Males and Tertiary Education in Jamaica

By Herbert Gayle and Peisha Bryan

Males and Tertiary Education in Jamaica is the result of five years’ qualitative research examining the relationship between men and tertiary education. Herbert Gayle and Peisha Bryan focus on the lived experiences and perceptions of three sets of young men: those who did not qualify to enter university; those who qualified but bypassed tertiary education; and those who qualified but for varying reasons have delayed entry into university. Using rigorous, in-depth interviews to capture the lived experiences of 186 males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine years, compared to those of 74 females of the same comparative age group, the authors examine the realities of males regarding their wish or ability to attend university in Jamaica. They found that men’s comparative absence from universities in Jamaica is cultural. Spurred by the world phenomenon of women’s liberation, Jamaican families shifted their support towards educating women to the effect that female enrolment in tertiary institutions increased from 64 per cent of men in 1971 to 228 per cent of men in 2011. Participation in tertiary education in Jamaica is unquestionably gendered and this work is the first and book-length scholarly response to the question of why men are not attracted to tertiary education in Jamaica.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of the West Indies Press
• Release date: Dec 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9789766407315

Herbert Gayle

Herbert Gayle is Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This volume is the first part of two which are the result of five years of research done to examine the relationship between men and tertiary education. This volume focuses on the lived experiences and perceptions of three sets of young men: those who did not qualify to enter university, those who qualified but bypassed tertiary education and those who qualified but for varying reasons have delayed entry into university. In-depth interviews were used to capture the lived experiences of 186 males between the ages of 18 and 39 years, compared to those of seventy-four females of the same comparative age group. This section of the study is therefore completely exploratory or qualitative. The purpose of this section was to establish a foundation upon which the rest of the study (and further studies) could be built. The sample was purposively selected to match the three categories of men needed. The approach was phenomenological; and the design was cross-sectional gender comparative for the simple purpose of examining the realities of males regarding their wish or ability to attend university in Jamaica.

This section of the study found that men’s comparative absence from universities in Jamaica is cultural. Spurred by the world phenomenon of women’s liberation, Jamaican families shifted their support towards educating women to the effect that female enrolment in tertiary institutions increased from 64 per cent of men in 1971 to 228 per cent of men in 2011. This shift was easy, given young men do not always need education to meet social expectations in Jamaica. In some cases, education was seen as hindering the male from providing for his primary and extended families in the short term. Additionally, males are often required to support themselves at university, completely or partly, as part of their readiness for life. Families across classes fear that women who are not educated are vulnerable to abuse in various ways. Therefore the effort made to educate women in Jamaica far outweighs that of educating young men. Males were more likely to identify financial problems or responsibility to family as the reason they bypassed tertiary education, while females were more likely to identify lack of support, primarily financial, as their reason. In other words, females expect financial support (males do not); and, when this support is not forthcoming, they spring to self-help action. Males, on the other hand, have to look out for self and family. Finally, while females see tertiary education as the main tool to achieving their life goals, males see it as competing with networking, skills and investment – and often education loses or is delayed. Participation in tertiary education in Jamaica is therefore gendered.

METHODOLOGICAL NOTE

This volume of the study is completely exploratory. The approach was that of phenomenology rather than a more complex and more ethnographic case study because the former was enough to yield the quality data needed. A few of the cases were complex enough to require source triangulation. In other words, researchers had to call or visit relatives and teachers of the young men to verify some of their experiences. This was not enough, however, to change the approach to that of a case study. In the third subsection (Qualified for Tertiary but Delaying) a tracer was used for fifteen males and fifteen females. The data were originally collected in 2010. Forty-one of the seventy male respondents and twenty-five of the twenty-nine females agreed that we could keep contact in order to trace their academic movement. In December 2013, using a six-question aide-memoire, we traced fifteen males and fifteen females from the delaying respondents to examine their life changes in terms of deciding or getting the chance to enter a university. It is important to note that delaying was defined as qualified but not enrolled in a university or other tertiary institution for at least three years. This means that those who were still delaying in 2013 would have been delaying for a minimum of six years.

