The School Mix Effect - The History of An Enduring Problem in Educational Research, Policy and Practice

The School Mix Effect: The History of an Enduring Problem in Educational Research, Policy and Practice Author(s): Martin
Thrupp Source: British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1995), pp. 183-203 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1393367 . Accessed: 06/08/2013 16:31
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BritishJournal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1995
183
in The SchoolMix Effect: the history of an enduring problem educational research, policy andpractice
MARTIN THRUPP,
University of Waikato,New Zealand
ABSTRACT The contextual effectof the social class mix of a school'sintakehas beenidentfiedin studiesas havingan important severalrecent on individual academic influence performance, particularly class students. However the understood. This paper reviewsthe for working effect,if genuine,is poorly history of researchinto this conceptsince the sixties, examininghow political, ideologicaland considerations haveinfluenced research to create ourcurrent methodological of theeffects of school ignorance mix. On the basis of this review,it is argued that (i), thereis at leasta prima-facie case the existence for a school mix and that the limitations the of significant effect: (ii), given of past approaches, most direction research would be to causal micro-level mechanisms for future rewarding explorelikely through Some in which causal mechanisms to student subcultures analysis. ways relating might begin to be are suggested. theorised
Introduction
The idea that school peers play an important role in determining the academic success of individual pupils is well established in popular wisdom. As Jencks Jencks et al., 1972) has observed, 'many people define a good school not as one with fancy facilities or highly paid teachers but as one with the "right" kinds of students', a view in which 'the quality of a school depends on its exclusiveness' (p. 29). The question of the contextual impact of the social class balance of a school's intake on the performance of individual students-the school mix effect-goes to the heart of contemporary debate over education policy. For if, as some recent research has found (McPherson & Willms, 1987; Lauder & Hughes, 1990), school mix is significant in determining the educational outcomes of individual students then it follows on at least three grounds that governments should seek to ensure that schools have well balanced social class intakes. Firstly, by increasing the overalllevel of achievement in a population, balancing school mix would help to optimise mean national standards of attainment (Henderson et al., 1978). Secondly, by improving working class attainment, balancing school mix would promote equality of opportunity (in the hard sense of equalising school
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outcomes and life chances). Thirdly, balancing school mix may accomplish this without substantially affecting the mean attainment levels of those groups who currently achieve well (Lauder & Hughes, 1990). However as McPherson and Willms (1987) note, the question of how school mix affects the educational performance of individual students is 'not well understood' (p. 23). Moreover, the claim that school mix has a significant impact on working class performance is controversial. Indeed the history of this concept over the past 30 years has been so coloured by political, ideological and methodological considerations that it is hard to establish what influence school mix has on student performance. To give a recent example of political and ideological influence we need go no further than Chubb & Moe's (1990) much publicised research. Although their data suggest that school mix does have a significant impact on student performance, their neo-liberal politics leads them to claim that 'schools can succeed or fail regardless of their student bodies' (p. 147). The implication is that schools 'should be free to admit as many or as few students as they want based on whatever criteria they think relevant' (p. 222). A similar methodological blindness has also led to the failure to address key questions. For example, the claim that school mix is a significant causal variable emanates from the quantitative research tradition on school performance. However, there is a considerable body of qualitative research which makes the claim that school mix is a genuine causal variable problematic. For example, the ethnographies of Lacey (1970), Willis (1977), Ball (1981), Brown (1987) and Jones (1991) all suggest, albeit for differing reasons, that schools themselves are divided by streaming and by the moral order imposed by students on their peers. Hence if school mix produces a real effect in the sense suggested by McPherson & Willms and Lauder & Hughes, it is difficult to see how the effect transcends divisions within schools. The isolation of qualitative from quantitative researchers has allowed quantitative researchers to assert that school mix is a genuine causal variable, rather than, say, a proxy for other causal processes [1], while qualitative researchers have not taken their cue from the quantitative tradition to investigate whether school mix is a genuine causal variable and if so, how it works. The fact is that because of these methodological oversights we do not know whether school mix is a genuine causal variable and, if it is, how it works. What appears to be a straightforward idea turns out to be rather more complex with educational research throwing a little light and rather less wisdom on it. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to critically appraise literature bearing on the question of school mix over the past 30 years to see whether the weight of evidence suggests that school mix is likely to be a genuine causal variable. This involves analysing the way political, ideological and methodological considerations have influenced research programmes, their design and the interpretations placed on their findings. Such an investigation then opens the way to addressing our current ignorance about the effects of school mix. While the political, ideological and methodological commitments of researchers may have 'got in the way' of understanding the nature and significance of school mix in ways more subtle than that exemplified by Chubb & Moe, we should not underestimate the political and educational importance of the concept if indeed we can establish that it is a genuine causal variable and explain how it influences individual student performance. If we are to understand how various considerations have influenced research on school mix, we need to look at the history of the concept. The earliest systematic studies in this area were the status attainment studies of post-war American sociologists.
