https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430219837095 Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 2019, Vol. 22(3) 323 –329 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1368430219837095 journals.sagepub.com/home/gpi G P I R
Group Processes &
Intergroup Relations
Group-Based Inequalities in
Educational Outcomes
Obtaining a higher education is one of the primary pathways to financial security, better health, and increased quality of life (Baum & Payea, 2004; Bowen, 1997; Perna, 2005). The effort needed and the barriers to obtaining a higher education, how-ever, are not equal among all groups. In fact, cer-tain groups, such as women in science technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and African American and Latino students across all levels of higher education often contend with additional barriers and concerns or need to exert extra effort to obtain the same level of education relative to their White male counterparts (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010; National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics,
2017). These group-based differences do not only apply to gender or racial/ethnic minority students, they also extend to a host of other disadvantaged groups, such as students from low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds (Jetten, Iyer, & Zhang, 2017) and first-generation college students (Stephens, Markus, & Phillips, 2014). Some of the potential long-term consequences of these group-based
Introduction to the special issue
on group-based inequalities in
educational outcomes
David M. Marx,
1,2Sei Jin Ko
2and Jean-Claude Croizet
3Abstract
Obtaining a higher education is critical to financial security, high-status career opportunities, and an increased quality of life. As such, understanding the barriers to educational attainment that certain disadvantaged groups must scale is paramount to creating a more equitable, productive, and diverse workforce. This special issue presents seven papers that focus on how the extant educational culture and structure contribute to or reinforce group-based inequalities in educational outcomes and experiences.
Keywords
academic transition, achievement, educational inequalities, higher education, identity, symbolic disqualification
1San Diego State University, USA
2 Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education
(CRMSE), USA
3Université Clermont-Auvergne, France Corresponding author:
David M. Marx, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182, USA.
Email: dmarx@sdsu.edu
inequalities are an ever-widening income gap, a cycle of poverty, and limited high-status career opportunities for disadvantaged group members (Perna, 2003; Thomas & Perna, 2004). Consequently, this educational gap is seen as one of the more acute problems facing modern day educational systems.
The reasons why certain groups lag behind in educational achievement and attainment have been hotly debated and range from “pinning the blame” on the individual to documenting how structural or societal factors perpetuate inequality (e.g., Biddle, 2001): The individualist perspective, which has largely fallen out of favor, points to the causes rooted in the individuals themselves, such as a lack of ability or motivation (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994), while the structural perspective, which has become the dominant perspective, points to situational and/or environmental cir-cumstances beyond the individual’s control (e.g., Fischer et al., 1996; Steele, 1997). In contrast to the individualist perspective, which lacks much, if any, corroborating evidence, there is extensive evidence in support of the structural perspec-tive—the structural inequalities that exist in the educational systems and society, more generally, impose systemic barriers to the academic achieve-ment of disadvantaged students (Royce, 2018). Thus, many students from disadvantaged back-grounds live in impoverished neighborhoods where they are more likely to attend underfunded schools that provide suboptimal curricula, lower achievement expectations by teachers, and an environment defined by peers who are uninter-ested in learning (Rjosk, Richter, Lüdtke, & Eccles, 2017).
Building on this structural perspective, social psychology has been examining how cultural and societal expectations shape the social reality expe-rienced by disadvantaged students and impact their pursuit of higher education and academic achievement. The study of these barriers came to the forefront of social and educational research after the publication of Steele and Aronson’s (1995) seminal article on stereotype threat, which sparked a wave of research exploring the impact of negative stereotypes on academic performance.
As a result, the theory of stereotype threat has been offered as one of the more compelling explanations for persistent educational inequali-ties (Steele, 1997). Currently, however, there is a debate about whether the effects of stereotype threat are overestimated (Flore, Mulder, & Wicherts, 2019). It is also important to note that the barriers faced by disadvantaged students are not limited to stereotype threat and its debilitating effect on academic performance. Disadvantaged groups often find themselves in a variety of aca-demic situations that jeopardize their sense of self, be it in terms of their interest, motivation, or sense of belonging. Recent theorizing in social psychology has thus begun to consider how these “academic” experiences and resultant outcomes fit under the umbrella term of “symbolic disqualification”—a psychological experience conveyed by institutional structures that one, as a disadvantaged group member, does not fit or belong within a certain valued space due to some personal shortcoming, such as a lack of ability to succeed (Croizet, Goudeau, Marot, & Millet, 2017; Croizet & Millet, 2012). According to this perspective, symbolic disqualification is not just an unfortunate predicament experienced by disad-vantaged group members, it also reflects a failure of the institution of education to provide an equi-table learning environment for all students. The educational system is thus structured in a manner that more easily benefits those students from advantaged (e.g., middle-class or continuing-gen-eration students) backgrounds often to the detri-ment of students from more disadvantaged (working-class or first-generation students) back-grounds (see Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Croizet et al., 2017).