Two hundred and sixty in-depth interviews were done to collect the data for this volume, and each of these respondents was selected purposively to fill the three categories outlined in table 0.1. The data outlined in the table show that the focus of the study was on males and that females were used as a point of comparison. For this reason, there was a deliberate attempt to keep the number of females at the minimum requirement for phenomenology (fifteen). It is widely accepted that for comparison in phenomenology, five to twenty-five respondents are used for each cell (Creswell 2007). Nonetheless, the median number of fifteen is a popular benchmark for phenomenological assessment. Each interview was face-to-face and lasted for 90 to 120 minutes. This is because the aide-memoire consisted of sixty-eight open-ended questions, all of which were critical to the study. In some cases, interviews were done in two parts to reduce the methodological problem of discomfort due to the length of the interview.

Table 0.1. Sample Frame and Core Questions for Volume 1

In collecting the data for this section of the study, all team members were trained to treat the three categories in table 0.1 as primary, gender and geo-social characteristics as secondary, and socio-economic status (SES) as tertiary. The aim was to interview twice more males than females due to the focus of the study (sample was 72 per cent males); and twice more urban people than rural to match the demography of tertiary institutions (sample was 63 per cent urban). The team was trained to treat the categorical variable SES as tertiary to see how the three primary categories exist among the various income groupings in Jamaica, thereby making SES emergent. To illustrate, if a researcher had a quota of ten rural males in the category Tertiary Education Bypassers to interview, he or she was strongly advised not to have a balance of SES but to interview the men that fit the category as they are found – to allow the SES to emerge naturally. We achieved this by doing the mass of interviews in public areas such as a town square rather than going into housing estates.

As shown in chart 0.1, 43 per cent of the sample was persons from upper-middle-income and middle-income (UM) backgrounds, 31 per cent were poor and the smallest group was the near-poor (NP) at 26 per cent. Given that SES was emergent in the sample design, the figures in chart 0.1 imply that the specific categories of problems with tertiary education studied are skewed towards the two ends of the socio-economic spectrum.

Chart 0.2 was constructed from the details provided in table 0.2. The sample design allowed us to recognize from the outset that the poor are the most likely to not qualify for tertiary education; and the wealthy are the most likely to have the choice to bypass tertiary education. Nonetheless, the impact of SES on delays seems more complex. Notice that the sample for the near-poor is stable or without any noteworthy imbalance, unlike the UM and poor, which are both skewed in some way.

Chart 0.1. Sample by SES

Chart 0.2. The Primary Categories of Respondents by SES

Table 0.2. Sample by Gender, Geo-social Zones and SES

You will notice that SES is divided into three categories and that we have focused on income rather than class. Though class is largely determined by income, the latter is less problematic. Research experience has taught us that there are really three critical socio-economic differentiations in people’s approach to education and most other social or material products. Four types of questions were asked to determine SES. In ranked order, they related to:

Area of residence – In previous research projects this criterion explained over 90 per cent of the various samples. It was the easiest way to identify the SES of respondents in Jamaica, providing the researcher gets the correct address. Less than 10 per cent of respondents labelled by area of residence alone have been changed when all four criteria are applied.

Occupation – In order to assess the power of occupation of respondents and/or parents as a criterion of SES we divided professions into three groups:

middle to high income (junior to top managers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, lecturers, engineers and owners of medium and large businesses)

lower middle (teachers, nurses, police, clerical workers, artisans, small business owners)

low income and unemployed (unskilled, semi-skilled, and needs-based micro-enterprise)

Education – Education has always been the weakest indicator of wealth. We have never found more than 80 per cent of respondents correctly placed in SES by education alone.

