Vryonides, Marios

This chapter examines the application of the concepts of social and cultural capital in empirical research seeking to provide explanations for educational processes relating to post-secondary school choice making in contemporary Cyprus and parents' aspirations in relation to their children's educational and occupational prospects in Greece. It argues that Bourdieu's work is a valuable source of ideas and concepts that provide the framework for quantitative investigations on a number of educational and sociological issues, particularly those that refer to social and cultural reproduction. Moreover, it addresses the criticism that is often associated with the limitations of quantification. This criticism asserts that quantitative techniques often do not explore with sufficient subtlety the social dynamics that are produced by the social contexts within which social action (i.e. educational choice making) occurs.

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.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the dimensionality of a Greek-language version of the Sex Role Egalitarianism Scale-Form B (SRES-B) via confirmatory factor analysis. Using two different samples (undergraduates and community sample from Greece) data from 667 individuals were collected. Three models were specified: the five-factor model (marital, parental, social-interpersonal-heterosexual, employment, and educational roles); the two-factor model (Intimate and Formal); and the single-factor model (Global factor). The findings indicated that the two-factor model had the best fit. The corresponding alpha coefficients were .94 and .92 respectively, with .96 for the total scale. Results also showed that women, young individuals, well educated persons, and people residing in cities were more egalitarian. No differences between the two samples were found.

This article aims to contribute to the debate of how theoretical concepts can be operationalised when researching educational issues. Specifically, it examines the application of the concepts of social and cultural capital in empirical research seeking to provide explanations for educational processes relating to post-secondary school choice making in contemporary Cyprus. The article argues that there are limitations in the various ways social and cultural capital are operationalised quantitatively in empirical research as often they do not capture adequately the full extent of the social dynamics that they draw attention to. Instead the use of qualitative methods where the researcher probes for details into the practices, habits, beliefs, and attitudes of individuals are seen as having powerful exploratory and explanatory potentials to address these limitations.

The aim of the article is to examine the effects of age in the way adolescents experience and report interethnic relations with emphasis on interethnic violence in the school environment. The methodology followed a two-stage sequential mode combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. This mixed method mode started with a survey which was contacted using a common questionnaire in England, Slovenia, Italy, Austria and Cyprus followed by group interviews with students aged 11-12 and 17-18. The survey data were analyzed with the help of statistical tests in order to reveal differences between the way the two age groups have responded to the survey questionnaire. More in-depth comparative analysis was carried out with the interview transcripts of the two age groups. There were differences in the way the two age groups have responded in the survey on interethnic violence but these were frequently small and do not signify major shifts in the way younger and older adolescents deal with issues of interethnic violence. More visible differences could be observed in the way the two age groups articulated their positions during the interviews.

This chapter focuses on three contemporary social problems in education that have received considerable attention from sociologists and educational researchers: educational inequalities between social classes and between ethnic/ racial groups and the social impact of the accountability movement in education. These three themes are concerned with how education reproduces social inequalities in society, often through procedures, structures, and the unintended actions of parents, teachers, school staff, and educational policy makers. The findings show that research on these topics is exceptionally rich in terms of theoretical and methodological approaches and debates. Furthermore, although most of the studies have been conducted in Anglo-Saxon countries, increasingly more research is carried out in different countries. This is a promising development, as theories about educational inequality are necessarily context specific, given that educational systems and their social conditions vary widely across national and regional contexts.