Sociology of Education

Epigenetic mechanism mediating the impact of child adversity on life-long adverse behavior

by Andrés Ginestet

Although epidemiological data provide evidence that early life experience plays a critical role in human development,... more Although epidemiological data provide evidence that early life experience plays a critical role in human development, the mechanism of how this works remains in question. Recent data from human and animal literature suggest that epigenetic changes, such as DNA methylation, are involved not only in cellular differentiation, but also in the modulation of genome function in response to early life experience affecting gene
function and the phenotype. Such modulations may serve as a mechanism for life-long genome adaptation.
These changes seem to be widely distributed across the genome and to involve central and peripheral systems. Examining the environmental circumstances associated with the onset and reversal of DNA methylation will be critical for understanding risk and resiliency.

Education for the Society of the Future in Morin's Work

by Vasiliki Kantzara

Early Selection in Hungary - A possible cause of high educational inequality

by Daniel Horn

The paper shows that two special types of academic tracks, which select students at age 10 and 12, increase test score... more The paper shows that two special types of academic tracks, which select students at age 10 and 12, increase test score gap between high and low status students in Hungary. Generalizing this finding I conclude that early selection causes the already not-small educational inequality of opportunity in Hungary to grow.  I show that higher status students are more likely to attend these early-selective academic tracks, even if previous test scores are controlled for. Also the value-added of the longer 8-year-long early-selective track is higher than that of the 6-year-long academic track, which in turn has a higher value-added than the general track. Taking everything together it seems that early-selective tracks have higher value-added, but the size and the significance of this effect varies across cohorts and subjects. The results are in line with the expectations: early selection is assumed to have an inequality increasing effect due to different teacher quality and also due to different peer effects between different tracks. It is also shown that early selection is not a Pareto improvement as the average performance is concerned.

Horsley_Model_Citizen_Conference_Paper_2011

by Nicola Horsley

“We Teach All Hearts to Break” (2012)

by Christian Garland

“We Teach All Hearts to Break”: On the Incompatibility of Education with Schooling at All Levels, and the Renewed Need for a De-Schooling of Society
Published in Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association 48:1, Special Issue: “Anarchism… is a living force within our life…” Anarchism, Education and Alternative Possibilities pps.30-38
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/heds20/48/1

Cultivating Global Citizens: Parents' Choice of Foreign Language Immersion

by Hannah B. Emery

Imagining the mathematician: young people talking about popular representations of maths

by Heather Mendick

This paper was co-authored with Debbie Epstein and Marie-Pierre Moreau. This paper was published in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education in 2010, volume 31, issue 1, pages 45-60. If your library subscribes then the hyperlink will take you to where you can access the paper. If not, then email me and I'll send you a copy.

This paper makes both a critical analysis of some popular cultural texts about mathematics and mathematicians, and... more This paper makes both a critical analysis of some popular cultural texts about mathematics and mathematicians, and explores the ways in which young people deploy the discourses produced in these texts. We argue that there are particular (and sometimes contradictory) meanings and discourses about mathematics that circulate in popular culture, that young people use these as resources in identity making as (non-)mathematicians, negotiating their meaning in ways that are not always predictable, and that their influence on young people is diffuse and nevertheless important. The paper discusses the discourses that prevail in some of the popular cultural images of mathematics and mathematicians that came up in our research. We show how mathematics is represented as a secret language, while mathematicians are often mad, mostly male and almost invariably white. We then explore how young people negotiate these discourses, positioning themselves in relation to mathematics. Here we draw attention to the fact that both those who continue with mathematics after it ceases to be compulsory and those who do not, deploy similar images of mathematics and mathematicians. What is different is how they respond to and negotiate these images.

Mathematical stories: why do more boys than girls choose to study mathematics at AS-level in England?

by Heather Mendick

This paper was published in 2005 in British Journal of Sociology of Education, 26(2), 225-241. The hyperlink will give you access to the paper if your library subscribes to the journal - otherwise the version that I've uploaded is virtually the same as the one that was published.

In this paper I address the question: How is it that people come to choose mathematics and in what ways is this... more In this paper I address the question: How is it that people come to choose mathematics and in what ways is this process gendered? I draw on the findings of a qualitative research study involving interviews with 43 young people all studying mathematics in post-compulsory education in England. Working within a post-structuralist framework, I argue that gender is a project and one that is achieved in interaction with others. Through a detailed reading of Toni and Claudia's stories I explore the tensions for young women who are engaging in mathematics, something that is discursively inscribed as masculine, while (understandably) being invested in producing themselves as female. I conclude by arguing that seeing 'doing mathematics' as 'doing masculinity' is a productive way of understanding why mathematics is so male dominated and by looking at the implications of this understanding for gender and mathematics reform work.

