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…

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,…

In Italy, the National Evaluation System (SNV), encompassing both internal and external accountability components, is designed not only to hold school actors accountable but also to stimulate innovation and change in pedagogical practices. Nevertheless, existing literature presents inconclusive and contradictory findings regarding the effects and…

Travel has become ubiquitous for most social groups as holidaying abroad has become ever cheaper and ecumene. This paper considers how travel can be understood as part of family practices around children's educations and futures. Drawing on Kaufmann's concept of motility, we examine how spatial mobility might become a form of cultural capital to…

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…

Previous research in middle-class school districts has focused on "within-school" segregation but not "between-school" segregation. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork and 122 in-depth interviews with students, parents, and faculty in an affluent suburban school district, I find that students who struggle…

There has been a rapid global expansion of English instruction in the early grades in public school curricula. Particularly in so-called developing countries, the increase of and its shift from exclusively private to public education is linked to the idea that acquiring English promotes personal, social, and economic development. The author takes…

Social class and income distribution remain the strongest predictors of both educational achievement and life outcomes. Despite government hopes, education does not generally promote social mobility; children from low income families tend to have lower attainment than their more affluent peers when they begin school, and the gap widens as they…

The white middle-class parents who chose to send their children to urban comprehensives largely rejected engaging in the usual competitiveness for educational success. Nevertheless the parents in our study still found themselves wittingly or otherwise captured by that same discourse. Their children are high achievers and are regarded as a valuable…

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…

At a small private liberal arts school such as Clark University, students are familiar with people from upper middle class backgrounds. Either they themselves are from upper middle class families or, if they are from working class or lower middle class backgrounds, they are acquainted with more affluent peers. Clark students have a clear image of…