Children’s conversion of cultural capital into educational success: the symbolic and skill-generating functions of cultural capital

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Educational inequality
• cultural capital
• educational achievement
• cultural capital conversion
• teacher bias
• scholarly culture

Acknowledgments

This paper greatly benefitted from helpful comments and methodological advice from Johann Jacoby.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Notes

1. It is important to note here that Kingston (2001) interpreted Bourdieu’s work in a way that was described by Goldthorpe (2007) as “domesticated”. Domesticated in the sense that the concept of cultural capital is not understood in relational terms and rather separated from Bourdieu’s wider theoretical framework.

2. Objective measures means in this context that the evaluation of the test result is less prone to reflect a subjective bias of the teacher. Nevertheless, the evaluative criteria of the ability test itself can be biased towards favoring the skills of middle-class children.

3. Some interpreters of Bourdieu argue that academic ability and cultural capital cannot be separated (Lareau and Weininger 2003). This interpretation, however, does not allow separating the skill-generating and symbolic function of cultural capital. Furthermore, as Jæger (2008) has elaborated before, in theory, children can have high academic abilities even when they show few high-status cultural signals and vice versa.

4. In the German educational system, children are separated into different educational tracks after the fourth grade. Depending on the state, the tracking decision is based on teacher recommendations or parent wishes.

Additional information

Funding

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.