XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

82

Social Class and Educational Strategies in National Educational Systems in Transformation

RC04 Sociology of Education (host committee)

Language: French and English

In the last decades, globalization, marketization and intensified educational competition have put their mark on national education systems and on social groups’ educational strategies. As the increased use of English as language of instruction testifies to, globalization challenges the value of nationally defined educational content and diplomas, imposing new balances between nationally and internationally recognized educational assets. In many countries, marketization, privatization and free school choice profoundly change the conditions for how social groups use educational institutions. An increasingly complex supply of education make educational trajectories dependent on how families and social groups mobilize their total volume and particular composition of informational, economic and social capital, one dimension of which is their own position and distribution in the socio-geographical space. While dominant social groups by virtue of their educational performance, their economic means or their social contacts confide in their ability to make use of elite school institutions of competing orientations, middle-class families often rely on “middle schools” that promise to open the paths to higher education, whereas lower social classes are confined to schools that no one else wants to attend. Taking into account the history and structure of  particular national education systems, this session addresses the educational strategies of social classes, fractions, groups and families under the pressure of transformation.