TY - JOUR

T1 - Children's conversion of cultural capital into educational success

T2 - the symbolic and skill-generating functions of cultural capital

AU - Mikus, Karoline

AU - Tieben, Nicole

AU - Schober, Pia S.

N1 - Funding information: This paper uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort Grade 5, doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC3:6.0.1. From 2008 to 2013, NEPS data was collected as part of the Framework Program for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). As of 2014, NEPS is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) at the University of Bamberg in cooperation with a nationwide network. This research was funded by the LEAD Graduate School & Research Network [GSC1028], which is funded within the framework of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. Karoline Mikus was a doctoral student at the LEAD Graduate School & Research Network. Dr. Nicole Tieben is external affiliate of LEAD. This paper greatly benefitted from helpful comments and methodological advice from Johann Jacoby.

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - A prominent explanation of intergenerational educational inequality is Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory. Indeed, previous studies have frequently shown that children’s cultural capital relates to academic outcomes. However, it remains unclear how children convert their cultural capital into achievement. While Bourdieu argued that cultural capital influences academic outcomes primarily by biasing teachers’ grades, other researchers have proposed the alternative explanation that children’s cultural capital absorption directly translates into academic skills. Using survey data on 2975 fifth graders from the German National Educational Panel Study, we disentangle these two mechanisms of children’s cultural capital conversion; and argue that the main conversion mechanism depends on the cultural capital dimension examined. The results of our structural equation model suggest that both mechanisms are at work and that the main conversion mechanism depends on the dimension of cultural capital examined.

AB - A prominent explanation of intergenerational educational inequality is Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory. Indeed, previous studies have frequently shown that children’s cultural capital relates to academic outcomes. However, it remains unclear how children convert their cultural capital into achievement. While Bourdieu argued that cultural capital influences academic outcomes primarily by biasing teachers’ grades, other researchers have proposed the alternative explanation that children’s cultural capital absorption directly translates into academic skills. Using survey data on 2975 fifth graders from the German National Educational Panel Study, we disentangle these two mechanisms of children’s cultural capital conversion; and argue that the main conversion mechanism depends on the cultural capital dimension examined. The results of our structural equation model suggest that both mechanisms are at work and that the main conversion mechanism depends on the dimension of cultural capital examined.

KW - cultural capital

KW - cultural capital conversion

KW - educational achievement

KW - Educational inequality

KW - scholarly culture

KW - teacher bias

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074975624&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/01425692.2019.1677454

DO - 10.1080/01425692.2019.1677454

M3 - Article

VL - 41

SP - 197

EP - 217

JO - British journal of sociology of education

JF - British journal of sociology of education

SN - 0142-5692

IS - 2

ER -