The employment-dependency ratio (the number of employed household members compared to total household members) – Researchers only used this laborious tool for determining SES when households were difficult to assess. The dependency ratio of the Jamaican UM household tends to range from 1:1 (one employed to one dependent) to 1:1.5; the near-poor tend to average 1:1.5 to 1:3 and the poor average 1:3+.

CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

THE STUDY IS FOCUSED ON GENDER-BASED TERTIARY educational participation and therefore uses, among others, a socio-demographic developmental approach in order to focus on socialization during childhood and adulthood. The variables covered in the study are cultural, structural and psycho-social, underpinned by a systemic interlinkage that allowed for an assessment of the life cycle and the interdependencies between different groupings and societal elements.

The literature demonstrates that determining the factors that affect social participation requires a holistic approach that incorporates a multi-dimensional quasi-case study or whole-life view of the developmental and interaction processes between the individual and society. Hence, while the primary focus of our discussion is examining and describing frames and thoughts on the issue of male social participation in tertiary education, this cannot be understood outside of the general social context of education and social arrangements and functions.

Social scientists generally agree that for an activity to be social it has to involve interaction. Hence, male social participation in tertiary education can be described as an activity that both involves interaction and is the result of interaction. Male social participation is the result of socialization through interaction with the primary group of the family, and the secondary groups of the school, peer, religious institution and workplace, among others. Important to understanding this dynamic is the influence of societal factors such as social class, area of residence and gender, which are at the base of the current study. The gender-based approach to the structure of, participation in and delivery of tertiary education is a representation of local and regional responses to globalization; international, regional and local social organization; and power relations among and within states.

Over the past four decades, there has been development in the capacity of educational systems globally, as well as increased participation in all levels of the education system. Estimates of school-life expectancy show that the global figure increased from 7.9 years in 1970 to 11.0 years in 2008 (UIS 2010, 14). Table 1.1 shows changes in the enrolment levels of students in primary, secondary and tertiary education between 1970 and 2008.

It is important to note that tertiary education showed the highest percentage increase of the three levels, a sign that greater emphasis has been placed on tertiary education as critical to development. Interestingly, a higher percentage of females than males enrolled in tertiary education, and this was higher than the level of population growth for both sexes in the respective age groups. This is noted to have been the reality for the region since the mid-1990s (UIS 2010, 20).

The Caribbean has been an extraordinary example of the impact of investments in female tertiary education: it is the only region with four countries in the global top ten where women outnumber men in tertiary enrolment. The Bahamas is ranked third, Guyana fourth, Barbados fifth, and Jamaica sixth. In 1970 there were 73 women to every 100 men enrolled in tertiary education on average in the world. In 2011 this changed to 108 women to 100 men. In the Bahamas there are 271 women enrolled in tertiary education to every 100 men; in Guyana there are 252; in Barbados there are 238 women, and in Jamaica there are 228 (Hausmann, Tyson and Zahidi 2012). The situation for Jamaica is interesting as it moved from a lower figure for female tertiary enrolment than the world’s average, and especially that of the rest of the Caribbean, which was higher than the world’s average in 1970. Chart 1.1 shows the dramatic difference between Jamaica and the world.

Table 1.1. World Increase in Educational Enrolment 1970 to 2008

Source: UIS 2010.

The evidence shows that higher levels of female participation, especially as it relates to gender parity with males, is more likely to be observed in two types of countries: those with very high incomes and less developed ones with relatively small tertiary systems such as Jamaica (UIS 2010, 70). It is important to note that globally there is gender parity for males and females graduating with a first degree (51 per cent males to 49 per cent females); the balance then tips in favour of females at the master’s degree level (56 per cent females to 44 per cent males), and is reversed in favour of males at the doctoral level (56 per cent males to 44 per cent females) (UIS 2010, 77). The data on tertiary enrolment for the Caribbean distinguish the region from the world – females dominate all three levels. To illustrate, for the years 2010 to 2016 at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI, the region’s premier university), females comprise 69 per cent of undergraduates, 71 per cent of master’s students and 64 per cent of doctoral students.

