Some students may learn to negotiate for extra time on tests, extended deadlines for assignments, or even to get out of punishments. (WFIU/WTIU News)
New research from Indiana University highlights the ways in which economic class can affect a student’s behavior in the classroom, and says that those behaviors can have long-term consequences.
The book "Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School" follows students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds in grades three through seven to examine the ways they follow instructions.
Author Jessica Calarco is an assistant professor of sociology at IU. She says middle-class students are often taught by their parents to advocate for themselves. That includes negotiating with teachers for advantages like extra time on tests, extended deadlines for assignments, or even to get out of punishments.
But she says working-class students are often taught to be respectful and follow a teacher’s instructions.
“Middle-class and upper middle-class parents, especially middle and upper middle-class white parents, often engage in sort of, trying to find advantages for their kids and trying to create advantages for their kids,” Colarco says. “But what I talk about in the book is that those parents are also teaching those kids how to create and hoard those opportunities for themselves.”
She says teachers and parents may have noticed the behaviroal differences, but often wouldn’t connect the differences to economic status. But working-class students saw a pattern.
“They were the ones best able to articulate that this is what the middle-class students were doing," Calarco says. "And they were worried about engaging in those kinds of behaviors themselves."
Calarco says often, teachers will agree to provide extra help to students because they know that refusing could end up taking away more class time.
“They knew that if they said no to the middle-class students, those middle-class kids would continue to push back,” Colarco says. “They would turn it into a negotiation, they would continue to ask for things and they would waste class time. And the teachers really didn’t have class time to waste.”
And she says this pattern gets stronger as students move into middle school, high school and even college. She says those small, day-to-day advantages can add up over time.
Calarco says there’s no easy solution to level the playing field. She says middle-class families could use their own privilege to advocate for more time and attention for all students, but she says that’s unlikely.
She also says schools can support teachers who say no when asked to provide extra help or give advantages to some students. And she says reducing class sizes can allow teachers to offer more assistance to every student.
