Class Incorporated: Stratified Patterns of Academic Engagement at a Highly Selective University

Megan Thiele and Amy Leisenring
Additional contact information
Megan Thiele: San Jose State University, USA
Amy Leisenring: San Jose State University, USA

Sociological Research Online, 2022, vol. 27, issue 2, 415-433

Abstract: This research examines the influence of social class stratification on students’ self-reported academic engagement. Drawing from 44 interviews with students from the three major class groups at an elite university, we show how social class patterns academic engagement. We analyze academic engagement along the following four domains: strategies for academic achievement, beliefs in personal ability, connections to academics, and the alignments between academic activities and career plans (Wang and Castenada-Sound, 2008). Counterintuitively, compared to both upper class and students from the lower class, middle-class students reported the lowest levels of academic engagement. We discuss possible explanations for these non-linear findings. We conclude by recommending that our traditional conceptions of academic engagement need to take social class into account, and further, that policy makers consider scaffolding for all non-upper class students within elite spaces.

Keywords: academic engagement; higher education; social class (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13607804211013822 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:415-433

DOI: 10.1177/13607804211013822

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Sociological Research Online
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().