The aim of this special issue of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations is to bring together research that moves beyond the dominant focus on performance and academic achievement to examine a broader range of educational out-comes (e.g., help-seeking, motivation, academic adjustment) that are impacted by the structural inequality and resultant symbolic disqualifica-tion that is present in current educadisqualifica-tional struc-tures and culstruc-tures. A further aim is to shift from
the prevailing focus on gender and race-/ethnic-ity-based educational differences to include other less studied groups, such as students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, first-genera-tion students, and recent immigrants. The find-ings from this past research are certainly informative, but the findings do not uniformly apply to all disadvantaged groups nor do all dis-advantaged groups experience the same barriers to educational attainment; hence by including a wider range of disadvantaged groups, the insight gained from the research presented in this spe-cial issue should provide a more comprehensive view of the barriers to equitable educational outcomes. We also hope that this research will provide insight into ways to tailor interventions for reducing group-based inequalities in educa-tional outcomes for a variety of disadvantaged groups.
Overview of the Special Issue
When soliciting papers for the special issue we sought to include a broad range of groups and measures without regard for the specific research question or focus, provided that the research directly examined group-based inequalities in educational outcomes. In some sense, we wanted to be open to whatever current topics researchers are grappling with and where research in this area is headed.
We were very encouraged to receive quite a few papers, which dealt with a diversity of groups, approaches, and measures. Once we finalized our list of contributing papers, we began the process of organizing them into themes. Two interrelated themes emerged, which revolved around issues related to the impact of educational structure and culture on disadvantaged students’ educational experiences and academic integration. Specifically, the first theme focuses on how the culture and structure of academic institutions create a sense of symbolic disqualification that affects disad-vantaged students’ sense of self and “forces” a modification of their educational interests and motivations. The second theme focuses on the unique challenges disadvantaged students face
when transitioning and integrating into academia and how these challenges influence their experi-ences and outcomes.
Educational Structure and
Symbolic Disqualification
Symbolic disqualification is an informative way to document how educational structure and culture sustain social inequality (Croizet & Millet, 2012). Accordingly, the three papers included in this sec-tion document how academic institusec-tions repro-duce social inequality by jeopardizing disadvantaged students’ sense of self, pressuring them to revise and adjust their interests down-ward, or creating feelings that they do not belong or come from backgrounds where identity com-patibility and anticipated fit influence their uni-versity choices.
People’s choices and interests are often con-ceived as the expression of individual factors (Elliot & Dweck, 2005). However, the decision of which academic path to forego or pursue var-ies systematically with students’ gender, ethnicity, and social class. Thoman et al. (2019) propose a theoretical framework to highlight the social influences that shape students’ motivation and lead to group-based inequality in education. Elaborating from the self-regulation of motiva-tion model (Sansone & Harackiewicz, 1996), the authors explain how students’ choice (goal-defined motivation) and interests (experience-defined motivation) are shaped by society. Three sources of influence are integrated: social roles and group norms, perception or exposure to interpersonal biases, and structural barriers. The authors describe how the model illuminates underlying causes of differential group-participa-tion rates in certain fields. By conceptualizing the impact of the social contexts on regulation of emotion strategies in the light of the self-regula-tion of motivaself-regula-tion model, Thoman et al. docu-ment the internal, yet social, process through which individuals who belong to certain social groups are silently led to adjust their own interest and motivation in a way that reproduces social inequality.
Subjective sense of belonging in college is an important determinant of academic outcomes. Research has repeatedly shown that disadvan-taged social groups experience a poorer sense of belonging in school than more advantaged social groups (Freeman, Anderman, & Jensen, 2007; Ostrove & Long, 2007). Jury, Aelenei, Chen, Darnon, and Elliot (2019) investigate the reason why students from working-class backgrounds report lower sense of belonging in higher edu-cation than their peers from upper middle-class backgrounds. The authors hypothesize that the relationship between social class and sense of belonging is mediated by perceptions of one’s prestige in academia. Across three studies, Jury et al. demonstrated that the lower students’ sub-jective social class, the lower their self-attributed prestige, and that prestige was a mediator of the relation between students’ subjective social class and their sense of belonging in college.
Nieuwenhuis, Manstead, and Easterbrook (2019) analyze the impact of students’ socioec-onomic status (SES) on university application in the United Kingdom. At stake is the “under-match” phenomenon (Smith, Pender, & Howell, 2013): The fact that students from working-class backgrounds choose to apply to certain universities that are less prestigious than the alternative to which they could apply based on their actual academic credentials. Across two studies conducted in high schools, Niewenhuis et al. reveal the role of identity compatibility and anticipated fit in university choices among low- and high-SES students. Relying on social identity theories (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), the authors show that economically disadvantaged high school students were less likely to report that their social class background was compatible with being a university student, and less likely to feel they would fit in at and apply to a prestigious university.
