Theoretical literature strongly points to a role of social and other environmental factors in predicting academic outcomes (Shaffer & Kipp, 2010; Condron, 2009; Panofsky, 2003). According to Shaffer & Kipp (2010), while behaviourist learning theories consider the environment and child-specific circumstances are inconsequential learning, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory consider linguistic, emotional, cognitive, and social development to be complementary processes that shape children’s growth and literacy. Vygotsky and Piaget’s theories emphasize the interaction between nurture and nature in learning and development. Piaget believed that children were moulded by their interaction with the environment, by adapting to it through continuous assimilation and accommodation of new information to form a coherent body of knowledge. Vygotsky theorized that learning is simply the socialization of knowledge and knowledge is culturally constructed.
Cultural agents, particularly parents, teachers and other adults influence the child’s thinking and cognitive development. Learning occurs in the course of four interrelated levels in interacting with the environment: microgenetic, ontogenetic, phylogenetic, and sociohistorical. Every culture transmits values, beliefs, and preferred problem-solving methods or tools of intellectual adaptation to successive generations. Panofsky (2003) argues that the acquisition of these cultural artefacts in the course of collaborative cultural dialogues with skilful cultural members. Effectively, rich cultural environments make for enhanced learning, and these are associated with environments where children are actively engaged and intellectually challenged perform better, and these factors are positively related to higher socioeconomic class. The experience of schooling and learning for children is also mediated by interpersonal relations, which are in turn influenced by broader contextual factors such as socioeconomic status, parent-student beliefs, culture, and intelligence.
The literature in respect to the relevance of social class as well as the environment to educational/learning outcomes has mostly focussed on the fact that social class translates into differences in motivation, positive role models, and resources available for schools, teachers, facilities, and even time for children to learn. Disparities in educational attainment between mainly poor ethnic minorities and white communities are particularly demonstrative of such patterns in literature (Condron, 2009; Schlee, Mullis, & Shriner, 2009). Hochschild (2003) for example, highlights socioeconomic class patterns and their influences on academic attainment in public schools. The role of social class and its influence on academic performance was mediated by nested inequalities in school districts, class biases, ethnic and racial inequalities in public schools.
Condron (2009) tested the relationship between school factors and eduational achievement as well as the rol of non-school factors in generating social inequalities. The results found that black and white disparities gre during school years because of disparities in school factors and class factors widened in the summer. In a longitudinal study to determine the extent to which teacher/school and parental social capital and resource capital affected academic achievement, Schlee, Mullis, & Shriner (2009) found that parental resource capital was a far more stronger predictor of academic attainment relative to parental social capital. Carolyn (2008) examined 502 Latino teenagers in immigrant families using multi-level modelling to assess how structural neighborhood adversity predicted grade point average, in addition to perceived parental, adolescent, and neighborhood factors. The results indicated that perceived neighborhood risk, geneder, mothers’ education, and aspirations for youth were direct predictors of GPA. Further, academic motivation influenced the relationship between mothers’ and fathers’ monitoring of children’s perfroamnce and the GPA.
References
Carolyn, C. (2008). Neighborhood, Parenting, and Adolescent Factors and Academic Achievement in Latino Adolescents from Immigrant Families. Family Relations, 57(5), 579-590.
Condron, D. (2009). Social class, school and non-school environments, and black/white inequalities in children's learning. American Sociological Review, 74(5), 683-708.
Hochschild, J. L. (2003). Social Class in Public Schools. Journal of Social Issues 59 (4) , 821-840.
Panofsky, C. P. (2003). The relations of learning and student social class: Towards re-socializing sociocultural learning theory. In A. Kozulin, Vygotsky's Theory of Education in Cultural Context (pp. 371-92). Cambridge University Press.
Schlee, B., Mullis, A., & Shriner, M. (2009). Parents social and resource capital: Predictors of academic achievement during early childhood. Children and Youth Services Review, 31(2), 227-234.
Shaffer, D. D., & Kipp, K. (2010). Developmental Psychology: Childhood & Adolescence: Childhood and Adolescence. New York: Cengage Learning.
