The aim of this article is to determine the extent to which individual, family, and contextual resources influence the school adjustment of 16-year-old teenagers and to investigate their consequent adult attainments at age 33. Adopting a longitudinal perspective, the experiences of more than 9,000 socially advantaged and disadvantaged young people…

Notwithstanding over 20 years of propaganda promoting board school teaching as an ideal career for upper-class women, it appears that in the 1890s it was still unusual for "girls of good family" to go in for it. Therefore, it was an eccentric plunge in 1898 when Eglantyne Jebb, an Oxford student from a prosperous land-owning family,…

This collection brings together many of the world's leading sociologists of education to explore and address key issues and concerns within the discipline. The thirty-seven newly commissioned chapters draw upon theory and research to provide new accounts of contemporary educational processes, global trends, and changing and enduring forms of…

This study tests the hypothesis that culturally disadvantaged (CD) children would return more often to a completed task (one on which they had had previous success), while non-culturally disadvantaged (NCD) children would return more often to an incompleted task (to achieve closure or to re-try a task which they had previously failed.) Failure…

In a search for the causes of student unrest, it is difficult to separate basic causes from the spoken and rationilized causes. This paper attempts to present a level of analysis which is sufficiently generic so as to discern basic trends and issues but at the same time descriptively specific, so as to be useful in facing practical issues and…

A total of 28 advantaged and 28 disadvantaged 5-year-old children who had been tested in a previous study designed to measure some of the skills and characteristics thought to be related to academic success (ED 032 929) were retested after a 6-month interval during which they had had a preschool experience. Two measures of object exploratory…

Results of a study of 707 students show that all disadvantaged children do not necessarily have negative self concepts. In fact, they show just the opposite at the elementary school level; however, self concept diminishes for both disadvantaged and advantaged students at the secondary school level. (NH)

Discusses the varying effects of economic and social conditions (particularly affluence, educational attainment, and immigration) on the development of U.S. art museums in 1869-99, 1900-30, and 1931-59. Suggests that museum legitimacy transmits the effects of most economic and social variables. Contains 63 references. (SV)

Studies differences in social mobility between rich and poor families. Finds that borrowing constraints retard social mobility among the poor by preventing poor parents from investing optimally in their children's human capital. Also finds that sibling inequality appears to be independent of parental wealth. (Contains 18 references.) (Author/PKP)

In all countries that participated in the IALS, there is a strong relationship between the literacy skills of youth and family socioeconomic status. This relationship is referred to a socioeconomic gradient. One of the key findings of studies that examined socioeconomic gradients within countries is that gradients tend to converge at higher levels…

Emily Beller and Michael Hout examine trends in U.S. social mobility, especially as it relates to the degree to which a person's income or occupation depends on his or her parents' background and to the independent contribution of economic growth. They also compare U.S. social mobility with that in other countries. They conclude that…

Substantial classroom experience has made teachers aware that teaching undergraduate sociology courses dealing with minority groups presents a particular set of challenges. The difficulty they confronted in teaching a course dealing with racial and ethnic groups is two-pronged: on one hand, there is the well-documented problematic nature of the…

This study examined how resources, distribution inequality, and biases toward privileged students affected academic performance. Fifteen-year-olds from 41 countries completed a questionnaire and tests in mathematics, reading, and science. Multilevel regression analyses showed that students scored higher in all subjects when they had more resources…

It has been suggested that overscheduling of upper-class youth might underlie the high distress and substance use documented among them. This assumption was tested by considering suburban 8th graders' involvement in different activities along with their perceptions of parental attitudes toward achievement. Results indicated negligible evidence for…