Caught in the triangle of mobility: social,residential and pupil mobility

This article examines the school choices of families who have recently experienced downward mobility during the economic crisis in Spain. Based on semi-structured interviews we analyse the educational strategies of the families in a Bourdieusian framework, focusing on how they cope with the loss of their perceived social status. Prior to the crisis, these families of working-class origin improved their social position as a result of their success in economic capital accumulation with a humble increase in social and cultural capital. Our research suggests that the concerns of families confronted with downward social mobility are manifested in tensions related to their school choice in terms of their strategies of resistance and negotiation with regards to the ownership, social composition and corresponding perceived quality of the school. School can symbolically represent the last resort, an indispensable investment in one’s own future and that of the next generation.     

Ideological tensions in the educational choice practices of modern Greek Cypriot parents: the role of social capital

The rapid modernisation process of Greek Cypriot society has created a cultural environment with an amalgam of traditionalist and modernist ethical attitudes, and antagonisms between them concerning, among other things, social advancement. These have implications for the way individuals and families develop various strategies of choice‐making for post secondary school destinations and for issues of social justice. We focus on social capital networks and resources. Our arguments are supported by the analysis of attitudes, beliefs, practices and resources available to a sample of 24 Greek Cypriot parents for choice‐making about the educational and occupational futures of their children. In discussion we offer modelling of these processes plus, more speculatively, implications for the possible emergence of a transcendent postmodernist cultural recontextualisation of social capital practices in contemporary Cyprus and for the ethics of social capitalism more generally.     

Publicly minded,privately focused: Western Australian teachers and school choice

In the growing school choice research literature little, if any, attention has been given to the choices made by the providers of educational services. Yet the workplace preferences shown by teachers and school administrators influences educational practice in important ways and helps illuminate some of the important issues raised in the school choice literature, such as the impact of marketisation on school planning, infrastructure and service delivery in public and private schools, social justice and resource distribution. Following discussion and analysis of the tendency for educational anthropologists to ignore teachers and their work, I use the stories of two teachers to help illustrate the research upon which this essay is built. Based on in-depth interviews with fifteen teachers in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, the primary aim of this paper is to ‘give voice’ to teachers by describing and analysing the social implications of the workplace choices exercised by a range of teachers. Issues of permanency, care, systemic needs, commitment to different forms of social equity, gender and age all emerge as important influences on the choices made by individuals when it comes to the type of school they choose to work in.     

Cultural capital,curriculum policy and teaching Latin

Latin is currently being trialled as a subject in 40 state secondary schools in England. This paper focuses on one of the justifications of this trial: that teaching Latin in state secondary schools provides students with cultural capital which in turn counters social injustice. By taking the example of Latin as a starting point, I reach two conclusions about cultural capital. The first is that providing students with cultural capital can be good for some individuals, and so justified on a case-by-case basis depending on context. However, this justification does not hold for curriculum policy making. My second conclusion is that in the long term, pursuing cultural capital as part of curriculum policy exacerbates the social injustices it purports to address. Wherever an activity is introduced for the sake of cultural capital rather than its educational value, educationally valuable activities risk being pushed off the curriculum, potentially degrading the educational value of the curriculum. In the case of teaching Latin, it may provide benefits to particular students, but as part of curriculum policy it risks exacerbating social injustices and undermining the educational value of school curricula. Going beyond the place of Latin on the curriculum, I argue that all appeals to cultural capital provide a poor basis for curriculum policy making.     

教育期望、社会资本与贫困地区教育发展

本研究的目的在于考察家庭、学校的社会文化资本对儿童教育参与程度以及学业成绩的影响。通过研究发现,儿童的教育期望、学业自信、学业努力和学校情感问题时他们学业成绩的提高有积极的作用．这种影响并不亚于我们以往所研究的家庭社会、经济特征对儿童学业成就的影响;家庭、学校的社会和文化资本因素以及学校课堂环境时儿童的教育期望、学业自信、学业努力程度的提高和学校情感问题的解决都起着重要的作用。因此,在分析影响学业成绩的因素时,不能单纯考虑儿童的家庭经济和人力资本特征。还要考虑与家庭、学校相关的一些社会文化资本因素。我们可以通过社会、文化资本以及学校环境的改善来提高贫困地区儿童的学业成就。从而达到发展贫困地区教育的目的。     

作为文化资本的传统文化：以古典文学名著为例

文化资本是解释教育再生产过程的重要概念工具。在过去几十年中，相关研究越发重视文化资本发挥作用的社会环境，凸显本土文化带来的教育优势。本研究考察了大学生在上大学之前接触古典文学名著如何影响个体的学习能力、高考成绩、进入顶尖大学学习的概率、大学专业选择、幸福感和自尊感。多元统计分析结果表明，接触古典文学名著可以显著提升个体的学习能力和学习成绩，并促进个体展现出更高的自尊感和幸福感。尤其在高考成绩提升方面，古典文学名著的作用是其他文化产品所不能替代的。但是，通过古典文学名著所达成的高考成绩提升却不足以帮助个体进入顶尖大学。     

Do parental attitudes toward and expectations for their children's education and future jobs matter for their children's school achievement?

