Pursuit of Upward Social Mobility. What's at Stake? Can Schools do Better?

Author(s):

Martha Mottelson(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

05. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

05 SES 06,

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

15:30-17:00

Room:

W2.11

Chair:

Martha Mottelson

Contribution

The paper will provide an outline of an ongoing research project on young student’s pursuit of upward social mobility in public schools. The goal of the project is to understand better what is at stake among middle school students from nonacademic families when social mobility by way of schooling is a chosen perspective. Further, the goal is to specify the support this specific group of students needs if schools are going to succeed in maintaining aspirations towards an educational trajectory.

The aim of the paper is to present and discuss a longitudinal case study that has followed five students from grades 5 through 8. The focus is to explore the encounter between student aspiration and school culture. The concept of Aspiration will here refer to student’s thoughts on school performance and practices, whereas school culture will refer to socially and institutionally embedded expectations regarding ‘normal’ student behavior (Bartholdsson 2008, Jackson 1969, Mehan 1979, Willis 1977). Research questions will focus on how the school meets student aspirations for education when performed in ways that may differ from the ones of students whose families to a greater extent have provided specific support based on insider knowledge on how to succeed in school.

The hypothesis of the project is that schools fail to acknowledge educational aspirations among students if they are not expressed in certain culturally sanctioned ways. The result being that teachers fail to identify certain types of educational aspirations and in consequence fail to provide relevant support to students who don’t comply with the middle class standards for presenting themselves as serious hardworking students. Thus, the goal of the project is to describe and understand educational aspiration when it comes out, is expressed and practiced in non-standard ways.

Overall goals:

To develop a vocabulary for describing educational aspirations in young nonacademic student’s perspective

To create knowledge on how schools meet, interpret and act upon educational aspiration when expressed in diverse ways.

To investigate how schools can meet the specific educational needs of students from nonacademic backgrounds, i.e take in to account their perspectives, orientations and practices and create targeted professional approaches and practices to accommodate them.

Background

The Danish national political goal that 95% of a birth cohort graduates from high school has not yet been successfully met. PISA testing has revealed that Danish schools show particularly poor results when it comes to support of upward social mobility (PISA 2012). The project investigates the specific context of Danish public schools, but the findings will be of broader interest as they have bearing upon a more general perspective of equity in education.

The question of why schools fail to promote more upward social mobility has been the object of international research with different foci:

Day-to-day routines and practices in classrooms convey and demand subjection to a set of random rules and regulations that merely accustom students to comply to structures of domination (Jackson 1969)
Schools promote the reproduction of prevailing social divisions in access to power and resources (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977)
Differences between working class culture and the prerequisites in public education (Basil Bernstein 1971)
Explaining why working class youth doesn’t buy in to the schools promise of a better life through compliancy to school demands (Willis 1977).

This project – on the one hand stands on the shoulders of previous research but on the other hand seeks to employ a more child-centered approach. The question here being with which perspectives young students who have upward social mobility as their aim seek to pursue their goals, how they experience what they meet in school, and how the school meets, understands and interprets this particular group of students?

Method

Theoretically the project is rooted in the following assumptions: The school is a societal institution that commends the reproduction of prevailing divisions of power and resources and secures the cultural reproduction of ideas and practices well designed to maintain status quo in society (Bourdieu& Passeron 1977). The identification of school as a tool for social and cultural reproduction provides explanation regarding the poor results with upward social mobility. However, rather than being a static prohibitive, the theories of reproduction provide a framework for understanding basic challenges in the endeavor to promote social equity in education. Different positions in society form the basis for habitual interpretation and understanding of situations and the formation of strategies for defining and achieving fruitful outputs (Bourdieu 1986). Thus, an understanding of socially formed preference, orientation and practice is key to analyze different positions in and approaches to education and different educational practices. The main bulk of data in this project is based on qualitative interviews carried out as short semi-structured conversational encounters (Kvale 1994, Spradley 1979), accompanied by a small number of classroom observations, informal conversations and field notes. The intention with the interviews has been to produce material that could reveal informant’s perspectives on and experience as students in a school, and for them to reflect on their personal school experience. Thus, interviews have been designed to invite informants to bring forth personal narratives containing reflexions on their own position, relations and identity (Mead 1934). Further the data has been produced with the intention to be analyzed as representations of informant’s framework of interpretation and understanding as discussed by Erving Goffman in ‘Frame Analysis’ and by Bordieu et al. in ‘The Weight of the World’ The project is a continuation of an ethnographic study of a fifth grade classroom finalized in 2016 (Mottelson & Jørgensen 2016) and as such seeks to combine earlier findings regarding school culture with findings rooted in student’s personal narratives. As the project seeks to uncover student’s perspectives it will further draw on research and findings disclosing the positions in everyday life held by children as opposed to those defined by adults in general and specifically by school professionals. Thus, the project applies methods, approaches and findings from research on childhood, children and children’s perspectives (Corsaro 2002, EVA 2009 Gulløv & Højlund 2003).

