and processes, such as social class and engagement with hierarchical education systems. This paper incorporates these multiple dimensions to provide a fuller account of 'Asian' success. Using large scale longitudinal survey data from Australia, we demonstrate the internal differences in the educational outcomes of Asian groups, and outline the stratifying role played by parental cultural capital. Most importantly, we show how unequal engagement with schools and the curriculum produces unequal outcomes. This intersectional approach enables a more theoretically integrated understanding of the factors that produce educational inequality in diverse societies.

Research shows that the concept of academic futility is promising for studying the mechanisms that cause differences in educational outcomes in general and vocational programmes. The aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis that in the Czech Republic, a country with one the largest VET sectors in Europe, the worse achievement of students in vocational programmes can also be explained by academic futility, and to explore the relationship between futility and the track attended. The conceptualisation of academic futility returns to the three-dimensional concept proposed by Brookover and Schneider in 1975. The analysis was carried out on a sample of 4871 upper secondary students. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit of the model for a two-level (student and class) concept of academic futility. Two-level structural equation modelling showed a negative relationship between futility and achievement and a lower culture of futility in classes with higher socio-economic status.

In this article, we examine conceptualisations of luck evoked by a select group of elite students studying in Oxbridge, when accounting for their academic success. The emphasis on luck in their narratives is categorised into three themes. The students linked their luckiness to deservedness, used luck as a way to express humbleness, and attributed their success to factors of chance. These themes are analysed against the backdrop of strong institutional support they receive as part of attending elite schools and being scholarship recipients. By being attentive to how luck is evoked in these narratives, we show that luck does not have an essential meaning and can produce different representations of legitimacy. The paper proposes the integration between critical and pragmatic sociological perspectives in order to advance our understandings of how elite groups qualify for the positions they obtain, how they define themselves and make sense of their educational merits.

The focus of this paper is to investigate what type of support high-achieving Swedish upper secondary students from families with low socioeconomic and educational capital, identified contributed to embark on a successful educational career. The analytical framework of the study is concepts that have emerged in empirical studies inspired by both Coleman's and Bourdieu's understanding of social capital concerning educational performance. The data analysed in this study are interviews with 23 students between 17 and 19 years old, 10 male and 13 female students. A substantial group of the students in this study is of migrant background. The support these students identified as critical in their successful educational experience was a combination of academic and emotional support by the teachers, a caring home environment and unconditional emotional support, and socialising with peers that had similar educational ambitions. When all these support dimensions line up for these students, they can embark on a successful educational career.

The Australian governments' centrepiece Indigenous strategy, the 'Closing the Gap' framework, established in 2008 to address systemic Indigenous disadvantage, is underpinned by the concept of 'school readiness', which expects Indigenous families to bring their children to school ready to learn. The education system commonly blames Indigenous culture as a contributing factor in explaining the 'Gap'. In this paper, we reverse the mirror of 'school readiness', examining what is known about the readiness of the education system to meet the aspirations of Indigenous learners. Using a meta-synthesis methodological approach, this paper provides an overview of research about the issues and challenges facing Australian schools to be ready to respond to the educational needs of Indigenous children. Findings reveal that the lack of teacher, curriculum, pedagogical, school environment and culture readiness are the four key aspects to consider. We conclude by discussing the implications and gaps in the existing Indigenous education strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on data drawn from a study exploring the educational strategies of 62 Black Caribbean heritage middle-class parents. In this paper, we consider the respective roles of race and class in the shaping of parents' educational strategies, deploying an analysis that focuses on their intersection and seeks to hold both race and class in productive tension. Drawing on empirical data, we illustrate how parents' classed and raced identities shape their interactions with school staff. (Contains 2 notes.)

