Conceptualizing Educational Inequality: A Relational Approach

Abstract

Is educational inequality a reflection of social inequalities or is it an outcome of the way education is organized? This is one of the pivotal questions of educational inequality research. The a priori answer given to this question influences the methodology and the findings of any research, although the answer remains implicit in most studies. Hence, because of the way the above question is formulated, research centers either on social group conditions and those groups’ ascriptive characteristics or on organizational patterns in education and educational practices. This applies to both the design of the field research and the interpretation of the results.