The Palgrave Handbook of Race and Ethnic Inequalities in Education

P. Stevens, A. Dworkin, P. Stevens, A. Dworkin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349338498, 9780230304284
• eBook ISBN: 9781137317803
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This comprehensive, state-of-the-art reference work providesthe first systematic review to date of how sociologists have studied the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality over the last thirty years in eighteen different national contexts.

1

Introduction to the Handbook

Comparative Sociological Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Inequality in Education

Peter A. J. Stevens and A. Gary Dworkin

This book brings together more than 30 years of sociological research on the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality carried out in 18 national contexts.

The development of this was inspired by two earlier reviews from Stevens and colleagues on the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality in England (Stevens 2007) and the Netherlands (Stevens et al. 2011). In conducting these reviews it became apparent that England and the Netherlands can fall back on rich traditions of research on this topic, but also that both bodies of literature are characterized by a focus on very different research questions and/or theoretical and methodological approaches. In addition, and somewhat in contradiction to what can be expected from a global, academic research community, scholars working in England and the Netherlands were mainly stimulated by national policy and research debates in developing and carrying out particular areas of research and less so by research conducted outside their national boundaries. The lack of mutual consideration and international cross-fertilization of research between these two (and other) countries, the abundance of research on race and ethnic inequalities in education, and the lack of recent, more systematic and comprehensive reviews of literature in this area called for efforts to further investigate how different national contexts develop particular research traditions and findings and how they can learn from each other in further developing our knowledge of the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality.

This book builds on the two reviews published earlier by Stevens and colleagues in two ways. First, it expands the scope of these reviews by presenting the findings of research carried out on the relationship between race and ethnic inequality in 18 different national contexts, including updated reviews of the articles written by Stevens and colleagues. These 18 countries are purposively selected to cover a broad range of socio-economic and educational contexts and geographical regions throughout the world, including reviews of research in Africa (South Africa), Asia (China and Japan), Australia, Europe (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, England, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands), Euro-Asia (Russia), North America (the USA and Canada) and South America (Argentina and Brazil).

While the Anglo-Saxon countries included in this Handbook are well recognized in terms of the amount and importance of research carried out in relationship to race and ethnic inequalities in education, this is far less the case for the other countries included. This can in part be explained by the observation that research in these countries is often not written in English and/or does not find its way to high profile academic outlets. As a result, an important achievement of this book is that it offers a platform for this non-English research to be accessed and acknowledged by an English-speaking academic community. In so doing, this Handbook pays tribute to and recognizes the importance of the work conducted by many scholars throughout the world in developing knowledge on the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality worldwide.

Second, each of the contributions included in this edited book follows the same methodology in carrying out the review and structure in presenting the findings. Hence, while each national review can be read and stands on its own, the similarities in terms of methodology and structure between the chapters allow the reader to better compare the development of knowledge on the relationship between race/ethnic inequalities between different countries. More specifically, all chapters are similar in that they:

(a)  Offer a brief introduction of the characteristics of the educational system, the main migration processes and developments in terms of social policy in relationship to ethnic and racial inequality. This allows readers to better contextualize the findings of each review.

(b)  Are primarily concerned with identifying and critically reviewing the key research traditions that developed between 1980 and 2012 within their national context in relationship to research on race and ethnic inequalities in education. In line with Stevens (2007: 148), a research tradition is defined as: ‘a set of studies developed over a certain period of time, which explore the relationship between educational inequality and race/ethnicity in a similar way by focusing on similar research questions, units of analysis, or social processes and use a similar set of research methods to achieve this goal’.

(c)  Are explicit about the employed sampling procedures, or which criteria of inclusion and databases were employed in developing a sample of literature to be reviewed, with the primary goal to be as comprehensive as possible. This transparency in terms of employed sampling frame helps the reader to better evaluate the focus and scope of the review.

