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This paper argues that the subspecialism of sociology of education has, for a century, been ambivalent about the 'hooligan'. It has both celebrated and excoriated the anti-school working-class boy. Similarly, the mainstream of sociology has been ambivalent about sociologists of education, both relying on them and ignoring them. Thirdly, the paper speculates on the position of hooligans in Britain in 2025 and the relationship between mainstream sociology and the sociology of education in that year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions were affected by COVID-19 school closures, with parents and schools caught unprepared. Education is expected to play a role in creating equal opportunities, so transferring schooling responsibilities to families may have increased learning inequalities generated by family backgrounds. We examined the time students spent on home learning and explored the role of the schools' distance teaching provision in explaining differences traditionally attributed to parental education, eligibility for free school meals, ethnic background and single parenthood. Using the Understanding Society COVID-19 dataset, we found children who received free school meals, single-parent families and children with parents with lower formal education qualifications and Pakistani or Bangladeshi backgrounds spent significantly less time on schoolwork. However, schools' provision of offline and online distance teaching and homework checking significantly increased the time spent on learning and reduced some inequalities, demonstrating the policy relevance of digital preparedness to limit learning loss in school closures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theory and case study of the formation of public professional radicalism. Theories of 'new class' and 'middle class' radicalism are criticised for neglecting the experiential context in which political consciousness is formed. A similar critique is made of Offe's analysis of the political contradictions of the welfare state. It is suggested that public professionals resolve their contradictory experiences of welfare capitalism into forms of rhetoric and action that combine 'non-market' and 'pro-market' values. This process is identified as the formation of ideology. Interviews with anti-racist educationalists in London and Tyneside are introduced to exemplify this argument. Five ideologies are discussed. Three (the notions of anti-racism as 'good education', as an exercise in 'consciousness raising', and as part of 'the Black struggle') were articulated in both study sites. Two others (the notions of 'local sensitivity', and 'the gentle approach') were distinct to Tyneside. The paper concludes by noting the salience of a geographically sensitive approach to the analysis of public professional radical consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class analysis has recently been criticised from a variety of standpoints. In this paper we argue that much of this criticism is misplaced and that, as a research programme, the promise of class analysis is far from exhausted. The first part of the paper clarifies the nature and purpose of class analysis, as we would understand it, and in particular distinguishes it from the class analysis of Marxist sociology. The second part then makes the case for the continuing relevance of class analysis, in our conception of it, by reviewing findings from three central areas of current research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the hypothesis of a `discouraged worker' effect, whereby local unemployment discourages 16 year-olds from leaving school, among a recent sample of young people in Scotland. The analysis supports the hypothesis: ceteris paribus young people were more likely to stay on at school, the higher the local unemployment rate. Local unemployment was also associated with lower school attainment: its positive direct effect on staying on may have been partly offset by a negative indirect effect mediated by attainment, although the direct effect was stronger and the evidence for the indirect effect was more tentative. The discouraged worker effect applied to staying on at school but not to college, whose courses (in Scotland) tend to be vocationally specific. The discouraged worker effect was similar for girls and boys; it was strongest for 16 year-olds with attainments slightly above the average, who were typically on the margins of the decision to stay on or leave. Staying on tended also to be encouraged by high proportions of local employment in service industries and in higher-level occupations; controlling for these factors increased the observed discouraged worker effect. The paper suggests that the design of most area-based studies of education and the youth labour market is inadequate to explain area differences, given the multi-dimensionality of the effects revealed by the Scottish data. Given the economic `need' for higher levels of educational participation, the paper provides further evidence of the distorted market signals generated by the labour- market context' of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the school background of leaders in eight occupational groups: the civil service, foreign service, judiciary, Royal Navy, army, Royal Air Force, Church of England, and clearing banks. These elite groups were studied at four time intervals: 1939, 1950, 1960, and 1971. With the exception of the civil service, no significant change was discernible in the proportion of men who had attended public school. The paper also examines the university background of leaden in five of the groups: the civil service, foreign service, judiciary, Church of England, and clearing banks. Except for the Church of England, no significant change was recorded in the proportion of men who had attended Oxbridge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is usually presumed that the function of education is that of selection and that this is the most important conception of education of which sociologists should be aware. This paper presents historical and comparative material from two contrasting societies-Graeco-Roman Antiquity and West Africa in the late Middle Ages-which shows that the selective function was relatively unimportant. The paper concludes by suggesting that educational conceptions take a variety of forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned with curriculum decision making