Inequality In Schools Research Articles

Desigualdades en la secundaria argentina: reconocimiento y disfrute por aprender

Desigualdades en la secundaria argentina: reconocimiento y disfrute por aprender

Navigating the nexus of subjectivity and trust in researcher/participant relationships

AbstractWe describe our decision points to disclose parts of our personal selves while building trust with vulnerable populations in schools during ethnographic studies. Finding how our subjective identities were similar to and different than those of our participants helped us to better understand the participants' lives. We argue in this article that the introspection created by negotiating subjectivities in our contrasting examples of intersectionality taught us more about structural inequality in schools than we learned via ethnographic data collection methods alone.

Navigating common challenges: Guidance for educators in racial justice work

The work of racial justice advocacy in the field of education is fraught with responsibility and challenge. The impact of historical racism on social policy within the United States has had an enduring effect in the educational realm, which is maintained in part by the prevailing white supremacy culture (WSC). Recent middle level education scholarship has emphasized the urgency of addressing racial inequities in middle schools. Yet teachers attempting to confront unjust practices and policies are often met with significant obstacles, which can curtail racial justice efforts. Antiracist middle grades teachers could benefit from a knowledge base regarding how to respond to common challenges faced in racial justice work. Drawing on the experiences of a group of middle grades educators who are striving to create more racially just schools in their communities, this article offers guidance for navigating resistance. We describe three pervasive challenges the group faced in their work: (a) antiracist initiatives without antiracist school policy; (b) resistance from colleagues; and (c) self-doubt. We subsequently draw connections between these challenges and WSC and offer recommendations for potential ways to respond to these challenges.

Within-School Achievement Sorting in Comprehensive and Tracked Systems

Why do inequalities in schooling persist, even in relatively egalitarian school systems? This article examines within school sorting as an explanation. We use classroom data on friendship networks in 480 European secondary schools and contrast comprehensive (England, Sweden) and tracked systems (Germany, Netherlands). Our question is to what extent comprehensive systems reduce achievement sorting at the level of (a) schools, (b) classrooms, and (c) friendships. Between-school variance in achievement is lower in comprehensive systems. However, this is counterbalanced by greater sorting within schools, between classrooms, and, especially, in friendship networks. Still, comprehensive schools create more equal environments for two reasons. First, the difference in between school sorting is larger than the difference in within school sorting. Second, within school sorting is less strongly related to social background characteristics. These findings help explain both why comprehensive schools produce more equal outcomes and how substantial inequality can nevertheless persist.

“Reading” Into Statistics: Systems Analysis and Action in an Early Career Mentor Community

The pandemic revealed inequities facing educators; in response, a district/university partnership hired seven external mentor/teacher leaders (TLs) to support 100+ early career teachers (ECTs). Drawing on sociocultural theories and a critical discourse analysis of 10 hour-long discussions among mentors, we sought to understand their collectively constructed understandings of systemic inequities facing ECTs. Findings indicate TLs collectively constructed meaning by evoking differing perspectives to make sense of these inequities and working to define their locus of control or ways they could provide support to the ECTs. Implications indicate what is necessary for mentoring in response to professional inequities in schools.

“People Need to Speak Up”: Preservice Secondary Science Teachers’ Movement Toward a Justice-Centered Science Education

ABSTRACT Teacher education programs must prepare their preservice science teachers to center social justice and to meet the academic needs of culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse students, as justice-centered discourses are traditionally absent from science classrooms yet integral to the teaching and learning of rich and relevant phenomena. In this study, we investigated a cohort of preservice secondary science teachers enrolled in a yearlong, post-baccalaureate teacher education program that attended to social justice. We conducted four interviews with each participant across their program and qualitatively analyzed their discussions of social justice ideas and teaching practices using three tenets of a justice-centered science pedagogy framework: enacting an antiracist and equitable science education, grounding instruction in social and environmental justice phenomena, and framing students as transformative intellectuals. We found preservice teacher participants discussed enacting antiracist and equitable science teaching by using a critical lens to identify inequities in classrooms and schools, and by attending to high academic expectations. Preservice teachers described focusing on socioscientific phenomena and local contexts as starting points for teaching about social justice science issues. Participants also shared their work toward framing students as transformative intellectuals by developing teacher-student relationships, building from students’ ideas, and discussing emerging ideas and efforts for student advocacy. Findings from this study underscore the need for more focused work on ways to prioritize the justice component of social justice science issues and the student advocacy component of students as transformative intellectuals so as to prepare preservice teachers to fully enact a socially just science education.

