{"title":"Epistemic Dynamics and Intersectionality in Faculty Hiring: Who Presents as Engaged Scholars?","authors":"Jessica R. Gold","doi":"10.1177/00380407261424498","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261424498","url":null,"abstract":"Higher education institutions widely promote engaged scholarship, yet it remains undervalued in academic reward systems, such as hiring and promotion, and it is especially risky for early career scholars. Using a unique data set of 138,738 applications for assistant professor positions, this study links large-scale demographic hiring data with applicants’ substantive presentation of self through the language they use in their materials regarding engaged scholarship. Results show that women of color are the most likely to present themselves as engaged scholars, drawing on long-standing traditions of public-serving epistemologies among historically marginalized scholars, even as such work remains unevenly rewarded. Centering applicants rather than evaluators highlights how scholars navigate disciplinary norms and exercise agency in shaping their professional identities. These patterns reveal how inequalities, epistemic and otherwise, may be reproduced in academic evaluation and show which scholars might be taking early career risks to pursue public-oriented scholarship—a core mission of public institutions.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147454676","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}
Jens-Peter Thomsen, Stefan Bastholm Andrade, Florian R. Hertel, Max Thaning, Øyvind Nicolay Wiborg
{"title":"Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Scandinavia and the United States","authors":"Jens-Peter Thomsen, Stefan Bastholm Andrade, Florian R. Hertel, Max Thaning, Øyvind Nicolay Wiborg","doi":"10.1177/00380407261424502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261424502","url":null,"abstract":"Intergenerational educational mobility reflects a welfare state's ability to provide citizens with opportunities to climb the social ladder. Representing two distinct welfare state types, studies have contrasted mobility patterns in Scandinavia and the United States but have provided no consistent answer as to who achieves the highest level of intergenerational educational mobility. We conduct a meticulous examination of intergenerational educational mobility in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the United States for cohorts born between 1958 and 1987 using comparable operationalizations and methods and the best available data (administrative data in Scandinavia and eight surveys in the United States). We focus on methods that capture relative mobility. Across models, we find that inequality in Scandinavia is 20 percent to 30 percent lower than in the United States. A multiverse analysis, which can run a large number of models within a single framework, shows that our results are robust to alternative variable specifications.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147393407","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 Is Anybody to Judge?” Educational Resistance through Recognition","authors":"Christina Ciocca Eller, Elena Ayala-Hurtado","doi":"10.1177/00380407261419106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407261419106","url":null,"abstract":"The United States is a “schooled society”: one where formal education is viewed as a primary conduit between American cultural ideals and people's moral worth and social value. Sociologists of education have described resistance against this dominant model through disinvestment from school, particularly among some students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. Yet it remains unclear if “school-invested” students also enact resistance and if so, what such resistance entails and means for educational and social inequality. Bringing together the literatures on recognition and educational resistance, we argue that recognition of stigmatized educational groups by school-invested students may serve as an important form of educational resistance. We build this argument by drawing on unique multiwave interview data (n = 168) to investigate college students’ perceptions of college dropouts. We find that although a minority of respondents discursively deploy stigmatizing frames when describing dropouts, more draw on recognition frames to bridge moral and symbolic gaps between college students and particular dropouts. We also find that certain college experiences, particularly exposure to peers with complicated college trajectories, appear to change students’ narratives on dropout over time. We consider the implications of recognition-based resistance and the associated opportunities and limitations concerning inequality.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146260917","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":"Contested Diversity? The Institutionalization of LGBTQ-Supportive Features in U.S. Higher Education, 1980 to 2018","authors":"Hannah K. D’Apice, Christine Min Wotipka","doi":"10.1177/00380407251407954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251407954","url":null,"abstract":"This study seeks to understand the extent of and explanations for the institutionalization of sexuality and gender identity in U.S. higher education institutions (HEIs). Using original longitudinal data collected on a national probability sample of 234 four-year HEIs, covering 1980 to 2018, we examine whether and when HEIs establish two key lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) supportive features: LGBTQ resource centers and LGBTQ studies programs. We argue that sexuality and gender identity have not been institutionalized to the same extent as other diversity features because they remain contested or viewed with ambivalence in some HEIs. Findings suggest that institutions that already demonstrate support for gender diversity or are associated with other institutions that signal such support are more likely to institutionalize these supportive features. In the case of LGBTQ rights, HEIs may therefore be particularly responsive to their institutional environments.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"120 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2026-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146160355","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":"Cultivating Familiarity: Social Class and Help-Seeking in Academic Advising","authors":"Junhow Wei","doi":"10.1177/00380407251391756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251391756","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on interview and observational data of college students and academic advisers at one research-intensive, public university, this article describes similarities and differences in how students from different social class backgrounds engage with academic advisers. Both middle-class and working-class students were comfortable seeking help to resolve immediate questions and concerns. Advisers’ efforts at establishing rapport and reaching out to students contributed to this parity. However, only middle-class students proactively cultivated their advisers’ familiarity to ensure their advisers would remember them and provide more personalized guidance in the future. Advisers viewed middle-class students who cultivated familiarity in a positive light. Cultivating familiarity also allowed middle-class students to have rich advising conversations despite having no pressing issues to address. This analysis introduces cultivating familiarity as a mechanism through which middle-class students may secure advantages, even in contexts where both middle- and working-class students feel comfortable seeking help.