Suchergebnisse

As social and economic stratification between black and white Americans persists at the dawn of the twenty-first century, disparities in educational outcomes remain an especially formidable barrier. Recent research on the black/white achievement gap points to a perplexing pattern in this regard. Schools appear to exacerbate black/white disparities in learning while simultaneously slowing the growth of social class gaps. How might this occur? Using 1st grade data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), I test—and find support for—the proposition that school factors play an elevated role in generating the black/white achievement gap while non-school factors primarily drive social class inequalities. These findings help explain why black/white achievement disparities grow mostly during the school year (when schools are in session and have their greatest impact on students' learning) while class gaps widen mostly during the summer (when school is out of session and non-school influences dominate). I conclude by discussing the implications for future research, especially as they pertain to what appears to be the most important contributor to the black/white achievement gap: school racial segregation.

In the half century since the 1966 Coleman Report, scholars have yet to develop a consensus regarding the relationship between schools and inequality. The Coleman Report suggested that schools play little role in generating achievement gaps, but social scientists have identified many ways in which schools provide better learning environments to advantaged children compared to disadvantaged children. As a result, a critical perspective that views schools as engines of inequality dominates contemporary sociology of education. However, an important body of empirical research challenges this critical view. To reconcile the field's main ideas with this new evidence, we propose a refraction framework, a perspective on schools and inequality guided by the assumption that schools may shape inequalities along different dimensions in different ways. From this more balanced perspective, schools might indeed reproduce or exacerbate some inequalities, but they also might compensate for others—socioeconomic disparities in cognitive skills in particular. We conclude by discussing how the mostly critical perspective on schools and inequality is costly to the field of sociology of education.

Scholars agree that the early childhood years are highly consequential for later educational outcomes, but we know little about the impact of early childhood socioeconomic conditions at the societal level. This study contributes to the literature by bringing to comparative sociology the proposition that variations in the social structures into which children are born have lasting impacts on their educational outcomes as they progress through secondary education. Drawing on theories of welfare regimes and social stratification, we analyze nation-level data on socioeconomic conditions from the early 2000s via the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and educational performance data from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment ( N = 35). In line with our hypotheses, societal inequalities and disadvantages present when children are young are associated with negative achievement outcomes 15 years later and policies that guarantee people basic securities are more consistently associated with positive achievement outcomes than are broad measures of social spending. We conclude by highlighting the value of our approach and suggesting directions for future research on cross-national variations in achievement as a product of socioeconomic conditions during early childhood.

To what extent, and why, do social science undergraduates experience anxiety about taking statistics courses? Despite holding assumptions of rampant statistics anxiety among students, sociologists have conducted few empirical studies of this issue. We extend the literature by analyzing data from a survey of sociology, social work, and criminal justice students enrolled in seven sections of our department's Social Statistics with Computer Applications course in the winter 2018 semester. Two thirds of respondents are anxious or very anxious about taking the course. They experience statistics anxiety primarily due to their lack of confidence in their ability to succeed in the course and their more general test-taking anxiety. This article offers a framework for instructors of social statistics courses to measure student anxiety and to address it in class in a way that aims to alleviate anxiety among the anxious while not alienating those who are comfortable in the course.

Most research on the consequences of the number of siblings highlights their downside—the negative association between sibship size and educational outcomes. But recently scholars have begun to understand the potential benefits of siblings, with some research indicating that kindergartners are more socially adept when they have at least one brother or sister. We expand this line of inquiry by studying fifth graders, a point where sufficient school-based peer interactions have occurred to potentially eliminate the social skills deficit observed among only children beginning kindergarten. Analyzing 11,820 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort of 1998-99, we find that, contrary to our expectations, only children failed to gain more social skills between kindergarten and fifth grade than their counterparts with siblings. This pattern has important implications for the one in five children now raised without siblings.

When theorizing differences in action between structurally unequal groups, sociologists often disagree over the roles that structure, culture, and resources play. It is not uncommon for debates to arise in which structural explanations for unequal outcomes are pitted against cultural ones, with the former pointing to group resource disparities and the latter emphasizing differences in how groups think and do things. In this article, we develop a theoretical approach that conceptualizes culture as an element of social structure and draws on Sewell's multiplicity of structures and Bourdieu's habitus to theorize group differences in action as structural. This approach, we argue, advances a structural sociology of stratification that helps counter the tendency for U.S. individualism to promote interpretations of group differences/disparities as having individual-level rather than structural-level sources.

Nationwide, academic sociologists at all types of higher education institutions face the challenge of working to improve students' writing skills. In this article, we describe a collective effort by a group of faculty members in one undergraduate sociology program to implement several effective writing-improvement strategies. We advocate aiming to improve students' writing by working together on a united front rather than working in isolation. After explaining the origins of the collective emphasis on writing that emerged in our group and briefly outlining the writing-improvement strategies that we utilize, we use student survey data to reflect on major themes before concluding with a discussion of the merits of our collective approach.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Who Lives in Rural America Today? -- New Directions in Population Change and Diversity -- 1 Unpredictable Directions of Rural Population Growth and Migration -- 2 African Americans in Rural America -- 3 American Indians -- 4 Latinos in Rural America -- Reshuffling and Remaking Rural Families -- 5 What Do Rural Families Look Like Today? -- 6 Older Rural Families -- 7 Rural Children and Youth at Risk -- 8 Rural Women -- 9 Rural Poverty -- Part II: A Transformed Rural Economy -- 10 How People Make a Living in Rural America -- 11 Who Benefits from Economic Restructuring? -- 12 Commuting -- 13 Continuities and Disjunctures in the Transformation of the U.S. Agro-Food System -- 14 Tourism and Natural Amenity Development -- Part III: The Rural Community: Is It Local? Is It a Community? -- Perspectives on Community -- 15 Community Agency and Local Development -- 16 Social Capital -- 17 Civil Society, Civic Communities, and Rural Development -- The Social Institutions That Maintain and Reproduce Community -- 18 The Global/Local Interface -- 19 Competition, Cooperation, and Local Governance -- 20 Religion -- 21 Promoting Educational Achievement -- 22 Rural Health Policy -- Part IV: People and the Environment: Tough Tradeoffs in an Era with Vanishing Buffers -- 23 Transforming Rural America -- 24 Community and Resource Extraction in Rural America -- 25 Fur, Fins, and Feathers -- Part V: Changing National and International Policies: New Uncertainties and New Challenges -- 26 What Role Can Community Play in Local Economic Development? -- 27 Devolution -- 28 Welfare Reform in Rural Areas -- 29 The Impact of Global Economic Practices on American Farming -- 30 Catalytic Community Development -- Conclusion -- References -- Contributors -- Index