Higher Socioeconomic Students Research Articles

The Relationship between the Teacher Qualities Perceived by Students and the Achievements of High and Low Socioeconomic Level Students

Teacher qualities play a key role in students’ achievement. In general, however, disadvantaged students may not have as much opportunity to benefit from teacher support as advantaged students. Therefore, this study aims to find out the relationship between the teacher qualities and the achievements of high and low socioeconomic level students in math and science literacy, and reading. Data were obtained from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 results. The study is a quantitative analysis using a relational model, with a sample consisting of 25% low socioeconomic level students and 25% high socioeconomic level students. The findings of this study indicate a more positive impact of adaptive instruction, teacher-directed instruction, and disciplinary climate on high socioeconomic students than on low socioeconomic students. However, the impact of teacher cognitive feedback on both student groups' achievement in all domains is negative.

Developing graduate employability for a challenging labour market: the validation of the graduate capital scale

PurposeThis article provides empirical validation of the Graduate Capital Model, adopted at a UK Russell Group University as a tool to analyse and support the career preparedness of both undergraduates and postgraduate students. An overview of employability capitals and how the development of these will potentially result in positive employment outcomes is explored. We describe the development of a psychometric tool “the Graduate Capital Scale” that seeks to operationalize these capitals. We then draw on data to establish the factor structure, reliability and validity of the tool.Design/methodology/approachThis paper introduces a new psychometric instrument, called the “Graduate Capital Scale”; this self-reflective tool aligns closely with the five capitals within the Graduate Capital Model (Tomlinson, 2017) and has been designed for higher education students to self-assess their confidence in transitioning to the graduate labour market.FindingsBased on a sample of 1,501 students across data collection waves, the findings from the psychometric scale show good factor reliability and validity for the constructs central to the overarching Graduate Capital Model. Within each of the component of the model, high factors loading emerged for a range of scale items, including subject-related skills, social networking, perceived job market fit and engagement with extra-curricula activities. Few gender differences emerged across the constructs.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was confined to a specific English university comprised of mainly academically high-achieving and higher socio-economic students. However, there is significant scope for the model and related scale tool to be applied to diverse student groups given its wholistic nature.Practical implicationsThe scale has considerable potential to be incorporated into careers practices and also embedded into course programmes as it aligns with a range of related learning outcomes. There is significant scope for this approach to complement a range of pedagogical and practical career interventions, including: self-reflective tools within tutorials; measures of learning gain for specific interventions such as careers coaching and mentoring; and as a personal reflective tool in careers guidance.Social implicationsThe approach developed through this employability tool has scope to be used for diverse graduate groups, including those with lower levels of career confidence, preparedness and insight and including those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.Originality/valueThis paper has introduced and demonstrated the validity of a practical careers and employability development tool that has significant practical applicability for students, graduates and practitioners. Moreover, this scale supports a pre-existing conceptually driven model and has demonstrated a clear alignment between theory and practice in the area of graduate employability.

The back of the coin in resilience: on the characteristics of advantaged low-achieving students

In the field of Economics of Education the “resilience” term is used to designate those students from low socio-economic backgrounds who can overcome their initial situation and obtain high academic results. However, the opposite kind of student profile has been a less explored field, i.e., high socio-economic status students who perform poorly and are thus denoted as advantaged low-achieving students. Because of that, the current study intends to disentangle the characteristics which influence the likelihood of high socio-economic students to become low-achievers. In order to do this, we use census and longitudinal education data and a rich set of variables from secondary education students in the most populated region of Spain (Andalusia). Our results show that students’ use of time and self-confidence, together with parental engagement, when students were in primary education, are relevant variables in explaining the low achievement of advantaged students.

A continuous income-based grade gap decomposition on university course grades

ABSTRACTThe earnings premium for education, and higher education in particular, is well documented. This article examines the college achievement gap between students coming from positions of high and low socio-economic status. Other papers have also looked at this issue, often by employing, at least in part, an Oaxaca decomposition. Past papers artificially divided socio-economic status into binary groups of high and low, in order to employ the decomposition. Socio-economic status is innately a continuous variable. Therefore, we implement a continuous version of the Oaxaca decomposition. Higher socio-economic students are both slightly better prepared in terms of observable characteristics and have better returns to their characteristics than lower socio-economic students. Notable differences across results obtained from the binary and continuous decomposition methods are discussed.

Prospective Teachers from Urban Environments Examine Causes of the Achievement Gap in the United States

This study analyzes the educational achievement gap between low and high socioeconomic students from the perspective of sixty-two prospective teachers in an undergraduate educational foundations course at a public majority minority urban university in the northeastern United States. The majority of these college students come from, and plan to teach in, lower socioeconomic areas; consequently their insights are uniquely relevant. These prospective teachers cite the following as key causes of the achievement gap: lack of parental involvement, linguistic conflicts between home and school, a lack of bicultural teachers, and the perception of anti-intellectual k-12 school climates. Implications of how these views may affect these prospective teachers when they enter the teaching profession are addressed.

Addressing Poverty Issues in Christian Schools: Teachers’ Perspectives

The purpose of Christian education is to incorporate Biblical values in the curriculum, and one essential message in the Bible is to reach out and liberate the poor. Through interviews, writing protocols, a focus group meeting, and document analysis, this narrative study focuses on the question of how do Christian educators create pedagogical spaces in their classrooms in order to address issues of poverty and connect these issues to Biblical ideas. Important themes that are discussed include teachers’ perspectives of poverty, classroom strategies, and student responses. In the final analysis, a critical framework is implemented to discuss possible obstacles to teaching about poverty to higher socioeconomic students in a Christian environment.

Class in the classroom: the relationship between school resources and math performance among low socioeconomic status students in 19 rich countries

This paper investigates achievement gaps between low and high socioeconomic students in 19 high-income countries. On average, math scores of students with indicators of high socioeconomic status (SES) are over one standard deviation above those with low SES indicators. The paper estimates the extent to which these achievement gaps can be attributed to differences in classroom- and school-level resources available to students from different SES backgrounds. In some countries, achievement gaps can be largely explained by differences in the characteristics of schools attended. However, in many other countries, the gap appears more closely related to differences in the characteristics of the students. The results point to the importance of institutional difference among countries in explaining international differences in the quality of education received by different groups within a nation.