Inequalities in Education

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:00 in Discussion Forums

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Prof Fiona Devine

Where: Star Education Centre, 116 Hyde Road, Ardwick, Manchester, M12 5AR

Abstract

In this presentation, I will consider the processes by which social class advantages and disadvantages are reproduced over time and space. I will draw on a theory which defines class in terms of economic, cultural and social resources. Drawing on my previous research in the UK (and the US), I will examine how middle-class parents mobilise these three types of resources to ensure their children enjoy educational and occupational success. In this way, such parents ensure their children remain in the middle class rather than fall into lower working-class positions. At the same time, I will emphasise that how parents help their children do well in school and work is not easy or straightforward. It is not inevitable that advantaged children do well and this is why there is much public anxiety and `fear of falling'. I will draw on recent research in Manchester which extends this interest in social stability and social mobility to and explores how is advantaged working-class parents help their children do as well as possible in the education system and then in the labour market.

Biography

Fiona Devine is a Professor of Sociology and Head of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester. Her research interests focus on social stability and social mobility with specific reference to social class and educational inequalities in the UK and the US. She is the author of a number of books including Affluent Workers Revisited (1992), Social Class in America and Britain (1997) and Class Practices: How Parents Help Their Children Get Good Jobs (2004). She was a member of the Governing Council of the Economic and Social Research Council and Chair of its International Advisory Committee between 2003 and 2007. She was awarded an OBE for Services to Social Sciences in the 2010 New Years Honours List.