The purpose of the article is to compare and contrast higher education and research among public relations and journalism students of middle-class and working-class origin. The paper applied Bourdieu's theory of "habitus" to analyze prejudices against the working class, explores whether working-class students express an anti-education…

Social class differences in educational decision-making form an important explanation for persisting educational inequalities, particularly in choice-driven systems with early tracking. Nevertheless, little is known about the process preceding these choices, especially when school and track choice are interrelated. Building on school choice…

Since the 1960s, the United States has witnessed a dramatic retreat from marriage, marked by divorce, cohabitation, single parenthood, and lower overall marriage rates. Marriage is now less likely to anchor adults' lives or provide a stable framework for childrearing, especially among poor and working-class Americans. Much research on the retreat…

In this paper, we develop an information distortion model (IDM) of social class differences in self-beliefs and values. The IDM combines psychological biases on frame-of-reference effects with sociological foci on ability stratification. This combination is hypothesized to lead to working-class children having more positive math self-beliefs and…

Large socio-economic differences in educational attainment and participation in Higher Education (HE) are seen in the United Kingdom (UK). Furthermore, improvements in attainment and in rates of progression to university have been much faster for most ethnic minority groups than for White children. Political rhetoric explains these differences in…

Finland has been celebrated as a country where everyone has the possibility to educate themselves and to get ahead in life through education. However, social differences of educability continue to persist and social differences of employability are further construed in the neo-liberal market economy. In this article we will examine 2 adult…

Despite increasing rates of university attendance among women, a significant gender gap remains in socialisation and educational processes in Japan. To understand why and how gender-distinctive socialisation processes persist, this study aimed to examine both middle-class and working-class mothers' beliefs about gender, education, and children's…

An emerging literature indicates that dispositional bias in causal attribution of social behavior is weaker for people with working-class (vs. middle-class) backgrounds. However, it is unknown whether this difference is also present in spontaneous forms of trait inference. In the current work, American undergraduates were asked to merely memorize…

This paper problematizes dominant discourses of social mobility. It begins by discussing social mobility from a philosophical perspective before examining current policies on social mobility in the United Kingdom, drawing on data from both recent mobility studies and the contemporary labour market. I then broaden out the discussion by exploring…

Undertaken in the context of an ageing population and under-representation of older adults in formal education in Scotland, this paper reports on selected findings from research funded by the West of Scotland Wider Access Forum. Using a longitudinal design, the project sought, over a two-year period, to track the experiences of 85 working class…

In a recent paper on gender inequality in higher education Buchman and DiPrete (2006) assume that the decrease in the gender gap in college completion in the US can partly be explained by changes in the allocation of familial resources in favour of women. However, they do not test this hypothesis empirically. In this paper I examine the effects of…

This paper explores the possibilities of working with White, working-class teacher education students to explore the "complex social trajectory" (Reay in Women's Stud Int Forum 20(2):225-233, 1997a, p. 19) of class border crossing as they progress through college. Through analysis of a course that I have developed, "Education and the American…

This article presents a review of Dennis Marsden's work. Looking at his oeuvre overall it is the family and intimate social relations and social class that are at the centre of his interests and analytical focus. Part of the power and effectiveness of his work was an ability to see families and their everyday lives in relation to social policy and…

Fields of inquiry intent on making social class differences visible and relevant in higher education and society at large are newly developing. Researchers continue to identify significant obstacles to degree attainment and hence to social mobility for working-class and low income students. A college student's social class background can…

This essay outlines several ways in which educators might better prepare young people of all backgrounds to understand, enter, and eventually act upon the changing economic landscape. The contributors to this article, which presents perspectives on social class and education in the United States, suggest that one might learn some lessons from the…