Expected Outcomes

The paper will display findings in the three areas of inquiry: 1 A vocabulary to describe educational aspirations: Concepts that grasp the specific position, outlook and frame of mind among youths from non academic homes and their corresponding practices. 2 An understanding of how young students from non academic homes experience school, how they expect to reach their goals and by which means their pursuit of upward social mobility comes about. 3 Analysis of how aspirations are interpreted and acted upon by middle school teachers in Danish public schools followed by identification of crucial characteristics of the mismatch between professional practices and specific educational needs of nonacademic youth in order to point out where to find areas for potential change and development. Further, the paper will address three discussions relevant to research methodology and design. 1 A general discussion of challenges in longitudinal studies. As longitudinal studies are performed over a long time span, they will tend to develop and change in the course of time, where data from different steps may have been produced under different circumstances and with developments in primary focus. How does the researcher deal with this challenge and which implications will it have on research work and findings? 2 In the current study, first step was carried out as an ethnographic field study whereas the second step has applied narrative approaches, thus being of a more phenomenological nature. The paper will discuss implications of this shift. 3 The paper will address general experience and challenges in research that seeks to employ a children’s perspective. Opportunities and constraints will be analyzed and discussed.

References

Bartholdsson, Åsa (2008) Den venlige magtudøvelse. Normalitet og magt i skolen. Akademisk Forlag Bernstein, Basil (1971) Class, Codes and Control. Routlede Kegan and Paul Bourdieu, Pierre & Passeron, Jean-Claude (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture Sage Publications Bourdieu, Pierre (1986) Distinction. A social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge Bourdie, Pierre et. Al (1999) The Weight of the World. Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Polity Press Corsaro, William A. (2002) The sociology of Childhood. Sage Publications EVA: Danmarks Evalueringsinstitut (2009) Børneperspektiver Goffman, Erving (1974) Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Northeastern University Press Gulløv, Eva & Susanne Højlund (2003) Feltarbejde blandt børn. Metodologi og etik i etnografisk børneforskning. Gyldendal Jackson, Phillip (1969) Life in Classrooms. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston Mead, George Herbert (1934) The Mind, Self and Society. University of Chicago Mottelson & Jørgensen (2016) Differentiering og skolekultur, UCC Kvale, Steinar (1994) InterView. En instroduktion til det kvalitative forskningsinterview. København, Hans Reitzels Forlag McDermott, Ray and Varenne, Hervé (1999) Successful Failure. The School America Builds. Westview Press Mehan, Hugh (1979) Learning Lessons. Social Organization in the Classroom. Harvard University Press Mehan, Hugh et al. (1996) Constructing School Success. The Consequences of untracking low-achieving Students. Cambridge University Press PISA 2012: Egelund, Niels (red.)(2013) PISA 2012 – Danske unge i international sammenligning. KORA Silverman, David (2001) Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing Talk, Text and Interaction. Sage Publications Spradley, James P. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc. Willis, Paul (1977) Learning to Labour. How working class kids get working class jobs. Saxon House

Author Information

Martha Mottelson (presenting / submitting)

UCC

Copenhagen V

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