Sociology of Education
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Published By Sage Publications

1939-8573, 0038-0407

2022 ◽  
pp. 003804072110724
Author(s):  
Kerby Goff ◽  
Eric Silver ◽  
Inga Dora Sigfusdottir

Researchers have studied academic orientation—students’ valuing of and commitment to education—as in part a function of a cultural fit between students’ cultural capital, competencies, identity, and the institutional culture of the education system. Recent research on students’ aspirations and commitment highlights the moral undertones of such cultural fit. Scholars have identified the perceived moral connotations of becoming “an educated person” and illustrated how students’ academic orientation may be intertwined with the unique moral culture of the education system. Neoinstitutional scholars have examined modern education systems’ emphasis on an individualizing type of moral culture, that is, an institutional moral culture emphasizing individual autonomy, rights, and achievement over traditional mores, knowledge, and social hierarchies. Scholars have yet to bridge these streams of research by examining the link between students’ personal moral culture and the institutional moral culture of education systems. In this study, we consider whether students whose moral orientation matches the individualizing moral culture of education systems are more academically oriented. We conceptualize this link as moral fit, and we use moral foundations theory to identify students’ personal moral culture. Analysis of a unique sample of students drawn from all secondary schools in Iceland (N = 10,525) shows (1) individualizing moral intuitions (those that emphasize the individual as the basic moral unit) are associated with a greater academic orientation, net of parental involvement, cultural capital, and other important controls, and (2) this association is only lightly moderated by differences in the school structure.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072110651
Author(s):  
Chantal A. Hailey

Most U.S. students attend racially segregated schools. To understand this pattern, I employ a survey experiment with New York City families actively choosing schools and investigate whether they express racialized school preferences. I find school racial composition heterogeneously affects white, black, Latinx, and Asian parents’ and students’ willingness to attend schools. Independent of characteristics potentially correlated with race, white and Asian families preferred white schools over black and Latinx schools, Latinx families preferred Latinx schools over black schools, and black families preferred black schools over white schools. Results, importantly, demonstrate that racial composition has larger effects on white and Latinx parents’ preferences compared with white and Latinx students and smaller effects on black parents compared with black students. To ensure results were not an artifact of experimental conditions, I validate findings using administrative data on New York City families’ actual school choices in 2013. Both analyses establish that families express heterogenous racialized school preferences.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072110635
Author(s):  
John B. Diamond ◽  
Odis Johnson

2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072110573
Author(s):  
Lei Lei

Many developing countries have experienced increasing spatial inequality, but little is known about the effect of community disadvantages on educational attainment in these societies. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (2010–2016), I examine the effect of community socioeconomic status (SES) on the transition into high school in urban and rural China, and I explore several mechanisms explaining the community effects. I adopt the generalized propensity score method to estimate the potential probability of high school entrance at different levels of community SES. Results show that community SES is positively associated with high school attendance in both urban and rural China, and the relationship is stronger in more disadvantaged communities in both contexts. In urban areas, the effect of community SES is partly attributable to collective socialization and children’s academic performance. In rural areas, spatial accessibility to high schools and children’s academic performance are the salient mechanisms.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072110555
Author(s):  
Kenneth Han Chen ◽  
Elizabeth Popp Berman

The meritocratic ideal prescribes that universities should admit students based on academic ability and individual effort. Yet as competition for scarce slots has increased, markets for services to improve the odds of admission have expanded. We use the case of a popular online forum for elite Taiwanese students seeking graduate study in the United States to argue that the moral values assigned to such markets provide useful information about the status of the meritocratic ideal. Using digital ethnography and interviews with forum participants, we find that individuals moralize markets for admissions services in ways that align with their social position. They valorize participation in markets that compensate for their “unfair” disadvantage around English while rejecting the legitimacy of adjacent markets that compensate for lack of cultural capital (which they possess). More generally, we argue that although individuals who benefit from meritocracy will tend to stigmatize associated markets, the positive moralization of such markets can reflect local contests over how meritocracy should be defined—yet not necessarily undermine the meritocratic ideal.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072110484
Author(s):  
Bailey A. Brown

Expanded school-choice policies have weakened the traditional link between residence and school assignment. These policies have created new school options and new labor for families to manage and divide. Drawing on interviews with 90 mothers and 12 fathers of elementary-age children, I demonstrate that mothers across class, racial, and ethnic backgrounds absorb the labor of school decision-making. Working-class mothers emphasize self-sacrifice and search for schools that will keep their children safe. Middle-class mothers intensively research school information and seek niche school environments. Working-class and middle-class black and Latinx mothers engage in ongoing labor to monitor the racial climate within schools and to protect their children from experiences of marginalization. Partnered fathers and single primary-caregiver fathers invest less time and energy in the search for schools. These findings identify an important source of gender inequality stemming from modern educational policies and suggest new directions for research on school choice.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072110460
Author(s):  
Melanie Jones Gast

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 94 (4) ◽  
pp. 251-252
Author(s):  
Linda Renzulli

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