A study on Children perceptions of social exclusion and the structural drivers of discrimination in Norwegian elementary schools

This article explores children's understanding of social exclusion within their school contexts through a critical race theoretical lens and how social exclusion and repression occur in a country whose policy is typically linked with equality and diversity. Our research was conducted in two primary schools in a big city in middle Norway, where urban segregation creates significant differences in school composition. This qualitative study research was made up of fifteen focus group interviews with 46 children from the age of 9 to 12 in two cases of two public schools, one urban and one suburban school. In terms of school demography, the Urban school was in the central part of the city, where local Norwegian origin families have been part of the same neighbourhood for years. The suburban school is located in a high-poverty area and highly segregated along racial, ethnic, and cultural aspects. As previous studies stated, there are structural inequalities in Norwegian schools, still there is a gap on the description of its consequences. This study pay attention to the voice of children and describe school discrimination, isolation, and unsupported processes in both schools. This innovative study shows that children in both school contexts need additional recognition. In addition, we add that educational policies need to be revised by including aims for collaboration, coordination and capacitation of children and families in their school communities and outside the structural limits. Further, we add that local schools should be part of global communities.

Beautiful Wastelands: tales from the bog: the ‘ordinary schools’ of greater Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT In the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) there are different systems for secondary schooling for young people and this paper focuses on public comprehensive secondary schools. These are frequently characterised as the “schools of last resort” by parents with the ability to make a choice about which school sector their children will attend. This paper uses spatial metaphors to situate readers into a constituted identity of the local comprehensive public school as “bog standard” while using narrative limnings to illuminate the professional complexities of English teachers’ work in these kinds of schools. It reports on the particular narratives of four English teachers working in four different “bog standard” public comprehensive secondary schools located across Greater Sydney. It is hoped that the narratives of this paper dispel some of the affective concerns that contribute so strongly to the imaginary of the threatening comprehensive public school while revealing some complexities for teachers of English navigating schooling inequalities in Greater Sydney, Australia.

Curriculum transformations in South Africa: some discomforting truths on interminable poverty and inequalities in schools and society

In this study, we argue that the different curriculum reforms South Africa embarked on have not really helped break the existing socio-economic inequalities. Precisely, the various reforms (e.g., C2005, NCS, and CAPS) initiated by the South African government have been proved to be a flop and uninspiring considering that schools have remained spaces where inequalities, violence, vandalism, harassment, stratification, and various crimes continue to exist. Outside the schooling spaces, unemployment, poverty, xenophobia, robbery, GBVs, and different forms of crime have characterized South African society. Many educational researchers have also argued that these issues could symbolize a broken education system that is guided by shoddy policies. Accordingly, we sought to establish key issues that confront South African educational system to explain how these reproduce the apartheid-era-like inequalities. In the main, we established that neoliberal-minimalist policies have significantly influenced socio-economic inequalities in South Africa. We also established that educational researchers have failed to identify neoliberalism as the root cause of South Africa's inequalities. To achieve our goals, we utilized document analysis to explain and understand how various policies, practices, and powerful individuals have influenced these injustices. Theoretically, these debates have been guided by Paul Freire's “Critical Pedagogy” and Bourdieu's “Social-cultural Capital” mainly for their ability to illuminate power relations, exclusions, and inequalities through Symbolic Violence and depravations.

How instructional leaders promote social justice

Instructional leadership is a school leadership approach with a strong focus on the development of teaching and learning. This study explores how instructional leaders act to promote social justice and eliminate school inequities. The participants in this qualitative study were 24 Israeli elementary school principals. Data collection was based on semi-structured interviews, and data analysis was theory-driven. The findings revealed that instructional leaders incorporated a social justice perspective into the three key dimensions of instructional leadership—defining the school mission, managing the instructional program, and developing a positive school learning climate—to address three main areas of inequity in the school: outcomes, belongingness, and discipline. This study suggests that as an instructional leader, the principal has to take specific actions supported by particular intentions to ensure fairness and equity.

Breaking Light on Economic Divide: How Elementary School Teachers Locate Class Inequality in Teaching and Schools