This paper is concerned with the role of friendship in the construction of social capital within schools for students in poverty. It undertakes an analysis of friendship through the lens of students who have experienced turbulence. "Turbulence" refers to a type of pupil mobility between schools (not to be confused with social mobility) understood as when a child enters or leaves school at a non-standard time. An examination of the ways in which "turbulent" children seek to make friendships provides an opportunity to consider the ways in which different types of friendships affect the construction of social capital in school. This paper examines these processes for six "turbulent" children from low-income families, and explores the different orientations to the construction of social capital between these children and their non-"turbulent" friends. This study extends our understanding of the role of friendship in the construction of social capital and may help to develop an agenda for considering the importance of friendship, social capital and education for children in poverty. (Contains 3 tables.)

Over the last decade it is young women who have come to be widely understood as the bearers of educational qualifications. It is girls who are now seen to have "the world at their feet" and to be able to attain the glittering prizes of academic success associated with elite universities and top occupations. And it is upper-middle-class girls, in particular, who appear to be achieving the most; a "super class" of pupils who are supposedly able to effortlessly succeed in everything that they do. Drawing on ethnographic data generated during a research project in a single-sex, selective girls' school this paper will explore what it meant for one group of elite girls to achieve and succeed in school. The paper will examine the different versions of success made available to the girls in this school, the girls' differing relations to these discourses and their intersection with other relations of power. The paper will question the popular post-feminist picture of the smart, sassy and successful "top girl" who is able to "have it all" and in the conditions of her own choosing. The paper will suggest that, even for the girls in this school, success was not easy to perform or "own" for oneself. Despite attending a school where success was openly celebrated, the paper will demonstrate the ways in which many girls still felt restricted to perform success in narrow and competitive ways that clashed with dominant discourses of femininity.

Academic development has played a significant role in creating university "learning and teaching" as an object of policy scrutiny and intervention. While academic development is a new field, its practices have been productive of new learning and teaching regimes in both the global "north" and "south". This paper explores the emergence of academic development as a practice and the agentic understandings of its actors in creating the academic development project in the face of global unevenness. The paper offers a critical account of the emergence of academic development practice in both the global "north", drawing on the intertwined histories of the UK and Australia, and in the global "south", drawing on the example of South Africa. In looking at the ongoing debates about academic development the paper argues that in constituting teaching and learning as its object, other more radical, feminist and critical pedagogies, which are capable of dealing with the power and curricula, were marginalised. (Contains 1 note.)

This paper is concerned with the longstanding question of policy for those referred to nearly half a century ago by the Crowther Report as the "bottom half"; those mainly working class children who, in a sense, are "selected for failure". The issue of selection is a matter of concern in countries around the world and has been at the centre of renewed political debate in Britain during 2005-2006. Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has been keen to advance a policy of "freeing-up" secondary schools so as to provide "diversity" and "more choice for parents and pupils". Critics regard such a policy as involving "selection by other means". This paper discusses questions of social class and inequality that are bound-up with the issue of selection. The paper provides an account of "Blairite" New Labour policy and discusses its closeness to new right education policy. The paper concludes with a discussion of radical proposals and observations on the prospects for the future. (Contains 9 notes.)

This paper presents a study of dominant educational discourses through textual critique and argues that such an approach enables education studies to preserve an important distinction from teacher training. The texts deconstructed here are specific to English education, but the discourses at work have international relevance as the rhetorics of accountability, performance and measurement (which we call cells of discourse) have global reach. Ward described a national picture in England whereby the great majority, if not all, of education studies undergraduate courses appear to be taught alongside, or within (through shared modules) teacher training programmes. But from a sociological position, these are two increasingly conflicting arenas--the study of education and the training of teachers. In response, Ward called for the subject to radicalize teacher education. The implications of this are significant if education studies is to retain a status as agent of critique. In this paper we return to the theme of education studies as a discrete practice from teacher training and suggest that any acceptance of a proximal relation to teacher education is counter-productive. In so doing we offer three contemporary examples of the subject at deconstructive work, scrutinizing the published standards for teacher training in England, employer discourse and the Tomlinson report (commissioned by the English government to offer proposals for the reworking of vocational education) and the new curriculum for adult literacy in England. Particular attention is given to analysing the ways in which such texts speak the currently powerful discourse of standards. (Contains 3 figures.)

