Coached for the Classroom

Abstract

Scholars typically view class socialization as an implicit process. This study instead shows how parents actively transmit class-based cultures to children and how these lessons reproduce inequalities. Through observations and interviews with children, parents, and teachers, I found that middle- and working-class parents expressed contrasting beliefs about appropriate classroom behavior, beliefs that shaped parents’ cultural coaching efforts. These efforts led children to activate class-based problem-solving strategies, which generated stratified profits at school. By showing how these processes vary along social class lines, this study reveals a key source of children’s class-based behaviors and highlights the efforts by which parents and children together reproduce inequalities.

The Experience of Low‐SES Students in Higher Education: Psychological Barriers to Success and Interventions to Reduce Social‐Class Inequality

“…Passeron (1964, 1970) originally argued that low-SES students have a lower chance of success in higher education not only because of less access to economic capital (i.e., financial resources), but also because of less access to cultural capital (e.g., knowledge, behaviors, and values that can be more or less familiar to an individual and more or less promoted in a system; Becker, Kraus, & Rheinschmidt, 2017). According to Bourdieu, the parents of low-SES students lack familiarity with the dominant culture of the university system and as a result are unable to effectively transmit the "appropriate" cultural capital to their children (Calarco, 2014; for a review on the difficulties between low-SES parents and school, see Lott, 2001). Below we describe two recent lines of research in social psychology that support Bourdieu's theories by documenting some specific university practices and cultural norms that contribute to the social reproduction of inequality.…”

Parent–Adolescent Socialization of Social Class in Low‐Income White Families: Theory, Research, and Future Directions

“…Socialization processes may reflect explicit/intentional and/or implicit/unintentional messages communicated primarily via basic principles of social learning, including imitation or modeling of a valued other and/or positive or negative reinforcement of particular attitudes, behaviors, and values by those valued others (see Elder, 1968;Kandel & Andrews, 1987 for reviews). Indeed, one of the primary mechanisms through which educators, psychologists, and sociologists have posited that messages regarding class are transmitted in families is via parenting practices and the impact of those practices on child and adolescent behavior (e.g., Arnett, 1995;Calarco, 2014;Lareau, 2011). The dearth of psychological research on socialization of status in families in general or White poor in particular is perhaps surprising then, given strides made in convincingly demonstrating that parents have the capacity to prepare their children for the complex challenges of navigating other marginalized identities, most notably race and ethnicity (see Stein et al 2018 in this Special Issue).…”

“…While a "no excuses" approach may have eventual benefits for children (e.g., self-starter, grit, determination), such messages may inadvertently be discouraging adolescents from learning some of the very skills necessary to succeed in a range of contexts, including education, and subsequently decrease opportunity and compromise outcomes (e.g., Calarco, 2011Calarco, , 2014Streib, 2011). As noted by Vance (2016), "I've learned that the very traits that enabled my survival during childhood inhibit my success as an adult" (p. 246).…”

Cultural Conflict: The Implications of Changing Dispositions Among the Upwardly Mobile

“…For example, Lamont et al (2014) critically assess the preoccupation with economic dimensions of social stratification and call for more developed cultural models of the transmission of inequality. The importance of cultural factors in the maintenance of social inequality has also received empirical attention from some younger scholars, including Calarco (2011Calarco ( , 2014 and Streib (2015). Yet, questions remain regarding the degree to which economic position is tied to cultural sensibilities and the ways in which these cultural sensibilities are imprinted on the self or are subject to change.…”