The impact of culture contact and desegregation on the whites of an urban high school

Conclusion Desegregation has generally been presented as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement and as an attempt to redress the educational disadvantages blacks have suffered as the result of a racial imbalance. Given the general theoretical considerations of resource allocation, the assumption has been that reallocations of resources to blacks would necessarily mean reallocation of these resources to blacks from whites. This view is also part of the popular culture where the process of desegregation has caused turmoil and disturbance among whites based, manifestedly at least, on the notion that improving educational benefits for blacks necessarily means a reduction in the same benefits for whites.Based on an analysis of the experiences of teachers and students at one polyethnic inner-city high school, we suggest that not only have whites at this school not been disadvantaged by the desegregation process but that there is evidence indicating that there have been more advantages for whites than for blacks. What, then, are the advantages of desegregation for whites, both students and teachers? In this school it was found that the advantages differed for white students and for white teachers, with white students experiencing more positive outcomes than white teachers experienced.     

‘They never go off the rails like other ethnic groups’: teachers’ constructions of British Chinese pupils’ gender identities and approaches to learning

This paper examines the ways in which British Chinese pupils are positioned and represented within the popular/dominant discourse of teachers working in London schools. Drawing on individual interviews from a study conducted with 30 teachers, 80 British Chinese pupils and 30Chinese parents, we explore some of the racialised, gendered and classed assumptions upon which dominant discourses around British Chinese boys and girls are based. Consideration is given, for example, to teachers’ dichotomous constructions of British Chinese masculinity, in which British Chinese boys were regarded as ‘naturally’ ‘good’ and ‘not laddish’, compared with a minority of ‘bad’ British Chinese boys, whose laddishness was attributed to membership of a multiethnic peer group. We also explore teachers’ constructions of British Chinese femininity, which centred around remarkably homogenised representations of British Chinese girls as ‘passive’ and quiet, ‘repressed’, hard‐working pupils. The paper discusses a range of alternative readings that challenge popular monolithic and homogenising accounts of British Chinese masculinity and femininity in order to open up more critical ways of representing and engaging with British Chinese educational ‘achievement’.     

Boffin and geek identities: abject or privileged?

High achievement, and in particular, the role of the academically diligent and successful ‘boffin’ or ‘geek’, are notably under-researched areas in the sociology of education. Issues around gender and other aspects of identity in relation to such pupils are particularly under-researched. In this Viewpoint article we draw on evidence from our recent research projects including young people interpolated to, or identifying with, the subject position of ‘boffin/geek’ and media representations of such positions. We debate some tensions between our work, drawing out shared findings. The article considers issues around capital, experience, and the extent of exclusion/inclusion for boffins/geeks, discussing to what extent such young people can be considered marginalised and abjected or agentic and privileged. We argue that structural factors such as gender, social class, ‘race’, age, and institutional location impact on these constructions and outcomes.     

RIM: A Random Item Mixture Model to Detect Differential Item Functioning

In this paper we present a new methodology for detecting differential item functioning (DIF). We introduce a DIF model, called the random item mixture (RIM), that is based on a Rasch model with random item difficulties (besides the common random person abilities). In addition, a mixture model is assumed for the item difficulties such that the items may belong to one of two classes: a DIF or a non-DIF class. The crucial difference between the DIF class and the non-DIF class is that the item difficulties in the DIF class may differ according to the observed person groups while they are equal across the person groups for the items from the non-DIF class. Statistical inference for the RIM is carried out in a Bayesian framework. The performance of the RIM is evaluated using a simulation study in which it is compared with traditional procedures, like the likelihood ratio test, the Mantel-Haenszel procedure and the standardized p -DIF procedure. In this comparison, the RIM performs better than the other methods. Finally, the usefulness of the model is also demonstrated on a real life data set.