This paper examines the justification for a culturally responsive educational initiative to raise the educational underachievement of Maori students in New Zealand. The initiative is justified by claims that the recognition in the classroom of a student's cultural identity will lead to the student's educational achievement. Using an account of a small study of teachers and their beliefs regarding New Zealand's culturally responsive educational policy "Kia Eke Panuku," we argue that such a claim is not established and it is the development of an epistemic identity which is more likely to be the means for Maori to attain educational success.

The educational disadvantages of migrant students are a persistent problem in many Western countries. Against this background, policymakers often call for more diversity in the teacher workforce, arguing that migrant students might benefit from being taught by migrant teachers. Despite the popularity of this claim, there is almost no research-based rationale for increasing the diversity of teachers in Europe. This paper is a step toward filling this research gap for Germany, aiming to assess whether migrant teachers reduce ethnic educational disadvantages. Our analyses are based on a nationally representative large-scale assessment of ninth graders that provides information on the migration status of both students and teachers, with achievement tests and teacher-assigned grades in German as dependent variables. The results run contrary to widely held expectations, indicating little evidence that migrant students benefit from being taught by migrant teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study draws on the theory of 'migrant optimism' and anticipated discrimination to examine whether a gap in educational expectations and achievement exists between immigrant and native students in Qatar and explores whether the impact of educational expectations on educational achievement is contingent upon the migratory status of students (migrant or native students). It utilizes data on students aged 15–16 obtained from the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The results show that migrant students have higher educational expectations and achievement than Qatari students, while female students in all groups enjoy better performance and hold higher educational expectations. The results also show that the gender gap among Qatari students is bigger than the gender gap among migrant students. Educational expectations have a significant and positive impact on achievement among Qatari and migrant students alike. These results and their theoretical implications are further discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asian migrant students are typically considered as educational paragons in the West. They have been shown to surpass other students in standard indicators of educational success. However, viewing this success with a purely ethnic framework is inadequate and essentialising. It conflates the experiences of various groups into a homogenised 'Asian' category and ignores the crucial role played by other properties and processes, such as social class and engagement with hierarchical education systems. This paper incorporates these multiple dimensions to provide a fuller account of 'Asian' success. Using large scale longitudinal survey data from Australia, we demonstrate the internal differences in the educational outcomes of Asian groups, and outline the stratifying role played by parental cultural capital. Most importantly, we show how unequal engagement with schools and the curriculum produces unequal outcomes. This intersectional approach enables a more theoretically integrated understanding of the factors that produce educational inequality in diverse societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we use interview data collected in a four-year longitudinal study of first-generation university students to answer the question: how might the ethnicity of first-generation students impact their university experiences? After briefly examining previous literature written on the educational achievement levels of ethnic-minority Canadians, specifically Asian-Canadians, and on first-generation students, we explain the concept of social capital and how it relates to ethnicity. The findings extracted from the interviews in this paper suggest that, although first-generation students lack general knowledge about university, their ethnic identities serve to ease their disadvantaged positions in university by serving as both bonding and bridging social capital in the form of relationships, peer groups and ethnic clubs.

In the course of educational expansion, student populations have become more diverse. This paper represents an international literature review on the topic of first-generation students (FGS), i.e. students whose parents have not obtained a higher education qualification. On the basis of more than 70 research articles and reports on FGS from several countries, we find that the focal points in FGS research concern their pre-college characteristics, mobility factors, decisions about institution, degree and subjects, FGS' experiences at university, and academic outcomes. Summarising the state of research on these topics, we point to two problems: (1) the international incommensurability of data on FGS due to differences in how FGS are defined and researched; (2) the depiction of FGS' problems as individual rather than structural problems. We recommend that structural changes such as making organisational structures in higher education institutions more transparent are in order instead of offering special support programmes only for FGS.