Chart 1.1. Change in Female Tertiary Education Enrolment – Jamaica Compared to the World

According to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS 2010) and the World Economic Forum 2012, the disproportionately higher level of female participation in tertiary education is not reflected in the labour market, where males dominate in senior positions and females are noted to require more years of schooling to gain equal salary to that of males. Jamaica is a unique case and thus worthy of study. Table 1.2 summarizes the Gender Gap Report of 2012. The table is divided into three sections. The top section is related to social well-being, the middle section to economic and political power and the bottom section is the human development index adjusted by gender. The top section shows that Jamaican women have achieved immense educational opportunities and that this has benefited them in two ways: social power and health. Jamaican women have achieved a high level of literacy and, behind Lesotho, they have the highest advantage over men in this area. High levels of literacy lead to Jamaican women having the sixth greatest advantage over men in tertiary enrolment. Jamaica is therefore among the thirty-two countries in which women have comparatively better health and survival. Jamaica is also among countries where women enjoy a healthy life expectancy substantially higher than men, despite the health-related risks associated with reproduction.

Table 1.2. Summary of Gender Gap Report 2012

Source: Hausmann, Tyson and Zahidi 2012.

In Jamaica, women’s progress in the last four decades has two shortcomings: economic and political. Jamaican women hold the top positions in the country in terms of being managers and senior officials, but those positions do not provide women with political or economic parity with men. Women dominate legislation located below the Jamaican parliament and cabinet and are very likely to manage businesses owned by men. Jamaica is ranked thirty-eighth in women’s participation in the economy and projected opportunities with seventy-two females to every hundred males. There are also seventy-nine women in the labour force to every hundred men. The critical problem is the quality of the participation. Jamaican women only earn sixty-three cents to men’s dollar. Women’s massive social achievement but relatively weak performance in economics and politics suggests that education has limits. These data say that education does not guarantee the means to establish and maintain power or meet the dicta of masculinity; hence women’s limited progress could be used as part of the rationale by some men (and to a lesser extent some women) to bypass education, or seek specific aspects of education or programmes that have a higher rate of achieving economic and political power.

According to Chevannes (1999), the problem of low male participation in tertiary education is related to definitions of masculinity and male readiness for survival. In the Caribbean masculinity is largely defined by physical attributes and the ability to provide and protect, rather than by intellectual and emotional capacity. As a result, the school environment is sometimes viewed as a feminine space that holds boys back from becoming men. The literature shows that socialization in the Caribbean is significant to understanding the decisions males make about their education.

Various studies have posited that even if male attitudes were positive towards tertiary education, many simply lack the financial support to attend tertiary institutions, as many families think that once secondary schooling is complete it is time to harvest their breadwinners (Gayle 2002). Most females have no such time limit. In fact, education is widely seen as females’ critical means of escaping dependence and abuse. Scholars, including Anderson (2001) and Chevannes (2001), have shown that completing school could be seen as counterintuitive to some males.

According to Anderson (2001), the unemployment level in 1998 of young males with no secondary education was 12.9 per cent, while it was 26.2 per cent for those with four or more years of secondary education. On the other hand, for the corresponding period, young females with no secondary education had an unemployment rate of 51.9 per cent, while those who had achieved four or more years of secondary-level education had an unemployment rate of 40.6 per cent (Anderson 2001, 46). In accordance with the data presented, Anderson concludes that pursuit of secondary education demonstrated a greater rate of increase in opportunities for employment in the case of females than males. Anderson explains that the transformation of the economy went in the direction of a widening of the service sector, which has a bias in favour of females. Concurrently, there was a contracting of sectors such as agriculture, which has traditionally had a predominantly male labour force.