in the school and the attempts to apply a sociological analysis to this important area. Its focus is on the 'micro' rather than on the 'macro' decision making process, i.e. within the school rather than within the educational system, though the significance of macro decisions is recognized throughout the paper. Commencing with a discussion of the role that may be played by the study of decision making in curriculum content and method, the paper goes on to suggest some of the orientations that influence such decisions. Six such areas are identified. In the light of these areas four ideological variables are hypothesized. These are finally brought together as components of a model of the autonomy and interrelationship of educational personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most studies of the transition from school to work take a snapshot perspective in examining economic returns to education, such returns evolve over an individual's lifetime. We empirically test a theoretical formulation derived from the cumulative advantage mechanism about enduring life-cycle effects of educational mobility on income. We analyse income trajectories for all Danes born in 1960–1961, and we consider how the welfare state may counteract certain mechanisms of intergenerational transmission that give children with college-educated parents better opportunities in the labour market. We find only small direct effects of parental college attainment on earnings trajectories after we control for offspring college attainment. Thus, schooling acts as a powerful and enduring economic leveller of family background effects in Denmark. Our analyses also show direct effects on trajectories in property income derived from wealth, suggesting that the welfare state has a harder time equalising income from wealth than from earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research into the body pedagogics of cultural practices emphasises tacit/pre-reflective/corporeal knowledge, yet the role of cognition requires further non-dualist/non-conflationist theoretical elaboration. This article contributes to this task through an ethnographic case study of Daoist Internal Arts (DIA) – eastern self-cultivation practices including neigong, qigong and tai chi. Daoist Internal Arts practitioners employ cognitive thought to facilitate a phenomenological shift from a Cartesian/dualist to a non-dualist mode of embodiment whereby mind and body are experienced in their ontological unity. Yet the effective use of thought in this process requires practitioners to walk a fine line between reifying cognition as a substance separate from corporeality, thus opposing mind and body, and utilising it as an instrument to address corporeality and foster mind–body unity. In underscoring this ambivalent character of cognition, I outline a sociological perspective of embodiment that avoids both dualist and conflationist accounts of cognitive and corporeal dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to retheorize school 'choice'; to begin to unpack dominant contemporary misconceptions through an examination of the 'choices' available to 454 inner city 10 and 11 year-olds engaging in the process of primary-secondary school transfer in England. The prevalent focus within educational theorizing on 'choice' as a form of agency often masks the fact that 'choice' is a marker of economic privilege. The more distant subjects are from economic necessity the more 'choice' becomes a possibility. In contrast, the majority of children in our research study had no 'choice' but to make a virtue out of necessity They were forced to accept the least bad option. Particularly disadvantaged were the large numbers of refugees in the sample and those children, cutting across class and ethnicity, who chose 'against the grain'. We conclude that school 'choice' is an issue of power and constraint, of class and racial processes, although the possibilities of 'choice' cannot in any straightforward way be seen as conterminous with class positioning, implicating, as it does, both ethnicity and fractions and differences within classes as well as between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to Sara Delamont's paper in the February 2000 edition of Sociology which provides an account of the relationship between the sub-discipline, sociology of education, and parent discipline, sociology. Delamont argues that the hooligan is an anomalous beast for sociologists of education, who paradoxically revere him: while the sociology of education is an anomalous beast for the parent discipline, whose practitioners reject and fear it. Essentially, according to the author, the latter part of Delamont's argument amounts to the claim that the wider discipline of sociology has neglected sociology of education. The author notes that in this article, his response is concerned with Delamont's unsatisfactory characterization of British sociology of education. According to Delamont, sociology in Great Britain has two grand narratives, both male--one derived from the political arithmetic tradition is quantitative, empirical and focused on social mobility, and the other discursive and focused on anti-heroes: the portrayal of the rebellion or resistance of the hooligan. Delamont has attempted to characterize British ethnographic studies, which include some reference to anti-school/delinquent boys, and which have been conducted by male sociologists, as falling into the same category.

Numerous studies have noted the lack of change in the sexual division of housework, despite substantial change in factors believed to affect it. According to popular thought, men are at best making selective inroads, such that change is limited to the more enjoyable work. This paper explores how combined educational attainment levels of spouses affect the division of housework, taking into account the relative 'pleasantness' of particular tasks. For this purpose 1992/93 Dutch data are used, including a national survey on the enjoyment of routine housework. Our findings stress the relevance of discriminating between different sorts of tasks. Firstly, men, if they contribute, do so more to the preferred tasks of shopping or cooking than to the less enjoyed cleaning or laundry. Generational differences suggest, however, that change towards equalisation permeates all tasks alike. Secondly, the division of each type of housework varies between couples with different educational compositions. The effects of education