The International Baccalaureate's (IB) branding and reputation targets academic high achievers aiming for university entrance. This is an empirical examination of the growing popularity of this transnational secondary credential amongst local populations in Australia, focusing on its uptake across the community, and the discourses underpinning its spread and popularity. This paper reports on online surveys of 179 parents and 231 students in schools offering the IB as an alternative to Australian state curricula. It sets out to understand the social ecology of who chooses the IB and who it chooses. Statistically significant differences between IB and non-IB choosers were found in terms of family income, parent education, student aspirations, transnational lifestyles and neoconservative, neoliberal and cosmopolitan beliefs. The analysis demonstrates how the reproduction of advantage is accomplished through choice behaviours in stratified educational markets. (Contains 8 tables.)

This paper presents some of the findings that emerged out of a national survey carried out in the school year 2005-2006 in various parts of Greece. The main aim of the study was to explore the effects of various "family" factors on the "student performance" in the (national) higher education entrance examinations. From the analysis of data it becomes evident that, despite numerous attempts at educational reform in the Greek education system in the last 30 years, inequalities among students based on family background still exist. The study has shown that the educational level and occupational status of parents represent two of the major factors affecting student performance--directly or indirectly--through their influence on previous achievement. It has also documented that the interplay between economic, cultural and social capital in shaping educational and occupational "pathways" is still an immensely important dimension in sociological studies of education. (Contains 1 figure, 2 notes, 1 graph and 10 tables.)

Low teacher morale, coupled with extremely poor schooling outcomes for students as measured on standardized tests have increasingly been reported in the media in South Africa. As elsewhere, there is growing demand for the reorganisation of teachers' work in order to enhance school performance. The paper investigates the ways in which current market-led government policies have sustained past inequalities between schools and between teachers. Drawing on Savage's notion of assets, the analysis focuses on how the material and organisational conditions of teachers' work combine to affect teachers' morale. The analysis is based on available sets of data on inequalities--at the societal level, at the level of the homes and communities of the children that attend school, at the level of schooling system and at the level of teachers. It proposes a conceptual typology in relation to the four levels of data we provide, which shows interesting differential effects on teachers' morale and the transformation of teachers' work in South Africa. We argue that the relations between enduring economic inequalities in South Africa, an underspecified new curriculum and the bureaucratization of teachers' work have created an intractable pattern of accumulation of educational disparity among teachers in South Africa. Teacher morale needs to be considered in the context of these structural conditions. (Contains 7 notes.)

This paper offers a reading of the Dovrat Report with the aim of assessing the convoluted and dialectical manifestations of the state--"the weak and the strong state"--in the era of global neo-liberalism. The Dovrat Report (Ministry Of Education 2005) includes a set of recommendations aiming to bring about structural and comprehensive changes in Israel's education system. We argue that this report, like many other educational reforms implemented elsewhere in the world and articulated against neo-liberal ideology, actually promotes a Janus-faced political entity in the field of education (and similarly in other fields). Thus, while the state seemingly withdraws from educational affairs through decentralisation and privatisation policies, it increases its involvement in these affairs in dictating the goals of education; in setting uniform standards of scholastic achievements; in the cultivation of children possessing the values and skills required by neo-liberal globalisation; and in imposing a national value system intended to render them loyal citizens of their patria. In promoting these contradictory goals, the state often operates indirectly; it develops a tight but elusive regulatory system operated from a distance. Thus, through a set of well-defined activities, the strong state functions at the background of the weak state, challenging claims that the state crucially loses its power under the global order. (Contains 8 notes.)

Participation in the national exams is a very difficult task for Greek lyceum students as their access to higher education is highly dependent on their performance in them. This paper focuses on the students' preparation for the national exams and especially their resort to out-of-school supportive lessons in relation to their socio-economic background. The study examines whether the widening of participation reduces social inequalities or not. It also examines the possibility of their resort to different forms of out-of-school support and the cost of it in relation to their families' socio-economic background and their performance. The findings give evidence that there is a close relationship between parents' socio-economic state and the form of out-of-school support as well as the students' performance in the national exams. High social class parents increase the possibilities of their children's turn to the out-of-school support and especially to the most expensive and effective forms of it, as it can ensure high performance and access to high academic status departments. It has become a means for high social class parents to help their children face competition and ensure the reproduction of their social privileges. All this leads to the conclusion that in spite of the fact that the vast majority of the Greek students attend public lyceums, the out-of-school support has led to the commercialization of education and the public character of education tends to be dismissed. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