Whilst the international scope of the contributions and the similarities in terms of structure and methodology between the chapters contribute to the uniqueness of this Handbook and its relevance to the field, certain limitations need to be pointed out in advance. First, while most of the chapters in this Handbook are highly successful in offering a truly comprehensive review of the research literature that developed in their respective countries, there is unavoidably some variation between the chapters in terms of how comprehensive the reviews aim to be. Due to limitations in resources and/or the vast amount of literature written on this topic, some chapters necessarily restrict their focus on a smaller number of research traditions (e.g. chapters on the USA and Finland) and particular types of (for instance, secondary) schooling (e.g. chapters on Ireland and the Netherlands). Furthermore, as it took over two years to develop this Handbook, some chapters focus on the period 1980–2010, while others also cover research carried out more recently.

Secondly, in developing our conclusions, we as editors decided against writing a fully integrative review, that is one that aims to bring together all the findings that emerged out of these studies into a single text and advises on future directions for research in each of the key research traditions and national contexts. As space limitations simply do not allow for such a review, the conclusions summarize some of the key characteristics of each national review (see, for example, the overview grid included in the concluding chapter) and point to main gaps in the literature. In so doing, this Handbook does not only aim to map out how researchers have explained and studied race and ethnic inequalities in education and how future research can build on this, but it also functions as the most complete and comprehensive sourcebook to date on this topic, effectively allowing readers to carry out their own integrative reviews on particular topics by reading the conclusions of this Handbook and critically summarizing particular sections of chapters.

However, despite these shortcomings, we are adamant that this Handbook offers a wealth of relevant information to students, researchers, social policy makers, and activists interested in the relationship between race and ethnicity and educational inequalities. We hope that this book will encourage readers to investigate questions concerning inequality in education and society more generally from an international point of view, and consider the rich bodies of literature developed on this topic worldwide.

The focus on racial and ethnic inequality in education which is central to this Handbook reflects a significant concern of the Sociology of Education Research Committee (known as RC04) of the International Sociological Association. The ISA, which was formally established in 1949, holds a charter from UNESCO and counts among its membership sociologists from 167 nations. As a professional organization, ISA holds membership in the International Council of Science. Its central office is in Madrid, Spain.

RC04 has addressed issues of educational equity and access at most of the ISA’s World Congresses and Forums held around the world since the RC’s inception in 1971, then under the leadership of Pierre Bourdieu as president. Distinguished sociologists of education have held office in RC04, including Basil Bernstein, Margaret Archer, Jaap Dronkers, Carlos Alberto Torres, Jeanne Ballantine, and Ari Antikainen. The editors and several of the contributors to this handbook are current members and even officers of RC04. In fact, some of the chapters in this Handbook originated as papers delivered at the 2010 World Congress of Sociology in Gotheburg, Sweden and the 2012 Second Forum of Sociology in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

References

Stevens, Peter A. J. 2007 Researching Race/Ethnicity and Educational Inequality in English Secondary Schools: A Critical Review of the Research Literature between 1980 and 2005. Review of Educational Research 77 (2): 147–185.

Stevens, Peter A. J., Noel Clycq, Christiane Timmerman, and Mieke Van Houtte. 2011 Researching Race/Ethnicity and Educational Inequality in the Netherlands: A Critical Review of the Research Literature between 1980 and 2008. British Educational Research Journal 37 (1): 5–43.

2

Argentina

Mapping Ethnic and Educational Inequalities in an Uncharted Territory. Argentinean Research Traditions, Their Contributions and Challenges

Analía Inés Meo, Silvina Cimolai, and Andrea Pérez

2.1 Introduction

Despite the existence of indigenous people and immigrants, Argentina has until recently denied, silenced, and marginalized socio-cultural differences and particularities. Up until the 1980s, a homogenizing cultural paradigm permeated educational policies and it is only recently that cultural and linguistic differences and diversity have been legally and culturally acknowledged. From the 1980s onwards, ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’ have entered into the educational policy agenda, triggered by the globalization of these concerns as well as the recognition of prior indigenous struggles demanding their rights. For instance, in 2006, the Education Law created a new type of education: ‘intercultural and bilingual education’, which was targeted at indigenous communities.

Concerns surrounding ‘cultural differences’ have been unfolding into complex socio-economic and political scenarios that have impacted on the structuration of the field of knowledge production in education and the configuration of research traditions. The last three decades have witnessed dramatic political changes: the return of democracy and its consolidation, the deepening and dismissal of neoliberal economic reforms, the shrinking and growth of the state’s role and intervention, and severe socio-economic crises such as those triggered by the hyperinflation of 1989 and the bankruptcy of the financial system in 2001, followed by a period of economic prosperity. These social, economic, and political fluctuations have affected the boundaries, levels of autonomy, and power relations between players and research agendas in the field of educational knowledge.

