The impact of participation in extracurricular activities on academic success has long been studied in the social sciences. This article aims at improving the measurement and understanding of this ...impact. Based on panel data regression models applied to a panel of French middle school students, it first provides a robust estimation of the impact of extracurricular activities on school outcomes (marks in French and Mathematics) and on a set of cognitive and non-cognitive skills. It finds a positive and significant impact on marks in French and Mathematics and scores on non-cognitive skills tests. No impact is found on cognitive skills. The article then investigates the underlying mechanisms of this impact. Its findings do not reinforce the transfer paradigm, according to which extracurricular activities provide students who participate in them with skills that they can reinvest in school life. Neither does it support the notion that such an impact may primarily be the result of students’ greater connivance with the cultural standards of teachers. Instead, it seems likely that what is mainly at stake in participation in extracurricular activities is families’ unequal capacity for extending the time of school supervision in their children’s free time. Therefore, insofar as the varying participation in these activities is strongly correlated to differences in students’ social and cultural background, participation in extracurricular activities would in itself contribute to reinforcing social inequalities in school achievement.
This article explores the changing pattern of cultural privilege in contemporary France. Using French data on cultural practices, including variables on ‘highbrow’ culture, mass culture and ...cosmopolitan culture, we apply a multi-correspondence analysis (MCA). The findings first show that cultural privilege among French social and educational elites remains primarily a matter of cultural capital endowment, with a structuring contrast between ‘legitimate’ and ‘mass’ culture. The MCA also shows an additional divide between local and global culture underpinned by a strong age gradient. Yet the emergence of a changing pattern of cultural privilege among the youngest cohorts does not imply any clear reduction in cultural inequalities. Rather, it suggests a growing cultural distinctiveness of French elites. Finally, these tendencies should not be easily extrapolated to other contexts as they reflect strong French specificities related to the evolution of social and educational structures during the second half of the 20th century.
•The article explores the consequences of social mobility for musical tastes.•Prevalence of the impact of secondary socialization in the class of destination.•Partial support for the idea that plural ...socialization fosters taste eclecticism.•Taste eclecticism corresponds to a variety of taste patterns.•Taste patterns reflect the combination of contradictory social settings.
This article explores the consequences of social mobility for musical tastes. It first shows that the impact of secondary socialization in the class of destination prevails over the impact of primary socialization in the class of origin. It also partially supports the assumption that plural socialization, as a result of social mobility, fosters taste eclecticism. Moreover, the analysis also suggests that taste eclecticism corresponds to a variety of taste patterns. On the one hand, selective omnivorousness combines the taste for highbrow genres and the most common items of mass-produced pop music. It is quite overrepresented among the highest status groups and significantly linked to upward mobility. On the other hand, extensive omnivorousness, which corresponds with a less selective form of eclecticism, is quite overrepresented among intermediate status groups, and is not intrinsically associated with social mobility. Finally, the article also demonstrates the presence of another pattern of taste eclecticism that hardly includes any tastes for highbrow genres and which is positively impacted by social mobility and strongly anchored in the lower status groups. Together, these results suggest that the complexity of taste patterns may reflect the combination of contradictory social settings and complex social trajectories.
► Comparison of the French cultural practices surveys of 1981 and 2008. ► Multicorrespondance analysis on 1981 respondents with projection of 2008 respondents. ► Shows relative inertia of social ...disparities in cultural participation in France. ► Demonstrates the persisting structuring power of class. ► Social differentiation of cultural attitudes a combination of openness and legitimacy.
Based on a comparison of the French cultural practices surveys of 1981 and 2008, this article shows a strong inertia of the structuring principles of the inequalities in cultural participation—despite the changes that occurred meanwhile in cultural policies. Beyond the theoretical controversies in the sociology of culture that developed during this same period, the retrospective analysis also suggests the prevalence of class inequalities that neither reduces to a simple inequality in the volume of cultural consumption nor to a simple opposition between highbrow and lowbrow repertoires, but rather should be considered as a combination of the two.
In sociological study of artistic tastes, the behavior of the upper classes is usually characterized by a penchant for “highbrow” arts and simultaneous rejection of popular arts and the products of ...mass culture. However, the trends brought to light by analysis of cultural practices survey data do not entirely confirm this representation. What distinguishes upper class behavior is in fact not so much familiarity with “legitimate” culture, as is often claimed, but diversity of stated preferences, in contrast to members of lower-status classes, whose preferences appear more exclusive. A contrast can therefore be established between the traditional model of cultural legitimacy and a model in terms of eclecticism. This article seeks to assess the import of the latter model on the basis of data on preferences in music from a 1997 survey of French cultural practices. First, French practices in this area unequivocally confirm the relevance of the eclecticism model, though that model appears more an extension of the cultural legitimacy model than a refutation of it. Second, the preference typology constructed through analysis of the data, and distribution of individuals by social factors among five music-listener profiles defined on the basis of that typology, forefront the importance of generation differences and uneven distribution of cultural capital and musical competence.