The challenges for education systems of student disaffection in working-class schools are well known, but the implications of high levels of student optimism in the absence of the resources needed to support academic success have been less often considered. Through examination of the school experiences post-compulsory learners in Australia, this paper seeks to identify some of the ways in which disadvantaged schools are able to command confidence and optimism from students. Analysis of the perspectives of students in schools catering to large numbers of second-generation Turkish-background students suggests that gender and ethnicity organise, make legible and obscure the production of educational disadvantage in these sites. I discuss the implications of strong confidence and faith in schools amongst students in light of contribution of this investment to a wider system of management and legitimisation of inequalities in schooling. (Contains 5 tables, 1 figure, and 7 notes.)

Research shows that the concept of academic futility is promising for studying the mechanisms that cause differences in educational outcomes in general and vocational programmes. The aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis that in the Czech Republic, a country with one the largest VET sectors in Europe, the worse achievement of students in vocational programmes can also be explained by academic futility, and to explore the relationship between futility and the track attended. The conceptualisation of academic futility returns to the three-dimensional concept proposed by Brookover and Schneider in 1975. The analysis was carried out on a sample of 4871 upper secondary students. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit of the model for a two-level (student and class) concept of academic futility. Two-level structural equation modelling showed a negative relationship between futility and achievement and a lower culture of futility in classes with higher socio-economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine conceptualisations of luck evoked by a select group of elite students studying in Oxbridge, when accounting for their academic success. The emphasis on luck in their narratives is categorised into three themes. The students linked their luckiness to deservedness, used luck as a way to express humbleness, and attributed their success to factors of chance. These themes are analysed against the backdrop of strong institutional support they receive as part of attending elite schools and being scholarship recipients. By being attentive to how luck is evoked in these narratives, we show that luck does not have an essential meaning and can produce different representations of legitimacy. The paper proposes the integration between critical and pragmatic sociological perspectives in order to advance our understandings of how elite groups qualify for the positions they obtain, how they define themselves and make sense of their educational merits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is to investigate what type of support high-achieving Swedish upper secondary students from families with low socioeconomic and educational capital, identified contributed to embark on a successful educational career. The analytical framework of the study is concepts that have emerged in empirical studies inspired by both Coleman's and Bourdieu's understanding of social capital concerning educational performance. The data analysed in this study are interviews with 23 students between 17 and 19 years old, 10 male and 13 female students. A substantial group of the students in this study is of migrant background. The support these students identified as critical in their successful educational experience was a combination of academic and emotional support by the teachers, a caring home environment and unconditional emotional support, and socialising with peers that had similar educational ambitions. When all these support dimensions line up for these students, they can embark on a successful educational career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade it is young women who have come to be widely understood as the bearers of educational qualifications. It is girls who are now seen to have 'the world at their feet' and to be able to attain the glittering prizes of academic success associated with elite universities and top occupations. And it is upper-middle-class girls, in particular, who appear to be achieving the most; a 'super class' of pupils who are supposedly able to effortlessly succeed in everything that they do. Drawing on ethnographic data generated during a research project in a single-sex, selective girls' school this paper will explore what it meant for one group of elite girls to achieve and succeed in school. The paper will examine the different versions of success made available to the girls in this school, the girls' differing relations to these discourses and their intersection with other relations of power. The paper will question the popular post-feminist picture of the smart, sassy and successful 'top girl' who is able to 'have it all' and in the conditions of her own choosing. The paper will suggest that, even for the girls in this school, success was not easy to perform or 'own' for oneself. Despite attending a school where success was openly celebrated, the paper will demonstrate the ways in which many girls still felt restricted to perform success in narrow and competitive ways that clashed with dominant discourses of femininity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic development has played a significant role in creating university 'learning and teaching' as an object of policy scrutiny and intervention. While academic development is a new field, its practices have been productive of new learning and teaching regimes in both the global 'north' and 'south'. This paper explores the emergence of academic development as a practice and the agentic understandings of its actors in creating the academic development project in the face of global unevenness. The paper offers a critical account of the emergence of academic development practice in both the global 'north', drawing on the intertwined histories of the UK and Australia, and in the global 'south', drawing on the example of South Africa. In looking at the ongoing debates about academic development the paper argues that in constituting teaching and learning as its object, other more radical, feminist and critical pedagogies, which are capable of dealing with the power and curricula, were marginalised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various papers published within the issue, including one on curriculum inequalities in England by Alice Sullivan, Anna Zimdars and Anthony Heath, one on the beneficiaries of the Assisted Places Scheme by Sally Power, Andrew Curtis, Geoff Whitty and Tony Edwards and one the educational success of a group of elite girls by Alexandra Allan.

