Kappan editor Rafael Heller interviews Annette Lareau about her research into different experiences of childhood and family life. In her observations of families of different social classes, she learned that upper-middle-class families approach parenting as an act of "concerted cultivation" requiring ongoing attention, making them more…

An intersectional approach to human development emphasizes the multiple social categories individuals occupy, some of which confer privilege (e.g., being White) and some of which confer marginalization (e.g., being poor). This approach is needed especially in critical consciousness scholarship, and particularly in regard to understanding whether…

The interaction between doctoral education and social class is under-researched, yet is perceived to play an important part in securing social mobility. Research that does exist tends to focus on issues of access or transition, rather than considering experiences during the doctorate. This article focuses on doctoral students' experiences of…

This research examines the complex patterns by which distinct dimensions of critical consciousness may lead marginalized adolescents toward distinct forms of political action. Structural equation modeling was applied to nationally representative data from the Civic Education Study (2,811 ninth graders; M[subscript age] = 14.6), first establishing…

The neoliberal agenda promotes education as a route toward success in university and career. However, a neoliberal economy requires large numbers of workers willing to accept low-paying, dead-end jobs. The students most likely to take these jobs are those who have struggled with literacy and so schools must, in Bourdieu's terms, re/produce,…

This paper argues that race and class inequalities cannot be fully understood in isolation: their intersectional quality is explored through an analysis of how the White working class were portrayed in popular and political discourse during late 2008 (the timing is highly significant). While global capitalism reeled on the edge of financial…

Although teen pregnancy and birth rates in the United States declined for ten straight years during the 1990s and were less than half of comparative figures from 1957, the year of the all-time high of teen pregnancy, nearly one in ten teenage young women still became pregnant in 2001, with half of these young women giving birth. Teen pregnancy…

This paper draws on a systematic review of qualitative research to explore the resilient mothering practices that young, British, working-class mothers employ to care for their children. The synthesis of studies of UK mothers under the age of 20 demonstrates how young working-class women must mother in impoverished circumstances, at the same time…