How Resource Inequalities Among High Schools Reproduce Class Advantages in College Destinations

by Joshua Klugman

Forthcoming in Research in Higher Education.

Previous studies argued that high school resources play a modest role in students’ postsecondary destinations, but... more Previous studies argued that high school resources play a modest role in students’ postsecondary destinations, but they ignored schools’ programmatic resources, which provide opportunities for marks of distinction, such as Advanced Placement courses, and they focused on older cohorts of high school students who entered colleges before competition over admission to selective colleges intensified in the 1980s. Analyses of data on a cohort of students who entered college in the mid-2000s suggest that programmatic and non-programmatic resources found in high schools influence postsecondary destinations and mediates the effect of family socioeconomic status on choices among 4-year colleges.

Latino School Concentration and Academic Performance among Latino Children*

by Joshua Klugman

Jennifer C. Lee is primary author.  Resubmitted to Social Science Quarterly.

Objective: To examine the effects of the concentration of Latino students in elementary schools on Latino first... more Objective: To examine the effects of the concentration of Latino students in elementary schools on Latino first graders’ test scores, and to determine if the effects vary by children’s nativity status.
Methods: We use generalized estimating equations (GEE) on a sample of Latino first graders from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998 (ECLS-K). 
Results: For math and reading, Latino concentration in schools’ improves students’ first grade test scores for Latino children of immigrant parents, but it has no effect for Latino children of U.S.-born parents.  For general knowledge test scores, Latino concentration has no effect for children of immigrant parents and has a deleterious impact on the scores of children of U.S.-born parents.  We also show no effect of Latino concentration on the scores of white children of U.S.-born parents.
Conclusions:  The results suggest that Latino concentration in elementary schools promotes educational outcomes for children from Latino immigrant families, but Latino families headed by U.S.-born parents do not benefit from co-ethnic concentration, which is in accordance with expectations derived from assimilation theories.   

School Co-ethnicity and Hispanic Parental Involvement

by Joshua Klugman

Co-authored with Jennifer C. Lee.  Forthcoming in Social Science Research.

Scholars of immigration disagree about the role ethnic communities play in immigrant families’ engagement in... more Scholars of immigration disagree about the role ethnic communities play in immigrant families’ engagement in educational institutions.  While some researchers argue that the concentration of disadvantaged ethnic groups may prevent meaningful engagement with schools, others argue that ethnic communities can possess resources that help immigrant families be involved in their children’s schooling.  In this study we use a nationally representative dataset of Hispanic children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to determine if the relative size of the Hispanic population in the school affects levels of their parents’ involvement in their education, as well as parents’ perceptions of barriers to their involvement.  Our results suggest that a large Hispanic presence in a child’s school can help increase immigrant Hispanic parents’ involvement in their children’s schooling, but there are no benefits for U.S.-born Hispanic parents, indicating that ethnic communities help immigrant families acculturate to American institutions.

The Advanced Placement Arms Race and the Reproduction of Educational Inequality

by Joshua Klugman

Forthcoming in Teachers College Record.

Background: Access to Advanced Placement (AP) courses is stratified by class and race.  Researchers have... more Background: Access to Advanced Placement (AP) courses is stratified by class and race.  Researchers have identified how schools serving disadvantaged students suffer from various kinds of resource deprivations, concluding that interventions are needed to equalize access to AP courses.  On the other hand, the theory of Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) argues that schools serving advantaged students may perpetuate inequalities by expanding their AP curriculum so their graduates can be competitive in the college admissions process. 

Research Questions: Between 2000 and 2002, California attempted to expand AP offerings and enrollments.  This study answers whether or not this intervention narrowed inequalities in AP along class and racial lines.  It also examines if community affluence affects district officials’ views of pressures to offer AP courses, which could explain any effectively maintained inequalities in AP access.

Research Design: This study uses a panel dataset of all California public high schools from 1997-2006.  It examines the changing effects of school poverty, upper-middle-class presence, and school racial composition on offerings of and enrollments in AP subjects. It supplements the quantitative analysis with interviews from 11 school district officials in California conducted in 2006.

