Suchergebnisse

AbstractOn 17 March 2021, just four days before the England and Wales census date, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) conceded in a judicial review case. The case concerned the meaning of the sex question in the census, and the guidance to accompany this question. How did the ONS end up in court defending its guidance on a question which most people would deem self‐explanatory? This article explains the legislative and political context around gender recognition, and the consequences for data collection. Drawing on my own experiences, I explore the politicisation of the definition of sex, and argue that the ONS gave undue weight to lobby groups with a particular viewpoint on sex and gender identity.

Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction has been interpreted in various ways, and several authors have criticised an overly narrow interpretation of cultural capital as simply consisting of 'beaux arts' participation. For researchers, this raises the challenge of developing a broader interpretation of cultural capital which is still specific enough to be operationalised. This paper discusses the ways in which parents may transmit educational advantage to their children through cultural rather than economic means, and the forms of knowledge and skill which may be considered as 'cultural capital'. An operationalisation of cultural knowledge is discussed, and empirical evidence is presented on differences in levels of cultural knowledge between the children of graduates and non-graduates.

"Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader explores the relationship between sex and gender identity with perspectives from across the social and human sciences. Each of the 15 chapters have been specially commissioned for this volume, and authored by scholars who are leaders in their respective fields. Each chapter offers significant methodological, theoretical and empirical insights into one of the most fraught debates in contemporary politics and academia. The book provides a broad-ranging introduction to the issues central to the 'gender critical' debate from a range of academic disciplines, drawing out the implications for social, political and legal debates. Topics and questions addressed include: the history of sex is womanhood a social fact? sex and the brain do we need data on sex? Also discussed are sports, sex-based rights, puberty suppression, criminal justice and gender dysphoria. Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader is ideal for students studying gender issues from a wide range of disciplines including sociology, history, philosophy and gender studies"--

Research emphasising the importance of parenting behaviours and aspirations for child outcomes has been seized on by policymakers to suggest the responsibility of the worst off themselves for low levels of social mobility. This article provides a critique of the way in which research evidence has been used to support the dominant policy discourse in this area, as well as an empirical analysis. We use the Millennium Cohort Study to interrogate the relationship between social class and attainment in the early years of schooling. We investigate the extent to which social class inequalities in early cognitive scores can be accounted for by parental education, income, family social resources and parental behaviours. We conclude that social class remains an important concept for both researchers and policymakers, and that the link between structural inequalities and inequalities in children's cognitive scores cannot be readily accounted for in terms of individual parenting behaviours.

This article examines the extent to which cultural capital helps to explain the link between social background and gaining an offer for study at the University of Oxford. We find that cultural knowledge, rather than participation in the beaux arts, is related to admissions decisions.This effect is particularly pronounced in arts subjects. We only partly support Bourdieu's postulation of cultural capital as the main differentiator between fractions of the middle class. Measures of cultural capital do not account for the gender gap in admission and only explain a small part of the disadvantage faced by South-Asian applicants.

A major part of the 2010–15 UK government's education reforms in England was a focus on the curriculum that pupils study from ages 14–16. Most high profile was the introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) performance measure for schools, incentivising study of "subjects the Russell Group identifies as key for university study" (Gibb, 2011). However, there does not appear to be good quantitative evidence about the importance of studying such a set of subjects,per se. This paper sets out to analyse this question, considering whether otherwise similar young people who study specific sets of subjects (full set for EBacc-eligibility, two or more sciences, foreign languages, applied subjects) to age 16 have different probabilities of entering university, and specifically a high-status university. It compares results from regression modelling and propensity score matching, taking advantage of rich survey data from a recent cohort of young people in England. We find that conditional differences in university entry attributable to subject choice are, at most, small.