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Clasă și educație. Inegalitate şi reproducere socială în învăţământul românesc
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Cartea este construita in jurul unui obiectiv central, anume acela de a explica cum factorii socio-familiali și cei școlari influențeaza in diverse contexte rezultatele educaționale ale elevilor. Imi propun sa ofer o imagine generala a modalitații in care invațamantul genereaza oportunitați pentru elevi intr-un context social marcat de saracie și politici de protecție sociala aproape inexistente și in același timp sa conectez tabloul general cu mecanismele de selecție ale elevilor din invațamantul obligatoriu. Unul dintre capitole trateaza pe larg inclusiv ce se intampla dupa selecția la liceu, fiind descrisa viața cotidiana intr-o clasa de elevi dintr-un liceu de elita din Romania.
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... " (D., male, rural, theoretical high school) We can see some differences between the words used for learning distractors even from one school to another in urban areas and from one school to another in rural areas. This refers to the socio-educational inequality between Romanian schools mentioned in the literature by Romanian researchers (Hatos, 2008;Hatos et al., 2022;Ţoc, 2018). Therefore, it is possible that students' results are also influenced by certain factors at the level of the school in which they learn. ...
Previous research has shown that the use of ICT in education has a complex relationship to the results of learning, both negative, positive, and mixed effects being recorded. However, the processes through which these effects are produced seem to stay largely unknown. Our qualitative study aims, thus, to explore the access to and the use of digital technology in relation to learning, from the perspective of reported experiences of eighth-grade students in Bihor County (Romania). The choice of this category of students is motivated by our previous quantitative investigations, which analyzed data collected from subjects of the same age group (approximately 15 years). The central objective of this study is to answer the question "Why can the use of ICT at home for school activities have a negative effect on school results?". Participant responses do not show significant gender differences but indicate differences between socioeconomic backgrounds (urban vs rural) regarding the use of technology especially for school activities, with the support received by urban learners being more generous on all socio-emotional sides (parents, teachers, and peers/ friends).
... Una dintre consecinţele vizibile a fost că, cel puţin în ceea ce priveşte indicatorii care măsoară inegalităţile de venituri, România se află printre ultimele locuri în Europa: indicele GINI 1 a crescut de la 24 în 1989 (Zamfir, 2012, p. 26) la 35,1 în 2018 (Eurostat, indicator ilc_di12); raportul S80/S20 2 a crescut de la 4,5 în 2000 la 7,2 în 2018) (Eurostat, indicator ilc_di11). Inegalităţile pot fi ilustrate în România nu numai prin inegalitatea de venituri, ci şi prin prisma accesului inegal la servicii ce influenţează calitatea vieţii indivizilor: studii sectoriale privind accesul inegal la educaţie (Florian & Ţoc, 2018;Ţoc, 2018), sănătate (Precupeţu & Pop, 2017), locuire (Briciu, 2016), piaţa muncii (Domnişoru, 2014;Dragolea, 2008Dragolea, , 2016 sunt ilustrative. Pe de-o parte, inegalităţile sunt determinate de structura economiei, piaţa muncii din România fiind puternic segmentată şi dominată de locuri de muncă cu salarii scăzute. ...
În acest articol analizez situaţia tinerilor vulnerabili din România, cu accent pe tinerii NEET, una dintre categoriile aflate în risc de excluziune socială în spaţiul european. Scopul este de a înţelege situaţia tinerilor care se află în situaţii de vulnerabilitate, împreună cu problemele specifice sistemului de învăţământ, pieţei muncii şi care
decurg din (in)eficienţa sistemului de protecţie socială. Prima parte a lucrării are ca scop descrierea inegalităţilor sociale la care sunt expuşi tinerii din România. A doua parte propune analiza descriptivă a profilului tinerilor NEET din România şi din Uniunea Europeană. Realizez analize secundare utilizând date furnizate de Eurostat
pentru a contura un profil al tinerilor NEET din România, date pe care le completez cu informaţii calitative obţinute de la tineri NEET şi asistenţi sociali, prezentate într-un raport al Institutului de Ştiinţe ale Educaţiei (ISE, 2015). A treia parte se concentrează pe problemele cu care tinerii se confruntă la ieşirea din sistemul de învăţământ, precum şi pe inegalităţile de pe piaţa muncii şi pe aspecte ce ţin de eficienţa
transferurilor sociale în România. Ultima parte este dedicată rezentării unor programe de tineret în contextul austerităţii.
