The COVID-19 pandemic has forced teachers and parents to quickly adapt to a new educational context: distance learning. Teachers developed online academic material while parents taught the exercises and lessons provided by teachers to their children at home. Considering that the use of digital tools in education has dramatically increased during this crisis, and it is set to continue, there is a pressing need to understand the impact of distance learning. Taking a multidisciplinary view, we argue that by making the learning process rely more than ever on families, rather than on teachers, and by getting students to work predominantly via digital resources, school closures exacerbate social class academic disparities. To address this burning issue, we propose an agenda for future research and outline recommendations to help parents, teachers and policymakers to limit the impact of the lockdown on social-class-based academic inequality.

United States higher education prioritizes independence as the cultural ideal. As a result, firstgeneration students (neither parent has a four-year degree) often confront an initial cultural mismatch early on in college settings: they endorse relatively interdependent cultural norms that diverge from the independent cultural ideal. This initial cultural mismatch can lead first-generation students to perform less well academically compared with continuing-generation students (one or more parents have a four-year degree) early in college. Yet, what happens as first-generation students experience the university culture throughout their time in college? Using cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches, we find that initial cultural mismatch is associated with psychological and academic costs that persist until graduation. First, at college entry, we find social class differences in cultural norms: first-generation students endorse more interdependent cultural norms than their continuing-generation peers. Second, endorsing interdependence at college entry predicts reduced subjective sense of fit in college four years later. Third, lower subjective sense of fit predicts lower grade point average and subjective social status upon graduation. Together, these results suggest that initial cultural mismatch contributes to worse experiences and academic outcomes among first-generation students, and that these disparities persist even until graduation. Further, we find that social class differences in cultural norms remain stable throughout college: first-generation students continue to endorse more interdependence than do continuing-generation students. We suggest providing access is not sufficient to reduce social class inequity; colleges need to create more inclusive environments to ensure that students from diverse backgrounds can reap similar rewards.

Three studies conducted among fifth and sixth graders examined how school contexts disrupt the achievement of working-class students by staging unfair comparison with their advantaged middle-class peers. In regular classrooms, differences in performance among students are usually showcased in a way that does not acknowledge the advantage (i.e., higher cultural capital) experienced by middle-class students, whose upbringing affords them more familiarity with the academic culture than their working-class peers have. Results of Study 1 revealed that rendering differences in performance visible in the classroom by having students raise their hands was enough to undermine the achievement of working-class students. In Studies 2 and 3, we manipulated students' familiarity with an arbitrary standard as a proxy for social class. Our results suggest that classroom settings that make differences in performance visible undermine the achievement of the students who are less familiar with academic culture. In Study 3, we showed that being aware of the advantage in familiarity with a task restores the performance of the students who have less familiarity with the task.

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This study examines the public stigma of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by their school-aged peers, focusing on both explicit and implicit attitudes. The twofold aims were to provide a broader picture of public stigma and to explore age-related changes in attitudes. Students completed an explicit measure of the public stigma and an implicit measure of attitudes after watching a video displaying children with ASD vs. typically developing (TD) children. Both measures showed more negative perceptions towards children with ASD compared to TD children. However, while explicit attitudes improved with age, implicit attitudes remained constantly negative. This finding suggests that both explicit and implicit attitudes should be considered when promoting an inclusive climate at school.

Jusqu'à récemment, la classe sociale était peu étudiée en psychologie, et lorsqu'elle était prise en compte, c'était plutôt comme une variable démographique à contrôler que comme variable d'intérêt. L'objectif de cet article est de présenter une revue intégrée des recherches récentes sur la classe sociale en psychologie sociale qui examinent la façon dont la classe sociale influence le fonctionnement psychologique et le comportement. Cette littérature conçoit la classe sociale comme un contexte de socialisation modulant l'accès à des ressources, ce qui façonne les manières de penser, de ressentir et d'agir des individus. Nous présen-tons trois approches qui se distinguent en se focalisant sur trois aspects différents du contexte de classe sociale -les ressources économiques, symboliques ou culturelles -et leurs conséquences en termes de processus psychosociaux -focalisation attentionnelle, orientation vers le soi ou l'environnement ou façons de se définir comme individu. La présentation de ces trois approches et des processus psychosociaux associés nous amènera également à discuter des indicateurs utilisés pour mesurer la classe sociale (revenus, emploi, niveau d'éducation, rang perçu). Enfin nous argumenterons comment une psychologie sociale des classes sociales permet, notamment par le recours à la manipulation des processus, une identification précise des mécanismes par lesquels la classe sociale influence le fonctionnement psychologique et le comportement.Mots clés: classe sociale; ressources économiques; rang perçu; capital culturel Until recently, social class has been rarely studied in psychology, and when it was taken into account it was rather as a control demographic variable than as a variable of interest. The aim of this paper is to propose an integrated review of recent research in social psychology that examines how social class influences psychological functioning and behavior. This literature conceptualizes social class as a context of socialization that modulates access to resources, which shapes individuals ways of thinking, feeling and acting. We present three approaches that respectively focus on three distinct aspects of the social class context -economic, symbolic or cultural resources -and describe how these resources impact attentional focus, orientation towards the self or the environment and ways to define oneself as an individual. We review the supporting empirical evidence sustaining these approaches and discuss the relevance of the indicators used to measure social class (income, employment, level of education, perceived rank). Finally, we argue that an experimental social psychology of social class is particularly needed as it allows, through the manipulation of processes, to identify the mechanisms by which social class influences psychological functioning and behavior.

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Classroom settings bring to light many differences between children—differences that children notice and attempt to explain. Here, we advance theory on the psychological processes underlying how children explain the differences they observe in the classroom. Integrating evidence from cognitive, social, cultural, developmental, and educational psychology, we propose that young children tend to explain differences among their peers by appealing to the inherent characteristics of those individuals and, conversely, tend to overlook extrinsic reasons for such differences—that is, reasons having to do with external circumstances and structural factors. We then outline how this inherence bias in children’s explanations affects their motivation and performance in school, exacerbating inequalities in achievement and making these inequalities seem legitimate. We conclude by suggesting several means of counteracting the inherence bias in children’s explanations and its effects on their educational outcomes. Throughout, we highlight new directions for research on the relation between children’s explanations, their motivation and achievement, and the inequalities observed in elementary school and beyond.