Social mobility: The potential of a genealogical approach

This article highlights the potential of taking a genealogical approach to researching social mobility based on empirical insights generated from a qualitative case study in a secondary school located in the South East of England. The study involved interviews with 42 students and the data lead to a deeper understanding of the role of families in inter- and intra-generational social movement. We begin by highlighting some limitations in existing research on social mobility. Next, the role of households and families in conditioning an individual's identity, dispositions, aspirations and choices is emphasised. We then present findings from the analysis of 42 genealogical work histories over three generations and explore the role of education and family background in shaping young people's employment aspirations. We argue that education has had little impact on overall mobility rates and suggest that whilst education has a significant role in mediating social mobility, the importance of family context should not be overlooked.     

Pupil mobility in schools and implications for raising achievement

This paper examines the causes of pupil mobility and good practice in schools to address mobility issues. Pupil mobility is defined as ‘a child joining or leaving school at a point other than the normal age at which children start or finish their education at that school’. The first part draws upon evidence of a survey, which explores the views of headteachers on the nature and causes of pupil mobility in schools and the priority they give to addressing pupil mobility issues in their schools. It examines the cause of mobility in schools in the context of mobile groups. This is followed by the challenges for managing mobility and strategies to address pupil mobility in schools. The second part of the paper outlines successful strategies that minimize the effects of mobility in schools. Evidence is drawn from case‐study research and focuses on the school systems, pastoral care and access to learning which combine to support the induction, assessment and monitoring of newly arrived pupils in school and effective use of data for self‐evaluation. Examples of flexible curriculum organization, innovative approaches to additional support and effective administrative procedures are drawn upon. Evidence reflects the views of a range of school staff, parents/carers and pupils in the case‐study school, as well as the judgements of senior researchers. Policy implications for government and for all concerned with school performance are highlighted, as well as many practical suggestions for raising achievement of mobile pupils     

Struggling with capital: a Bourdieusian analysis of educational strategies among internationally mobile middle class families in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Drawing on empirical data regarding educational strategies among internationally mobile families in the Stockholm-Uppsala region, this study questions the notion of a global middle class. First, a quantitative analysis shows that immigrating middle class professionals and their children are few, having marginal impact on the demand for international education. Furthermore, they far from constitute a homogeneous class, instead comprising of fractions opting for different types of schools. A second, qualitative study on capital conversion among mobile families illustrates that even well-educated international movers face serious challenges converting their existing knowledge, skills and contacts into well-informed social, professional and educational strategies in their new context. This suggests the limitations of concepts such as international capital. It is argued that the GMC concept overshadows the fact that social groups within the middle classes have varying degrees of international mobility that constitutes just one dimension of what separates them from each other.     

Gender inequalities in transnational academic mobility and the ideal type of academic entrepreneur

Based on a study on academic career paths of PhD graduates in Switzerland, this paper is concerned with the individual and institutional factors that affect transnational academic mobility in the postdoctoral period. It will be argued that the institutionalisation of geographic mobility in academic career paths through research funding institutions and universities have gendering and stratifying effects. Complex formations related to gender, partnership, children, and dual-career constellations, as well as to social class and academic integration, are resulting in inequalities in the accumulation of international cultural and social capital.     

‘You want the best for your kids’: improving educational outcomes for children living in poverty through parental engagement

Background: Existing evidence suggests a relationship between family social contexts, family relationships and interactions, children’s social and cognitive development and educational outcomes. Interventions that assist families in relation to parenting and supporting children’s development can have positive effects on both parents’ skills and the educational progress of their children.

Purpose: This article reports on a study conducted in an area with high levels of social and economic deprivation in Scotland, which aimed to investigate the nature and effectiveness of the services in place to support poor families. The project focused on capturing the experiences of parents and what they perceived as effective support from the nursery and school staff in terms of getting them more involved in their children’s learning.

Sample: There was a particular focus on the four-to-seven-year age group, thus covering the crucial transition from pre-school (or non-school) provision to primary school. A sample of three Early Education & Childcare Centres (EECCs) and three schools were selected. The schools and EECCs were all from areas of high social deprivation and had a high proportion of children on free school meals.

Design and methods: The study was qualitative in design and included in-depth semi-structured interviews with 19 service managers and practitioners, six focus groups with parents and six activity groups with children. Data were analysed using both pre-determined and emerging codes.