Cătălin Augustin Stoica's volume Introduction to the Study of Social Stratification and Mobility: theories, measures and models of analysis can be considered a starting point in developing a theoretical understanding of the concepts mentioned in the title. Although the book is mainly addressed to students in the area of social sciences, we can say that the language is widely accessible to the general public. It should be appreciated that the reader does not need a theoretical background before reading the book, as each concept is defined and analysed in such a manner, that makes the transition from common knowledge to scientific knowledge. Stratification and social mobility could not be dealt with separately, and in order to make intelligible how these concepts are intertwined in the dynamics of social life, the author presents them in a theoretically evolutionary scale. The explanation of the concepts is carried out starting from classics such as Marx and updated to the contemporary era with the help of authors that include Erik Olin Wright. From the conceptual trunk outlined by the theories of the aforementioned authors, sprout the branches of sub-chapters such as 'Power and Privilege' or 'Theories of the Elites', whose purpose is to broaden the reader's understanding of the subject. Through his book, Cătălin Augustin Stoica succeeds in offering a new approach to concepts studied for many decades in the field of sociology.
After the fall of the communist regime, Romania launched the first multi-systemic reform in the education sector in 1995. The reform was largely financed through a World Bank loan and closely followed the neo-liberal ideology promoted by Bank officials. It aimed to privatize and to implement private sector management principles in the public education sector. This paper argues that in order to introduce neo-liberal policy models, the Bank first created a structure of knowledge around the Romanian system of education, which diagnosed it as inefficient and underperforming. Specific representations of domestic institutions, bureaucratic processes, and actors were used to legitimate the forms of intervention proposed and the role of the Bank in internal governance. I argue further that the main stake of the project was reforming governance in education as new mechanisms for power distribution and money allocation were set in place. By manufacturing their role as impartial, apolitical “experts,” and by ignoring the political nature of government, they created a niche in governance and imposed neo-liberal understandings in education.
”Violent criminality” book makes a unique scientific contribution to the knowledge, explanation and prevention of violent crime, a phenomenon with serious and destructive consequences on the life and physical integrity of individuals and of the society which we are part of. It is the result of the author’s constant preoccupations with the topic of violent crime, supported by a long period of documentation and fundamental scientific research, which began 10 years ago, during her doctoral internship at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work of the University of Bucharest. The approach is an integrative one, with a theoretical and an empirical validation stake, starting from the analysis of violent crime (forms, causes, incidence) and arriving at social and criminal policies designed to help prevent and combat the problem addressed. The book is intended both for specialists and the general reader interested in understanding the particularities and social implications of violent behaviour. At the same time, due to its clear and concise presentation style, it is a real support for undergraduate, master and doctoral students at faculties with a socio-humanistic profile. Once read, the book will help the reader understand that it is the right and duty of each of us to protect ourselves and to help counteract actions as harmful as violent and criminal ones.
Access to education, specifically in relation to socio-economic background, is one of the enduring issues in educational research. The theme is particularly salient for the Romanian case from a policy perspective, given the increase in social polarisation specific to the post-communist transition and its effect on access to higher education. Recent reforms in university funding have started to address this issue, with the inclusion of several mechanisms that allocate financial resources according to university efforts towards social equity. The main objective of our research is to provide an overview of the policies concerning the inclusion of students from low socio-economic backgrounds and assess the degree to which progress has been made towards reaching current national targets regarding access to higher education. We argue that although significant improvements have been made at the level of policy initiative, more precise targeting is needed in order to meet labour market demands, given that most current efforts are directed either at fresh high school graduates or at diminishing the dropout rate. These efforts, even if 100% successful, will not prove sufficient given current demographic trends. Therefore, we consider another potential avenue for increasing student numbers, suggesting that an orientation towards non-traditional students (adult students) might be beneficial. With this in mind, in the second half of the paper, we explore the main characteristics and trends concerning Romanian mature students using the results from the EUROSTUDENT VI and EUROSTUDENT VII studies, with the goal of formulating policy proposals that aim to unlock the potential of this demographic.
