{"title":"Every Break You Take: Advancing Seasonal Comparison Research with Digital Trace Data","authors":"Emil Smith, Hanna Dumont, David Reimer","doi":"10.1177/00380407261489205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261489205","url":null,"abstract":"This study extends seasonal comparison research by examining learning losses across not just summer breaks but multiple breaks of varying length, timing, and reliance on learning support. We used digital trace data from a reading app to track weekly reading-speed growth in a cohort of 8,921 Danish students from fourth grade (2019) to the end of sixth grade (2022), comparing growth during school and breaks, including Covid-19 closures. Results show consistent learning losses or stagnation following short breaks, indicating that traditional seasonal comparison designs may underestimate schools’ effects on learning. Notably, learning stagnation during the Covid-19 closures persisted even after schools reopened. We found indications of compensatory school effects by socioeconomic status in fourth grade but not in later grades. Results also suggest schools may narrow achievement gaps between students with immigration backgrounds and students from the ethnic majority population.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149198927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teacher Bias, Socioeconomic Inequality, and the Role of Academic Reputations: Evidence from a Grading Reform","authors":"Jesper Fels Birkelund","doi":"10.1177/00380407261479708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261479708","url":null,"abstract":"Prior research suggests teachers’ evaluations may be influenced by students’ socioeconomic background, yet most evidence comes from experimental settings that overlook biases arising in real student-teacher interactions. This article exploits a 2016 Danish reform that introduced external evaluation of a ninth-grade essay exam to examine whether teachers grade socioeconomically advantaged students more favorably than do external examiners. Using a difference-in-differences design comparing assessments affected and unaffected by the reform, I find that teacher involvement increases the socioeconomic grading gap by 15 percent to 20 percent. Further analyses show this effect is largely explained by objective measures of prior academic performance, suggesting it reflects not socioeconomic bias per se but teachers’ reliance on academic reputations when assigning grades.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148901923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Feeling the Best Fit: The Role of Emotions in College Decisions","authors":"Madison Garcia","doi":"10.1177/00380407261470787","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261470787","url":null,"abstract":"Using ethnographic observations and interviews with students and staff in a college access nonprofit (CAN), I show that college-going inequalities may also reflect structurally based emotional barriers and that these barriers can be overcome through opportunities to imagine futures with positive emotional valences where the student “fits” in college, and where college is a “fit” for the student. Before joining the CAN, students aspired to attend college, but their sense of fit was low and grounded in negative emotions (e.g., worries about challenges, ambivalence about college choices). Through CAN-sponsored college visits and precollege career-opportunity programs, students were able to imagine futures where they fit in college and where college fit their goals—imagining futures with positive emotional associations. This sense of fit allowed students to confidently make emotionally informed decisions about colleges and majors. I argue emotional barriers play an underdiscussed role in college transitions and clarify how emotions, by undergirding college decisions, shape youths’ paths to college.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"71 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148693378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wesley Jeffrey, Christian Michael Smith, Laura T. Hamilton
{"title":"Hidden Advantage along the Pipeline: Family Wealth and Educational Transitions from High School through Graduate School","authors":"Wesley Jeffrey, Christian Michael Smith, Laura T. Hamilton","doi":"10.1177/00380407261457391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261457391","url":null,"abstract":"Research shows a link between wealth and educational attainment, but little work has examined wealth relationships from high school degree through graduate degree completion. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to study when and how wealth may advantage students along their entire educational trajectory. Using sequential logistic regression models (“Mare models”), we find that across transitions, wealth relationships are separate from income and parental education relationships. As observed for other socioeconomic dimensions, wealth relationships decrease at the transition to graduate school entry. However, we show that the wealth relationship substantially increases at the graduate degree completion transition, running counter to the waning pattern found for family income and parental education. We also reveal that, like other socioeconomic dimensions, these wealth relationships partially attenuate when we include early indicators of academic performance differentials. Our findings thus shed new light on the nature of wealth-based educational inequality in the United States.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148342097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Bow to Brain: Reducing Educational Inequalities through Music Education? Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment on a Violin Program for Young, Disadvantaged Children","authors":"Julie Pereira, Philippe Coulangeon","doi":"10.1177/00380407261452622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261452622","url":null,"abstract":"This study evaluates the effects of intensive music education on disadvantaged children in the northern suburbs of Paris, using a quasi-experimental design with entropy balancing. We focus on a four-year compulsory violin program delivered during school hours to children ages four to seven. Data were collected between 2020 and 2024 from academic assessments and national standardized tests across 57 schools. We investigate whether intensive music training improves cognitive and academic outcomes and how these effects vary by socioeconomic background. Preliminary findings reveal short-term gains in writing, numeracy, and syllabic skills—particularly among socially disadvantaged preschoolers—but these benefits diminish over time. By the end of second grade, negative effects appear in language skills, notably for lower socioeconomic status students. These patterns may result from reduced instructional time in core subjects and unequal compensatory support at home. The study underscores the risks of embedding intensive extracurricular programs within school hours and cautions against relying solely on academic outcomes to justify arts education.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148321847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Patrick Emmenegger, Matthias Haslberger, Anna Wilson