Anderson (2001) shows that the occupational structure and size of the labour market in relation to the labour force created a situation where females face greater levels of competition in gaining employment with placement based on educational achievement. Within such a context, it is quite fair to infer that women require higher levels of educational attainment as part of their survival tool kit than men. As such, women are more likely to calculate higher levels of marginal utility and return on investment from educational achievement. Concurrently, the structure of the labour market predisposes men to calculate lower levels of return on educational investment. Based on the primacy of economic provision as part of the male role, in a context lacking congruence between education and employment, rationality would dictate that men seek income-earning activities outside of the formal labour market and its normative constructs. Males face a double-edged sword in the labour force: education does not reward them and yet non-education sectors are shrinking. Hence, Anderson (2001) speaks of an increase in male involvement in informal and underground economic activities.

It is understood that females are more likely to maximize subsidized education in Jamaica since, when resources are scarce, working-class families tend to send girls to school at the expense of boys due to the practice of protecting the female in harsh environments (Chevannes 2001) and because of higher returns from girls on parent investment in education (Figueroa and Hondu 1996). Low education participation of either males or females retards the development of a country, given the fact that quality training drives economies; emphasis on male-oriented education and training robs societies of general and social development, while emphasis on educating females weakens capacity in science and technology (Agbamu 2007).

There is also a clear relationship between education and violence. Countries with low levels of education usually have high levels of homicide (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2007). This is because Education is … one aspect of socialization (Haralambos, Holborn and Heald 2000, 774). Education is not only about preparation for a labour market, but it is also equally important for character development and social participation. Given Jamaica’s relatively low literacy rate in the English-speaking Caribbean (86 per cent compared to other Caribbean countries’ 95 per cent and above), it is not surprising that it has one of the highest homicide rates in the region. This is a significant problem because young out-of-school males are the largest group of perpetrators and victims of violence. As a result of violence, the country spends an exorbitant amount of the annual budget on security and injury costs.

EDUCATION AND PERFORMANCE

Education comprises the learning-related outcomes of exposure to different bodies of knowledge transmitted through various agents of socialization. It is a crucial part of equipping the individual for societal function. Especially within informal frames, education helps the individual survive within localized communities or geo-cultural spaces. Therefore, the different knowledge-based elements of education may be unequal for different status groups as it relates to social capital. Though these knowledge-based elements may prove to be conflicting, they are connected by the fact that they are all products of the distributive system of resources and rewards. Typically, structured elements of education tend to be endowed with higher levels of prestige and status than unstructured ones. However, the utility of any body of knowledge to the basic human drive for survival is contextual and based on the functional needs of the particular ecology.

Generally, we tend to focus on education as a function and product of the school system and of participation in its various institutions. The quality and output of participation are associated with different structural and cultural factors, including value-based and normative frames. However, education as one element of socialization encompasses a wider range of processes. Education is both that which comprises what is formally transmitted through structured curricula in the education system and that which is informally transmitted as part of the institutional processes of the family, peer group, media and other agents of socialization.

The school is the main agent of structured education. According to Macionis and Plummer (2002, 488), schooling is formal instruction under the direction of specially trained teachers. However, the school is also a site for transmission of the values and norms of society, especially existing arrangements and experiences of stratification. It is the distinction between formal and informal education, direct and indirect socialization in education and the contradictions between and within institutional settings that characterizes the basis upon which individuals participate in tertiary education. Within such schema, it is reasonable to assume that those who are already equipped with compatible values and norms to that of the school system will be assessed as more likely to facilitate its survival and so be promoted as the achievers.

Tertiary educational participation runs the gamut of post-secondary learning experiences that facilitate role preparation for adult employment and social, political and other forms of economic engagement. It may involve apprenticeship and similar forms of on-the-job training, and the resultant street smarts earned from engaging in the informal processes that characterize much of interaction and bargaining. Therefore, not all post-secondary learning is certified and seen as formal education.

CERTIFICATION AND PERFORMANCE

Modern societies are preoccupied with credentials. However, for certification to be conferred on any individual, performance is usually defined and stratified in the context of pre-existing indicators and targets which are observable. Within this context, the measurement of education and learning based on performance seems to be a function of the capacity to conform to pre-existing expectations, rather than creativity and ingenuity outside of existing acceptable frames for behaviour.