are such that an explanation based on egalitarian values fares better than one based on human capital. Finally, comparing the spouses, the results indicate that the influence of wives' education dominates. However, among highly educated wives this does not hold true when it comes to cleaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on data from a qualitative study of mothers' involvement in children's education in order to present a different perspective on gender and class from those embedded in contemporary dominant discourses on social class. It argues that class is a complicated mixture of the material, the discursive, psychological predispositions and sociological dispositions. As such, the ways in which class as a complex set of interrelated issues contributes to social inequalities are best understood by combining quantitative approaches to social class with more qualitative studies which attempt to explore how class, and the inequalities it generates, are lived in gendered and raced ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popular consensus in the field of education is that teachers consciously or unconsciously discriminate against pupils on the basis of social class, ethnicity and sex. However, in exploring the extent of bias in teachers' perceptions and treatment of pupils from different social groups, few studies have satisfactorily taken into account variation in pupils' conduct. More specifically, the research in this area has frequently failed to demonstrate whether teachers respond to some pupils more than others because of their social attributes or because of their behaviour. In this paper multivariate techniques were used to address this problem. The results of the analysis showed little evidence of social class or racial discrimination by teachers. It was, however, apparent that girls were significantly less likely to be punished than boys after differences in behaviour had been taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In virtually all advanced capitalist industrial societies, transitions from compulsory education into employment have been prolonged since the 1970s. The basic reasons are the same everywhere, but there have been contrasting interpretations of youth's new social condition by different countries' social scientists. Here a particularly sharp contrast is between Britain and Germany. In the former country most researchers have taken a negative view of the trends, whereas German scholars have stressed the spread of flexibility, individualisation, and opportunities for self-directed growth. This paper discusses the similarities and differences between transitions into employment in Britain and Germany using evidence from matched samples of 16-22 year olds. It is argued that there are fundamental, systemic differences between the organisation of entering the labour forces in Britain and Germany. In Germany transitions take longer, are more structured, and are rooted in a training culture. However, each country's young people are made to feel that they themselves make significant choices, and their transitions have become individualised. Simultaneously, individuals' opportunities in each country continue to be governed by the familiar predictors -- family background, sex, place of residence, and attainments in secondary education. It is argued that in each country young people are prototypical cases of broader trends towards structured individualisation and the fragmentation of formerly more homogeneous social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The curriculum vitae has become a central feature of modern academic life. It can be understood as a form of autobiographical practice, one centrally involved with the construction and presentation of a self in a particular occupational context. This paper explores these themes and seeks to show how the insights of Goffman might contribute to an understanding of the nature and significance of these practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent analysis of data from Scotland found evidence of `discouraged worker' effects. More young people stayed on in full-time education post-16 in areas of high adult unemployment than in areas of low unemployment; this was particularly true for those with middling-level qualifications. Using comparable data on English young people the paper attempts to replicate the Scottish analysis. Although evidence of local labour market effects is offered, no `discouraged worker' effects were found; in fact, more young people stayed on in areas of low unemployment. Some possible reasons for differences between the two countries, including the potential influence of different structures of post- 16 educational opportunities, are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International comparisons of engineering graduate numbers are frequently used as indices of industrial development and measures of the responsiveness of the educational system to industrial requirements. Such comparisons make implicit assumptions about quality by assuming that like institutions or like qualifications are being compared. In this paper the concept of 'best practice' engineering education is derived from engineering manpower reports of German engineering education in order to address issues of both quantity and quality in comparing engineering education in Britain and Japan. Japan is found to have associated engineering education with relatively more prestigious institutions and to have attracted a higher proportion of more able male pupils to broad based engineering education compared to Britain. Yet there are some interesting differences between the model of 'best practice' engineering education based on Germany and Japanese practice, particularly in curricula, which underline the importance of the division of labour between education and employment in the education and training of engineers. Examining the responsiveness of educational systems through propositions derived from a model of 'best practice' rather than through simple output statistics underlines the importance of different patterns of institutional development, the role of the state, educational and occupational selection, and status within the curriculum for understanding the variety of contemporary engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent discussion and policy have tended to separate the problem of procuring research competence from consideration of the nature and purposes of sociology