Sociology of Race and Ethnicity in Education

Study Notes

SOCIETY, FAMILY AND INCLUSIVE SCHOOL COURSE 2024-2025

Course taught by Professor Fatmanil Doner
Lesson 6 focuses on education and ethnic-cultural inequality

Expected Learning Outcomes

LOS 1: Understanding the relationship between school and society through sociological concepts, identifying fundamental types of social inequality (social class, gender, and ethnic culture), and how the school both fights and reproduces these inequalities.
LOS 3: Understanding how the relationship between school and society evolves in different historical moments, with a focus on different approaches to social inequality (social reality and educational impact).

BASIC CONCEPTS: RACE AND ETHNICITY

Race: A social construction and categorization of people based on perceived shared physical traits, maintained for sociopolitical hierarchy. It relies on collective, hereditary, and unalterable physical and biological characteristics (e.g., skin color, hair, eyes). Physical features are assigned valuational significance (better/worse, good/bad). (e.g. ability, intelligence, degree of civilization).
Ethnicity: Characterized by shared culture (e.g., language, food, music, dress, values, beliefs) related to common ancestry and shared history. It defines human communities based on racial, linguistic, and cultural affinities. Cultural particularities (e.g., language, religion, customs/traditions) distinguish one group from another.

ETHNIC DIVERSITY AND SCHOOLING

Conditions: Consider migration processes, origin formation, apprenticeship schemes, linguistic differences, diverse migrant family structures (e.g., non-uniform families, transnational families, single-parent families, divorce, new pairings).
Social Origin: Migrants often experience a double impact of ethnic minority and social class origin, which can contribute to a lack of resources for compensating disadvantages (e.g., after-school classes). Family pressure regarding studies and job opportunities can also be a significant factor.
School Segregation: Neighborhood concentration can lead to school segregation, mostly in public schools, with educational outcomes for minority children influenced more by access to key educational resources (e.g., skilled teachers, curriculum) than by race itself.
Enrollment Data (2023): Foreign student numbers rose by 37% in 6 years, reaching 944,992.

IMMIGRATION AND EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

Onion Boado (2014): Analyzed the relationship between family and school, and the gap in children's mathematics knowledge at the end of primary school.
Questions to Ask: Is a worse position of immigrant children already evident in primary education regarding important curricular subjects?
Reason for Disadvantage: Several factors can explain immigrant disadvantage in early educational phases, originating from either the home or schools.
Cultural Capital: The number of books in a household is a more creative indicator to measure cultural differences among families. Native households report a lower proportion of households with fewer than 25 books compared to immigrant households.
School Ownership: Children of immigrants from outside Spain are more often in the public school segment.
School Performance Two Indicators: Ownership of schools and average socio-economic composition of the student body.
Age of School Enrolment: Increased gap between immigrant and native children is observable even when immigrant children start school earlier.
Conclusions: Individuals of immigrant origin in Spain show disadvantage from very early ages.
Spanish Education System: Despite traditional depiction of equitable secondary and primary competencies (PISA, TIMMS), challenges exist with the school integration of immigrant children.
General Pattern: Immigrant households tend to have limited access to crucial education-related resources like parental education, socio-economic status, and cultural capital.
Early Education's Effect: The beneficial effect of early education is less pronounced for immigrant children than for native children.
School's Contribution: Schools' contribution to differences in student performance (between those from immigrant and native backgrounds) is limited, contrary to common belief.