Results: While all parents recognised the value of education for their children’s social mobility and opportunities and were keen to engage in activities, they remained aware of the limited resources they could draw upon, mainly in terms of their restricted academic competencies, specialist knowledge and qualifications. The desire to help their children overcome their families’ economic circumstances was also hampered by the absence of strong social and kinship networks that they could draw upon.

Conclusions: We draw on concepts of social and cultural capital to examine parents’ positioning in relation to their children’s education. The conclusion highlights parents’ strategic orientation to school/nurseries, often seen as a resource of cultural capital, and calls for a more positive discourse of parental engagement in relation to disadvantaged groups.     

文化资本理论视野下助学贷款的社会流动功用研究

以社会流动与文化资本为理论基础,基于问卷调查所得数据,采用描述性统计与Logistic回归等分析方法,对助学贷款的社会流动功用进行了实证分析。研究发现,随着高等教育费用的快速增长,经济资本成为个体获得文化资本的必要条件之一,经济资本匮乏的贫困生获取文化资本时,在数量与质量两方面都处于劣势;但绝大多数贫困生获得助学贷款后,打破经济资本拥有不足对其文化资本追逐活动的制约,获得数量更多、质量更高的文化资本,从而在社会地位市场的竞争中具有更强的竞争力。助学贷款通过文化资本这条路径,间接发挥着促进贫困生向上社会流动的功用。为了更好发挥助学贷款的社会流动功用,研究最后提出了加快助学贷自身发展等一系列的政策建议。     

美国关于流动儿童教育问题的研究与实践

美国学龄人口的流动率较高,美国学者对流动儿童的教育问题也给予了特别的关注.许多研究表明,学龄人口频繁的流动既不利于流动儿童自身的学习,也会对学校甚至学区的教育产生影响.为此,美国通过完善立法、利用网络传递流动学生信息、帮助贫困的流动家庭、加强学校(社区)与流动儿童家庭的联系等措施,力图做到"不让一个孩子掉队".美国关于流动儿童教育问题的一些研究与实践对我国有一定的借鉴意义.     

‘An attempt to tip the scales’: music and embodied capital in an English secondary school

This article explores class, capital, and aspiration to social mobility in an ethnographic study of an English secondary school. In particular, the article considers the school’s musical instrument programme as a site for inculcating forms of capital, under the auspices of developing skills for upward social mobility. Bringing together Bourdieu’s conceptions of schooling with theories of materiality and situated learning, we contend that this school succeeds in cultivating new forms of embodied capital among students through the development of communities of musical practice. However, a tension remains between emancipatory aims of the programme and the sanctioning and championing of certain forms of dominant cultural practice. The learning environment of the instrument programme highlights the complex and conflicted impact that schooling can have on the development of cultural capital and on reproducing disadvantage and difference.     

马克思的资本流动理论与产业结构的变动规律

本文认为,在资本主义市场经济中,资本流动的规律限制了市场机制的调节作用,使得经济失衡不可避免;随着资本流动范围的扩大,产业结构的升级和经济解构成为必然的趋势.通过对马克思资本流动理论的非均衡的理解和延伸,我们可以更清楚地看到市场经济的运作规律和发展趋势.     

Travels in extreme social mobility: how first-in-family students find their way into and through medical education

ABSTRACT

Higher education is understood as essential to enabling social mobility. Research and policy have centred on access to university, but recently attention has turned to the journey of social mobility itself – and its costs. Long-distance or ‘extreme’ social mobility journeys particularly require analysis. This paper examines journeys of first-in-family university students in the especially high-status degree of medicine, through interviews with 21 students at an Australian medical school. Three themes are discussed: (1) the roots of participants’ social mobility journeys; (2) how sociocultural difference is experienced and negotiated within medical school; and (3) how participants think about their professional identities and futures. Students described getting to medical school ‘the hard way’, and emphasised the different backgrounds and attitudes of themselves and their wealthier peers. Many felt like ‘imposters’, using self-deprecating language to highlight their lack of ‘fit’ in the privileged world of medicine. However, such language also reflected resistance to middle-class norms and served to create solidarity with community of origin, and, importantly, patients. Rather than narratives of loss, students’ stories reflect a tactical refinement of self and incorporation of certain middle-class attributes, alongside an appreciation of the worth their ‘difference’ brings to their new destination, the medical profession.     

