Discussion and Conclusions

Abstract

In this study, I have investigated the topic of educational inequality both theoretically and empirically in the case of CS, an Istanbul primary education school. For the empirical analysis, I performed a four-month field study between October 2006 and January 2007, during which I conducted 141 narrative interviews with the school’s eighth grade students (the last grade of compulsory education before the students follow their separate paths in upper secondary education), their teachers, the school administration and various actors related to the school (Chapter 4.2). Starting with the field research period and also during the analysis of the empirical data, I addressed two questions: “what is educational inequality?” and “how can educational inequality be studied?” Based on RS and the relational approaches of Charles Tilly and Pierre Bourdieu, I specified three relational characteristics of educational inequality: relativity, cumulativeness and being an organized practice (Chapter 3).