Mix Effect TheSchool Coleman et al. and Liberal Educational Intervention
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Research related to school mix began in the US in the late 1950s. Concerned more with the socio-psychological impact of school mean socio-economic status (SES) on student aspirations than on measured school achievement, these early studies examined the effects of school SES composition on students' later life-chances, particularly their likelihood of attending university. Wilson (1959) was amongst the first to demonstrate that pupils attending schools with high proportions of high SES students were more likely to intend going to university than would otherwise be expected given their own social class background and academic performance. This positive finding was later confirmed in a series of similar studies by Michael (1961), Turner (1964) and Boyle (1966). Yet it was not until the release of the influential Coleman Report (Coleman et al., 1966) that the effects of school mix on student achievement received widespread was a report on the extent and causes of attention. Equality of EducationalOpportunity educational inequality in the US commissioned by Congress in response to Section 402 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Coleman and his colleagues wrote at a time when ethnic conflict in inner city ghettos appeared to threaten the cohesion of American life. As part of Johnson's 'Great Society' programme, the liberal reforms of the 'War on Poverty' attempted to meet public expectations set up by the preceding Kennedy Administration for a more egalitarian society. From conception the Coleman Report was destined to be an influential document because the congressmen who commissioned Coleman hoped that he would find glaring inequalities in the financial and material resources received by schools in different communities that would legitimate massive federal intervention in ghetto schools. In the event they were disappointed because Coleman's conclusion was that there was little inequity in the allocation of material resources to schools. Furthermore, Coleman found that most school variables made little difference to school outcomes over and above the influence of student background characteristics. Nonetheless Coleman did find that minority achievement was highest in ethnically integrated schools. This became a trumpeted finding because, in contrast to the rest of the report which failed to find that other forms of direct state intervention (such as increased funding) had an effect, it appeared to offer some solution to the contentious issue of educational inequalities between America's white and black communities. Coleman argued that the apparent positive effects of a largely white student body came not from racial composition per se but from the better educational background and higher aspirations that are on the average found amongst white students. (1966, p. 307) He suggested: The effects of the student body environment upon a student's achievement appear to lie in the educational proficiency possessed by that student body, whatever its racial or ethnic composition. (ibid.) Thus, although Coleman's brief was to explore ethnic inequalities, in essence his argument appears to have been that it was the social class/prior achievement mix of schools which made the difference [2]. Coleman found that school mix was the only school variable that seemed to have a significant impact on academic outcomes: Attributes of other students account for far more variation in the achievement of minority group children than do any attributes of school facilities and slightly more than do attributes of staff. (1966, p. 302)
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Whereas the unique contributions of school and teacher were 'vanishingly small', the unique contribution of student body characteristics were 'very large' (p. 304). Coleman argued that the school mix effect was 'asymmetric'-that it had its greatest effect on those from educationally deficient backgrounds (ibid.). Two important legacies for the way in which school mix is perceived today by many educational researchers and policy makers may be traced back to Coleman's findings. First, the Coleman Report led to the development of bussing policies in the US. When bussing was later widely discounted in the more conservative climate of the 1970s and 1980s as a failed liberal reform, the notion of balancing school mix became politically untenable. This in turn is likely to have influenced the demise of research into school mix. Yet the evidence on the apparent failure of bussing does not in itself substantiate the view that balancing school mix could not provide a potentially powerful educational intervention. Rather it points to deficiencies in the way that the bussing policies of the time were implemented. An example is the way in which desegregation schemes generally applied only to inner city areas rather than entire metropolitan regions. This meant that desegregation often had little effect because it was followed by resegregation as white, middle class families moved to outer suburbs beyond the reach of the schemes
[3].