and to pursue it with close reference to the presumed needs of various possible users of research. This paper argues that sociologists should set their own consideration of the issue firmly within the framework of a commitment to the intellectual problems and purposes of sociology as a disciplined And that if that is done suitable educational strategies for promoting competence can be devised; a possible strategy focussed on undergraduate work and the Ph.D. is outlined. It is suggested that the real problem is not that of competence but certain unrealistic expectations hidden in the demand for usefulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines, with some reference to a content analysis of three British journals, the methodological orientation of current British sociology in order to argue that most graduate students as a consequence of their undergraduate socialization are unlikely to wish to take advantage of formal methodology courses at the graduate level, at least in so far as these are highly technical in content. Some of the implications of the argument for sociology in Britain generally, for undergraduate methods teaching and for the structure of graduate education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching sociological practice in Britain in the 1960's was carried out in `methods' courses which focussed on large scale survey techniques. Although in subsequent years courses have been broadened, there is still a clear conflict between the model of research contained in the syllabuses, texts and examination papers for these courses and sociological work as a whole. It is suggested that a reformulation of such courses to cover all aspects of research practice and the involvement of students in designing and carrying out their own research work would move it into the centre of sociology teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on an investigation of a reorganized comprehensive school. Although in the tradition of the `new' sociology of education, it is critical of aspects of such an approach. It attempts to give a greater insight than hitherto into the work relationships of teachers in schools; concentrates on the consequences for self and role performance of teacher career experience, focusing particularly on teacher/headteacher interaction. Intra-school `horizontal' and `vertical' aspects of teachers' careers (particularly, `the streaming of teachers') and associated moral careers are examined; and the formation of a `cabal' and a `clique' noted. This professional segmentation is linked with the streaming of children and the distribution of `stratified knowledge' within the school, which are seen to guarantee distinctive pupil identities and educational careers. In conclusion, the suggestion is made that comprehensive schooling, as at this school, is a negation of the comprehensive principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an historical and statistical analysis of the pre-professional education of officers of various sectors and levels of the British Army between 1800 and 1971. 'Four eras' in the evolution of educational selectivity in the army commissioning system are identified: 1800-1849---educational criteria irrelevant; 1849-I 870-partial educational selectivity; 1870-1939-examination-dominated selection; 1941 onwards- `scientific' selection. In the light of this historical pattern, it was anticipated that the officer corps would show a heavy dependence on the elite sector of education, although also, over time, a reduction in this dependence. Examination of figures for membership of Woolwich (1855-1939), of Sandhurst (1890-1967), of the army elite (1870-1971), and of the officer corps as a whole (1969) verified these predictions. Officership proves to have been a virtual monopoly of the public schools-amongst whom the major boarding schools were predominant at least up to the Second World War, and even since then public school boys have predominated at every level of the army until quite recently. However, it is also clear that an irreversible decline in the role of the public schools has now set in, and that state sector schools are now taking over the major role in the supply of new officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research on educational choice has revealed good correlations between it and social class. Such research has two weaknesses; it fails to specify a mechanism connecting structural attributes and individual behaviour, and it cannot account for deviants. One attempt to remedy these deficiencies is supplied by explanations cast in terms of class values. This paper criticises such explanations, and suggests that the real determinant is to be found in economic differences which are only properly visible over the whole working career. Such economic differences partly cross-cut traditional occupational divisions. Economic experience is projected to construct models of the world which are used in making decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the influence of the policy of local education authorities upon educational attainment. We suggest that the influence of local policy has been neglected in the sociology of education and hypothesize that policy variables are likely to be of major importance as determinants of attainment. Evidence drawn from correlations of policy, provision and social-class variables with each other and with various measures of attainment tends to validate this suggestion, and indicates that two `policy- models' of local authority activity may be appropriate: viz, the elite-orientated authority model, in which resources are differentially concentrated on a sponsored elite with consequent high attainment of this elite; and the egalitarian authority model where resources are more evenly spread throughout the school system with consequent `inferior' attainment of an elitist kind, but where the evidence suggests there is higher overall attainment of the total school system product. It would also appear that the determinant of the policy set pursued by an LEA. is the social class background of the area it covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sociological Research Unit of the Department of Sociology of Education has been engaged for the past five years upon a study of variations between and within social class in familial patterns of communication and control. This paper examines social class differences in maternal reports of various contextual usages of