The International Observatory on Academic Achievement - Documentary search

File number :
CS-ISC-02e

Bibliographic reference :
Duru-Bellat, M. (2002). Les inégalités sociales à l'école. Genèse et mythes. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Abstract :

Book Purpose
The book of Duru-Bellat strives towards a dual objective. The first purpose is to put into perspective all the knowledge on social inequalities at school that has been accumulated over the past twenty years and the second, “to take a reflective look on these sociological analyses of inequalities”.

Sociological Building Blocks of Educational Inequalities
The book is divided into four parts, the first part focusing on the sociological building blocks of inequalities at school. In the first chapter, the author distances herself from deterministic theses and embraces a new sociological perspective allowing opportunities for action to change existing inequalities, considers what schools can do to counteract inequalities and sees equality through a prism that goes beyond mere comparison among various academic careers. She seeks to offer a definition that relies less on equal opportunity in accessing elite streams and more on “access for all to a certain common level or, in a broader perspective, to a school experience equally formative”. Next the author tries to limit the use of statistics which, in her view, do not guarantee a corollary progress of scientific expertise no matter how useful or perfected they are.

Academic Career Sedimentation
The second part of the book discusses the gradual sedimentation of academic career inequalities. At the earliest grade levels, inequalities have social origins (discrepancies in cultural background). The second sediment layer, which is school-related, develops during early school years when underprivileged students who start their academic career not as well prepared as others are already labelled as bad students. These students are still labelled as such upon entering secondary school. Two phenomena may play a role here. Firstly, schools offer streams that correspond to the interpretation they develop regarding their students. Secondly, the career choice period is influenced by this representation. Incidentally, it is during this very period that students’ social and family backgrounds, which generate initial inequalities, greatly influence their future once more (third sediment layer).

School Context Characteristics
The third part of this book focuses on the implications of inequalities among school context characteristics. The author identifies the efficiency factors that emerge from researches conducted on school effectiveness. As a result, there is no ready-made formula that can suit every school; however, the label “warm but firm” summarizes fairly well the most effective configuration. Schools are a social environments marked by the quality of their psychosocial dynamics, which vary from one school to the next and may create an “unequal learning framework” for students. It appears that an effective mobilization of school forces and resources for the purpose of promoting healthy school climate and social dynamics may actually provide some solutions.

International Comparisons
The fourth part of this book establishes international comparisons. The author highlights the fact that the massification of school systems has shifted inequality issues, where it is no longer a question of access but success. This massification has created competition, which results in differentiation in educational paths. The issue of educational inequality continues to be raised since there is unequal access to segregated academic streams.

New Explanatory Models Required
Persisting social inequalities at schools not only reinforce but also disrupt the main theories (Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Boudon) that have been proposed so far. Given that the results of all researches conducted on educational inequalities cannot be properly accounted for by the main theories, the author invites us to look for new explanatory schemes that may account for new family orders, the influence of school context and a correlation not necessarily established between diploma hierarchy and employment hierarchy. The author suggests a conceptual design (chapter 10) of her own devising that strives to integrate these various components.

Key Words :
Social Inequality, Equal Opportunities, Democratization, Inequality Assessment, Academic Career, School Context, School Climate, Socialization, International Comparison, Academic Streams, Sociology of Education, School Environment