
In Negotiating Opportunities, Jessica Mccrory Calarco Argues That The Middle Class Has A Negotiated Advantage In School. Drawing On Five Years Of Ethnographic Fieldwork, Calarco Traces That Negotiated Advantage From Its Origins At Home To Its Consequences At School. Through Their Parents' Coaching, Working-class Students Learn To Follow Rules And Work Through Problems Independently. Middle-class Students Learn To Challenge Rules And Request Assistance, Accommodations, And Attention In Excess Of What Is Fair Or Required. Teachers Typically Grant Those Requests, Creating Advantages For Middle-class Students. Calarco Concludes With Recommendations, Advocating Against Deficit-oriented Programs That Teach Middle-class Behaviors To Working-class Students. Those Programs Ignore The Value Of Working-class Students' Resourcefulness, Respect, And Responsibility, And They Do Little To Prevent Middle-class Families From Finding New Opportunities To Negotiate Advantages In School.
This book investigates how social class background influences the academic success of students through the mechanism of negotiation. Jessica McCrory Calarco, a sociologist, utilizes five years of ethnographic fieldwork to examine the behavioral differences between middle-class and working-class students. She argues that middle-class students are socialized to challenge rules and seek assistance, while working-class students are taught to prioritize independence and rule-following, leading to systemic disparities in how teachers distribute attention and accommodations.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Experts in the sociology of education recognize this work as a significant contribution to understanding how cultural capital functions in the classroom. Readers frequently note the clarity of the ethnographic observations and the author's nuanced critique of deficit-oriented educational programs.
Page Count:
256
Publication Date:
2018-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190634456
ISBN-13:
9780190634452
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