Rising educational inequality is considered as one pressing social problem in many national education systems. There is limited existing literature that examines how youth from different social backgrounds perceive and consider social inequalities and "justice." This study addresses this research gap by probing the perspectives of…

Latinx college students at predominately White institutions (PWI) encounter a culture incongruence between the culture of college and back home, which can make them feel like they have to juggle two cultures. This cultural incongruence (Gloria & Kurpius, 1996) is often engendered through racial hostility from White peers, that diminishes their…

Mathematical modeling is a process in which students investigate authentic problems and everyday situations using mathematics. In doing so, they bring their multiple mathematical knowledge bases and cultural funds of knowledge into their solution strategies. During a task called "Abuelo's Birthday", 297 students in grades 3-5 decided how…

A powerful discursive formation claims 'bad parenting' amongst the poor predisposes their children to educational underachievement. A small number of children in poverty succeeding within early education potentially undermines this construction of 'parent blame'. This requires an explanation which perpetuates the dominant discourse about…

This constructionist phenomenological dissertation study explored stories from nine working-class, first-generation college students, specifically how middle-class socialization on a four-year university campus located in the Mountain West region of the United States impacts the relationships with their parent(s)/guardian(s). My primary research…

This case study is based on my PhD research, completed in 2010, in which I explored how families from broadly working class backgrounds constructed and understood the fact that a child of theirs had been labelled 'gifted and talented' at school. I wanted to understand this in relation to their views on giftedness and alongside their own…

Drawing on ethnographic data, this article examines the complex terrain that working-class Pakistani-American youth must negotiate in their daily lives. Specifically, the article illustrates how particular views of Islam and Americanization manifest in particular sites and within educational discourses, and the resulting dissonance that youth…

The transmission of knowledge and skills within the working-class household greatly troubled social commentators and social policy experts during the first half of the nineteenth century. To prove theories which related criminality to failures in working-class up-bringing, experts and officials embarked upon an ambitious collection of data on…

We examined the effects of family functioning trajectories on sexual risk behaviors and STI in adolescents. A sample of 850 predominantly (80%) Black adolescents from Michigan, United States, was assessed at baseline, 12, 24, and 36 months postbaseline. Adolescents were from working-class families with a mean age of 14.9 years (SD = 0.64, Range =…

Sociology has long recognized the centrality of the body in the reciprocal construction of individuals and society, and recent research has explored the influence of a variety of social institutions on the body. Significant research has established the influence of social class, child-rearing practices, and variable language forms in families and…

This study focused on household funds of knowledge or "historically accumulated bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household functioning and well-being" (Gonzalez, Andrade, Civil, & Moll, 2001). A Funds of Knowledge approach provides both a methodological and theoretical lens for educators to understand both themselves and…

This paper's topic is the educational upward mobility of members of the working class. It seeks to find out what makes educational success possible and aims to build a theory of educational upward mobility. Data have been collected through biographical-narrative interviews of Austrian graduates from working-class backgrounds. Their narratives have…

During the last few decades, the South Wales Valleys (UK) have undergone a considerable economic, social, cultural and political transformation, altering youth transitions from school to work. Drawing on a two and a half year ethnographic study, in the paper I concentrate on a group of academically successful young white working-class men aged…

This qualitative study examined the everyday mathematical experiences and understandings of three, 4-year-old, African-American children from working-class backgrounds. The study drew on Street, Baker, and Tomlin's (2005) broad, ideological model of mathematics as "social" and their analytic concepts of mathematical events (units of…

Guardians have been implicated in the development of children's academic self-regulation. In this case study, which involved naturalistic observations and interviews, the everyday practices of a working class family were considered in the context of self-regulated learning development. The family's practices, beliefs, dispositions and home…