The influence of cultural participation and socio-economic background on the school results

Formation of culture depends on the formal as well as the informal education. Although education begins at home during the early childhood development and in the social environment, the formal education plays a pivotal role in the transmission and formation of culture. In recent years, the number of school dropouts on all educational levels and the lower educational attainments among some groups within the society have become the focus of political debate. For my master research at the department of arts and cultural studies of Erasmus university in Rotterdam, I have conducted a survey among the students at the intermediate vocational schools, vocational colleges and the university in Rotterdam. During my research, I tried to find out an answer to the following question: do the social economic background, the students’ cultural participation as well as parental cultural participation affect the students’ school results (average mark for all the subjects during their last study bloc). In my multivariate quantitative analyses, I used the data from 300 students who had fully completed and returned the survey questionnaires in which they were asked questions about their social economic backgrounds, their cultural participation as well as their parents’ cultural participation. Although prior to my research many scientists had explored similar questions at different times and different places, I was curious to find out whether their findings also apply to the students in Rotterdam 2008. The results of my research led me to conclude that Pierre Bourdieu’s field of cultural production, namely his Social, Cultural and Economic capital theory applies to the students’ school results in Rotterdam 2008. Social, cultural and economic capital play a determining role in the students’ school results. Alebrt Bandura’s Social cognitive theory, in which he asserts that the social environment plays an important role in shaping human behaviour, is valid. Fathers’ education and some of the parental cultural participation practices have a positive effect on the school results of their children. Harry Ganzeboom’s cultural participation theory in which he assert that peoples’ cultural knowledge and skills from their early pedagogical environment, previous education and individual experiences, partially contribute to their abilities in processing new information, also applies to the students and their school results here in Rotterdam. Furthermore the results showed that, when we take into consideration other intervening factors such as cultural participation and social economic background of the students, gender and ethnicity do not affect the students’ school results (average mark).