Self-interest and Liberal Educational Discourse: How Ideology Works for                Middle-Class Mothers

Brantlinger, Ellen; Majd-Jabbari, Massoumeh; Guskin, Samuel L.

doi:10.3102/00028312033003571

Cited by 70 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Beyond this, however, we would argue that qualitative research may give deeper insight into how individuals navigate the “dilemma” of making choices in practice that seem to run contrary to their moral or political principles. Bratlinger, Majd‐Jabbari, and Guskin () interviewed middle‐class mothers who believed in integrated education, yet defended segregation when it came to selecting schools for their own children. The mothers argued that their choice to send their children to higher‐income schools was based on the fact that they were “the best schools.” Some candidly admitted that they had purchased homes within the high‐income school districts because attending schools with predominantly low‐income enrollments would disadvantage their children's education.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Principle‐Implementation Gap in Attitudes Towards Racial Equality (and How to Close It)

Dixon

Durrheim

Thomae

2017

Political Psychology

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Research on attitudes towards racial equality has identified an apparent paradox, sometimes described as the “Principle‐Implementation Gap.” White Americans accept equality as an ideal yet reject interventions designed to achieve that ideal. In this article, we provide a critical review of empirical and theoretical work in the field and outline some directions for future research. Drawing on a program of research conducted in post‐apartheid South Africa, we argue for the value of: (1) widening the field beyond its traditional focus on White policy attitudes in the United States; (2) developing relational models that encompass more fully the perspectives of historically disadvantaged as well as historically advantaged communities; (3) making greater use of methods that elucidate how ordinary people themselves construct the meaning of the Principle‐Implementation Gap and how this informs, and indeed justifies and normalizes, associated patterns of behavior; and (4) prioritizing the difficult question of how to promote social change in societies where most citizens embrace equality as a noble end but often reject the means through which it might be accomplished. With regards to the latter—and given the ascendancy of prejudice‐based explanations of the Principle‐Implementation Gap—the article evaluates in particular some strengths and limitations of a prejudice‐reduction model of social change.

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Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Principle‐Implementation Gap in Attitudes Towards Racial Equality (and How to Close It)

Dixon

Durrheim

Thomae

2017

Political Psychology

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“…In this respect class formation is very much women’s work. The invisible work of mothers, as ‘status maintainers’ (Brantlinger, Majd‐Jabbari and Guskin, 1996: 589) is crucial to the knitting together and activation of different forms of family capital.…”

Section: The Localitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Middle Class Fractions, Childcare and the ‘Relational’ and ‘Normative’ Aspects of Class Practices

Ball

Vincent

Kemp

et al. 2004

The Sociological Review

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The emphasis in class research remains on the structural aspects of class, class processes are neglected. This paper focuses upon some relational and normative aspects of class through an examination of social divisions produced and constructed within middle class families' choices of childcare. Working with data from two contrasting settings in London (Battersea and Stoke Newington) three issues are addressed in the paper; the extent to which childcare arrangements both substantively and structurally position children differently within long term educational careers; the ways in which the use of choice in a market system of child care and education, works to produce patterns of social closure that quietly discriminate via the collectivist criterion of class and racial membership; and the ways in which child care choices also point-up and perpetuate subtle distinctions and tensions of values and lifestyle within the middle class, between class factions. Concepts drawn from the work of Bourdieu are deployed throughout. This paper draws from an ESRC-funded study of middle-class, or more precisely, service class (Goldthorpe, 1995) families in London, choosing childcare. 1 Through the lens of childcare arrangements, and the planning of children's educational careers, we engage with some of the recent developments in class theory and class research (Crompton, 1998;Savage, 2000; Robson, 2002, see also Vincent, Ball and Kemp, 2004). More substantively the focus on pre-school care enables us to begin to demonstrate the ways in which middle-class educational strategies are constructed from a very early age, but also to show how these strategies vary within the middle-class not only by household but by the habitus within which the household is spatially located. Here then we address both the differentiation of class fractional values and life-styles within our middle-class samples, and the ways in which these differentiations are enacted to produce and reproduce boundaries within the middle-class and between this class and class 'others'. That is to say, following Bourdieu our analysis is relational, the class and class fractional

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“…46 Like Ellen Brantlinger, however, we also look at the workings and maintenance of privilege and how the actions of dominant groups leverage and solidify that privilege. 47 In other words, rather than focus on the marginalization and oppression that minoritized groups experience, we instead turn the analytic lens to uncovering how the creation of K-8 schools functioned to create pockets of privilege within one urban school district.…”

Section: Development Of K-8 Schoolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enclaves of Privilege: Access and Opportunity for Students with Disabilities in Urban K-8 Schools

Ashby¹,

White²,

Ferri³

et al. 2020

Hist. of Ed. Quarterly

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Middle grades education has been the object of efforts to remediate US education to address an array of social problems. Districts have sought out K-8 models to create smaller learning communities, require fewer school transitions, and allow sustained student connections. This paper offers a historical analysis of K-8 schools, drawing on statistical and spatial methods and a DisCrit intersectional lens to illustrate how creating K-8 schools produced enclaves of privilege in one urban school district. K-8 schools in our target district became whiter and wealthier than district averages. Students with disabilities attending K-8 schools tended to be placed in more inclusive classrooms, where they were more likely to be integrated alongside nondisabled peers than counterparts attending traditional middle schools. We consider how the configuration of K-8 schools, which could be considered an administrative decision to better serve students, has obscured interworkings of power and privilege.

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Self-interest and Liberal Educational Discourse: How Ideology Works for Middle-Class Mothers

Cited by 70 publications

References 36 publications

The Principle‐Implementation Gap in Attitudes Towards Racial Equality (and How to Close It)

The Principle‐Implementation Gap in Attitudes Towards Racial Equality (and How to Close It)

Middle Class Fractions, Childcare and the ‘Relational’ and ‘Normative’ Aspects of Class Practices

Enclaves of Privilege: Access and Opportunity for Students with Disabilities in Urban K-8 Schools

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