This paper examines the use of logic models in the development of community initiatives within the AmeriCorps program. AmeriCorps is the civilian national service programme in the U.S., operating as a grants programme to local governments and not-for-profit organisations and providing low-cost labour to address pressing issues of social inequality. Logic models are a popular tool in programme planning, which graphically illustrates the relationship between a programme’s goals, resources expenditures and expected outcomes. Drawing from institutional ethnographic data, this paper examines how the use of logic models within the programme planning process create particular modes of defining and intervening in the achievement gap, thus shaping interventions by youth workers at the level of individual behaviour and obscuring structural roots forms of inequality. It is argued that in such ‘technologies’ of neoliberalism, we can understand how neoliberal public policy works to influence interventions at the community level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a theoretical argument regarding the power of school to shape parental involvement in culturally informed ways. The paper emerges out of preliminary fieldwork among Jewish middle-class parents in a town in northern Israel, during which our attention was drawn to the intense activity in and around their children’s transition to primary school. This activity became a lens for the exploration and articulation of a theoretical claim, according to which parental involvement is not just a matter of the fit or lack of fit between the cultural capital imported from home into school, as posited by much of the relevant literature. Rather, the cultural shaping of parental involvement takes placewithin and throughencounters between school and family: by means of the school’s cultivation of ‘proper’ disposition and comportment for parents, the power of emotional community and the recruitment of a key cultural symbol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that, in contrast to the great reports such as Crowther, Newsom Robbins and Plowden, recent government papers relating to educational in England pay little attention to values that should shape the standards to be achieved, the knowledge to be transmitted and the virtues to be nourished. Whilst legislation over the past 60 years has promoted a vision of 'education for all', what has predominated has been a concept of learning restricted to that which privileges the small number who can perform well within a narrowly defined understanding of academic studies. It is argued that the need to measure and standardise performance has resulted in a marginalisation of the broader vision of learning, which should be pursued in order to enable us to live fully human lives. Such an approach will require a transformation of educational ideals and refusal to accept the reductionist practices inherent in the language of performance management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of quantification is a powerful development shaping many domains of life today. In the area of education, for example, performance measurement, testing and ranking have become common tools of governance. Quantification is not a neutral way of describing society, but a process of valorisation. It has three sociologically relevant effects. Firstly, the availability of quantitative data strengthens social comparisons. Secondly, quantitative measurement of social aspects fosters expanded competition. Thirdly, there is a trend towards increased social hierarchisation because representations such as tables, graphs, lists or scores ultimately transform qualitative differences into quantitative inequalities. This paper unfolds the argument that quantitative ascriptions of status ranks change our order of inequality because things that previously could not be compared with each other are made comparable. Moreover, it asks who bears the power of nomination in the regime of numbers and which forms of contestation might be available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) PISA for Schools, a local variant of the more-renowned 'main PISA' test that measures and compares individual school performance on reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems. Here, I address the governance implications of how PISA for Schools data has been taken up by the transnational European Schools System (ESS). Drawing suggestively across new 'relational' thinking around data-driven modes of governance, as well as interviews with key policy actors within the ESS, I show how PISA for Schools reflects contradictory logics within the ESS, in which the inherently context-based goal of 'becoming European' is juxtaposed with the desire to employ decontextualised international evidence. I conclude by exploring how the perceived need for such data, associated with the global authority of the OECD, can produce a problematic focus on data-driven practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common criticisms of school choice programs is that, instead of improving student achievement, they would increase school segregation. Parents may use different criteria to choose a school, such as proximity, school quality, or the school's ethnic/racial composition. As a result, the system would be segregated based on the parent's preferences. This research examines the school preferences of indigenous parents and whether ethnic discrimination influences their decision-making process. Longitudinal national-level data from Chile were analyzed using OLS with fixed effects. The