An Exploratory Examination of Cultural Capital and Concerted Cultivation across School Contexts

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Abstract

The current paper examines the relationship between socioeconomic status and educational achievement among kindergartners in the 2010-11 school year. Previous research has found that family’s pass on advantage to children through participation in high status cultural activities (Bourdieu, 1986) and specific parenting practices that teach children skills that are valued in school settings (Lareau, 2011). This study extends existing knowledge of this relationship by investigating whether Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital and Lareau’s (2011) theory of concerted cultivation vary across different school contexts. The study uses the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011) to investigate these relationships. The findings reveal that while there is an association between cultural capital, concerted cultivation, and socioeconomic status, these measures are only predictive of spring reading scores for children who attend schools with high poverty, providing additional evidence that these practices are related more to mobility than reproduction.

Author

• Jeremy Redford, American Institutes for Research