Results: Hierarchical generalized linear models show that upper-middle-class presence structures California high schools’ AP subject offerings and enrollments, much more than school poverty.  California’s intervention resulted in increased AP subject offerings and enrollments in high schools serving disadvantaged and less-advantaged students, but these reductions in deprivation had trivial effects on inequalities, since schools serving advantaged students increased their own AP offerings and enrollments.  In addition, high schools serving white and Asian students had larger increases in AP offerings and enrollments than high schools serving black and Hispanic students.  Interview data indicate that officials in affluent districts perceived a greater demand for AP subjects, and were more likely to report their school staff were proactive to initiate new AP courses, than officials in districts serving working-class communities.

Conclusions: The findings document that while policies can increase AP access at schools serving low-income students, the actions of affluent schools and families will pose substantial barriers to achieving parity in AP offerings and enrollments. Moreover, studies gauging resource inequalities among schools may underestimate these inequalities if they use school poverty to measure schools’ socioeconomic composition. 

Learning the Hard Way

by STAMATIA KREMMYDA

published in 'Insight, Edinburgh University Economics Magazine', page 30

On Educational Sensemaking and the Antinomy of Liberty and Equality

by Karen Paiva

published in the Journal of Educational Controversy, Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 2006

Análisis de la brecha digital en el sistema universitario español

by Ruben Crespo

Dentro del panorama actual de la influencia de las TIC en la educación, este trabajo de investigación social se centra... more Dentro del panorama actual de la influencia de las TIC en la educación, este trabajo de investigación social se centra en el sector universitario español, más concretamente, cómo influyen las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en el colectivo de personas mayores de 35 años que realizan estudios universitarios.

Correlates of pupils’ sense of futility in primary education in Flanders: The role of the teacher.

by Dimitri Van Maele

Van Houtte, M., Van Maele, D. & Agirdag, O. (in press). In: M. F. DiPaola & P. B. Forsyth (Eds.), Leading Research in Educational Administration. Greenwich, CN: Information Age Publishing.

Pupils’ sense of futility with respect to school is an important predictor of lower achievement, lower study... more Pupils’ sense of futility with respect to school is an important predictor of lower achievement, lower study involvement, and school misconduct. Feelings of futility regarding school are particularly prevalent among pupils from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. The present study examines which school and pupil features are associated with pupils’ sense of futility. Furthermore, it aims to investigate the role teachers might play in either enhancing or buffering these feelings of futility, especially in low SES pupils, by taking into account the effect of faculty trust and pupils’ perceived teacher support. By means of multilevel analysis of data collected during the 2008-2009 school year from 2,845 pupils and 706 teachers across a sample of 68 primary schools in Flanders (Belgium), this study confirms that higher feelings of futility associate with pupils’ low SES background, low ability, and low perceived parental support. These associations result in higher levels of sense of futility in low SES and low ability schools. The findings also indicate the crucial role teachers might play. Although faculty trust nor perceived teacher support seem able to buffer the development of feelings of futility in low SES and low ability pupils, having trusting and supportive teachers lowers the risk of strong feelings of futility. An important policy implication of this study is therefore that it might be rewarding to improve faculty trust in pupils in order to fight pupils’ feelings of futility. Other strategies are, however, advisable in order to buffer the higher feelings of futility in low SES pupils in particular.

"Ungdomens Segrande tro" Unison sång som social och kultiverande folkhögskolepraktik

by Erik Nylander

Master thesis, Department of Sociology. Umeå University

Folkhögskolan som musikaliskt förmak

by Erik Nylander

Published in "Två sidor av samma mynt Folkbildning och yrkesutbildning vid de nordiska folkhögskolorna Lundh Nilsson & Nilsson red. 2011 Nordic Academic Press

Tutor and teacher timescapes: Lessons from a home-school partnership

by Angela Coco

R. Wong and F. Crawford, “Educating all Children - Without Exceptions"

by Reuben Wong

Op-ed published in 'Today' newspaper (Singapore), 18 July 2011.

While education is one of the most important issues on Singapore’s national agenda, taking up about one-fifth of the... more While education is one of the most important issues on Singapore’s national agenda, taking up about one-fifth of the Government’s annual budget, there is a segment of children — those identified with physical and other disabilities — who fall between the cracks in Singapore’s educational system. The authors argue that we can, and should, build on Singapore’s educational achievements by ensuring that every child is given ample opportunities to reach his or her full potential. This requires that we address the needs of a small but growing number of children with disabilities in Singapore, who require early intervention services.