This article applies positional conflict theory to investigate how the proliferation of international schools can create a new layer of educational stratification and deepen inequality of opportunity. Data from five international schools in metropolitan centres across southern China were collected through interviews, school visits, and a survey.…

Support for higher education is a known and well-documented venue for financial transfers within families, but practices of family support beyond college are less understood. Drawing on interviews with recent master's degrees recipients who have student debt, I find key class differences in the process and forms of family financial assistance for…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of college-age mentors in a school-based mentoring (SBM) program with the aim of understanding mentor perceptions of "power." Design/methodology/approach: Seventeen mentors, comprising both undergraduate (9) and graduate (8) students, participated in this exploratory…

Women of Color (WOC)[superscript 1] comprise 20.3% of the U.S. population, and it is estimated by 2060, WOC will be the majority of all women in the United States (Catalyst, 2021). As this demographic shift continues, little research has focused on how WOC experience their place of work. This study examined factors affecting the experience of…

Whiteness is prevalent in higher education and therefore permeates science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. While research shows STEM's long history of exclusion and marginalization in higher education (Ong et al., 2011), there has been limited research on the ways students with minoritized identities of sexuality and/or…

Research suggests that class-privileged students value learning for its own sake and study the liberal arts, while working-class students believe college is a means to an end. However, recent studies indicate that these associations are weakening. This paper investigates the link between class background, college values, and curricular choices,…

Internships have become an important means to enhance career prospects in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. This article used positional conflict theory to explore how university students from different social class backgrounds experience internships, and the implications for inequalities in post-graduation employment. One-hundred…

From a historical perspective, it was only in the modern era that the academic profession was favored by the middle and upper classes who came to dominate it. This article shows that, in contemporary China, the pattern of the middle and upper classes dominating the academic profession results from their families having a good early education and…

Studies have shown the ways in which non-Western middle- and upper-class families are seeking to educate their children in the West. The rationale for this kind of social reproduction strategy is the acquisition of 'valuable' cultural and symbolic capitals which can be advantageous in the graduate job market of both their home country and…

This study contributes to ongoing conversations about mechanisms to support preservice teachers, especially those who are White and middle class, in learning about race and racism in preparation for teaching in diverse settings. We use the frameworks of Critical Race Theory and racial literacy to inquire into the ways that two cohorts of…

This article explores parents' use of private tutoring services for their primary school children in Sydney, Australia's largest city. Using Bernstein's theories of invisible and visible pedagogies, we look, through the eyes of a small group of middle-class Chinese-background interviewees, at the tensions between certain pedagogic forms associated…

Research has shown social class differences in undergraduate engagement, yet we know little about the reasons for these differences. Drawing on interviews and participant observation with undergraduates at an urban, public comprehensive university, this ethnographic study investigates the academic engagement strategies of students from different…

This dissertation focuses on the growing role of private, for-profit Independent Educational Consultants (IECs) in the college application process. Over the past two decades, an "admission industrial complex" of commercial enterprises designed to help students strategize about admissions and give them information about colleges has…

Drawing on interview data regarding literacy practices done in tandem with housework, this article presents an array of recipe uses among retirement-age women. Given their backgrounds as professionals who come of age during second-wave feminism, the women see little value in "domestic" practices such as cooking literacies (Barton & Hamilton).…

Despite an increase in higher education uptake in the UK, participation rates for working class students remain low. When working-class students attend university, they are often attracted to lower status universities to enrol in new subject areas, such as media studies. This study uses Bourdieu's theory of stratification, and its reproduction via…