Together, the papers in this section highlight how structural and institutional inequality shape the self and perpetuate group-based inequality by creating a sense of symbolic disqualification among students from disadvantaged groups.
Academic Transitions and
Educational Integration
Academic transitions and educational integration can be challenging for any student, but perhaps pose an additional challenge to students from dis-advantaged backgrounds. For instance, academic institutions face the challenge of ensuring equality of opportunity for all students, while also needing to acknowledge the persistent educational inequal-ity among students from disadvantaged back-grounds, be it race/ethnicity, immigrant status, or SES. Academic institutions typically emphasize independence, which may be incompatible with students from different cultures or disadvantaged backgrounds that are more likely to emphasize interdependence (Stephens, Fryberg, & Markus, 2011). Academic transitions and educational inte-gration can also apply at the level of college major. As such, integrating into a field of study can be especially challenging for students who see few other students who look like them. The papers in this section tackle this transition and integration issue among a number of disadvan-taged groups, who each has unique challenges when entering into a new learning environment, college, or major.
Perceptions of social discord felt by African American college students can account for group-based inequalities in a wide range of educational outcomes. Moreover, racial incidents occurring in and around college campuses make race more sali-ent for African American studsali-ents and influence their identity development. The research con-ducted by Campbell, Carter-Sowell, and Battle (2019) examined how individual differences in sen-sitivity to racial status relate to academic success and satisfaction among African American students enrolled at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) relative to African American students enrolled at a historically Black college/university (HBCU). Results indicated that, regardless of whether students attended a HBCU or PWI, if they viewed their daily interactions through the lens of race, it had a direct and negative bearing on academic success and satisfaction and this was truer among those students attending a PWI.
Using a social identity perspective, Veldman, Meeussen, and van Laar (2019) examined how both academic and social integration in college contribute to the social-class achievement gap between first- and continuing-generation students. These authors reasoned that for first-generation students, as opposed to continuing-generation students, the transition to college may be particu-larly difficult because they often experience low identity compatibility due to the perceived mis-match between their social background and iden-tity as a college student. Veldman et al. tested their reasoning by measuring students’ academic and social integration at the beginning and end of their first year in college. Results revealed that first-generation students experienced less identity compatibility in their first semester, which in turn related to lower social, but not academic, integra-tion. Low identity compatibility was also related to lower academic achievement (measured by the number of courses passed) 1 year later, and this relationship was mediated by lower social integration.
Expanding on contact theory to incorporate educational outcomes, Wölfer, Caro, and Hewstone (2019) argue that outgroup contact may be particularly beneficial for immigrant stu-dents who are in the process of transitioning to a new country, culture, and school; they argue that outgroup contact facilitates the academic develop-ment of students due to the social capital and the uniquely supportive information and connections that outgroup contact provides. Examining this reasoning among immigrant and nonimmigrant middle-school students residing in three countries (Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden), these authors found that outgroup contact benefitted all students’ academic achievement, but immigrant students benefitted more than nonimmigrant stu-dents, which over time may help decrease struc-tural inequalities and promote immigrants’ academic and economic potential.
Women leave STEM majors at higher rates than men (Ellis, Fosdick, & Rasmussen, 2016). Covarrubias, Laiduc, and Valle (2019) argue that this may be due to the type of messaging being relayed in STEM gateway courses. That is, the
culture of STEM gateway courses may be send-ing the implicit message that women lack the abil-ity to succeed in these courses and that they do not fit the profile of the typical competitive, inde-pendent STEM student. This type of messaging may ultimately prevent women from getting the support they need to succeed in these courses. To explore this issue, Covarrubias et al. examined how varying the messaging around a peer-led tutoring (PLT) program impacts help-seeking behavior among students enrolled in a STEM gateway course. Results revealed no impact of messaging type on male students’ PLT sign-ups. Yet, when the messaging highlighted that success is based on hard work and effort (a growth mes-sage) there was an increase in female students’ PLT sign-ups relative to a control condition that simply relayed factual information about the course.
Together, these papers highlight how aca-demic transitions and educational integration can be hindered by racial sensitivity and the racial make-up of the college campus and by percep-tions of low identity compatibility between stu-dents’ social background and college identity, or facilitated via outgroup contact or by altering the messages inherent in STEM gateway courses.
Conclusion
A greater understanding of the educational barri-ers faced by disadvantaged students has both theoretical, in terms of understanding the psy-chological impact of these barriers, and practical implications, in terms of using this theoretical insight to develop effective, evidence-based solu-tions to the education gap. These barriers, how-ever, are not the same for all students, thus taking a broader perspective and examining the educa-tional experiences of students from a wide range of disadvantaged backgrounds should facilitate the goal of creating a more equitable, productive, and diverse workforce as well as a more equitable educational system. The papers in this special issue reflect this goal by focusing on how society and educational culture and structure both create and contribute to educational inequality.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Writing of this article was partially supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF: #1535117) to David M. Marx and Sei Jin Ko.
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