This article aims to contribute to the debate of how theoretical concepts can be operationalised when researching educational issues. Specifically, it examines the application of the concepts of social and cultural capital in empirical research seeking to provide explanations for educational processes relating to post‐secondary school choice making in contemporary Cyprus. The article argues that there are limitations in the various ways social and cultural capital are operationalised quantitatively in empirical research as often they do not capture adequately the full extent of the social dynamics that they draw attention to. Instead the use of qualitative methods where the researcher probes for details into the practices, habits, beliefs, and attitudes of individuals are seen as having powerful exploratory and explanatory potentials to address these limitations.
The rapid modernisation process of Greek Cypriot society has created a cultural environment with an amalgam of traditionalist and modernist ethical attitudes, and antagonisms between them concerning, among other things, social advancement. These have implications for the way individuals and families develop various strategies of choice-making for post secondary school destinations and for issues of social justice. We focus on social capital networks and resources. Our arguments are supported by the analysis of attitudes, beliefs, practices and resources available to a sample of 24 Greek Cypriot parents for choice-making about the educational and occupational futures of their children. In discussion we offer modelling of these processes plus, more speculatively, implications for the possible emergence of a transcendent postmodernist cultural recontextualisation of social capital practices in contemporary Cyprus and for the ethics of social capitalism more generally.
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