results show that indigenous students, particularly those who have suffered ethnic discrimination in middle school, prefer high schools with a higher percentage of indigenous students. Furthermore, it was found that the level of acts of discrimination occurring in middle schools increases as the percentage of indigenous students rises. However, when the proportion of indigenous and non-indigenous students is similar, indigenous students are less likely to face discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the justification for a culturally responsive educational initiative to raise the educational underachievement of Māori students in New Zealand. The initiative is justified by claims that the recognition in the classroom of a student's cultural identity will lead to the student's educational achievement. Using an account of a small study of teachers and their beliefs regarding New Zealand's culturally responsive educational policy Kia Eke Panuku, we argue that such a claim is not established and it is the development of an epistemic identity which is more likely to be the means for Māori to attain educational success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic advantage associated with having a university-educated parent may be intrinsic to that condition or depend on the proportion of university-educated parents in a society. If the latter, the expansion at university level will bring about a decrease in the average performance of children from university-educated families. I capitalize on the research opportunity that offers a late-expansion case such as Spain and assess how the academic achievement of students coming from university-educated families has evolved across the successive PISA waves. I document a strong decline that is partially explained by the increasing number of university-educated parents (particularly fathers) without a highly-skilled job. Furthermore, as the expansion of university causes the increase of hypogamous university-educated families where girls have an advantage, I test whether the decline in academic achievement is different for boys and girls. I observe no decline in academic achievement for girls coming from hypogamous university-educated families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, an increasing number of students seek private supplementary tutoring, known as 'shadow education.' Various studies report social class differences in the use of shadow education. High-SES families may invest in shadow education as a form of concerted cultivation, seeking to improve their children's school achievement. In this study, we apply meta-analytic structural equation modeling to explore relationships between parental education, income, and the use of shadow education across nations and educational contexts. We find robust relationships between parental education, income and the use of shadow education. Moreover, we assess a mediating role of shadow education in the relationship between SES and achievement. Shadow education appears to fulfill a competitive function for privileged families who seek to secure advantage in educational competition. We conclude that educational research, particularly research concerned with inequality of opportunities, needs to take account of the progressively prominent position of shadow education in the educational landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Baccalaureate’s (IB) branding and reputation targets academic high achievers aiming for university entrance. This is an empirical examination of the growing popularity of this transnational secondary credential amongst local populations in Australia, focusing on its uptake across the community, and the discourses underpinning its spread and popularity. This paper reports on online surveys of 179 parents and 231 students in schools offering the IB as an alternative to Australian state curricula. It sets out to understand the social ecology of who chooses the IB and who it chooses. Statistically significant differences between IB and non-IB choosers were found in terms of family income, parent education, student aspirations, transnational lifestyles and neoconservative, neoliberal and cosmopolitan beliefs. The analysis demonstrates how the reproduction of advantage is accomplished through choice behaviours in stratified educational markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I first examine how the dominant view of children as incompetent is constructed in the field of sociology, highlighting the constructions of them as playful, vulnerable and passive. Then, I deconstruct these dominant constructions and argue that they do not do children justice. To restore justice to children through reconstructing the concept of childhood, I suggest that children should neither be constructed as workfree and carefree, nor as innately innocent and vulnerable. Moreover, I suggest that the common practice of legally fixing a chronological identity for adults within the life course should be challenged, and that the relationship between social structures and agency should be understood in terms of relational rather than co-deterministic theories. Finally, to promote agency in children at the policy level, I suggest that they should be empowered to participate actively in various settings, particularly schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some of the findings that emerged out of a national survey carried out in the school year 2005–2006 in various parts of Greece. The main aim of the study was to explore the effects of various family factors on the student