(In)stabilities in Learning Trajectories: Revisiting the Narrative of Summer Learning Losses

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 28. Summer Setback Effects

Abstract

Sociologists of education have described summer vacations as prime generators of achievement gaps among children and youth. Students learn at relatively equal rates when school is in session but diverge along social lines in the summer months when they experience markedly different learning opportunities in their non-school environments. The literature on seasonal learning has implicitly assumed that students’ non-school environments are static over time, such that, in successive summers, students either always gain skill and progress further ahead or always lose skill and fall further behind. In this paper, we examine the stability with which students gain or lose skill across consecutive summers. Data come from a multi-year longitudinal study of summer learning in five school districts in Ontario, Canada. Using a piecewise growth model with an unstructured covariance matrix, we find that students’ gains and losses in numeracy are variable across summers: many students gain ground one summer and lose ground the next. We also find that students’ learning rates tend to be more similar from one school-year to the next compared to one summer to the next. We discuss implications for the ways in which we theorize the generation of achievement gaps.

Authors

• Zahide Alaca, University of Toronto

• Scott Davies, University of Toronto