ABSTRACT
By focusing on a special form of social capital, network closure among a child’s parents and the parents of the child’s good friends in school (hereafter “parental closure around school”), the 1999 debates on the effect of social capital on learning centered around three related issues: (a) Does the concept of social capital refer to a school attribute or an individual attribute? (b) Will parental closure around school increase or decrease students’ learning? and (b) Because the second issue refers to the possible underlying mechanism for parental closure effects on learning growth, norm enforcement (Coleman and Hoffer 1987) or horizontal expansion (Morgan and Sørensen 1999a) were respectively suggested to explain positive or negative effect on learning growth. Rather than revisiting the debate on the effect of intergenerational social closure on students’ learning, this chapter engages in the debate from a different angle. I argue that although I agree with Morgan and Sørensen (1999a) that the concept of social capital in a form of parental closure around school refers to a school attribute, we need to understand individual parental behavior and its relationship to learning because the reproduction and sustenance of the school level of social capital depends on the behavior of the students’ parents, voluntarily or in response to school programs and the child’s situation. I engage the debate by gaining an understanding of the role of individual parents’ behavior.
