Explaining educational differentials: Towards a formal rational action theory

(1997) - R Breen, J. H. Goldthorpe

Journal: Rationality and Society
Link::
DOI:: 10.1177/104346397009003002
Links::
Tags:: #paper #RAT
Cite Key:: [@breenExplainingEducationalDifferentials1997]

Abstract

Notes

• Explain three phenomena:

  • Increasing educational participation rates

  • Little change in class differentials in these rates

  • Rapid erosion of gender differentials in educational attainment levels

• Use a rational action approach to explain these trends

  • Product of individual decisions made in light of resources available individuals

• Model represents children and their families acting rationally

• Both class and gender differences in patterns of educational decisions are explained as the consequence of differences in resources and constraints

• Do not invoke cultural or normative differences between classes or genders to account for why they differ in their typical educational decisions

• Children of less advantaged class origins have not brought their take-up rates of more ambitious educational options closer to those of their more advantaged counterparts

• Since the 1970s gender differentials favouring males over females has declined sharply and even in some cases been reversed

• We assume that class differentials in educational attainment come about through the operation of two kinds of effect which we label as primary and secondary (Boudon 1974)

  • Primary effects are those that are expressed between children's class origins and their average levels of demonstrated academic ability

    • Richer kids do better on tests than poorer ones

  • Secondary effects are expressed in the actual chooses that children, together perhaps with their parents, make in the course of their careers within the educational system

• Within children's and their parents central tendencies we consider them to be understood as rational

• Seek to dispense with the notion that these actors will also be subject to systemic influences of a subcultural kind, operating through class differences in values, norms, or beliefs regarding education

  • The culturalism accounts for class differentials in educational attainment have been unsatisfactory

• Two more assumptions

  • We do suppose the existence of a class structure - with some degree of hierarchy

  • We suppose an educational system that serve to define the various options that are open to individuals at successive stages in their education careers

    • A system that provides education of different kinds thus making individuals choose branching points

• Unlike the human capital model that offers a fungible linear accumulation a more realistic view would be that educational systems offer an array of choices and constraints that defy... Simple linear formations (Arum and Hout 1995)

Model

• Assume that pupils must choose to continue in education or to leave and enter the labour market

  • Continuing education leads to two paths- success and failure

• Deciding to continue education we assume that

  • Cost of remaining in school

  • Likelihood of success

  • The value or utility that children and their family attach to the three educational outcomes

The generation of class differentials

• Children of two classes differ in their average ability

• Two classes have different levels of resources which they can meet the costs of education

• Relative risk and aversion

  • Assumption that families of both classes alike seek to ensure so far as they can, that their children acquire a class position at least as advantageous as that from which they originate

• Differences in ability and expectations of success

  • Assume that a pupil may only continue in education if his or her ability level excess some threshold

  • Suppose that pupils own knowledge of their ability helps shape the subjective probability they attach to being successful in the next stage of education

• Differences in resources

  • Service class have greater access to resources than working class

How important are these assumptions?

• The central result of our risk aversion assumption namely that of middle class children wanting to stay in education seeks to capture the attractiveness of upward mobility rather than immobility and in the aversion of downward mobility

Explaining Empirical Generalisations

• To account for the trend of widening educational participation with maintenance of class differentials

  • The relative costs of education have declined over time in all advanced countries

  • Even though some level of education could be made free of charge class differences in participation at this level will remain more or less unchanged even though overall participation will increase

• Some authors argue that class differences in educational attainment will only begin to decline when participation in a given level of education of children of more advantaged backgrounds reaches saturation

  • Once service class families possess all resources that exceed the costs of remaining in education and thus the proportion in this class who choose to continue in education will be equal to the proportion that perceive it to be in their best interests

    • Further reductions in c will have no effect on service class families but will on working class families

    • Equality among class differentials will not occur until the rate of those within each class see the advantages of continuing education at the same rate

• Gender differentials occur within not between families thus no reduction in the cost of education nor inequalities in resources are appropriate to explain their reduction

Conclusions

• Empirical implications

  • Provide further testing for the model

  • Before they go onto a further level of education children of less advantaged backgrounds will require a higher expectation of success at that level

  • As children process from lower to higher levels of the educational system, the patterns of chooses that they make will lead to class differentials in participation becoming smaller

  • As gender differentials in educational participation and attainment diminish over time, class differentials among women will increase from a level initially lower than that of men so as to approximate the male level or, in cases where class differentials are in general decline less than among men

• Theoretical implications

  • Main significance bearing on explanatory strategy

  • Further to its empirical implications not being rejected the theoretical model achieves a level of parsimonious strategy of the rational action approach is supported

  • We see rational actions as not the only, but the main common factor at work across individual instances, and that will therefore shape patterns of educational choices in aggregate

  • We can see cultural norms as serving as guides to rational action that have evolved over time out of distinctive class experience and that may substitute for detailed calculation when educational choices arise

    • Could conceivably be of some explanatory significance as inertial forces in cases where the structure of constraints and opportunities is changing

    • Norms in being essentially epiphenomenal, would rather quickly come into line with patterns of action that display a rational adaption to the new circumstances that have come into being

• Our model implies an explanatory strategy that is reductionist but desire reduction in so far as it is warranted by the empirical support that our theoretical arguments can obtain

Summary:

Breen and Goldthorpe hope to explain three phenomena; the increasing educational participation rates, the little change in class differentials within these areas, and finally the rapid erosion of gender differentials in education levels. They hypothesis a rational action approach- that individual decisions are influenced by the resources available to individuals. They first assume that class differentials come about based upon primary and secondary effects; primary being that rich kids do better on tests than poorer kids, secondary being the choices that those poorer families make as a result of their current resources. They dismiss the culturalist account of influence on children from different class backgrounds because it leaves too many unanswered questions and relies too much on institutional influences for its answers. There is a second assumption that states that families from all class positions wish to see their children be upwardly mobile or at least maintain their class position- this brings in the concept of risk aversion, if a choice has the potential to deny this reality then the risk may be too great for individuals within one class but not the other. Gender differentials unlike class differentials occur within not between families, thus no explanation is appropriate with regards to the reduction in cost of education or inequalities with resources. The concept of cultural norms is viewed by the authors as a guide toward the rational action principles that have evolved over time out of distinctive class experiences.