language. The findings, obtained from a sample of 100 mothers, indicate social class differences in adult-adult and mother-child communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by examining the typology of educational systems outlined by Earl Hopper m Sociology (vol. 2, no. I, 1968) and argues against the attempt to reduce the comparative study of education to varieties of occupational selection. On the other hand, accepting that a central part of the sociology of education must be with ideology and the generation and transmission of learning, it outlines a framework for examining this in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at how sociology might regard the concept of 'character', both in terms of the way it is used in public discourse and in its own accounts of social life. In the former, the concept is likely to be regarded with suspicion, especially where it is used to explain individuals' life outcomes in a way that ignores social structures and depoliticizes inequalities. Such usages are to be found in political discourse on welfare and in the character education movement as a solution to problems of 'social mobility'. Yet if character refers to individuals' settled dispositions to act in certain ways, then it has some affinities with the Bourdieusian concept of habitus. The article argues both for developing the critique of ideological uses of the concept and for considering how it might be used in ways that do not misrepresent its explanatory and normative significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology has an ambivalent relationship with advocacy research because the benefits of participation and engagement must be balanced with concerns about bias. The current study uses 10 recent research reports on homophobia in British educational settings, written and funded by campaigning charities, as a case study of contemporary advocacy research. Presenting a sociological analysis of these documents and adopting a social problems approach, claims-making processes in the reports are documented and significant methodological and analytical flaws are identified. Instead of objective research, these reports are campaigning documents that seek to gain media coverage and influence policy. Implications for how the reports should be used as resources for research and social policy are examined, and a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to engaging with advocacy research is called for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out the ways in which primary schools have come to bear significant risks in making decisions over whether, how and when to reflect transgender issues. We examine press reporting that arose in relation to a recent incident in the UK in which a primary school in East Sussex was widely criticised for instigating a 'transgender education' initiative. We argue that despite tacit indications that UK Government supports 'transgender education' as a learning area for children as young as five years old, there is an ongoing risk to primary schools who implement such initiatives. The nature of this risk is located within the usage of equalities terminology in governmental discussions and official guidance that effectively acts to gloss over the enduringly controversial nature of transgender issues. The vague and non-specific nature of equalities terminology allows for both heteronormative and transgressive interpretation, thereby locating the risk of public criticism with primary schools, and head teachers in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a series of well-documented changes in post-war English higher education: the massification of, and increased differentiation within, the system, as well as changing relationships between credentials, skills and incomes. It offers an account of the new liberal arts degrees rapidly emerging at both elite and non-elite universities in England, explaining these as a response to, and negotiation of, an ever-changing higher-education landscape. Through an analysis of the promotional websites of the 17 English liberal arts degrees offered in the 2016–2017 academic year, the article links their emergence to broader trends, while insisting that there are crucial differences in the ways in which elite and non-elite universities use new degrees to negotiate the higher education landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that middle-class parents engage in the ‘concerted cultivation’ of their children with a view to securing their future status. One aspect of this ‘concerted cultivation’ entails the enrolment of children in organised enrichment activities. While scholars have focused on the ‘enrichment’ market for school-aged children, few have examined the preschool market. This article presents an analysis of a Sydney-based Australian parenting publication with a focus on advertisements for enrichment and entertainment activities targeting preschool-aged children. Many of these advertisements promote the message that future educational success is predicated on parental investment in the preschool years and mothers/parents are urged to do all they can to give their child a ‘head start’ on learning. This analysis highlights how these activities are promoted as a strategy for class reproduction, suggesting that anxiety about children’s future status has seeped into the preschool years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses national university applications and admissions data to explore why ethnic minority applicants to Russell Group universities are less likely to receive offers of admission than comparably qualified white applicants. Contrary to received opinion, the greater tendency of ethnic minorities to choose highly numerically competitive degree subjects only partially accounts for their lower offer rates from Russell Group universities relative to white applicants with the same grades and ‘facilitating subjects’ at A-level. Moreover, ethnic inequalities in the chances of receiving an admissions offer from a Russell Group university are found to be greater in relation to courses where ethnic minorities make up a larger percentage of applicants. This latter finding raises the possibility that some admissions selectors at some Russell Group universities may be unfairly rejecting a proportion of their ethnic minority applicants in an attempt to achieve a more ethnically representative student body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how parenting