This article assesses the impact of a two-year long project-based learning program conducted by the National Opera of Paris in a large number of middle schools located in underprivileged areas, ...aiming at preventing school dropout and tackling educational inequalities by providing disadvantaged students with the opportunity to discover the world of opera. Taking a counterfactual approach (propensity score matching), we measure the impact of participation in the program on final exam and continuous assessment grades. The analysis displays mixed results: a significant and positive impact for the students who participate in the program for its whole duration (two years), at least for continuous assessment scores, but a negative impact for those who leave the program after only one year. The contrast between the effects of full and partial participation in the program suggests that these may be primarily due to a selection effect in favor of the most culturally and socially compliant students, in line with Bourdieu's and Passeron's reproduction theory (1997 1970) rather than a mobility effect (DiMaggio,
1982
) resulting from the transfer of cultural capital to disadvantaged students.
Classes sociales Coulangeon, Philippe
Sociologie,
2018
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
L’étude des classes sociales met en présence une grande variété de conceptions, qui privilégient les groupes sur les individus comme unité pertinente d’analyse des faits sociaux. Instruments de ...catégorisation et d’analyse, les classes constituent aussi une composante de la vie sociale et politique concrète des sociétés. Elles associent ainsi des éléments objectifs, fondés le plus souvent sur des critères théoriques, et des dimensions subjectives, qui renvoient aux sentiments d’appartenance de...
The question addressed by this article concerns the extent to which the extensive eclecticism observed today in many cultural domains constitutes a major refutation of Bourdieu's theory of ...distinction. Based on recent French data on music listening habits, this article examines Bourdieu's theoretical legacy by means of a multi-correspondence analysis of people's listening habits in various musical genres. The analysis basically invalidates Bourdieu's strict homology hypothesis and corroborates Peterson's omnivore/univore thesis as far as it is not possible to establish an unequivocal correspondence between any musical genre and a social group or to confirm that upper-class and high-status groups tend to distinguish themselves by the variety of their musical consumption. In that sense, as omnivorousness tends to become a distinctive criteria, Bourdieu's thesis seems only partially challenged by this new theoretical framework, as far as cultural consumption remains socially stratified. Finally, two competing hypotheses may be proposed on the meaning of the predominantly omnivorous behavior of the upper classes and highest social status groups. First, the omnivorous musical consumer can be seen as an outcome of social mobility and school massification which is introducing people from increasingly heterogeneous social and cultural backgrounds into elites. Second, eclecticism can be understood as a generic disposition towards culture characterized by tolerance and openness to diversity which tends to embody the modern quintessence of distinction.
Cet article porte sur une tentative d’évaluation de l’impact scolaire d’un dispositif d’enseignement artistique et culturel, le programme Dix mois d’école et d’Opéra (DMEO), porté par l’Opéra ...national de Paris et les académies de Paris, Créteil et Versailles depuis le début des années 1990. Ce dispositif, dont nous exposons dans un premier temps l’histoire et les caractéristiques, cible plus particulièrement des classes de collège situées dans des établissements du réseau d’éducation prioritaire des académies concernées. L’article s’appuie principalement sur l’analyse secondaire des données de trajectoire scolaire des élèves d’une cinquantaine de classes de collège impliquées dans le programme entre 2003 et 2012 au moyen d’une méthode contrefactuelle consistant à mesurer l’influence d’un facteur sur une évolution, par la différence entre cette évolution et celle, hypothétique qui serait mesurée en l’absence de ce facteur. Ces données concernent les notes obtenues au brevet des collèges et les choix d‘orientation en fin de troisième, au sujet desquels les résultats de l’analyse suggèrent un impact modeste mais significatif de la participation au dispositif DMEO. Ces résultats font aussi apparaître une différenciation selon le sexe et l’origine sociale des élèves, avec des effets globalement plus prononcés chez les garçons et chez les élèves de milieux populaires. L’article insiste enfin sur la nature incertaine de ces effets, que l’enquête qualitative menée en parallèle des analyses statistiques permet d’éclairer. Nous avançons l’idée que ces effets relèvent sans doute davantage de la modification des conditions d’encadrement et de motivation des élèves, des formes d’implication et de coordination des équipes pédagogiques que de l’acquisition de compétences scolaires au sens strict.
Modélisation Coulangeon, Philippe
Sociologie,
06/2015
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
La modélisation consiste en une représentation stylisée des relations entre les faits sociaux, porteuse d’une visée explicative, qui constitue une des formes possibles de la connaissance en sciences ...sociales. La parcimonie du modèle tranche de ce point de vue avec le souci d’exhaustivité du récit ou de la description, qui visent davantage à la compréhension des phénomènes. Toute modélisation est porteuse d’une visée explicative, qui n’est pas nécessairement définie par la recherche de relatio...
