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This paper develops a thread of argument from previous contributions to this journal by Richard Smith and Ruth Cigman about the educational salience of self-esteem. It is argued—contra Smith and Cigman—that the social science conception of self-esteem does serve a useful educational function, most importantly in undermining the inflated self-help conception of self-esteem that has commonly been transposed to the educational arena. Recent findings about a lack of significant correlation between low global self-esteem and relevant educational variables help us to focus on the type of self-esteem that does matter in the classroom: justified domain-specific self-esteem, in which the chief domains in question are the school subjects and students' self-respect. Moreover, this paper suggests that low self-confidence—which is a real problem for many students—may often be mistaken for low self-esteem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper three logit models of school continuation are presented. The Italian school system was divided into three separate school transitions: from primary education to lower secondary school, from lower to higher secondary school, and from higher secondary education to university. Data derive from the Italian Social Mobility Survey, carried out in 1985 on a sample of over 5,000 people, both male and female, employed and unemployed. They are used in this paper for a cohort analysis of trends over time of educational inequalities due to social origin and sex. The main conclusion of this study is that, apart from minor changes in the rapidly contracting sector of agriculture, there is no consistent sign of reduction of educational inequalities by social origin in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I ask how educational researchers can believe the subjective perceptions of qualitative participant-observers given the concern for objectivity and generalisability of experimental research in the behavioural and social sciences. I critique the most common answer to this question within the educational research community, which posits the existence of two (or more) equally legitimate epistemological paradigms—positivism and constructivism—and offer an alternative that places a priority in educational research on understanding the purposes and meanings humans attribute to educational practices. Only within the context of what I call a transcendent view from somewhere—higher ideals that govern human activities—can we make sense of quantitative as well as qualitative research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the hypothesized inverse relationship between socioeconomic status and conservatism on a wide range of so-called social issues. This relationship is important in itself as well as in some theories that link political dealignment to features of postindustrial society. We examine this relationship by looking at the net effects of education, occupation, income, and class (owner, supervisor, or worker) on nine issues. Our results suggest that the hypothesized relationship is absent for most dimensions of socioeconomic status and most social issues. The most consistent exception to this is that liberalism on social issues tends to increase with education, but even here the relationship varies considerably from issue to issue. The lack of a consistent relationship reflects both the diversity of the social issues and the fuzziness of the social/economic distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a critique of two papers written by Thomas Y. Levin and John Caughie regarding Theodor Adorno's work "On Popular Music: Studies in Philosophy and Social Science" which attempted to infer from Adorno's work pointers towards a politics of popular cultural production. The article proposes ideas on the historical limitations of new techniques and introduces theories for a politics of popular cultural production. It also explains theoretical issues and the relevance of the ideas regarding a cultural politics of television. In sum, the author suggests that in developing a composite idea of cultural politics, the writings of Adorno be observed.

This paper investigates linkages between education and work domains for a birth cohort of British men and women, In particular, the analyses examine Sørensen's conceptualization of open and closed position systems. We investigate one application of these concepts by examining whether open versus closed education systems (i.e., ability group and school type) generate jobs with first employer of differing duration and jobs in open versus closed work position systems. The methodology features a continuous-time discrete-state stochastic model of the transition from the first employer. The data include multiple event histories through age 23 for a 1958 birth cohort of over 11,000 British men and women. In general, we find important differences in the determinants of transitions from open versus closed employment systems. The major differences include gender and earlier life course location in open versus closed education systems and ability tracks. The empirical results only partially support hypotheses in the literature about the timing of transitions (duration dependence) in open and closed employment systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]