{"title":"Caught in a Downward Spiral? The Relative Attractiveness Deficit of Vocational Education and Training","authors":"Patrick Emmenegger, Matthias Haslberger, Anna Wilson","doi":"10.1177/00380407261440275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261440275","url":null,"abstract":"Vocational education and training (VET) is hailed for easing skill shortages and fostering inclusion. However, little is known about the factors influencing the choice between VET and general education. We conducted a vignette experiment with more than 11,500 respondents in seven European countries, asking respondents to assign fictitious 15-year-olds either to VET or to general education based on achievement, motivation, and sociodemographic profiles. Respondents consistently channeled students with low grades and low motivation into VET. This bias weakened but persisted among respondents who view VET as offering favorable labor market prospects. Boys, working-class youth, and adolescents outside large cities were also steered toward VET, although achievement effects outweighed ascriptive ones. These patterns hold across countries and respondent subgroups, indicating that VET is widely perceived as the less desirable educational pathway. Our findings suggest that VET is caught in a downward spiral in which the relative unattractiveness of VET and academic drift reinforce each other.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148286426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Aspiration to Action: Socioeconomic Disparity in the Translation of Educational Goals into Time Investment","authors":"Anna Yong","doi":"10.1177/00380407261432647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261432647","url":null,"abstract":"Although educational aspirations are widely viewed as central to attainment, less is known about how they translate into academic behavior. This study investigates the behavioral consequences of aspirations using nationally representative data from South Korea and dynamic panel models with individual fixed effects. Results show that aspirations predict both self-study time and private tutoring time even after accounting for prior behavior and unobserved individual characteristics. However, the aspiration–behavior link varies by age and socioeconomic status, especially for tutoring time. The aspiration–tutoring relationship strengthens as students grow older and is more pronounced among those with highly educated parents. These patterns reveal systematic differences in aspiration–investment alignment, which refers to the extent to which students can convert their educational goals into concrete academic behaviors, highlighting a novel mechanism through which socioeconomic disparities in educational outcomes persist.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147682109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Care, Success, and Accountability: Cultural Logics, Expectation Drift, and the Complex Nature of Teacher Expectations","authors":"Maia Cucchiara, Sherelle Ferguson, Sidra Sheikh","doi":"10.1177/00380407261432655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261432655","url":null,"abstract":"Teacher expectations are key predictors of student outcomes, yet how they are produced and negotiated in practice remains understudied. Drawing on ethnographic research in two progressive high schools serving low-income students of color, we show expectations function less as individually held stable beliefs than as institutionally situated judgments that are continuously produced and revised through interaction and interpretation. We identify three shared, institutionally sanctioned cultural logics—care, success, and accountability—guiding teachers’ decisions, showing how tensions between them created uncertainty about responding to students’ needs. Sometimes, these tensions produced <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">expectation drift:</jats:italic> the process through which what teachers ask of students decreases or shifts over time. Rather than a simple lowering of standards, expectation drift reflects negotiated responses to structural constraints and institutional pressures. By portraying expectations as socially constructed and context-dependent, we show how expectation drift may both support student learning and school engagement and contribute to processes of reproduction.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147578428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who Can Afford to Be an English Major? Economic Origins, Debt, and Public Beliefs about Higher Education","authors":"Emma D. Cohen, Natasha Quadlin, Shiva Rouhani","doi":"10.1177/00380407261427410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261427410","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, many Americans have grown critical of the cost of college, often drawing distinctions between which degrees are more and less worthwhile. These discussions have emerged at the same time that working-class and indebted students have become increasingly prevalent in higher education, underscoring vast differences in social origins and economic resources even among students at the same institution. Do Americans tend to make sharp distinctions between degrees they consider worthwhile and not? Or are these considerations reserved mostly for students with social and economic disadvantages? In this article, we assess how social class and educational debt affect public beliefs about what students should study in college. We conducted a nationally representative survey experiment ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">N</jats:italic> = 1,121) that asked respondents how likely they would be to recommend fields of study for students with different combinations of social class background and educational debt. We find that Americans make clear class-based distinctions in recommending fields of study. Working-class students, much more than upper-middle-class students, are expected to study majors with high pay and employability. By comparison, we find few effects of student loans net of social class. Data from the open-ended portion show that Americans are more likely to consider upper-middle-class students’ skills and interests and working-class students’ chances of getting a good job, suggesting that working-class students face a societal emphasis on attaining financial security that encourages their restraint in young adulthood. Implications for the study of social class and higher education are discussed.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147454675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}