Interpreting Instruction and Demonstrating Knowledge as Cultural Capital

• In Event: New Approaches to Studying Cultural Capital

Abstract

Socioeconomic gaps in educational achievement are staggering. As Sean Reardon (2011) notes in Whither Opportunity, students at the 90th percentile of the income distribution have an advantage over those in the 10th percentile of up to 7 years’ worth of schooling. This naturally begs questions about why these gaps emerge and persist, especially during students’ earliest years in school as their achievement trajectories begin.

Cultural capital theory suggests that socioeconomic status shapes the way children learn (from their parents) how to engage with authority figures in school, which ultimately may impact their achievement (Lareau 2003; Calarco 2011; 2014; Jack 2016; Streib 2011). While engagement with authority figures (i.e. teachers, administrators) no doubt structures how students experience school, social class may shape skills and know-how in other ways. Theis goal of this paper is to demonstrate how socioeconomic status shapes other forms of cultural capital and how that cultural capital can lead to academic advantages and disadvantages.

This paper draws on classroom observations and interviews with first graders, their parents, and teachers. For one academic year, I observed four first grade classrooms between two elementary schools in different districts. All classrooms were racially and socioeconomically diverse, though both schools had a numerical majority of white and non-poor students.

I find that higher-SES students decode teachers’ inexplicit academic instructions and demonstrate academic knowledge more ably, confidently, and frequently than lower-SES students. Lower-SES students regularly demonstrate procedural knowledge (i.e. knowledge of classroom rules) to gain attention and praise from teachers. These patterns are connected to two things: (1) teachers give less explicit and continuous instruction for academic tasks than for classroom procedure and (2) higher-SES parents teach their children the academic problem-solving script teachers expect and reward, whereas lower-SES parents emphasize rule-following as the path to academic achievement.

My results suggest that class-based cultural capital extends beyond students’ ways of engaging with teachers and other school authority figures. In fact, social class is intimately connected to how students interpret teacher instructions, the kind of knowledge they are apt to demonstrate, and how they go about demonstrating that knowledge. While both forms of knowledge (procedural and academic) are important for students to understand and demonstrate (especially in first grade), effectively demonstrating academic knowledge reaps more academic advantages for students and is therefore a more profitable form of cultural capital for young students.

References:
Calarco, Jessica McCrory. 2011. “I Need Help!” Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School.” American Sociological Review 76(6):862-882.
Calarco, Jessica McCrory. 2014. “Coached for the Classroom: Parents’ Cultural Transmission and Children’s Reproduction of Educational Inequalities.” American Sociological Review:1-20.
Jack, Anthony Abraham. 2016. “(No) Harm in Asking: Class, Acquired Cultural Capital, and Academic Engagement at an Elite University.” Sociology of Education 89(1):1-19.
Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods. CA: University of California Press.
Reardon, Sean. 2011. “The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor: New Evidence and Possible Explanations.” Pp 91-116 in Whither Opportunity, edited by Richard Murnane and Greg Duncan. New York: Russell Sage.
Streib, Jessi. 2011. “Class Reproduction by Four Year Olds.” Qualitative Sociology 34:337-352.

Author

• Karen Phelan Kozlowski, University of Southern Mississippi