Recently in this journal, Sciffer, Perry, and McConney (2020) argued that school socioeconomic-background (SES) compositional effects are important for both research and policy. In response, this commentary argues that realistic school SES effects can only be identified in properly specified models. Otherwise, the estimated school effects are very…

We respond to Malatinszky and Armor's, and Marks' comments on our article recently published in this journal. We agree with Marks in the use of prior achievement to control for spurious effects in school effects research. Marks makes an incorrect statement about our article, refers to dated critiques, and presents an empirical demonstration with…

Studies regarding school composition have been highly influential in the design of policies. However, methodological and conceptual controversies have hindered the emergence of a consensus on the existence, size, and direction of peer effects. Drawing on four cohorts of Chilean students (n = 620,044), this work analyses the extent to which the…

In a recent article in this journal, Sciffer, Perry, and McConney identify the risk of relying on insufficient within-unit variation as a serious flaw in a number of studies using student fixed effects regression to identify the effects of school socioeconomic composition (school SES) on academic achievement, including one by Armor, Marks, and…

Bourdieu argued that class-based inequalities influenced educational outcomes and this paper illustrates the relevance of Bourdieu's concepts in understanding one specific community. A wider study by the authors used the concept of habitus to identify factors which impacted on the participants--predominantly white working-class…

This article pinpoints the mathematic performance gaps among high-socioeconomic background (SES) students from different racial groups in the United States. By doing so, it sheds light on how racial and socioeconomic privilege intersects thus creating different educational outcomes among high-SES children. In short, it illuminates who are the…

Denominational secondary schools in Scotland have been an influential means by which Catholics have achieved full social citizenship. Most of the Catholic population of Scotland has its origins in late-nineteenth-century migration from Ireland into low-skilled occupations. Although the church built a system of Catholic primary schools, it could…

School socio-economic compositional (SEC) effects have been influential in educational research predicting a range of outcomes and influencing public policy. However, some recent studies have challenged the veracity of SEC effects when applying residualised-change and fixed effects models and simulating potential measurement errors in hierarchical…

Schools worldwide are increasingly enmeshed in discourses of securitisation. Efforts to prevent or counter violent extremism (P/CVE) are a manifestation of this. P/CVE in education takes various forms; the pilot explored here is considered super-soft in that no mention was made of violent extremism. Attention was given to schools' capacities to…

This article argues for the importance of studying the moral meanings that young people attach to their aspirations and plans for the future. Drawing on semi-structured interview data with 29 young people from a sixth-form college in a disadvantaged area of East London, I show that aspirations are closely connected to the formation of individual…

This paper explores the changes in intergenerational mobility seen in Spain during the last century. It examines educational and occupational mobility, paying particular attention to the existence of a differentiated gender effect. The magnitude of the historical changes that have taken place in Spain during the twentieth century and the scarcity…

The field of academia is frequently associated with traditional norms that aim to regulate scholarly activity, especially research. The social web, as another field, is often viewed as challenging long-established conventions with novel knowledge production practices. Hence, the two fields seem to oppose rather than complement each other. Using a…

Rather than assessing its causal effect on educational attainment, the authors of this article aim to use the concept of cultural capital to define a huge, complex and interconnected collection of educational and school strategies adopted by students and families and to examine the way that these strategies are related to school inequalities. Data…

Empirical studies have repeatedly shown that in Germany educational success still strongly depends on the social origin of individuals. Using the National Educational Panel Study, we analyse the effects of fathers' and mothers' education levels on their sons' and daughters' educational attainments across three successive birth cohorts in West…

In Britain, educational qualifications gained at school continue to play an important and central role in young people's educational and employment pathways. Recently there has been growing interest in documenting the lives of "ordinary" young people. In this paper we analyse the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales in order to better…