Social Class
Implications for Education &
Youth Development
Examining Social
Class
 Interactive Social Class exercise
 How do we define and recognize
social class?
 What assumptions do you have
with regard to social class?
Questions to
consider…
 Please consider the following questions
throughout the presentation…
 How do you perceive your own social class? How do you think
your students perceive your social class? What implications
does this have for your work?
 How do societal assumptions about class impact your students?
 Can social class develop independently in a closed setting such
as a classroom? Can a person of low status/rank from one
setting have a high status or rank in a different setting or vice
versa? Does a classroom or program develop its own social
classification? If so, which is it more important to be sensitive to;
in-class, in society, or both?
 How should social class be addressed in the classroom?
 What do teachers need to be aware of in order to best serve
students of various social classes?
Defining Class
 Based on our discussion of the
definition and perceptions of class,
what class do you believe you fit into?
 Class Matters: A New York Times
feature from 2005.
 Exercise: Where you fit on the spectrum.
 How do you think students perceive
your social class? What implications
does this have for your work?
Societal Perceptions
of Class
 How are our definitions of social class
shaped by societal influences?
 “Class Dismissed” Video
 How do societal assumptions about
class, and associated portrayal in the
media, impact you and your students?
Impacts…
 …of Education
on Socioeconomic Class
 …of Socioeconomic Class
on Education
…of Education on
Class
 Revisiting “Class Matters”
 Income as a major factor in social
class (Socioeconomic class).
 Education: Impact on Income
 Income: Impact on Class Mobility
…of Class on
Education
 “It is difficult to isolate the factors that may produce a given
effect simply by comparing middle-class to working-class
children. Social class is a "package variable"--a summary label
for an intricate complex of related variables including parental
education, occupational status, income, housing conditions,
time allocation, attitudes toward school and schooling,
experiences with school, expectations for future educational
and occupational success, nature of the family's social network,
style of parent-child interaction, and many more elements.
Replicating findings of social class differences in school
achievement brings us no closer to understanding the
mechanisms by which those differences develop because it is
rarely possible to sort out the separate effects of the wide array
of factors packaged together as "working class" or "middle
class.”
Snow, Catherine., Tabors, Patton. (1996). Intergenerational Transfer of Literacy. Family
Literacy. Retrieved November, 2008. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/FamLit/transfer.html
of Class on
Education…
“Taking all ethnic groups and
genders, low-SES students drop
out six times as often as high-SES
students and almost three times as
much as mid-SES students.”
Van Galen, Jane., Noblit, George., Apple, Michael. (2007) Late to Class: Social Class and Schooling
in the New Economy. Excerpt obtained from Google Books.
Looking at a few
examples…
 Literacy
 Student Performance
 Higher Education
“The needs of low-income students may be overlooked because of
the relative invisibility of this risk factor in comparison with others
based on race, gender, or disability.”
Duffy, Jennifer O. (2007). Invisibly at Risk: Low-income Students in a Middle and Upper-Class World.
About Campus, Volume 12, Issue 7. Retrieved via Academic Search Premier.
Literacy
 “High performance on standardized tests of reading is
consistently associated with access to print, and that
children of poverty have far less access to print. This
relationship holds because access to print results in
more recreational reading, and more recreational
reading results in more literacy development. The
obvious part of the cure for children of poverty is more
access to print, via better school and public libraries.”
 Have you noticed instances in your class of
students from different socioeconomic classes
having differing access to reading materials?
Krashen, Stephen. (2005). The Hard Work Hypothesis: Is Doing your Homework Enough to
Overcome the Effects of Poverty. Multicultural Education, v12, n4. Retreived October 2008,
fromhttp://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/
Student Performance
US Dept of Ed: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/pirlspub/9.asp?nav=2
Student Performance
NCES: The Condition of Education 2006: Poverty & Student Mathematics Achievement
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2006/section2/indicator15.asp
Higher Education
 “In their contribution to the book Condition of
Access, Brian Fitzgerald and Jennifer Delaney
reveal that nationwide, within five years of
entering college, more than 40 percent of
students from the top income quartile graduate
with a bachelor’s degree, compared with 6
percent from the lowest income quartile.
These low graduation rates for low-income
students can be attributed to academic and
social struggles unique to this population that
act as barriers to their success.”
Duffy, Jennifer O. (2007). Invisibly at Risk: Low-income Students in a Middle and
Upper-Class World. About Campus, Volume 12, Issue 7. Retrieved via
Academic Search Premier.
Higher Education
 “Access and financial support do not necessarily lead
to success for low-income students; such policies must
be coupled with a range of other support systems
aimed at ensuring that students enroll and graduate.”
 “Working class students are less likely to attend
graduate school than more affluent students who
graduated with the same grades from the same
institutions.”
Duffy, Jennifer O. (2007). Invisibly at Risk: Low-income Students in a Middle
and Upper-Class World. About Campus, Volume 12, Issue 7. Retrieved via
Academic Search Premier.
 Have you noticed differences in the aspirations of
students from different socioeconomic
backgrounds?
Pedagogical Implications
Advice from the : Derek Bok Center for
Teaching and Learning
Harvard University
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58474/class.html
 Be very explicit about classroom norms and rules of operation.
Let students know how to play the game, and help those who
seem uncertain.
 Include readings from a wide variety of class perspectives.
 Use examples that come from every class.
 Acknowledge class differences and make class a topic for
discussion. Look for class-based perspectives. Note valueladen language.
 Ask about student experience and about personal reactions to
material; include these in content discussions.
More advice from the : Derek Bok Center for
Teaching and Learning
Harvard University
 Get to know your students and their individual strengths and
weaknesses. Teach to both.
 Vary the kinds of assignments, to include a variety of learning
styles.
 Vary classroom activities, to include collaboration and small
group work.
 Provide the opportunity for rewriting papers, as a way to teach
students still learning to work in that mode.
 Protect the student who makes an unsophisticated comment.
 Model the acceptance of various class backgrounds.
Change-making…
Educate yourself
 Know your youth
 Know class and cultural boundaries and customs
 Know local resources
Work to diminish the gaps in your class/group
 Identify barriers that keep students from learning
 Look to develop social capital (How do you define social capital?)
 Help students and their families access resources
 Legitimate Group/Classroom democracy
Change-making
Open an ongoing discussion on social class
 Be sensitive, but honest
 Allow time
 Let students direct the discussion
Change and develop your curriculum where necessary
 Integrate student input and suggestions for change
 “Play Jazz”
 Use backdoors and tangents (I.e manners, customs,
etc.)
Online resource…
People Like Us: A PBS Special
www.pbs.org/peoplelikeus
Further questions to
consider…
 Have you ever done activities related to class with students
or youth? If so, what did you do, and how did it go?
 How does class impact or influence your teaching overall?
 Is class an “invisible risk?”
 Can social class develop independently in a closed setting
such as a classroom? Can a person of low status/rank
from one setting have a high status or rank in a different
setting or vice versa? Does a classroom or program
develop its own social classification? If so, which is it more
important to be sensitive to; in-class, in society, or both?