Italy is one of the most important destination countries for Romanians. At the same time, the Italian care sector relies mainly on migrant labour, most of whom are Romanian women. Historically, Italy is considered one of the landmark countries for the southern or Mediterranean welfare state, characterised by its fragmented labour market, underdeveloped social protection system, informal economy and unpaid care work, usually done by the women in the family. Italy has one of the highest rates in Europe of both the elderly population and life expectancy at birth. In the last 20 years, the care work was gradually redistributed to migrant care workers, most of them women from former socialist countries, who often live in the household where they work. Migration from Eastern Europe, particularly Romania, has been facilitated, on the one hand, by rising unemployment and low-paid job opportunities in migrants' countries of origin in the context of the deindustrialisation of state industry and, on the other, by the Italian elderly public-support system which is based on cash benefits granted to the family which can be redistributed to employ migrant care workers. In this paper we analyse three specific types of care work migration from Romania to Italy and the main challenges which they face, taking into account the specifics of the work and the type of migration chosen. The methodology is qualitative, based on 20 semi-structured online interviews with Ro-manian care workers and two interviews with stakeholders.
The main objective of this article is to analyze the interaction between the principle of proximity in the enrollment process to primary school and the high school admission mechanism from an educational equity perspective. Specifically, I conduct a case study in which I analyze how the type of school graduated by a student in Bucharest influences the type of high school at which she will be admitted, given the present system of allocation. As such, I am interested in identifying the extent to which the school where the student is enrolled (when parents, theoretically cannot choose, as it is dependent on the street where they reside) can represent an explanatory factor for the probability to be admitted at a particular high school (a stage when parents and students can manifest their preferences for a school/specialization).
In this article, we analyze how social inequalities are manifested in the education system in Romania. The assumption from which we start is that the change of the social structure following the process of transition from a planned state economy to a capitalist market economy has determined phenomena such as poverty and social polarization, as well as the degradation of public health, education or welfare systems. In this context, one of the solutions to exit from poverty and especially to interrupt the cycle of intergenerational reproduction of poverty has been and continues to be the attempt to provide equal opportunities to all students in education and to support them to obtain at least the minimum skills and the minimum level of education required for participation in the labour market, taking into account all the specific vulnerabilities of capitalist economic systems. In the first part of this article, we describe the main changes in the social structure that have taken place in Romania over the last 30 years, with an emphasis on the analysis of employment, poverty and social inequality. In the second part, we describe the changes that have taken place at the level of the education system with an emphasis on attempts to ensure access to education for all students and define the concept of educational inequality. Subsequently, we use secondary data to analyze how social inequalities manifest in the education system, focusing on the problem of school dropout and the acquisition of basic competences. We describe the vulnerabilities of those belonging to the poor social classes to participate in the educational process and to have chances of school success at least similar to those of the privileged classes. We also argue that the education system contributes to the reproduction of social class inequalities, in the context of changing the occupational structure generated by the processes of globalization and the development of platform capitalism. In the last part of the article, we express our skepticism about the role of educational policies in reducing educational inequalities and providing opportunities for school success to pupils from disadvantaged socio-family backgrounds.