practices popularly classed as ‘good’ are related to poverty, education and time pressure. Using the 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE) survey we argue that parenting practices such as reading, playing games and eating meals together are not absent among those who are less well educated, have lower incomes or are more deprived of socially accepted necessities: therefore, political claims of widespread ‘poor parenting’ are misplaced. Further, we suggest that the dominant trope of poor people being poor at parenting may arise because the activities of the most educationally advantaged parents – who do look different to the majority – are accepted as the benchmark against whom others are assessed. This leads us to suggest that the renewed interest in sociological research on elites should be extended to family life in order that the exceptionality of the most privileged is recognised and analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between social stratification and arts participation? Because the barriers to both participation and consumption vary, the relationship between the social strata and arts participation may differ from the relationship between social strata and arts consumption. Using three pooled waves of the Taking-Part survey (N = 78,011), I estimate latent class and multinomial logistic models to examine the association between education, social status, social class, and income with patterns of arts participation. Five latent clusters are observed and both social status and social class are insignificantly associated with each cluster. In contrast, education remains strongly correlated with most forms of arts participation. These results indicate that arts participation, as a constituent part of ‘lifestyle’, is not primarily explained through social status or social class but rather through education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research emphasising the importance of parenting behaviours and aspirations for child outcomes has been seized on by policymakers to suggest the responsibility of the worst off themselves for low levels of social mobility. This article provides a critique of the way in which research evidence has been used to support the dominant policy discourse in this area, as well as an empirical analysis. We use the Millennium Cohort Study to interrogate the relationship between social class and attainment in the early years of schooling. We investigate the extent to which social class inequalities in early cognitive scores can be accounted for by parental education, income, family social resources and parental behaviours. We conclude that social class remains an important concept for both researchers and policymakers, and that the link between structural inequalities and inequalities in children’s cognitive scores cannot be readily accounted for in terms of individual parenting behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The status attainment literature suggests that the educational success of parents determines the educational success of their children (Blau and Duncan, 1967). However, the mechanisms by which families determine a child’s education are imperfectly understood. This article tests Lareau’s (2003) parental typology to identify the association between parenting strategies and educational outcomes achieved using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) 2004–2006. The findings suggest that class is not a convincing predictor for parenting style, but that use of concerted cultivation parenting strategies does improve the young person’s chances of achieving five GCSEs grade A*–C. These parenting strategies are also a positive predictor of how much a young person enjoys school, a teacher’s perception of their progress in school, their own perceptions of progress in school, their likelihood to apply to university, and whether they believe they will be accepted if they apply. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how Dutch and British students socially construct the positional competition for jobs within their educational and labour market contexts. The findings illustrate two contrasting approaches to employability. The competition for jobs as understood by the Dutch students is based on absolute performance, an unclear relationship between skills and the labour market, and the development of human capital in areas of experiences, skills and abilities. For the British students it is based on relative performance, ranking of candidates and the importance of signals. The study also shows that these principles are aligned to national labour market and educational contexts. These results highlight the importance of the institutional context in how the positional competition for graduate jobs is played out. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The expansion of higher education raises the risk environment for school-leavers as more occupations become partially graduate with the result that occupational signals are fuzzy. This makes the educational decision more difficult and more risky, especially with more of the cost of higher education being transferred to the individual. After a discussion of the nature of risk, derived from Beck, and of the role of government policy and of economics in obscuring this, the analysis uses simple quantitative techniques, based on British Labour Force Survey data, to demonstrate the increased fuzziness of graduate work. It is also shown that a rising proportion of graduates receive only average pay, thus raising the risks associated with educational investments even further. