Educational Choice and Cultural Capital: Examining Social Stratification within an Institutionalized Dialogue between Family and School

Abstract

This paper analyses the impact of social class on families' and teachers' decisionmaking within an institutionalized family-school dialogue in France. The dialogue decides which upper secondary school track a student will attend and consists of three main steps: (i) family's school track request, (ii) staff meeting's subsequent school track proposition, and (iii) family's optional rejection of the staff's proposition. Using national longitudinal data, Ifind that parents' cultural capital importantly mediates secondary effects (i.e. social class effects that remain after controlling for school performance) on families' requests and their rejections of staffs' propositions. Social class effects on staffs' propositions are accounted for by families' requests and student school performance. Moreover families and teachers appear to choose grade retention to avoid enrolment in a lower track.

Relative risk aversion models: How plausible are their assumptions?

“…In February, families communicate their track preferences to the school, but teachers may formulate a conflicting track recommendation, which is usually communicated to families between April and May. Parents can reject such a conflicting recommendation by initiating a formal procedure that involves meeting the head teacher, who then makes a final decision by June, although this rarely occurs in practice (Barg, 2015). We interviewed the students in January 2018 and their parents in May 2018.…”

Parents’ educational involvement: Types of resources and forms of involvement in four countries

“…System stratification (or differentiation or tracking) usually refers to whether there are different educational programmes or schools at the same point in an educational trajectory that are hierarchically ranked (Horn, 2009; Van de Werfhorst & Mijs, 2010; Jackson & Jonsson, 2013). Most studies find that stratification reinforces social inequality (Horn, 2009) and increases advantages connected to cultural capital (Barg, 2015). In contrast, standardisation (the degree to which the curriculum, teachers’ qualification, exams, school financing and so forth are set at the central state level) (Park, 2008; Horn, 2009; Van de Werfhorst & Mijs, 2010) has been found to increase equality of opportunity.…”

An analysis of social class differentials in parent-initiated contact with teachers

“…The first step of this institutionalised dialogue is a family's school track request and the second step is a school track proposition by the staff meeting, which consists of the student's teachers, the head teacher and parent representatives. In most cases, the staff meeting's proposition determines the track a student attends since even though families have the right to reject, only few do so (Barg 2015). Hence, the main decision-making power still lies in the hands of the school.…”