A second legacy stems from the Coleman Report's seemingly ambiguous findings concerning school mix. Coleman's conclusion that minority achievement was highest in ethnically integrated schools appears inconsistent with another of his findings: that minority students had lower academic self-concept in high SES schools. Coleman found that school integration has conflicting effects on attitudes of minority group children: it increases their sense of control of the environment or their sense of opportunity, but decreases their self concept. (1966, p. 324) This ambiguity helped researchers in the 1970s (Meyer, 1970; Jencks et al., 1972; Nelson, 1972; Bain & Anderson, 1974; Alexander & Eckland, 1975; Alwin & Otto, 1977) to theorise an oppositional, counterbalancing explanation of their lack of success at discovering significant overall school mix effects. Typically these studies argued that while school SES mix did have a positive normative effect on status aspirations (Kelly, 1952), it also created a negative effect as a result of status comparison. In high SES schools, students were seen to have higher aspirations from interacting with others likely to attend university but to suffer comparatively by having to compete with them. The latter influence was often known as the 'frog pond effect' (Davis, 1966). The 'ability' mix of the school was therefore thought to work against the SES mix in a counterbalancing way such that while these 'different' mix effects might be considerable, overall mix effects would be small. Coleman's findings were sometimes seen to have supported this hypothesis [4]. In fact, Coleman did not regard the apparently conflicting findings concerning school mix to be of the same magnitude; he clearly held that integrating schools would boost minority achievement (1966, p. 324) [5]. The reinterpretation of Coleman's findings implicit in the counterbalancing hypothesis can in part be attributed to later doubts about Coleman's methodology (Bowles & Levin, 1968; Smith, 1972). More fundamental, however, is that in the seventies the dominant educational ideology amongst researchers came to preclude the notion that school mix or indeed any school variable could have a significant impact on school outcomes. The effect of this ideology was to limit research
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on school mix to finding theoretically interesting effects rather than any considered useful for policy. et al. and the Impasse in School Performance Research
Jencks
The post war liberal belief that schools could equalise students' life chances came under attack in the 1970s. The view that schools could not compensate for society (Bernstein, 1970) had it's roots in the failure of liberal educational policies designed to equalise life chances. The view was taken that compensatory educational programmes and bussing in the US had failed while in the UK research was published showing that comprehensive schools did not necessarily improve life chances (Ford, 1969). This afforded the opportunity for both right and left to claim that schools could not promote equality of opportunity, in the strong sense of equalising life chances. For the right the reason lay in the genetically determined nature of intelligence Jensen, 1969); for the Marxist left, schools could not promote equality of opportunity because they were effectively agents of the ruling class (Bowles & Gintis, 1976) while for left liberals like Jencks Jencks et al., 1972) the route to greater equality of opportunity lay not in education but in other social and economic policies. In Inequality Jencks et al. attempted to show the inadequacy of a reform strategy based on education by providing an analysis which made use of what Coleman (1973, p. 1524) described as 'skilful but highly motivated use of statistics'. Jencks introduced his discussion of school mix by noting that methodological considerations surrounding the question of school mix-the importance of various correlated variables, their become the subject of a 'minor sociological specification and measurement-had industry during the 1960s' (p. 151). He argued that while numerous early studies did find strong positive school mix effects, with better data and more sophisticated use of statistics the best recent studies have concluded that the socio-economic composition of a high school has virtually no effect on students aspirations. (1972, p. 152) These 'best recent studies' numbered only two, however (Sewell & Armer, 1966; Hauser, 1970), and both were widely regarded at the time as methodologically and theoretically unsound [6]. Moreover Jencks dismissed studies which indicated positive mix effects at elementary level arguing that 'the evidence (was) not very weighty' (p. 103). On balance the same would have to be said for Jencks' refutation of the effects of school mix. Supporting the political orientation of researchers like Jencks was a particular approach to research methodology known as methodological empiricism. This research approach, epitomised by the work of Coleman and Jencks, used a quantitative methodology and emphasised neutrality in a way which left endsin the hands of policy makers and concentrated the efforts of the researcher on the meansby which these ends could be attained (Gouldner, 1971, p. 445). It was an approach directed towards establishing the existence of school effects rather than the problem of explaining them. The statistical measures used were incapable of unravelling the actual processes occuring within schools because as Karabel & Halsey (1977, p. 18) note, 'it neglected those problems that did not readily lend themselves to quantification'. The extent to which researchers ignored the limitations of methodological empiricism or were simply unaware of them is difficult to assess. By 1972, Jencks was certainly becoming aware of the limitations of this approach but used it nonetheless:
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We have ignored ... the internal life of schools. We have been preoccupied with the effects(Jencks emphasis) of schooling. ... This has led us to adopt a 'factory' metaphor ... Our research has convinced us that this is the wrong way to think about schools. The long-term effects of schooling seem much less significant to us than they did when we began our work, and the internal life of the schools seems correspondingly more important. But we will not explore the implications of this alternative view in much detail. Instead we will be content to document our scepticism about the importance of school outputs.