An exploration of school mobility: Risks and protective factors in late elementary

This study explored negative emotional, behavioral, and academic performance outcomes for highly mobile students and potential protective factors. Participants were fourth and fifth-grade students (N = 647, 51% male) from three schools with low socioeconomic status, highly mobile student populations within a large, suburban school district in the midwestern United States. Data were collected through student self-report surveys, teacher-report surveys, and school records. Multilevel moderation analysis tested whether school connectedness (SC) or social and emotional competence (SEC) acted as protective factors for highly mobile students, moderating the effect of school mobility on emotional problems and academic performance. Student mobility was associated with more emotional problems and lower academic performance. In contrast to past research, there was not an association between mobility and behavior problems. Although they did not act as protective factors, SC and SEC were independently associated with fewer emotional problems and stronger reading performance for all students, controlling for mobility. Results build on existing evidence that student mobility has negative effects on emotional and academic outcomes and lend support for interventions focused on enhancing SC and SEC of all students, including those at increased risk due to high mobility.     

Spatializing a global education phenomenon: private tutoring and mobility theory in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

Along with the dramatic expansion of private tutoring around the world, a significant body of literature has been produced to understand this phenomenon. While many studies consider the issue of geographic location, the spatial dimension tends not to be a central focus of private tutoring studies. In contrast, the present essay applies mobility theory to research from Cambodia, where private tutoring is essential to student success. It does so in order to place private tutoring provision into a broader perspective that includes but moves beyond the economic dimensions of supply and demand and the sociological dimensions of economic, cultural, and social capital to include consideration of how private tutoring provision is constrained by a multidimensional spatial field of possibilities and how private tutoring participation is enabled by one’s position and abilities in relation to that field. The paper argues for increased attention to ‘spatial capital’ in studies of private tutoring and education generally.     

Capital,habitus, and education in contemporary China: Understanding motivations of middle-class families in pursuing studying abroad in the United States

Abstract

The growing Chinese middle class and their accumulation of wealth and economic capital have seen an increasing number of Chinese students pursuing their education in the West. Due to this growing number, motivations behind their decision to study abroad warrant scholarly treatment. This article discusses the motives of Chinese middle-class families and their children in seeking studying abroad. The paper reports on a recent study of 166 students on American campuses from 2017 to 2018. It uses Bourdieusian concepts of capital, habitus, and the idea of social mobility and social reproduction, to understand Chinese middle-class families’ strategic decisions around studying overseas in relation to employability, labour market competitiveness, and family support. Studying abroad, therefore, is construed by Chinese middle class families as a way of pursuing and preserving their social status and social mobility.     

Pupil mobility,attainment and progress in secondary school

This paper is the second of two articles arising from a study of the association between pupil mobility and attainment in national tests and examinations in an inner London borough. Our first article examined the association of pupil mobility with attainment and progress during primary school. It concluded that pupil mobility had little impact on performance in national tests at age 11, once pupils’ prior attainment at age 7 and other pupil background factors such as age, sex, special educational needs, stage of fluency in English and socio‐economic disadvantage were taken into account. The present paper reports the results for secondary schools (age 11–16). The results indicate that pupil mobility continues to have a significant negative association with performance in public examinations at age 16, even after including statistical controls for prior attainment at age 11 and other pupil background factors. Possible reasons for the contrasting results across school phases are explored. The implications for policy and further research are discussed.     

Understanding school mobility and mobile pupils in England

A significant proportion of pupils move school during their school career for reasons other than standard structural moves between educational stages. Little is known about the underlying causes of these moves and the characteristics and experiences of mobile pupils are challenging to research. There is currently a large disconnect between the macro level of system structures, data and policy and the individual experiences and journeys of mobile pupils. This article brings together international literature around school mobility and mobile pupils, with analyses of the English National Pupil Database (NPD), tracking a cohort from age 5 to 16, to better understand when school moves occur and the characteristics of mobile pupils. Findings reveal a sizable underlying rate of moves in England of about 1.5–2% per term and identify differences in mobility related to disadvantage, school phase, ethnic group and SEND status. The predictive power of the data, however, is low, highlighting the need for more research, policy and practice in this area to better understand individual mobility circumstances. By bringing together the literature and the data, the article concludes with a discussion of what is known about school mobility and recommends further areas for research into the characteristics, experiences and outcomes of mobile school pupils.     

