Vryonides, Marios

This paper focuses on parents and the way they perceive and formulate expectations and aspirations about their children's educational and occupational outcomes. Drawing on evidence from a survey among more than 700 parents of primary school pupils this paper demonstrates that interesting patterns in parental aspirations can be observed. These patterns can be partly explained by differences in parental social and cultural capital circulating in the home environment. The discussion of the results evolves around the argument that families often employ different strategies as a result of their social positioning which relates to particular social and cultural characteristics that shape distinct habituses of either success or compromise. This paper contributes to the examination of the often hidden mechanisms that originate from the family and produce social class differentiation in education that sustains overall social inequalities in contemporary Greek society and makes the ideal of equity in and through education still illusive.

This paper focuses on adolescents’ reading habits during the protracted lockdown (March 2020 - May 2021) due to COVID-19. Drawing on evidence from an online survey, several focus groups and semi-structured interviews with adolescents in Greece and Cyprus during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper explores the extent to which reading books is still highly valued in adolescents’ lives and the degree to which this activity is related to adolescents’ advantageous familial and socio-economic background. Moreover, the paper examines whether reading should still be considered an activity that contributes to cultural reproduction in the digital era. This paper contributes to the examination of the often invisible mechanisms that originate from the family and produce socially stratified school underachievement that sustains social inequalities in contemporary Greek and Cypriot societies.

This paper focuses on parents and the way they perceive and formulate expectations and aspirations about their children's educational and occupational outcomes. Drawing on evidence from a survey among more than 700 parents of primary school pupils this paper demonstrates that interesting patterns in parental aspirations can be observed. These patterns can be partly explained by differences in parental social and cultural capital circulating in the home environment. The discussion of the results evolves around the argument that families often employ different strategies as a result of their social positioning which relates to particular social and cultural characteristics that shape distinct habituses of either success or compromise. This paper contributes to the examination of the often hidden mechanisms that originate from the family and produce social class differentiation in education that sustains overall social inequalities in contemporary Greek society and makes the ideal of equity in and through education still illusive.