This chapter maps research traditions examining ethnic and educational inequalities in basic education in Argentina from the 1980s up to 2010. The lack of any previous similar analyses implies a considerable challenge and one which has involved acknowledging not only the history of the education system but also the nature of the recent developments in the field of educational knowledge production. This chapter offers a typology of research traditions, which are described via a set of studies that have addressed specific research themes or topics, and have deployed similar theoretical tools and methodological strategies (Stevens 2007; Stevens et al. 2011). Boundaries between traditions are not clear and tend to overlap; however, each revolves around specific educational research concerns involving indigenous people and/or immigrants.

This chapter is organized into four main sections. The first section presents basic information regarding social and educational policies targeted at indigenous people and immigrants both before and during the period under analysis. It also depicts the current socio-demographic situation of these groups. Moreover, it offers key data on the Argentine education system, such as structure, governance, participation of the state and private sector, and recent democratizing trends of basic schooling. The second section presents the methodological strategy deployed to make ‘visible’ what previous studies have neglected. It describes a set of systematic and flexible criteria used for searching, identifying, and sampling research on ethnic and educational inequalities in Argentina. The following sections explore the identified five research traditions in turn: ‘mapping educational access’, ‘intercultural educational policies’, ‘language conflict and schooling’, ‘difference and diversity’, and ‘school texts as a means of othering’. After summarizing the key findings of this chapter, the last section identifies potential territories to be charted by these expanding, rich, and promising research traditions.

2.1.1 The Argentinean education system

In Argentina, education is compulsory from age 5 to 17/18 (Law, 26.206)¹ and encompasses at least 12 school years (one for early childhood, six or seven for primary education and five or six years for secondary schooling). Primary education should offer an integrated basic and common education, whereas secondary schooling is composed of two different cycles: (i) the basic and common cycle, and (ii) the oriented cycle which includes different specializations related to knowledge and the social and working world. Primary schooling became almost universal in the 1990s, and secondary schooling has rapidly grown from a net school rate of 32% in 1970 to an estimated 81.4% in 2009 (Rivas et al. 2010; SITEAL 2011).² Similarly to other Latin American and African countries, if pupils do not achieve the expected educational standards for primary or secondary education, then they have to repeat the school year.

There are no centralized entrance exams or final general exams on completion of either level, and pupils cannot be allocated to different types of schools or internal tracks within a school according to their educational achievement. Access to non-university institutions and to state universities is open: this means that any secondary school graduate is able tao enroll in any degree without any further entrance requirement (Figure 2.1).

Up until the 1960s, the Argentinean education system was highly centralized and monopolist (Narodowski and Andrada 2001). By the mid-1990s, provincial authorities directly funded, managed, staffed, and supervised state primary, secondary, and tertiary education, whilst the National Ministry of Education monitored the educational system by producing and evaluating data concerning educational quality and by giving financial and technical support to compensate for inequalities between regions or social groups (López 2002; Palamidessi et al. 2007). From the mid-1990s the national government started to gather data from schools, students, and educational achievement (National Annual Census of Schools and Students and Educational Standards Assessment Survey (Operativo Nacional de Evaluación Educativa)).

Figure 2.1 Structure of the Argentinean national education system (Law 26.206)

Note: The Argentinean national education system consists of four levels ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction to the Handbook: Comparative Sociological Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Inequality in Education
• 2 Argentina: Mapping Ethnic and Educational Inequalities in an Uncharted Territory. Argentinean Research Traditions, Their Contributions and Challenges
• 3 Australia
• 4 Austria
• 5 Belgium
• 6 Brazil
• 7 Canada
• 8 China
• 9 Cyprus
• 10 England
• 11 Finland
• 12 France
• 13 Germany
• 14 Ireland
• 15 Japan
• 16 Russia
• 17 Republic of South Africa
• 18 The Netherlands
• 19 United States of America
• 20 Researching Race and Ethnic Inequalities in Education: Key Findings and Future Directions
• Index