中国城镇居民教育与收入代际流动的关系研究

This study examines the relationship between education and intergenerational income mobility in urban China based on the data of Chinese Urban Household Education and Employment Survey (CHUHEES)—2004” by Institute of Economics of Education of Peking University. It analyzes the characteristics of the intergenerational income mobility of Chinese urban household through such indices as intergenerational income inheritance and mobility, and intergenerational income elasticity, exploring the role of education to promote intergenerational income mobility through pathanalysis and binary logistic regression. It also analyzes the changing tendency along with the progress of the market reform in China and tries to provide theoretical explanations for the empirical results. According to the findings, there is rather obvious intergenerational income transmission in urban China, and most children still resort in the same income group with their fathers. As a kind of important mechanism of intergenerational mobility, education is instrumental to promote children of disadvantage group to upgrade of their economic status, showing its strong functions to promote intergenerational upward mobility. With the improvement of the level of marketization together with appropriate social policy, the role of education to promote the intergenerational income mobility and social equity is getting stronger. __________ Translated from Jiaoyu Yanjiu 教育研究 (Educational Research), 2007, (5): 3–14     

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.     

Dropout and Downward Mobility in the Educational Career: An Event-History Anaylsis of Ethnic Schooling Differences in the Netherlands

While many aspects of educational careers have been examined ill the literature on ethnic minorities, such as truancy, turnover and grades, downward mobility has rarely been studied. Using data on more than 10,000 students who entered secondary school in The Netherlands in 1989, we develop an event-history model for secondary school careers and we use this model to analyse the determinants of dropout and downward mobility simultaneously. Our findings show that students from Mediterranean and Caribbean immigrant families are about 3 times as likely to drop out from secondary school without a degree compared to Dutch children. They are also more likely to be downwardly mobile during their secondary school career, but this differential is weaker Compositional differences with respect to individual ability and parental resources explain a large part of these differences. When holding constant parental resources and individual ability, ethnic students are less likely to experience downward mobility than Dutch students. In other words, when there is failure in the school career Dutch children are more likely to follow the route of downward mobility whereas children from ethnic minorities are more likely to drop out altogether. The multitrack nature of the Dutch educational system thus may have a negative impact on ethnic inequality.     

Adjustment and achievement associated with mobility in military families

Forty Army families were investigated regarding their history of geographic mobility, identification with Army life, their personal well-being and children's school achievement and social competence. Frequent relocation was not found to be detrimental to service member or spouse and, in fact, was positively associated with higher child and social competence. Military identification correlated with well-being for service members, but not for spouses. However, it was the degree of spouse military identification that was more strongly related to children's adjustment than that of service members. The role of military living in reducing relocation stresses is discussed and implications are drawn for nonmilitary populations.     

Pupil mobility,attainment and progress in primary school

This article presents an analysis of the association between pupil mobility and educational attainment in the 2002 national end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) tests for 11‐year‐old pupils in an inner London education authority. The results show that pupil mobility is strongly associated with low attainment in the end of key stage tests. However, the negative association with pupil mobility is reduced by half when account is taken of other pupil background factors known to be related to educational attainment (such as special educational need and socio‐economic disadvantage), and is eliminated entirely when account is also taken of pupils' prior attainment as indicated by end of KS1 test scores at age 7. Thus there is no indication that changing school has a negative impact on educational progress during primary school. Pupils who join their school during KS2 from other schools in England are more likely to be ‘at risk’ of low attainment due to higher levels of socio‐economic disadvantage, a greater need for support in relation to English as an additional language, a higher incidence and greater severity of special educational needs and pre‐existing low attainment at the end of KS1. A key factor in understanding the relationship between mobility and attainment is the reason for mobility. One‐third of mobile pupils had arrived from schools outside of England, often as refugees, asylum seekers or economic migrants, and these pupils accounted for the major part of the effect ascribed to ‘pupil mobility’. The low attainment of these pupils is the result not of ‘changing school’ but of a broad range of factors including substantial cultural, educational and social adjustment.