Educational performance ought to be understood from the perspective of demonstrations of aptitude based on preset criteria. We are invariably required to examine the pre-existing knowledge sets that are brought to the table as capital. These combined with instructional techniques and environments are significant determinants or at least associational variables in individual outputs. From a cognitive perspective, these relate to the capacity to think through, negotiate and engage with knowledge (Svinicki 2002). This process may include finding associations between experience and what is transmitted in the school setting, which may encourage feelings of inclusion or exclusion based on levels of congruence or difference.

The resulting behaviours in the school may reflect conformity or maladaptation as students seek to represent behaviours associated with their identities, described by Talcott Parsons (1964) as pattern maintenance. This is associated with the arguments presented by Pierre Bourdieu in relation to education’s role in reproducing class relations (cited in Macionis and Plummer 2002).¹ In this regard, the social currency or value of prior knowledge as fixed and variable capital is to be measured as resources in engaging different knowledge sets. Hence, the more the knowledge set that is brought to formal education mirrors or is compatible with that transmitted in the formal curricula, the more likely performance will be optimized if sufficient effort and attention are given to learning or engagement.

From a systems perspective, desirability cannot exist in the absence of undesirability; hence one aspect of learning and performance is maintaining the status quo due to ontological security or sense of safety, which leads many to conform to expectations rather than defy the accepted norms. As a result, low levels of performance among the poor and high levels of performance among the wealthy within educational institutions serve to legitimize the underlying ideologies of a system of stratification. Prior knowledge is not only associated with the individual’s performance, but also assessment of the individual’s social attributes. Such assessment may well determine the opportunities afforded to the individual for learning and the assessment of the product of his or her labour within the school system.

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, SOCIALIZATION AND ADAPTATION: THE RELEVANCE OF PARENTING

Much of what we learn today is determined by what we know from yesterday. The various theories on learning argue for the relevance, significant impact and even determinism of prior knowledge on learning outcomes. Prior knowledge is not to be delimited to discrete bodies of knowledge that may be recited on recall. It includes all of our experiences that set the frame for our interpretations and actions, including the structural parameters for behaviour and conduct created by primary caregivers in the home and those set by teachers and other authorities in the school. It is important in exploring this particular issue that we give as much credence to informal learning as we do formal learning. There is a distinct difference between learning and demonstrating learning, and it is the latter that in fact determines performance within the school setting.

There are many perspectives on parenting and therefore many definitions. In Jamaica, parenting education and skills development programmes have been attempted as part of the national strategy for improved educational performance. Programmes designed to transfer parenting knowledge sets have been targeted at parents of especially the lower social classes, as a means of improving the outcomes of families and children. This has primarily been associated with theories of the significance of prior knowledge in shaping behaviour and educational performance. When parents understand the developmental stages of children and their roles and responsibilities in enabling optimal development, they are better equipped to promote and encourage growth and effectively deal with challenges. Children are in turn provided with structured frames for interaction and, importantly, social bargaining skills, which play key roles in effective interaction within the cultural space of the school.

Parenting may therefore be defined as a combination of activities aimed at socialization of the young. It involves promoting desirable values within both articulated ideal normative frames and lived normative frames that reflect the cultural, social, economic and political capital of parents or their surrogates, and that of the broader community in which families are located. The ways in which parents raise their children are key elements of the preparatory phase for learning. Ricketts and Anderson (2009), in discussing the relevant literature, make interesting references to parenting styles, which are of significance to learning outcomes. The parenting styles coined by Ricketts and Anderson (2009) bring to the fore what we will term two sides to the parenting coin.