Această lucrare utilizează date obţinute din testările internaţionale PISA pentru a analiza factori explicativi pentru performanţa şcolară a elevilor de 15 ani din România. Studiul aduce o contribuţie în dezbaterea din sociologia educaţiei referitoare la rolul resurselor familiale comparativ cu cele şcolare în determinarea rezultatelor educaţionale. Rezultatele analizei de regresie lineară sugerează că cei mai importanţi factori care influenţează rezultatele la testări sunt statusul ocupaţional şi capitalul cultural al părinţilor. Dintre factorii ce ţin de şcoală, calitatea resurselor educaţionale din şcoală, măsurate prin percepţia directorilor cu privire la existenţa unui deficit al materialelor de instrucţie, echipamente de laborator, computere, softuri şi internet, materiale din bibliotecă. Analiza confirmă ipoteza conform căreia rezultatele educaţionale sunt influenţate mai degrabă de factori familiali decât de factori şcolari. Acest lucru este important în contextul încercării reducerii inegalităţilor de acces şi participare la educaţie în România. Până în prezent s-au depus eforturi pentru îmbunătăţirea resurselor şcolare (în special de infrastructură şi capital uman). Articolul sugerează o schimbare de strategie în privinţa distribuţiei resurselor pentru îmbunătăţirea accesului la educaţie ce ar necesita luarea în considerare a factorilor exteriori şcolilor. Cuvinte-cheie: mediu familial de provenienţă, resurse şcolare, performanţă şcolară, evaluarea PISA, inegalităţi educaţionale.
In the last years, Romania formally tried to overcome the problems related to inequality of opportunity in education. This paper examines the role of home resources and gender in determining academic performance. Based on secondary data drawn from Progress in International Reading Literacy Study we suggest that both gender and home resources have a significant impact on the reading achievement of students. The existing work operationalizes the differences in reading achievement as an indicator for life chances, being proportional with economic success later in life. Our findings contradict ideas about equality of opportunity promoted by the official curriculum regarding the individual merit as the main factor that places students in privileged social positions.
Most studies on academic success have focused on the total years of schooling, test-related performance, awards participation in competitions, and school results. In this paper I analyze the role of differences in the social background of Romanian high school students in their overall academic achievement. In other words,
What roles do social and educational factors play in achieving top academic results?
The paper engages with existing work that operationalizes differences in academic achievement as an indicator for educational inequalities that often, in Western Europe and US, are proportional with continuation of studies, university prestige, and even economic success in adulthood. Based on secondary data drawn from a nation-wide representative sample of upper secondary school students, collected in November 2009, I analyze (1) the students` perceptions of the relationship between teachers, students and parents, (2) the influence of the parents` educational status on their children, and (3) the way students perceive the education system itself. I consider that academic results are related to the life chances of individuals, and that it is important to identify precisely the factors which affect school performance. Implicitly, this paper has a normative dimension: the participation in higher education of the population is considered crucial in post-industrialized societies for increased international competitivity, but at the same time to increase social justice and upward social mobility.
Over the past decades, educational reform has been one of the centerpieces of transition in Central and Eastern Europe. A huge degree of variability among countries exists, from sudden liberalization to securing the status quo previous to revolutionary political change. Reforms have ranged from institutional to instrumental changes. We argue that policies may lead to undesirable outcomes, when they assume a certain institutional framework. We then describe the evolution of Romania’s educational system, focusing on a case study of an implemented large-scale policy program: the Rural Education Project for Romania. We thus argue that by assuming institutional change such attempts are bound to fail because the existing status quo adapts actions to existing practices, thus leading to unexpected outcomes.
The post-socialist transition in Romania can be understood in terms of a shift from moral communities to networks of influence, on the one hand, and networks of survival on the other. Additionally, central institutions no longer exert authority over the periphery. Local and regional elites have reorganised themselves into multiple networks of influence which act independently of the centre. A significant element in this process was the dismantling of the welfare state. The hypothesis of this article is that some of the ultras’ brigades formed in transitioning Romania constitute specific survival networks of that period. For more than 10 years, these groups, which have consisted of neighbourhood gangs, used football as a pretext for meeting and leisure while at the same time extending kinship networks and economic exchanges. The insights offered describe the clientelist dimension to these networks and how resources are distributed, as well as the interdependencies between the leader and the rest of the members of the group.
This chapter discusses recent empirical work in the sociology of education which emerged from a widespread concern about equality of educational opportunity. Four bodies of empirical work can be linked to this concern: status attainment studies, school effects studies, research on the organization of schools and instruction, and research on school and classroom processes. The chapter discusses how these bodies of research are linked to an interest in social equality and how they have developed beyond that initial concern. While some comparative, cross-national and cross-cultural research exists in these traditions, this review is limited to work conducted in the United States.