Marco Pitzalis

Cultural capital and educational strategies. Shaping boundaries between groups of students with homologous cultural behaviours

Abstract Rather than assessing its causal effect on educational attainment, the authors of this article aim to use the concept of cultural capital to define a huge, complex and interconnected collection of educational and school strategies adopted by students and families and to examine the way that these strategies are related to school inequalities. Data analysed come from the 2009 Italian survey for the Program for International Student Assessment run by the OECD. A Latent Class Regression Analysis has been applied to categorize four groups of individuals who share specific cultural habits, educational dispositions and choices, and social status; in short, the four groups differentiate individuals with a different endowment of the intangible asset, cultural capital. Moreover, using the socio-economic status as a covariate we link the latent class membership probability with individuals’ social standing and, consequently school choices.

Scaling the Latent Variable Cultural Capital Via Item Response Models and Latent Class Analysis

One of the main tasks of an educational system is to enrich the Cultural Capital of its students. The Cultural Capital linked to social origins is considered crucial in determining students’social life and subsequent professional achievement. This work moves from an ad hoc survey carried out on a sample of students who enrolled or applied for an entrance test at the university. The Cultural Capital is treated as a latent variable which students are supposed to possess at a greater or lesser degree. Latent Class Analysis is adopted in order to provide a non arbitrary scaling of Cultural Capital and to sort out mutually exclusive classes of students. Moreover, Item Response Models are implemented to assess the calibration of the questionnaire as an instrument to measure the Cultural Capital of the surveyed population.