Combining perspectives in multidisciplinary research on inequality in education

Abstract

This comment presents some general principles for multidisciplinary research to capitalize on the growing attention for inequality in education across academic disciplines. The variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives across disciplines results in different conceptual frameworks and empirical designs to study inequality in education. While each framework and design contributes to our shared understanding of the problem, combining these perspectives requires awareness of the various lenses through which educational inequalities are being studied. We identify three dimensions along which perspectives on inequality of education vary between disciplines. These dimensions pertain to (1) how the problem of inequality in education is framed, (2) how inequality in education is empirically evaluated, and (3) how the role of education in fostering (in)equality is conceptualized. In response, we propose three general principles that may help deal with this variation when building a multidisciplinary body of knowledge on inequality in education.