In this paper, we explore the methodological implications of conducting qualitative interviews when researchers and participants come from different social classes. Singling out class on its own terms, rather than considering it as an auxiliary structural factor, we examine the unique challenges that arise during cross-class interviews. Such…

The marketised and securitised shaping of formal education sites in terms of risk prevention strategies have transformed what it means to be a learner and a citizen. In this book, Karl Kitching explores racialised dimensions to suggest how individuals and collectives are increasingly made responsible for their own welfare as "good" or…

This book presents the evidence gathered from original interviews to show how the aspirations of young people develop in light of their social circumstances. Those who attend independent schools will find that the relationship between what goes on at home and at school makes it socially almost impossible not to have achievable aspirations for a…

To illustrate how theoretical studies should blend with empirical research, this article describes how scholars changed the ways they thought about schools and poverty. It begins with a historical review of the perspective of educational theorists and public policy prior to the 1970s. Taking a Marxist perspective, Bowles and Gintis (1976)…

This study uses large-scale survey data and a multiple group, multilevel latent growth curve model to examine differential school effects between low, middle, and high social class composition public schools. The results show that the effects of school inputs and school practices on learning differ across the 3 subpopulations. Moreover, student…

Most of the observational study of marriage has focused on relatively young and highly educated couples from professional backgrounds; working-class couples, older couples, and couples from distressed marriages seem reluctant to volunteer for research on close relationships. The development of techniques for recruiting these couples represents an…

Most of the observational study of marriage has focused on relatively young and highly educated couples from professional backgrounds. Very little is known about the generality of this observational research to couples whose marital philosophies have been influenced by a different array of socioeconomic conditions and secular trends. Satisfied and…

Presents a study investigating Eysenck's paradox of socialism: the tendency of working class individuals to hold conservative social and radical economic attitudes and that of middle class individuals to hold conservative economic and radical social beliefs. Reports no evidence supporting economic belief predictions, but some evidence that middle…

This paper discusses a problem of educational equity in the British educational system. Specifically, the document focuses on a group of working class white male students who undermine school authority, promote social class entrapment, and essentially disqualify themselves from educational opportunities. Increasingly, British public secondary…

Explores the Accelerated Christian Education Curriculum used in a working class, fundamentalist Baptist school in upstate New York. This school blends behaviorism and Calvinism, using rules to regulate students' behavior and cubicle "offices" to isolate students. Speculates on the congruency of this social reproduction approach with…

Social class influences parent involvement in schooling. This book uses the case study method to compare family-school relationships in a working-class elementary school with those in an upper middle-class school, focusing on one first grade class in each school, and within the two schools, on 12 families, over the course of their children's first…

Describes a group of seniors at a Montreal high school, the offspring of working class Southern European immigrants, whose socialization is confined to school because most work part time. Suggests the importance of balancing the focus on leisure youth groups with school-based cultures such as this. (DM)

Reports a British study that explores relationship between social class and personality among 11-year-olds, using the Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory-Short Form. Social class was determined by the father's occupation, and alternatively, by neighborhood. No correlation was found between father's occupation and any of the four personality…

Family socialization is a social mechanism of the reproduction of social inequality from one generation to the next. The argument about the "class-specific socialization," which stopped in the 1970s, is being taken up again with this discussion and developed further towards a theory of socio-structural and situation-specific…

Discusses a study of the effects of material incentives and institutionalized values upon the expansion of secondary school systems in France. Reports that class was more important than gender in determining expansion because state policies placed greater emphasis on emphasized class in determining supply. Concludes that state policy reinforced…