Session Information
09 SES 04 C, Social Disparities in Education (Part 1)
Paper Session
Contribution
Gothenburg, the second largest city of Sweden, has a rather high proportion of school segregation (index 0.26), which is above national level. Differences in school quality have been shown due to school segregation. One factor is related to effects from peer relationships (Gustafsson, 2006). Previous obstacles in measuring peer effects have now decreased (see for example Hoxby, 2000; Boozer & Cacciola, 2001; Gustafsson, 2003; Zimmerman, 2003).
A comparative study has been made by EU (Luciak, 2004) in order to scrutinize ethnic minorities within educational settings. The size of migrant and ethnic minority groups, different nationalities and ethnicities, exposed large differences between the EU-countries.. The compulsory Swedish school had 14% students with foreign background in 2002. For Sweden the decentralized school system from the 1990s has led to increased differences between municipal communities. A parallel development is seen in increased school segregation related to ethnicities within larger cities (Gustafsson, 2006). The proportion of students with foreign background differs among schools within the same municipal community is also related to one dimension of segregation. In this respect the city of Gothenburg has the 5th largest school segregation based on foreign background among students.
Segregation on the level of municipal community may be separated from segregation on school or class level. Segregated school classes within a non-segregated school may occur (Gustafsson, 2006). The overall definition of segregation in this study is related to the proportion of foreign background (Scandinavian or non-Scandinavian) within school classes.
Friendship among peers in classrooms is a result from at least two processes, social selection and social influence (Cohen, 1977; Candel, 1978). The elasticity among networks is higher within school contexts due to a larger amount of freedom to interact with preferred individuals (van de Bunt et al., 1999). Furthermore students choose to rely on visible similarity attributes. In this respect the kind of socialization context has impact on individual choices. The school institution is characterized by a large amount of task independent preferences (de Klepper et al., 2010).
The concept segregation is known for its complexity and ambiguity. Five dimensions are often used: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization and clustering (Massey & Denton, 1988; Massey et al., 1996). In this study much focus is related to student clusters depending on bilateral choices. Subsequently individuals outside the class networks are clearly shown (Holfve-Sabel & Bengtssson, 2009). Segregation at school level is not discussed, instead student groups with or without foreign background and mixed groups compared among the large mixture of classes using spectral segregation index (SSI), and here especially mean SSI of networks.
The aim of the investigation was to illuminate classroom segregation due to foreign background during classroom work.
The research questions were:
Are students with Scandinavian or non-Scandinavian background willing to cooperate during classroom work?
What kind of differences or similarities exists in socio-metric small networks within classrooms comparing the 2 groups as well as gender groups?
Which patterns are seen among students of the two background categories as well as genders in relations to absence or loneliness?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Boozer, M A & Cacciola, S E (2001) Inside the black box of Project STAR: Estimation of peer effects using experimental data. Economic Growth Center, Yale University. Center Discussion. Paper no 832. Candel, D B (1978). Homophilly, selection, and socialization in adolescent friedships. American Journal of Sociology 84, 427-436. Cohen, J M (1977) Sources of peer group homogeneity. Sociology of Education, 50, 227-241 de Klepper, M; Sleebos, E; van de Bunt, G & Agneessens, F (2010). Similarity in friendship networks: Selection or influence? The effects of constraining contexts and non-visible individual attributes. Social Networks, 32, 82-90. Gustafsson, J-E (2003) What do we know about effects of school resources on educational results? Swedish Economic Policy Rewiew, 10 (2), 77-110 Gustafsson, J-E (2006) Barns utbildningssituation. Bidrag till ett kommunalt barnindex. Stockholm: Rädda barnen Holfve-Sabel, M-A. (2006). Attitudes towards Swedish comprehensive school. Göteborg: Göteborg.Studies in Educational Sciences 242. http://libris.kb.se/bib/10158737 Holfve-Sabel, M-A & Bengtsson, A (2009) Application of spectral segregation index (SSI) as a measure of segregation at the individual level in peer networks. http://bada.hb.se/bitstream/2320/5444/2/ECER09.pdf Hoxby, C (2000) Peer effects in the classroom: learning from gender and race variation. NBER Working Paper, no 7867 Luciak, M (2004) Migrants, minorities and education. Documenting discrimination and integration in 15 member states of the European Union. Vienna: EUMC. Massey, D & Denton, N (1988) The dimensions of residential segregation. Social Forces 67 (2), 373-393. Massey, D, White, M & Pua, V (1996). The dimensions of segregation revisited. Sociological Methods and Research, 24 (2), 172-206. van de Bunt, G G; Duijin, M A J & van Snijders, T A B (1999) Friendship networks through time: an actor-oriented dynamic statistical network model. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory 5, 167-192 Zimmerman, D (2003) Peer effects on academic outcomes. Evidence from a natural experiment. Review of Economics and Statistics. LXXXV, 9-23
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