“You’re Supposed to Help Me”: The Perils of Mass Counseling Norms for Working-Class Black Students

2016 ◽  
pp. 004208591665217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Jones Gast
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Black Students ◽  
College Counseling ◽  
Urban Settings ◽  
Class Background ◽  
The Impact

How do educators reconcile the growing college-for-all norm—the notion that all students should pursue college—with the diverse needs of students in urban settings? What is the impact on Black students across social-class background? Using interviews and fieldwork with teachers, counselors, and diverse Black students in a large Californian high school, I examine college-counseling norms under a social capital framework. With high caseloads, I find that educators support mass outreach and vague encouragements for 4-year colleges. Ultimately, my findings problematize one-size-fits-all counseling norms and highlight the need for more targeted counseling for urban and working-class Black students.

Reconceptualizing College Knowledge: Class, Race, and Black Students in a College-Counseling Field

2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072110460
Author(s):  
Melanie Jones Gast
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
College Access ◽  
Help Seeking ◽  
College Counseling ◽  
College Knowledge ◽  
High School Counseling ◽  
College Going ◽  
Knowledge Class

Past work and college–access programs often treat college knowledge as discrete pieces of information and focus on the amount of available college information. I use ethnographic and multiwave interview data to compare college–aspiring working- and middle–class black 9th and 11th graders across almost two years in high school along with their post–high school updates. Respondents were exposed to college–going messages but faced racial constraints and unclear expectations for college preparation and help seeking. Working-class respondents drew on hopeful uncertainty—a repertoire of hope for college admissions but uncertainty in the specifics—and they waited for assistance. Twelfth-grade working–class respondents experienced the effects of counseling problems and frustrations near application time. Middle-class and some working–class respondents used a repertoire of competitive groundwork to improve their competitiveness for four–year admissions, targeting their help seeking to navigate impending deadlines and late–stage counseling problems. My findings point to the timing and process of activating repertoires of college knowledge within a high school counseling field, suggesting the need to reconceptualize college knowledge in research on racial and class inequality in college access.

scholarly journals Intra-generational inequalities in young people’s political participation in Europe: The impact of social class on youth political engagement

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572110317
Author(s):  
Maria Grasso ◽  
Marco Giugni
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Young People ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Class Background ◽  
National Perspective ◽  
Europe Today ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

The declining political engagement of youth is a concern in many European democracies. However, young people are also spearheading protest movements cross-nationally. While there has been research on political inequalities between generations or inter-generational differences, research looking at differences within youth itself, or inequalities between young people from different social backgrounds, particularly from a cross-national perspective, is rare. In this article, we aim to fill this gap in the literature. Using survey data from 2018 on young people aged 18–34 years, we analyse how social class background differentiates groups of young people in their political engagement and activism across nine European countries. We look at social differentiation by social class background for both political participation in a wide variety of political activities including conventional, unconventional, community and online forms of political participation, and at attitudes linked to broader political engagement, to paint a detailed picture of extant inequalities amongst young people from a cross-national perspective. The results clearly show that major class inequalities exist in political participation and broader political engagement among young people across Europe today.

God’s Guardrails

2021 ◽  
pp. 88-124
Author(s):  
Ilana M. Horwitz
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Risky Behaviors ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Professional Class

This chapter explains why religious restraint operates differently based on teens’ social class background. It argues that what religion offers isn’t equally helpful to everyone. Working- and middle-class teens benefit from religious restraint because religion gives these kids access to social capital, which middle- and especially working-class kids can’t access elsewhere. Since boys are especially prone to getting caught up in risky behaviors that derail them from academic success, the social capital of religious communities creates crucial “godly” guardrails that help them stay on the path to college. The benefits of godly guardrails are not distributed evenly, because not everyone’s road to college looks the same. Professional-class kids don’t benefit from godly guardrails as much because they already have access to social capital through other social institutions.

We Need More Documentary, and We Need More than Documentary: Interview with Art Historian Steve Edwards

2017 ◽  
pp. 32-39
Author(s):  
Andreia Alves de Oliveira ◽  
Steve Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Present Status ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Visual Theory ◽  
Academic Conference ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Academic Year ◽  
History And Theory