The traditional discourse in the scholarship on cultural capital theory has focused on how exclusive participation in elite status culture by students from higher socioeconomic status families benefits their learning in schools, the effects of which are most evident in linguistic subject areas such as reading achievement. However, some scholars have argued that cultural capital is not restricted to elite status culture but could include parental familiarity with school evaluation standards and job market requirements, and that the effects could transcend languages to include performance domains with more objective evaluation that are susceptible to school influences (e.g. mathematics and science). The present study systematically examines this position using data involving 96,591 15‐year‐old students from 3602 schools in eight countries who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012. Results of three‐level hierarchical linear modelling showed positive relationships between seven cultural capital variables and student mathematics achievement. The cultural variables comprised: home educational resources; parental educational attainment and occupational status; parental expectations of their children's educational attainment, future career in mathematics and school; and parental valuing of mathematics. In particular, the three parental expectations variables had substantively larger effect sizes on student achievement than the other cultural capital variables. The results demonstrated that parental familiarity with school evaluation standards and future job requirements, especially as measured by parental expectations, may constitute cultural capital that privileges student mathematics achievement in schools.     

The dynamic role of cultural capital in the competitive school admission process: a Chinese experience

School choice in China is a parent-initiated bottom-up movement characterised by the payment of a substantial ??choice fee?? to the desired school, and parents?? positional competition through the use of cultural, social and economic capital, before and during the school choice process. This study demonstrates that Chinese middle class parents?? cultural capital and their efforts to help their children to accumulate cultural capital through after-school activities greatly increase their positional advantage in the competitive school admission process in China. The Chinese practice of acquiring cultural capital outside the family has to some extent extended the development of Bourdieu??s cultural reproduction theory. The widespread practice of such actions by middle class families clearly illustrates how cultural capital can be used to maintain social stratification by perpetuating educational inequalities that lead to unequal life opportunities for differently schooled people.     

高校毕业生就业流动与社会分层中的资本运用

高校毕业生就业流动经历了从个体显著到群体显著的演变,并将随着时代的发展不断变化。高校毕业生就业流动与社会分层是一个复杂的过程,受到多方面因素的影响。从文化资本而言,学历证书作为体制状态的文化资本,影响着高校毕业生的就业流动与社会地位;从人力资本而言,人力资本存量提升了高校毕业生在就业市场中的地位,为高校毕业生提供了向上流动的资质;从社会资本而言,高等教育通过社会资本进行阶层复制,那些社会资本雄厚的学生比其他学生更有机会获得更好的职业和流动到高阶层社会地位中去。     

Social class and educational decision-making in a choice-driven education system: a mixed-methods study

Social class differences in educational decision-making form an important explanation for persisting educational inequalities, particularly in choice-driven systems with early tracking. Nevertheless, little is known about the process preceding these choices, especially when school and track choice are interrelated. Building on school choice literature, this study aims to explore how parents from different social backgrounds shape their decision-making process at the transition from primary to secondary education in Flanders (Belgium). To this end, we adopt an explanatory mixed-methods design. Quantitative findings from a parent survey conducted in 36 primary schools were complemented with 32 in-depth interviews with parents. Our findings show two parental profiles regarding educational decision-making, which can be traced back to differences in social and cultural capital. Although effective navigation of the complex field of educational decision-making proved to be strongly class related, parents’ educational and immigrant biographies led to specific approaches, transcending the middle class versus working class binary.     

British South Asians and pathways into selective schooling: social class,culture and ethnicity

This article is a theoretical and empirical study of the ways in which different South Asian groups, Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani, achieve entry into the selective education system, taking into consideration the factors of social class, ethnicity and culture. In‐depth interviews with 42 South Asian school pupils from three single‐sex selective schools (one independent and two grammar), 47 South Asian school pupils from three secondary modern schools, and 25 South Asian parents are used to interpret perceptions, attitudes towards, and experiences of selective school entry. It is found that that certain working‐class South Asian parents possess strong middle‐class attitudes towards selective education, irrespective of their ability to facilitate it as a function of their financial, cultural, or social capital. Middle‐class South Asians were not only highly motivated but also possessed the economic, social and cultural capital to ensure successful selective school entry. In general, social class status was the strongest factor in the likelihood of gaining entry into selective schools. This research contributes to the literature on selective education as well as on the intricacies of the British South Asian educational experience.     

Cultural activities and educational progress: evidence from Russian longitudinal data / Actividades culturales y progreso educativo: evidencia basada en datos longitudinales procedentes de Rusia

This study analyses the possible influence of cultural activities such as visits to theatres, museums, exhibitions, zoos, circuses, excursions, trips and campaigns on educational progress. It uses longitudinal data taken from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, which is a unique nationally representative survey; the sample consists of schoolchildren aged six to14. The methodology makes use of the panel data structure and logit regressions to effectively control for time-invariant determinants of educational achievements, and the method directly controls for socioeconomic status, students’ health, public school, region, age and gender. Consequently, this study accurately measured the isolated effect of cultural activities. The findings suggest that these cultural activities correlated positively with educational progress, as the cultural capital theory predicts. However, participation in these activities without parents did not show significant effects. Therefore, parental participation seems necessary to observe a positive association between cultural activities and educational progress, in accordance with the social capital theory.     