One could easily say that the two sides to the parenting coin equip the child with the skills for self-directed behaviour while mediating this with responsiveness to the demands of the wider social group. Baumrind’s theory centres on two main concepts: parental responsiveness and parental demandingness. Parental responsiveness refers to the extent to which parents equip children for developing and enacting internally imposed values and corresponding structured behavioural frames. On the other hand, parental demandingness refers to the degree to which sanctions are imposed and expectations communicated from parent to child that serve to set the frame for behaviour. These, in many ways, direct integration into the family unit and facilitate social integration, associated with social order and continuity. Parental responsiveness promotes internal self-regulation on the part of the child and parental demandingness imposes external regulation on the child. In so doing internal and external values are promoted, and in the ideal situation, these should be compatible.

Baumrind’s theory is important in examining issues of how well children are prepared for effective participation in the environment of the school. Children who are ill-equipped for self-regulation are challenged in regard to internal motivations and have difficulty identifying and articulating defined value systems and owned behaviours. On the other hand, those who do not experience demands from their parents struggle to respond to the structures of the school and to contextualize sanctions. Within schemas of loose self-definition and lack of preparation for appropriate responses to external regulations, there is little prior knowledge to assist students in responding to the structures employed by teachers to achieve particular academic outcomes.

Ricketts and Anderson (2009) suggest that knowledge-based capital associated with particular socio-demographic characteristics such as class and gender is associated with educational performance. These characteristics set the frame for socialization by families, which not only includes the direct cultural knowledge passed from the caregiver to the child, but also embodies the physical and material environments that significantly contribute to how the individual is treated. In citing Melvin Kohn’s work Class and Conformity (1969), Ricketts and Anderson (2009) show how the socio-demographic characteristics of parents are highly related to the parenting roles embodied in the work of Baumrind. Kohn’s findings suggest that middle-class parents give greater focus to developing their children’s skills for self-regulation through internal standards, while lower-class parents focus on preparing their children for conformity and regulation by responding to externally imposed values.

Kohn’s findings (cited in Ricketts and Anderson 2009) also show that middle-class fathers are more likely to be active participants in child rearing than lower-class ones, with middle-class boys more likely to want to emulate their fathers than lower-class boys. Kohn associates the parenting practices of middle- and working-class parents with occupational roles and responsibilities. For him, middle-class parents are more likely to be employed in professions that require self-directed activities that offer different levels of autonomy, while lower-class parents are more likely to be engaged in occupations that involve acting in response to external directives. These behavioural frames are adapted to parenting practice, embodying the models for conduct presented to children and also comprising the expectations for behaviour from children. In fact, when we examine the module on parenting presented by Ricketts and Anderson (2009), we see that socio-economic status is associated with the level of interaction between parents and children. Parents of higher socio-economic standing are more actively involved in and more satisfied with their parenting role. Two important statements on the findings are noted here (Ricketts and Anderson 2009, 50): (1) higher education, whether measured in terms of school attended or levels of academic qualifications, is related to more interactive parenting; and (2) economic deprivation is related to more restricted interaction styles.

A fundamental assumption derived from these and related findings is that the capital available to individuals determines their operationalization of values in the behavioural frames. When we speak of capital here, we refer to all the social, economic, political and other resources and accessibility factors that define the individual or unit socio-demographically. Within institutionalized settings such as the family, role expectations are often general and universal within society. We will often find that general social values are upheld to the extent that they are articulated. However, the capital available determines which values are prioritized and how values are demonstrated by parents to children.

Similar principles apply if we transfer the concept of values and associated behaviours to learning and performance within the school setting. Values can be broadly defined as concepts, and norms are applications of these concepts. Applied knowledge bring concepts to life. Within learning theory, there are many perspectives on the relationships between concepts and applied knowledge, and especially how understanding of one aids in the understanding of the other.

Svinicki (2002, 22) speaks about intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation. Intrinsic sources, which are argued to be more effective for motivation, present control and opportunities for making choices to the learner. Svinicki (2002) explains approaches to learning embodied in behavioural, cognitive and more recent perspectives on knowledge construction. She speaks to the issue of differences in learning styles and argues that, while important,