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article seeks to extend work in the growing sociology of adulthood. It considers the debate that young people in the UK and other advanced industrial societies now face challenges to their adulthood; in particular, that they experience problems of social recognition. Using membership categorisation analysis (MCA) the article then illustrates how members of a sample of 23 young people who had taken a gap year, a break in their educational careers taken between leaving school/college and university, use talk about changes in their relationships with their parents during this period of their lives to accomplish an adult identity in their current context. The article considers the ramifications of these findings and the consequences for studying adulthood more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers an explanation for recent trends that indicate higher numbers of young British Pakistani men and women pursue higher education compared to their white peers. Our qualitative research provides evidence for shared norms and values amongst British Pakistani families, what we term ‘ethnic capital’. However, our findings also highlight differences between families. The Bourdieuian notion of ‘cultural capital’ explains educational success among middle-class British Pakistani families. We argue, however, that insufficient attention has been given to the relation between education and ethnicity, and particularly the role of ‘ethnic capital’ in ameliorating social class disadvantage. Our research also recognizes the limitations of ‘ethnic capital’ and traces the interplay of ethnicity with gender and religion that produces differences between, and within, working-class British Pakistani families. We also emphasize how structural constraints, selective school systems and racialized labour markets, influence the effectiveness of ‘ethnic capital’ in promoting educational achievement and social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article seeks to contribute to a newly growing literature on religious differences in education and the labour market, and seeks to answer two main questions: To what extent does education have similar impacts on occupational attainment across ethnic and faith groups? To what extent are these ethnic differences due to religious affiliation and/or skin colour? The data used in this study have been obtained from the 2001 UK Census. The data suggest that ethnicity per se is not an important factor but operates as a proxy, and, as this article shows, skin colour and culture (religion) are to a greater extent arguably the main mechanisms that operate to reinforce disadvantage among some groups or to facilitate social mobility amongst others. The direction and strength of their influence appears to be dependent on whether the specific culture is seen as compatible or 'alien' in relation to the hegemonic culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the insinuation of therapeutic culture into everyday life from the vantage point of a qualitative cross-generational study of economically marginalized young women and their mothers. Against dominant assessments of therapeutic culture -- as representing cultural decline, social regulation or transformation -- we draw on interview narratives to analyse its practical and situated effects. We argue that desires for disclosure and open communication are not trivial or narcissistic and instead interpret them as productive emotional strategies for managing difficult circumstances, and for engendering a sense of competence and possibility. Thus a concern with 'talking things through' is neither ineffectual nor adequately understood as a manifestation of an ahistorical feminine alignment with emotions and interior life. While we do not dismiss regulatory aspects of therapeutic culture, our analysis offers an alternative and empirically based account of the ways cultural imperatives are enacted across generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last quarter of the 20th century gave rise to debate in this journal and elsewhere regarding the treatment of women in class analysis. It is argued here that the question of minority ethnic achievement has given new impetus to arguments in favour of taking account of mother's occupation in class schemas. The article constructs three different class schemas and tests their utility in this context. It then uses one schema to assess the importance of social class in explaining achievement differentials among minority ethnic pupils in Britain. Class background is found to be a key factor for all groups. The analysis finds significant differences between ethnic groups even when pupils from the same social class background are compared. When disparities within ethnic groups are examined, however, it is found that the effect of moving one place down the social class structure is similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how urban working-class youth display their identities through taste and style within the educational field. The authors examine data from longitudinal tracking interview to see how such practices contribute to shaping young people's choices and attitudes towards higher education. The authors suggest that while young people try to generate worth and value through investments in style, these practices also play into oppressive social relations and keep the young people within marginalized social positions.

This article is devoted to the explanation of the influence of social origins on student achievement. Using the data of the Project for International Student Assessment on 25 nations, I show that cultural capital provides a relevant, but far from exhaustive, account of schooling inequalities; furthermore, the explanatory power of Boundieu's theory seems impressively similar across countries. I also try to argue that, in order to elaborate a more satisfactory explanation, we need to take into account at least two more factors: occupational aspirations and economic resources. Finally, I discuss whether the above mentioned factors can be integrated into a coherent theoretical framework to achieve a better understanding of educational inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a tension in time studies between measuring arid accounting for the changing distribution of units of time across social activities, and explaining temporal experiences. By analysing in-depth interviews with 27 people, this article employs a theory of practice to explore the relationship between respondents' ‘non-work’ practices and five dimensions of time. It hypothesizes that practices which demand a fixed location within daily schedules anchor temporal organization, around which are sequenced sets of interrelated practices. A third category of practices fills the gaps that emerge within temporal sequences. The most significant socio-demographic constraints (gender, age, life-course and education) that shaped how respondents engaged and experienced practices in relation to the five dimensions of time are then considered. It is argued that the relationship between different types of social practices, five dimensions of time and socio-demographic constraints presents a conceptual framework for the systematic analysis of differential temporal experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]