Social and cultural capital in educational research: issues of operationalisation and measurement

This article aims to contribute to the debate of how theoretical concepts can be operationalised when researching educational issues. Specifically, it examines the application of the concepts of social and cultural capital in empirical research seeking to provide explanations for educational processes relating to post‐secondary school choice making in contemporary Cyprus. The article argues that there are limitations in the various ways social and cultural capital are operationalised quantitatively in empirical research as often they do not capture adequately the full extent of the social dynamics that they draw attention to. Instead the use of qualitative methods where the researcher probes for details into the practices, habits, beliefs, and attitudes of individuals are seen as having powerful exploratory and explanatory potentials to address these limitations.     

义务教育均衡发展的社会资本障碍及其政府治理

The balanced development of compulsory education, with a focus on the goal of educational equality, is both a matter of policy orientation and a practical educational issue. At present, people are mostly concerned with the unbalanced state of development of compulsory education, its causes, and issues regarding its administration. Various modes of production, policy choices, and institutional arrangements during different periods have been the practical, historical causes of differences in regional compulsory education, differences between urban and rural areas, and differences between schools. A direct consequence of the unbalanced development of compulsory education has been the emergence of irregularities in school selection. During the process of school selection, the strength of family and school social capital is increasingly influential, and it has increasingly negative effects: circumventing the policy of going to school near home, aggravating differences between families because of family and school social capital, and therefore damaging the prospect of educational equality. On this account, we present a constructive proposal for government policy to reduce the detrimental effects of social capital by means of reasonable policy choices and institutional arrangements. With prerequisite balanced allocation of school resources for compulsory education, the government reduces the role that family and social capital play in school selection and constructs a benignly competitive environment wherein school social capital works to placate social issues aroused by the intervention of the social capital of families and schools in school selection. __________ Translated by Zhang Lin from Beijing Shifan Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban) 北京师范大学学报 (社会科学版) (Journal of Beijing Normal University (Social Sciences)), 2008, (2): 24–32     

Teachers’ guidance,family participation and track choice: the educational disadvantage of immigrant students in Italy

In Italy, as in other European countries, students of foreign origin are over-represented in the vocational school tracks, with relevant consequences on their limited chances of attaining a university degree. While research has long underlined the weight that a family’s social, cultural and economic capital has on a child’s school performance, educational expectations and choices, the role that school and teachers themselves play in the transition from lower to upper secondary school has been rarely explored in Italian sociological research. The present study aims to bridge this gap in the literature, showing how teachers’ orienting practices, interacting with highly differentiated patterns of family participation in the school guidance process, can play a relevant role in reproducing foreign-origin students’ segregation into the lower tracks of the school system.     

The role of social capital in the explanation of educational success and educational inequalities

This article examines the role that social capital plays in school success and in the explanation of social and ethnic inequalities in the German educational system. Based on Coleman's well-known concept of social capital, different aspects of social capital are distinguished, including social network composition, parent–school interaction and intrafamilial social capital. In sum, the overall results indicate that the different aspects of social capital influence the school performance of pupils. In addition, social capital endowment is found to be of relevance for the explanation of inequalities in school grades between social classes and ethnic groups. In this respect, the analyses indicate that social capital endowment is part of the underlying mechanism responsible for educational inequalities.     

Bungie Jumping and Supervision of Higher Degree Students

Abstract

This article engages with four key informants from a school into the meaning of soccer in the lives of the informants and the disparity between the school's practice and the cultural meanings attached to soccer, at the school and community‐based clubs. We will demonstrate how their ability and the cultural knowledge developed through playing club soccer over most of their lives provided them with an identity and meaningful membership in communities built around soccer. Drawing on Bourdieu (1884), we see this physical and cultural knowledge as embodied capital. While it provided them with meaningful membership, social status and position within the communities of their soccer clubs, it had far less value at school. Within the community of the school, their embodied cultural capital provided them with few opportunities to develop a sense of social distinction, personal identity, self‐expression and self‐determination.     

教育身份:农村成员社会流动的符码——基于实证研究的思考(三)

教育身份作为一种象征性的社会地位标志通过教育文凭体现出来。不同学校的文凭代表着不同“含知量”的文化资本,意味着不同的社会资源交换价值。对文化资本较为薄弱的农村成员来说,教育身份的社会地位获致效用成为了个人社会流动的重要力量。     

认识人力资本理论:一个扩展的读书笔记

传统人力资本理论是一种流水线式的投入-产出分析模型,关注投资、收益及个人和政府的教育投资策略,从而使学校系统的教育生产和工作场所的生产率差异的产生成为有待解构的“黑箱”。而对教育生产过程和工作场所生产过程的研究表明,组织结构和生产关系作为内生变量直接影响学校系统的产出、生产率的变化和人力资本效益的发挥,因此传统的投入-产出模型引入制度的变量可以产生更为乐观的对教育经济价值和社会价值的预测。