performance in the (national) higher education entrance examinations. From the analysis of data it becomes evident that, despite numerous attempts at educational reform in the Greek education system in the last 30 years, inequalities among students based on family background still exist. The study has shown that the educational level and occupational status of parents represent two of the major factors affecting student performance – directly or indirectly – through their influence on previous achievement. It has also documented that the interplay between economic, cultural and social capital in shaping educational and occupational ‘pathways' is still an immensely important dimension in sociological studies of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper’s topic is the educational upward mobility of members of the working class. It seeks to find out what makes educational success possible and aims to build a theory of educational upward mobility. Data have been collected through biographical-narrative interviews of Austrian graduates from working-class backgrounds. Their narratives have been analysed abductively, by creating hypotheses from observation of empirical phenomena. As a result, the need for higher education for identity is revealed as a constitutive factor for educational upward mobility. Thus, members of the working class are educationally upwardly mobile when their identities are related to higher education. This finding might explain why policies which do not address fundamental societal and institutional changes often fail to increase the educational success of members of the working class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now nearly thirty years since Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative administration introduced the Assisted Places Scheme (their first education policy) and over ten years since New Labour abolished it. The Scheme, which was designed to provide a ladder of opportunity for academically able students from poor backgrounds to attend private schools, is of more than historical interest. It can be used to illuminate enduring sociological concerns about the relationship between home and school. This paper draws on retrospective interview data to reveal how the Scheme was experienced by its more disadvantaged beneficiaries. Revisiting classic sociological analyses from the 1960s and 1970s, it unravels the complex interactions between home background, friendship networks and school cultures and shows how these contributed to contrasting experiences of commitment, detachment, estrangement and alienation. These differing modes of engagement with schooling appear to have had lasting effects on our respondents and influenced their subsequent careers and orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the stratification of the curriculum according to parents' education, gender, ethnicity and school sector in England, focusing on year 10 subject choices. Using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, we analyse both year 10 subject choices and the factors that may motivate these choices, such as liked and disliked subjects, attitudes to subject choice and the extent to which choices were shaped by parents, teachers or the young people themselves. The social structure of curriculum choice is mapped using Multiple Correspondence Analysis, which reveals the hierarchy of subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continued lower academic attainment of Black (especially Black Caribbean) pupils is now well established. Yet, to date there has been no single coherent national Government strategy that has successfully closed the gap in educational attainment between either Black and White pupils or between Black pupils and the national average. Academic and policy debates centring on the causes and potential ways of addressing this gap remain marred by controversy and disagreement. This paper is based on qualitative research, which explores how staff and pupils at an inner city secondary school in the south of England construct academic success. Focusing on one aspect of the findings, it reveals that staff subscribe to two forms of success: an inclusive, low D to G grade success and an exclusive, high A* to C grade success, each of which are seen as attainable only by certain types of pupils. The appearance and behaviour of Black pupils, particularly those engaged in what is termed 'Black street culture', are seen as directly at odds with the aims of the school and therefore minimize their likelihood of attaining success in exclusive terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between a school's design and architecture and its educational practices, in light of critical theories regarding place, space and education. The study was based on 63 observations during the school daily activities and 75 semi-structured interviews with students, teachers and other staff, as well as two focus-groups consisting of school graduates. We identified two major elements that are shared by the school's physical-architectural and pedagogical infrastructure: fluidity and synoptical practices of visibility, that construct two principles of a subversive structure, benevolent and therapeutic control, and detouring practices of power relations and the creation of emancipating spaces. The article proposes a conceptual framework to illuminate the findings and discusses theoretical and practical implementations that are essential for future policies regarding educational practices for youth at risk for dropout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]