Preschool and School Education in a System of Social Inequality

This research focuses on the analysis of a relatively isolated educational establishment situated in the Priosersk region. This case study provides the opportunity to understand the mechanisms typical of the educational system in general, such as social mobility and the (re)production of social inequality. It should be noted that this research specializes not on the traditional Russian analysis of progressing from school to higher educational establishments, but on the study of earlier transitions of kindergarten to school and the end of the 9th grade. Despite mechanisms of social mobility in the education system, this research pays attention to competition among schools as an important mobility factor.
Pilot questioning and testing of kindergarten students and their parents has been already carried out. At present, statistical information is being collected and education system workers as well as pupils, kindergarten children and their parents are being interviewed. Special work on this project is being conducted by the Laboratory Assistant, fourth-year student Evgenii Kochkin. He is carrying out his own research work in one of the schools and aims to reveal the social issues that influence decisions concerning the future education of a ninth-grade pupil.

It is planned that the main body of the monograph will consist of an analytical review of research development (from the 1960s) into inequality in education and a description and analysis of the interaction between economists, sociologists, psychologists and other humanities specialists concerning studies of this problem. One of the most interesting aspects of this work will be a comparison with the contemporary Russian situation (in addition to previously published results, the results of new Laboratory research will be stated here). Above all, the monograph will examine the problems of kindergartens and choice of school: foreign research into inequality at the preschool stage will be combined with the results of the kindergarten research conducted in 2006-2007. The project is financed by the St. Petersburg European University's “Educational Social Research Development in Russia” Program. The monograph is currently at the primary stage: the bibliography has been compiled, foreign literature on the problems connected with inequality in secondary education has been ordered, and parts of the book are being worked on.

The problem this analytical review is devoted to is drawing an increasing amount of attention from researchers. New work in this field is influenced by the initiative and most recent publications of Nobel Prize winner James Hackman and his colleagues. The Laboratory research workers have contacted James Hackman (who gave an interview to the project’s researchers in April 2007) as well as many other specialists in this sphere. According to the plan, not only sociologists but also economics and psychology specialists will be involved in this project. As well as the review/analytical section containing an almost exhaustive bibliography on this topic, the monograph will also contain the results of the Laboratory’s field work (namely the results of observing children at schools and kindergartens). The project is sponsored by the St. Petersburg European University's “Educational Social Research Development in Russia” Program. The Monograph is currently in its initial stage; the bibliography is ready, foreign literature has been ordered, and a draft analytical review of part of the monograph (“Child Welfare Institutions as a Factor of the Child’s Cognitive Development at an Early Age”) has been conducted by Ekaterina Uglanova.