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,…

Mental health problems among young people have increased in recent decades, particularly among middle-class youth, a development often related to increasing achievement pressure. This paper explores how young people from the financial and cultural middle classes in Norway experience school stress and their parents' values and practices concerning…

This paper sought to shed light on the beliefs, aspirations and values in relation to education that shape parental ways of involvement among Chilean urban lower-middle-class parents. Using the capability approach as the main theoretical framework and a critical epistemology, the discussion focuses on the way in which the pre-eminence of…

This qualitative study documents the experiences of 15 women from different social class backgrounds who are members of a women's fraternity/sorority at a large, public, institution located in an urban area in the Mid-West. The purpose of the study was to better understand the relationship between social class and the nature and impact of the…

This work is the result of an effort to further investigate the American black family, and to relate the findings to formally drawn sociological theories. The author directed a research project in which black and white undergraduate students conducted more than 200 case interviews among middle class, working class and lower class black families.…

This collection brings together many of the world's leading sociologists of education to explore and address key issues and concerns within the discipline. The thirty-seven newly commissioned chapters draw upon theory and research to provide new accounts of contemporary educational processes, global trends, and changing and enduring forms of…

Asserts that schools tend to reject pupil's culture, and seek to replace it with values, both middle class and egalitarian, which are not effectively conveyed, and advocates that the subject matter and techniques of education should be revalued, with the revalued material being made accessible to all pupils. (Author/JM)

This study closely examined interview transcripts collected in six rural schools to describe how educators and community members viewed issues of social class. Data came from an SEA-funded project investigating high-poverty schools honored for serving all students well. This study is one of several drawing on data gathered for this project.…

Despite a myriad of school reform efforts, inner-city schools, attended for the most part by poor and working-class Black and Latino children, are failing to prepare students for our highly complex and changing world. This book suggests that reform efforts have failed because they focused upon school-based solutions and paid scant attention to the…