Third ISA Forum of Sociology «The Futures We Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World», Vienna, Austria

Assessment of Justice in the Institutions of Learning

Thursday, 14 July 2016: 09:45 Location: Hörsaal 10 (Juridicum)

Oral Presentation

Yulia EPIKHINA, Institute of Sociology of Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

Education is often regarded as an institute that contributes to the equalization of life chances in society. The critical tradition in sociology represented by P.Bourdieu and J-P.Passeron focused on  the inequalities of the system of education itself. The inequalities tend to stem from differences in cultural capital, level of integration of the students to the system of institutional rules and ambition. The All-Russian representative survey based on the sample of 2003 respondents focused on the different perceptions by students of the educational institutions and the process ongoing inside it. The respondents evaluated the justice of grading and the justice of education outcomes. It turned out that variance in the assessment of justice inside the institution is closely related to the achievement level of the respondent and later mobility outcomes. The more successful the respondent was, the more justice he attributed to the system of education, the more positive was his or her assessment of education. The survey revealed an obvious dependence of the perception of justice in education on perceived outcomes of the educational attainments and the larger context of social mobility. The survey also revealed that the years of learning and the level of skills had a significant impact on the way the education process if perceived. Most of these factors depend on the family background of the respondent and point to an influence of family cultural capital on the evaluation of justice in education system.