Cultural capital and intellectual ability as predictors of scholastic achievement: a study of Slovenian secondary school students

Abstract

Cultural capital, originally a general sociological concept, has been transformed into a construct that is often applied in predicting scholastic attainment. Intellectual ability (IQ) has also been proven to be a strong, although basically psychological, predictor of educational attainment. However, these strands of research have hardly been contrasted in terms of their predictive power and in terms of their potential interaction. In the current study of Slovenian secondary school students, the results indicated that both constructs had statistically significant predictive power, both as to attainment and as to transition into type of secondary education. Results also indicated that: both constructs were fairly robust, as their predictive power remained statistically significant even after control variables were entered into the model; and they operated independently as results indicated no interaction between these constructs. The ‘return’ on cultural capital was greater for students whose parents had lower educational status.

Keywords:

• scholastic achievement
• cultural capital
• intellectual ability