Cultural Transmission, Educational Attainment and Social Mobility

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between cultural socialisation, educational attainment and intergenerational social mobility. Picking up on debates about the transmission of cultural capital and social advantage, we use data from the Taking Part Survey of England to analyse how far socialisation into cultural activities and encouragement play a role in educational attainment, intergenerational mobility and in the reproduction of class. This survey has unprecedented data on whether respondents had been taken to museums/art galleries, theatre/dance/classical music performances, sites of historic interest, and libraries when they were growing up. This is buttressed by information on how much parents or other adults encouraged the respondents to read books or to be creatively active in different domains of the arts, literature and music. Using these rich measures of childhood socialisation, we can show that part of the effect of parental class on educational attainment is due to the transmission of this kind of cultural capital. Moreover, this transmission also has a direct effect on the level of educational attainment. In a similar fashion, respondents who have experienced a higher intensity of cultural socialisation are more likely to be upwardly mobile, and likewise, cultural transmission has a positive effect on the prevention of downward mobility among service class children. These results are discussed in the light of current issues in British mobility research and its treatment of cultural aspects of class and mobility.s ore_1927 406..428During the past two decades major advances have been made in comprehending both the scale and extent of social mobility in the UK, and its core economic and social dimensions (see for example Goldthorpe, 1980 and1987;Marshall et al., 1997;Goldthorpe and Jackson, 2007). There has, however, been a lack of clarity in the cultural dimensions of mobility, including both the effect of social mobility on cultural practices and tastes, and the role of cultural processes themselves in affecting mobility outcomes. This issue is linked to the existence of unresolved theoretical issues in the study of mobility which pit rational action approaches against those who argue for the importance of cultural capital in the structuring of social mobility (see Goldthorpe, 2007a and b;Savage et al., 2005;2007). This uncertainty also bears on the analysis of the role of educational attainment as a key mediator of social mobility, givenThe Sociological Review, 58:3 (2010)

Do ICT Competences Support Educational Attainment at University?

“…If their father attended higher education, students score only higher for the GPA (in both models) and study efficiency in Model 2 (see also St. John & Musabo, 2011, p. 162;Scherger & Savage, 2010). In Taiwan, Tien and Fu (2008) did not find a confirmation of our observation.…”

“…Contrary to what could be expected from the study by Scherger and Savage (2010), i.e., that reading books could have a positive effect on study efficiency, our data stresses that the more books students read and the more often they visit a library, the lesser the result they will achieve for study efficiency at the end of the first academic year (b = -0.10). This observation needs some clarification.…”

“…In the first of two steps, we will check the extent to which the traditional explanatory variables of the academic pathways model can predict the educational attainment of freshmen (Lleras, 2008;Scherger & Savage, 2010;St. John & Musoba, 2011).…”

“…For instance, in explaining the educational attainment of a large sample of UK citizens, Scherger and Savage (2010) refer to age, gender, father's occupational class, educational qualifications of the respondent (type of diploma), ethnicity, and index of parental socialization. These are definitely very important factors for understanding why a person attains a particular level of education, but are certainly not all that can be found in relevant research.…”

Everyday participation and cultural value

“…Given the association between the possession of established cultural capital and life chances in societies such as the UK Scherger & Savage, 2010), it has been argued that by focusing on everyday activities we risk neglecting the consequences of unequal access to the arts in divided societies (Crossick, 2015). Yet, while it remains the case that only a small, affluent minority of the UK population 3 is regularly engaged in cultural practices which are effectively subsidised by the less affluent majority of non-participants in these same practices, issues of equity loom large for a cultural policy that fails to challenge the status quo.…”