Background/Context: Macro-analyses have documented the raced and classed consequences of rampant economic inequality in schools and society. However, in educational research, there remain clear gaps in understanding how schoolteachers, especially those working with children, locate the appearances of economic inequality in their teaching and how they make sense of the social conditions that create such disparities. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Key to understanding how economic inequality matters in the classroom is acknowledging teachers as critical to disrupting classist relations, cultivating critical awareness, and advocating on behalf of and in solidarity with those who face the brunt of ongoing systems of racial capitalism and coloniality. Equally critical is how the role of teaching can challenge the neoliberal belief that market principles are the best and only way to shape the impending future. To that end, the purpose of this project was to analyze the process of elementary school teachers in New York City as they materialize a more robust understanding of class formation as a part of lived experience and to advance new possibilities for harnessing the teaching of economics as a means toward racial and social justice. Research Design: As part of this larger project, we asked 57 New York City teachers in grades 1–5 to share responses to Likert and open-ended questions, and analyzed a subset of data along two primary lines of inquiry: In what ways does social class appear in your classroom? Describe a moment in your classroom or school when social class mattered. Through a constructivist grounded analysis, we surfaced four overlapping locations: (1) disparities in material possessions and access among students; (2) tensions between teachers, parents, and families; (3) inequalities built into school-based structures and practices; and (4) teachers’ own subjective histories with social class. Conclusions/Recommendations: Given the dearth of scholarship in this area, particularly at the elementary level, we argue for greater attention to the experiences of teachers as they work within institutions marred by racial capitalist society. Elementary school teachers are keenly aware of how material infrastructures and the extraction of value in and through education present grave inequalities for their students and families. They express genuine interest in deepening their understanding of economic inequality and for spaces to explore ways in which they can respond to the everyday events they shared in this study.

Study on the Influence of Online Primary and Secondary School Education in Different Regions of China on the Inter-regional Education Gap under the COVID-19 Epidemic

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has brought a disaster to people around the world, disrupting the pace of people's life, work and study. China's education policy in the face of the epidemic emphasizes that preventing the spread of the epidemic to schools, safeguarding the well-being of teachers and students, and maintaining the stability of schools is a major political task for the education system and the most important task at present. The health of teachers and students as fundamental, but not at the expense of students' studies. Chinese students had to return home from school to prevent the spread of the virus. In order to deal with the epidemic, all provinces and regions across China launched a live action of “no suspension of classes”. Students have begun to take online classes at home. Compared with the past, the public resources provided by online courses can make it easier for children in backward areas to get quality education. Classes from many famous teachers allow children to broaden their horizons at home. Convenient Internet technology allows children to access knowledge anytime and anywhere. However, the poor Internet facilities do cause difficulties for some students. They don't have a good learning environment and a good Internet connection. Most of these students also come from backward areas. Therefore, whether online courses can alleviate regional educational inequality in primary and secondary schools in China has become a valuable topic.

Reclaiming the System: Group Counseling Landscape in Schools

Postpandemic culture has provided educators the opportunity to rebuild and reclaim the education system from its very foundation. Pioneering researchers in school counseling have begun reexamining what antiracist school counseling programs look like and providing school counselors practical recommendations for addressing racism and dismantling racist policies and procedures in their schools. This article disseminates findings from a quantitative research study that examined how school counselors are currently utilizing the lens of power, privilege, and intersectionality in their implementation of small groups in their schools. The results indicated that about half (52%) of participants are implementing small-group counseling through this lens while the other half are not. Further results showed that, demographically, school counselors who identified as Black or African American are more likely to do this critical work. We discuss implications for practitioners as they explore their own racial identity and battle racial inequities in schools.

English

Girl-child self-esteem, self-confidence and coping capacity with positive effects on their school performance is increase when. Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) topics are included in health education. This review explored the relationship and effect of sanitary facilities in schools on Girl-child participation, health impact on Girl-child education, the state of sanitary facilities and sanitary behaviors in public Junior High Schools and as well identified sustainable solutions and made recommendations on how to provide adequate sanitary facilities to reduce inequality in schools. This qualitative review gathered and analyzed secondary data at both global and local levels (with focus on the Ghana experience). Results: availability of sanitary facilities in schools has the potential to reduce students’ absenteeism especially among the girl child. Poor sanitary facilities have an adverse impact on girls’ privacy and comfort. Girls’ inability to manage their menstrual hygiene affects their participation during events at school because of panic over outflow. Girls avoid eating or drinking during the day to further avoid using the sanitary facilities making it difficult to concentrate while in school. This study shows that school WASH issues are associated with health conditions like vector-borne illnesses among others and embarrassment in school toilets. The state of hygienic conveniences and services in schools are poor and inadequate. For schools with basic amenities, they are in an awful state as a result of neglect. Therefore, it is vital to provide adequate sanitary facilities in schools. This will improve the health and wellbeing of the gild child in Ghanaian schools.   Key words: Gender, girl-child education, health, hygiene, sanitation, water.

Rising Up: Collectivizing, Strategizing, and Forging Solidarities among Parents and Caregivers Leading for Racial Justice

This study Expressions in Urban Educationlores the Expressions in Urban Educationeriences of 11 Black parents, one Latinx parent and one Brown (South Asian) parent in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) in Ontario, Canada, who have challenged racial injustices and inequities in schools, districts, and the province. Drawing on counter-storytelling as a methodology of Critical Race Theory, we reframe the activism of Black and racialized parents as the ultimate form of parent engagement and an important example of educational leadership. These strategies include: the energy of collectivizing, powering up, and building cross-racial and cross-community solidarity. We share implications for educational leaders in rethinking parent engagement and anti-racist, educational leadership.