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145553734","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":"Gender Peer Effects on Educational Achievement in Swedish Compulsory Schools: A Study of Contemporaneous and Cumulative Effects","authors":"Tünde Lénárd","doi":"10.1177/00380407251391761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251391761","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents evidence on linear, nonlinear, and cumulative gender peer effects on test scores. The study utilizes exceptional Swedish data containing the history of the gender composition of students’ classrooms from first to ninth grades. The analysis builds on school fixed effects with the added advantage of observing within-school variation in gender composition across actual classrooms. In contrast to what is often suggested in the literature, results show that gender composition does not uniformly affect boys and girls. More female-dominated classrooms slightly increase girls’ and decrease boys’ test scores, but these effects mainly concern students in classrooms with very skewed gender distributions. Moreover, effect sizes are very small, suggesting that classroom gender composition should not be a primary policy concern except when imbalances are large and cumulatively sustained. Findings also underscore the importance of accounting for nonlinearities and cumulative effects in research on gender peer effects.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145499051","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":"The Achievement Narrative and Alienation in School: A Typology of Academic Disconnection","authors":"Sean J. Drake, Jeffrey Guhin","doi":"10.1177/00380407251381695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251381695","url":null,"abstract":"Previous work on student alienation in schools has emphasized alienation as either a source or consequence of students’ lack of achievement. We show, in contrast, how alienation is common to a wide range of students’ experiences in school, including among “high-achieving” students. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork in two disparate suburban high schools, we show how students’ experience of alienation is linked to an exacting achievement narrative in U.S. schooling. We describe four forms of alienation: precarious character, unsound settings, impossible plots, and someone else’s story, with the first three each connected to a different narrative element (character, setting, plot) and the fourth a more existential sense of narrative disconnect. We highlight the importance of alienation as a reason to de-emphasize schooling in solutions to inequality, making space for more radical politics of redistribution.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"149 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145397379","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}
María G. Rendón, Ashley Hernandez, David R. Schaefer
{"title":"Social Reproduction at a Minority Serving Institution: STEM Capital Disparities among Children of Immigrants","authors":"María G. Rendón, Ashley Hernandez, David R. Schaefer","doi":"10.1177/00380407251352785","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251352785","url":null,"abstract":"We examine exclusion and the persistence of STEM disparities for underrepresented minority (URM) students at one diverse college campus, a prestigious Minority Serving Institution (MSI). We draw on in-depth interviews with 28 class- and ethnoracially diverse children of immigrants to examine how they navigated their first year in biology. Our analysis reveals three types of students who differ in STEM capital: (1) STEM-thrivers, who inhabit a “bio-bubble”; (2) STEM-adapters, who straddle STEM-dominant and non-STEM-dominant peers; and (3) STEM-disconnected, who struggle in silence. We explain how this STEM capital typology is racially inflected, informed by both immigrant class origin and high school segregation. We call attention to social dynamics associated with STEM capital, the forms of exclusion encountered by URM students, and how universities, including MSIs, can reinforce STEM disparities that result in social reproduction.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"306 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144983292","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":"The Logics of Teaching: How Institutionalized Ideas about Teaching Shape Teachers’ Professional Identities","authors":"Maya Kaul","doi":"10.1177/00380407251359628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251359628","url":null,"abstract":"Teachers’ professional identities are the foundation of their practice. Previous scholarship has largely overlooked the extent to which the broader institutional environment shapes teachers’ professional identities. In this study, I bridge institutional logics with theory on teacher professional identity to empirically examine the deeply institutionalized, taken-for-granted ways U.S. society has come to think of teaching (e.g., as a moral calling, as a profession, as labor), which are internalized by PK–12 teachers. I draw on survey data from 950 teachers across four U.S. states (California, New York, Florida, and Texas) and develop an original survey measure to capture what I term teachers’“institutionalized conceptions of teaching.” Across diverse state policy contexts, I find that teachers’ conceptions of teaching are guided by three underlying logics: (1) an accountability logic, (2) a democratic logic, and (3) a moral calling logic. I then examine the relationship between institutional logics and teachers’ professional identities. I find that the taken-for-granted ways society frames teaching may be associated with dimensions of teachers’ professional identity, such as self-efficacy and professional commitment. The findings suggest that supporting the professional well-being of PK–12 teachers may require shifting the deeply institutionalized norms of the profession to be more aligned with teachers’ democratic aims—rather than maintaining our system’s deep norms around external accountability and view of teaching as a moral calling. The study offers methodological contributions to the study of logics and practical implications for the field of teaching.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144930321","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":"White Flight in Public Higher Education? Racial Avoidance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions","authors":"Laura T. Hamilton, Charlie Eaton, Simon Cheng","doi":"10.1177/00380407251352786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407251352786","url":null,"abstract":"Latine college students in the United States face increasing isolation in universities designated as Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). We contend that this pattern is not just a function of Latine selection into particular universities. Using enrollment data for public four-year undergraduate institutions from 1990 to 2019, we show that White student enrollment declines after universities cross the 25 percent Latine threshold and become designated as HSIs. Our layered model of college choice identifies multiple factors that activate White racial avoidance, pulling White students to Predominately White Institutions and pushing them away from HSIs. Controlling for local demographics in states and counties where HSIs are located, we estimate White student enrollments are 6 percent to 16 percent lower after HSI status. Student application and admission data for California and Texas four-year public universities illustrate that national patterns of White enrollment decline at HSI transition are likely driven by student and family preferences rather than organizational processes or seat constraints. Applications from White students are 12 percent lower after HSI status, yet admissions data, over which universities exert considerable control, show no change. Overall, our findings suggest White students respond to the high concentration of Latine students at HSIs with “white flight,” contributing to racial segregation in higher education.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2025-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144898799","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}