Steve Edwards teaches history and theory of photography and is a fiery, self-described “radical from a working-class background”, “post-Trotskyist” and “socialist feminist”, who reads “Marx and more Marx”. We met in 2016 in Lisbon at an academic conference on Photography and the Left, where he was one of the keynote speakers. Edwards’ paper tracked the changes in relation to the Left and the documentary movement in Britain from the 1970s to the present day, his argument consisting in that documentary and social class are closely entwined. This interview, done at Birkbeck, University of London, which he joined as a Professor at the beginning of this academic year, revisits the main themes of what was, in many ways, an enlightening and inspiring talk. Using the two terms – Photography and the Left – to frame and anchor the discussion, our exchange covers Edwards’ political education, the 1970s emergence of a key period in visual theory and subsequent mutations in political visual practice, up to its present status in a neoliberal society and the forms and intellectual basis of contemporary resistance to it. Although the exchange is centred on the British context, it is done so, however, with total awareness of it being an instance among others of documentary photography’s many global manifestations. It is with these manifestations that this interview aims to enter into dialogue, through its publication in a magazine with a global audience such as Membrana’s.

Schmoozing in Elementary School: The Importance of Social Capital to First Graders

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendralin J. Freeman ◽  
Dennis J. Condron
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Class ◽  
First Graders ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Weak Ties ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Math Skills ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Sociologists have investigated the importance of social capital for many outcomes, but the influence of various types of social capital—particularly intergenerational closure—on inequality in students' academic skills remains unclear. In this study, the authors draw on and extend theoretical perspectives rooted in Coleman and Bourdieu to assess the impact of both strong and weak ties on children's learning. Analyzing data on first graders from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), the authors show that multiple types of social capital are distributed unequally by social class, and that these disparities in social capital partially mediate the relationship between social class and gains in math skills. Intergenerational closure, however, does not promote learning net of other factors. Supporting primarily Bourdieu's perspective on social capital, the authors conclude that weak ties in particular are critical in explaining class inequality in learning, even during the early years of a child's education.

The Discipline Gap: What's Trust Got to Do with It?

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (11) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa S. Romero
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Students ◽  
Academic Outcomes ◽  
School Outcomes ◽  
Discipline Gap ◽  
Student Trust ◽  
High School Outcomes ◽  
Course Placement ◽  
The Impact

Background/Context If we are serious about eliminating the racial achievement gap, we need to address the discipline gap as well. The scholarly literature generally paints a positive picture of the potential of trust to transform schools. Research on student trust has shown that students who trust their teachers and schools are suspended and expelled less frequently and have more positive academic outcomes. However, we know little about if or how the impact of trust may vary by race or gender. Research Question Do the benefits of trusting relationships accrue equally to all students? Do trusting student–teacher relationships pay off in less discipline and improved academic outcomes for all students, or do the benefits of trust depend on the race and gender of the student? Research Design Structural equation modeling was used to model the relationships between student trust, behavior, and high school outcomes, controlling for socioeconomic status, school size, and prior achievement. Data, drawn from the Educational Longitudinal Survey of 2002, includes responses from more than 6,000 public high school students (n = 6,352) who identify as African American or White. Comparisons are made between results for White, African American, and African American male students. Findings/Results Student trust is associated with fewer disciplinary incidents and better academic outcomes; however, the benefits of trust do not accrue equally to all students. Black students, particularly males, benefit less from trust. Controlling for trust, behavior, and standardized measures of math and reading ability, Black students are penalized multiple times for a single disciplinary incident: by the suspension (or other consequence), by missed instruction, and by the impact on their grades (and possibly their future course placement and postsecondary plans). In other words, there are unequal consequences of equal discipline. Conclusions/Recommendations This research found that Black and White students with roughly equivalent discipline records, scores on achievement tests, and levels of trust still have substantially different high school outcomes. Although efforts to implement restorative justice or positive behavior support programs are a step in the right direction, results suggest that they will not be enough. Schools must deal with implicit bias and the unequal consequences of equal discipline. To do this, we must scrutinize course placement practices, grading, and the messages that we send to students. Failure to do so will continue to leave us with a vast education debt and will continue to fuel the achievement gap.

Paradise Lost? Patterns and Precarity in Working-Class Academic Narratives

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-44
Author(s):  
Deborah M. Warnock
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Student Debt ◽  
Survivor Guilt ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Impostor Syndrome

Through an analysis of eight collections of autoethnographic essays written by working-class academics and published over the span of thirty-two years, I identify stable themes and emergent patterns in lived experiences. Some broad and stable themes include a sense of alienation, lack of cultural capital, encountering stereotypes and microaggressions, experiencing survivor guilt and the impostor syndrome, and struggling to pass in a middle-class culture that values ego and networking. Two new and troubling patterns are crippling amounts of student debt and the increased exploitation of adjunct labor. I emphasize the importance of considering social class background as a form of diversity in academia and urge continued research on the experiences of working-class academics.

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