Contribution
Description: My research question
"How do academically successful disadvantaged students select and retain institutional agents that can contribute to their gaining of the social and cultural capital of schools that can facilitate their academic success and social mobility?"
Discussion of the topic
Over my seventeen years as an urban educator, I witnessed a phenomenon that has gone unexplained-students living in poverty, whose siblings and parents were "dropouts" or unsuccessful in school; and for many, their families also experienced a legacy of racial discrimination. Furthermore, many of these students came from single parent or guardian homes, and yet many of these students were successful in their academic program and entered good colleges upon graduation - thus opening opportunities for social mobility.
Theoretical framework
To understand this phenomenon my theoretical point-of-origin, aligned with that of Bourdieu's (1972,1977, 1986), one must look at the reproductive processes embedded within our sociocultural context (macro) and within the structures of schooling (micro) linked to educational outcomes and social mobility. The phenomenon I observed- where disadvantaged youth have succeeded in school and have become socially mobile-can be understood by using Bourdieu's theoretical model of social reproduction and his concepts of social and cultural capital linked to one's habitus. Second, these processes are complex and multidimensional (Ball, 2003; Brown, 2000; Bourdieu, 1998; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Dika & Singh, 2002; Lareau, 2000; Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2001; Reay, 2004). How I have theorized and conceptualized these students' successes (the phenomenon) is by "flipping" Bourdieu's (1973, 1977) social reproduction model of the elites to that of disadvantaged youth, in a way similar in concept to Marx's "flipping" of Hegel's notion of ideas determining social reality and the material world. Thus, I used Bourdieu's concepts of cultural, social capital, and habitus as analytical tools to explain how some disadvantaged students are able to be academically successful and socially mobile. I argue that it provides the analytic tools to study why some disadvantaged students may attain the needed social capital, as it links the acquisition of cultural and social capital to one's "habitus."
Methodology: I used a combination of both quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify patterns and trends across the participants, as well as to construct in-depth case-studies (Yin, 2003) of individual urban high school students in an IB Programme.
Table 1: Main data collection instruments and their methods of analysis.
Data collection tool Information collected Type of data Type of analysis
A. Social Capital Participant Survey
" Family composition
" Academic achievement of family members
" Attribution of academic success/failure of family members Quantitative survey data Descriptive and statistical analysis
B. Network Participant Survey
" Perceptions about various institutional agents (teachers, peers, relatives and other adults Quantitative survey data Descriptive and statistical analysis
C. Participants' Written Questionnaire
" Past academic experiences
" Definition of schooling success
" Academic, cultural and social interests and hobbies
" Influence of specific institutional agents
" Future plans (Qualitative) open-ended survey data Case-study analysis
D. Participants' Intensive Interviews
ALL OF ABOVE Interview data Case-study analysis
E. Focus group ALL OF ABOVE Interview data Qualitative analysis
F. Archival records/ school documents " Past academic experiences
" Academic performance Document/
Archival/ artifact
data Case-study analysis
The case study/mixed methods research design employed moves away from normative frameworks, to those that investigate social capital via psychosocial outcomes such as: school and community engagement, "school mix" effect (diversity of the student population), peer interactions, institutional agency and locus of control studies, using social networks theories (Lin, 1990,1999a, 1999b) and Bourdieu's (1977,1986) social reproduction models.
Conclusions: The research revealed student participants' attitudes, perceptions and behaviors towards schooling changed and their preconceived notions of schooling success, competitiveness, and acquiring knowledge were challenged by the rigor of the curriculum and assessments in the IB Programme. Furthermore, because of the structure of secondary schools and teachers' focus on the curriculum/subject area (Goodson, 1997) and high stakes exams (Martina, Hursh, Markowitz, Hart & Debes, 2003) needed to satisfy state requirements for graduation, most students were unable to make those important connections they had made in the elementary and middle school with teachers as their primary institutional agents. In order to continue their academic success, students were compelled to solicit sponsorship and institutional agency of their peers and friends-this meant changes in the student participants' habitus such as: trusting other students; redefining schooling success, competitiveness, knowledge and learning, and working collaboratively, rather than enacting the "false" meritocratic notions of individualism that had worked for them in the past with the "invisible" support of their teachers and relatives.
These changes in the student's habitus were facilitated by the combination of characteristics, which included the diversity of the student population, school culture, the curriculum and instruction, pedagogical practices and the administration's "mission" to select students for the IB Programme not only from the "intellectual or social class elite," but from diverse backgrounds. The student participants' acknowledge knowing and enacting "the rules of the game" (Bourdieu, 1992), although a few students admitted they also had ethical tensions with this concept.
My research successfully used several theoretical concepts of Pierre Bourdieu (1987, 1992, 1998) - and particularly the concept of habitus - to inform the collection and analysis of empirical data regarding social capital attainment and supports Reay's (2004) and Sayer's (2004) call to use habitus in empirical research. My findings also bring forth new directions for further research by merging Bourdieu's theoretical framework with research in "school mix"/ compositional effect (Lauder & Thrupp, 2004) and the use of different measures of composition beyond those of SES or the "control" group medical model of analysis.
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