ABSTRACT
Parental influences on students’ educational achievements have been widely discussed by sociological and educational research on both sides of the Atlantic. Time and time again, research has demonstrated the advantageous position of middle-class parents compared to their working-class counterparts when it comes to successfully intervening and shaping their children’s education (see for instance Ball, 2003; Lareau, 1989; Reay, 2005b). Likewise, research that explored parental educational influences through the lens of ethnicity found that parents’ practices, related to their children’s education, vary considerably among different ethnic groups (see Archer and Francis, 2007; Desimone, 1999; Qian and Blair, 1999). Following on from this research, this chapter employs social capital as a concept to explore further whether inequalities related to social class and ethnic background cut across parental involvement in their children’s education.
