In the context of widening participation policies, polarisation of types of university recruitment and a seemingly related high drop-out rate amongst first generation, working class students, we focus on the provision offered by the universities to their students. We discuss how middle class and working class student experiences compare across…

Typically, the period between the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in mid-January and the end of Black History Month in February sees serious and sober public discussions about the state of Black America. Those discussions have heated up earlier than expected due to the November release of a national survey on Black social progress by the…

This paper analyzes the contradictory location of the professional and managerial new middle class within the rising tension between old systems of the industrial capitalist model of education, epitomized by a reliance on high-stakes, standardized testing and the newer forms of production associated with the "fast" capitalism of the global…

This article argues that narratives forecasting spectacular mobility for Black people/people of color along with the growth of the Black middle class function as proof that America "works" and that the American dream is obtainable for all. However, what is concealed within this "meritocratic" discourse is that full acceptance into this society is…

Starting with the observation that attitudes towards death cannot be divorced from attitudes towards life, the author proceeds with a critical and reflective look at American society's poor management of death, both in terms of the dying person and the bereaved. Denial is the mechanism used to protect ourselves from facing the fact of death, and…

Identifies a number of the major aspects of social class that freshman composition addresses in its aims of enabling students to think and write in ways that will make them good citizens of the academic (and larger middle class) community and viable candidates for good middle class jobs upon graduation. (TB)

The developing views of the purposes of school learning (PSLs) and related achievement among immigrant Chinese preschoolers and their European American (EA) age-mates were examined. Both culture and socioeconomic status (SES) were considered simultaneously, an often neglected research approach to studying Asian children. One hundred and fifty…

This article, part of a larger study, examines three middle-class, Hispanic Canadian families' conceptualizations of language, culture, and identity. Via an analysis of interview data, the findings indicate that the parents assigned diverse meanings to heritage language development (HLD) and held high expectations for their children's formation of…

Job loss remains a permanent feature of the American economy. Black and white children may experience parental job loss differently, even when they share the same class location. We address this question using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), following those children "born" into the survey between 1968 and 1979 and followed…

Two-way bilingual immersion education, offered in a fast-growing number of primary schools in the United States, provides primary language maintenance to minority language speakers while simultaneously offering an enrichment "foreign" language immersion experience to English-speaking children in the same classroom, generally with the same teacher.…

Low-income mothers in the U.S. are more likely to experience postpartum depression (PPD) and less likely to seek treatment than their middle-class counterparts. Despite this knowledge, prior research has not provided an in-depth understanding of PPD symptoms as they are experienced by low-income mothers. Through in-depth interviews, this study…

Neoliberalism has brought a privatization trend that has deeply affected the structure of the educational system of countries. While public schools lag behind, new forms of private schooling have arisen creating different forms of inequality. Nonetheless, in Chile the major inequality exists between schools attended by low and middle income…

Children born into poverty in the United States are at higher risk for a number of nonresilient outcomes. An extensive body of work examines and then confirms the qualities of resilient children, emphasizing the importance of four social-psychological characteristics--social competence, problem solving, autonomy, and sense of purpose--and three…

Recent widening participation policies have been subject to a number of criticisms; they focus on aspirations rather than differences in performance; they place less value on the aspirations of the "disadvantaged" comparing them to a middle class norm; they subordinate what was a radical agenda to the demands of the economy and so…

The paper outlines an interpretation of Bernstein's contribution to the sociology of education that stands in contrast to the common interpretations of Bernstein's work. It is commonly assumed that Bernstein constructed a simplistic "deficit model" of educational failure, or alternatively, that Bernstein was a structuralist who did not give any…