class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # SOC 2220 Discussion Section ## Week 5 ### Xuewen Yan ### 2020-10-2 --- # Feedback Section organization - Material recap + Concepts & Readings - Breakout room discussions Communication - New office hours: Wed eve & Thur afternoon (same link) - Permanently available links on Discussion tab (Office hours and slides) Quiz prep - Quiz available at 3pm Friday - Lecture video - Slides & readings --- # Concept review - Cultural capital (Bourdieu; Lareau) + Reproduction of class through schooling - Social capital (Coleman; Dufur et al.) - Tracking and ability grouping (Hallinan) - The acting white hypothesis (and why is it "insidious"?) (Tyson et al.) - Model minority myth --- # cultural capital -- Bourdieu (French) - valued/high-status cultural signals (attitudes, preferences, knowledge, behavior, credentials, goods) - *"Symbolic violence" of school: reproduction & legitimization Lareau (building on Bourdieu and studying USA) - class differences in the style of parental involvement in school; - cultural capital **interacting with** dominat institutional norms and expectations (in specific societies) --- # social capital -- Coleman (*1988, Social capital in the creation of human capital) - Assets generated from social structure, social relationships and/or networks, such as trust, reciprocity, and shared norms for behavioral enforcement Dufur et al. - Little race-sex differences in the building or creation of social capital; exception: parental trust not working for black boys; - Female advantage in return to family social capital; - Low return to school social capital across gender-race groups. --- # Concept review **Tracking and ability grouping** -- - segregation; lower status and development for lower-track students - Modification rather than elimination (efficiency and resource distribution) **The acting white hypothesis** -- - "the premise that black students are driven toward low school performance because of an 'oppositional peer culture'” - contradicted by substantial evidence but still persists as a "zombie theory" + counter-evidence: the stereotyping of high-achieving kids as "nerds" and "geeks" in particular schools, regardless of race --- **model minority myth** -- - Empirical evidence of on-average higher achievement among Asians - Conceals within-Asian heterogeneities (e.g., South-east Asian Americnas vs East/Indian Americans) - Creates a hierarchy across (minority) racial groups - *Pressure to high-performing Asians and the neglect of their struggles in other aspects of wellbeing (e.g., dating, return to education in the labor market) --- # Reading recap IRP (Institute for Research on Poverty) 2019 - What is “the income achievement gap”? - How is poverty associated with school achievement? What are the mechanisms? - What are the aspects of poverty that impede brain development? Owens 2016 - What is gender gap in educational attainment? How is it measured? - What are early behavior problems? - What factors account for differences in rates of high school graduation, college enrollment and graduation, and years of schooling between boys and girls? --- # Reading recap IRP (Institute for Research on Poverty) 2019 - What is “the income achievement gap”? *(pp1)* - How is poverty associated with school achievement? What are the mechanisms? *(pp1,2)* - What are the aspects of poverty that impede brain development? *[Hint: “limited financial resources, neighborhood violence, low-quality schools, environmental toxins, and unstable family life.”]* Owens 2016 - What is gender gap in educational attainment? How is it measured? *[Abstract]* - What are early behavior problems? *[Table 1, p240]* - What factors account for differences in rates of high school graduation, college enrollment and graduation, and years of schooling between boys and girls? *[Figure 2. Pp250]* --- # Section Activity Watch the video together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgoRN4n0GGs, from the beginning to 4’12 only; Apply knowledge from lectures and readings to discuss the following questions: - How is family-school relationship associated with social class? [eg. refer to (Lareau, 1987)] - How can family background affect students’ achievement within schools? - Reflect on your experiences, has family-school relationship affected your educational outcomes? If so, in what way? - In your view, what are other within-school structures associated with differential educational outcomes among students? Why?