Loudest voices and unequal opportunities in the suburbs: A conversation with John B. Diamond

Within racially diverse suburban high schools, an opportunity exists. Black and Latinx students do not do as well as their white peers, even as the school overall performs well. Brown sociology professor John B. Diamond has studied this phenomenon and attributes the gap to several factors, including implicit bias among teachers and administrators, and the oversized influence of white parents trying to get advantages for their children. In his book, Despite the Best Intentions: How Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, with his coauthor Amanda Lewis, they interview students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members in a diverse suburban high school. In this Kappan interview, he discusses their research and how educators can disrupt the inequities in schools and districts.

MEAN YEARS OF SCHOOLING INEQUALITY AND RETURN ON EDUCATION: ANALYSING THE MAIN DETERMINING FACTORS

Education is a determining factor in human development. West Java had a mean year of schooling (MYS) of around 8.37 years in 2019, which is still below the compulsory primary school. This study aims to find out the factors that can be attributed to low MYS. Ten variables influence the MYS. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method was used to simplify the observed variables by reducing the dimensions. The result reduces ten variables to two factors containing five variables. The first factor is infrastructure (road access, distance to schools, and health centres) and the second factor is income (RMW and GRDP). These two factors significantly influence the MYS. This MYS, in turn, directly affects people’s food consumption. A higher percentage of income for non-food represents a higher return to education. Districts have a lower return on education than cities. Two factors (infrastructure and income) do not directly affect the percentage of people’s income for food but are affected through MYS. The central and provincial governments need to pay more attention to districts with an agricultural base on the availability of school infrastructure. In addition, it is necessary to increase people’s income by providing better road access to reach better education.

Intersectionality in US educational research: visibilizing the historically excluded and under-recognized experiences of disabled girls of color

ABSTRACT The experiences of disabled girls of color have historically been ignored within and/or excluded from US educational research and thus, are often unheard and under-recognized. Few scholars use an intersectional lens to examine how inequities impact disabled girls of color. In this call to action to the research community, existing scholarship focused on their lived experiences is reviewed first. Next, the affordances of intersectionality as an axiological, methodological, and theoretical approach to educational research are discussed. As such, scholars, educators, and policymakers can use intersectionality to learn about the types of experiences disabled girls of color are having in school, including what is working and what is not working for them, from their perspectives. Therefore, intersectionality supports a deeper and more complex understanding of how schooling inequities impact students. Moreover, intersectionality supports engagement and transformation wherein scholars, educators, and policymakers act on the suggestions and solutions disabled girls of color bring forth for dismantling unjust educational systems to (re)imagine, (re)design, and (re)construct them. Finally, implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed. In sum, honoring the experiences and perspectives of disabled girls of color has the power to transform schooling.

Nordic challenges related to exclusion and local responses in Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian urban compulsory education

ABSTRACT Although the Nordic educational models have traditions of inclusion, researchers have found strong evidence that they can reproduce inequalities for minoritized groups attending primary and lower secondary schools. Following Luhmann’s system theory, this structurally orientated study identifies problems in the educational system that are caused by communication at the institutional level and in the translation of inclusive goals in urban educational institutions. We synthetise literature focusing on Norway, Sweden, and Finland to investigate the differences between the Nordic educational systems’ explicit welfare goals and the gap between equity as an ideology and a system output from the functionally differentiated urban compulsory education. This review focuses on 113 peer-reviewed academic articles published during the last decade (after January 2012 until December 2021) that examine educational inequality and marginalisation in Nordic urban schools. Our analysis is based on system theories highlighting three crucial discussions of inequality in the three Nordic systems: residential segregation and school areas, the impact of performance evaluations, and discriminatory support measures. Moreover, the results indicate differences in communication in the different countries.

No Dreadlocks Allowed: Race, Hairstyles, and Exclusion in Schools

While the educational exclusion of students who wear hairstyles linked to people of African descent has garnered significant media attention, there has been little scholarly investigation of this phenomenon. Drawing on content analysis of dress codes in Texas public schools, this article addresses this gap in knowledge by conceptually and empirically elaborating how students who wear dreadlocks are stigmatized in schools. Engaging sociological theory asserting that stigmatization entails unfair treatment and negative labeling, I show how students who wear dreadlocks in some schools are subject to structural discrimination and stereotyping. More specifically, I develop a typology of negative stereotyping and negative treatment faced by students who wear dreadlocks in some schools. By elaborating how students who wear dreadlocks are stigmatized, this article advances theory on culture and inequality in schools. Practically, given growing efforts across the United States to pass legislation that makes school prohibitions on hairstyles linked to people of African descent illegal, it is especially important to understand how these hair bans stigmatize students.