This paper tests two competing explanations of differences in returns to cultural capital across schooling environments: Cultural reproduction (cultural capital yields a higher returns in high-achieving environments than in low-achieving ones) and cultural mobility (cultural capital yields higher returns in low-achieving environments). Using multilevel mixture models, empirical results from analyses based on PISA data from three countries (Canada, Germany, and Sweden) show that returns to cultural capital tend to be higher in low-achieving schooling environments than in high-achieving ones. These results principally support the cultural mobility explanation and suggest that research should pay explicit attention to the institutional contexts in which cultural capital is converted into educational success.

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Research in the sociology of education argues that the educational system provides different learning opportunities for students with different socioeconomic backgrounds and that this circumstance makes the educational process an important institutional context for the reproduction of educational inequality. Using combined survey and register data of more than 56,000 students in 825 schools, this paper conducts the first empirical test of the argument that instructional strategies that emphasize student responsibility and activity, also referred to as student-centered instruction, increases educational inequality. We analyze whether the impact of student-centered instructional strategies on academic achievement differs for students with different socioeconomic backgrounds. Results suggest that a student-centered instructional strategy has a negative impact on academic achievement in general and for students with low parental education in particular. Our findings support the argument that the instructional strategy of schools is an important mechanism in generating educational inequality through the stratification of learning opportunities.