TOWARDS A SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW OF SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT.

This article discusses a socio-psychological aspect of school management. One of the most firmly established findings in educational research is the relationship between the socio-economic background from which a pupil comes and his educational achievement. A more recent research development in this area of inquiry has been to isolate particular aspects of the concept of social class and, by means of multivariate analysis, to estimate the relative importance of the variables normally associated with the concept in relation to school achievement. It is often said that the demonstration of a statistical relationship of this kind does not justify the assumption of any causal connection between the two variables of parental aspirations and the children's achievement. Implicit in this last view is the notion that the nature of the relationship between the two variables is that it is part of a complex process in which a great many factors are involved. The process of socialization is essentially one of learning, in the course of which individuals come to internalize and integrate into their personality systems the social norms of the groups to which they belong.