(1972, p. 13) On the other hand there is little evidence of widespread doubt about the validity of methodological empiricism amongst school performance researchers until the late 1970s. Overall it appears that during this period researchers were preoccupied by debates over the measurement and validity of a narrow set of empirical findings, precluding fresh examination of the prevailing problematic from different methodological and theoretical perspectives. By the late 1970s the view that schools were powerless to address social inequalities was widely accepted. It appeared that any school mix effects which did exist would not make any difference to school outcomes and could be dismissed. Many researchers agreed with Hauser and his colleagues when they argued that research on the schooling process could profitably be turned to issues other than the explanation of school to school variations in aspirations and achievements. (1976, p. 341) Research into school performance was at an impasse. In political terms it had discounted the impact of schooling in redressing inequalities of educational opportunity while in methodological terms it was incapable of investigating possible key school processes, such as school mix. However, the political climate was also changing as right wing governments took over in Britain and the US. The priority according to equality of opportunity was superseded by questions concerning efficiency and value for money. School Effectiveness Research
After the pessimism that characterised the research of the seventies, the popular appeal of school effectiveness research rested largely on the ability of its central message'schools can make a difference'-to speak in a positive and 'commonsense' way to the needs of educators and policy makers. Since the 'effective schools movement' developed in the late 1970s, the school effectiveness field has spawned a voluminous literature which has been widely reviewed both by proponents (Rutter, 1983; Cuttance, 1985; Scheerens, 1992; Reynolds, 1992) and critics (Rowan et al., 1983; Purkey & Smith, 1983; Ralph & Fennessey, 1983; Lauder & Khan, 1988; Angus, 1993). School effectiveness research certainly represents a methodological advance over previous macro-level studies in that it has, to some extent, examined the internal workings of schools. The field has typically, however, lacked a critical perspective with respect to the relationship between schools and their intakes. In part this has been because school effectiveness research has eschewed many of the central questions raised by the earlier studies about the relationship of students' social origins to their school achievement and adult life-chances. As Angus (p. 335) recently put it, the school effectiveness response to the pessimism of the seventies 'was simply to deny it, assume that schools do make a difference to student outcomes, and search for indicators of this
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difference'. In part this 'denial' can be explained in terms of the strategies adopted by the school effectiveness movement. School effectiveness researchers assumed, firstly, that 'exemplary' schools exist which achieve considerable academic success regardless of student background, and secondly, that specific, identifiable and reproducible characteristics could explain the success of these schools. By making these assumptions, school effectiveness researchers down played the significance of school intakes in a way which, while not intending to do so, chimed well with the right wing shift. This was because the right assumed schools had a much greater ability to control outcomes than had been previously thought, a position which could place a far clearer responsibility on them to be accountable. It followed for the right that schools could be held directly accountable for their outcomes. In order to focus more attention on the potential for positive reform of low SES schools, early effective schools proponents developed a position against what they saw as excessive concern with the influence of students' background characteristics on achievement. For instance, Ron Edmonds, the respected black educator and a leading proponent of the effective schools movement, argued that repudiation of the social science notion that family background is the principal cause of pupil acquisition of basic school skills is probably prerequisite to successful reform of public schools for the children of the poor. (1979, p. 23) Ralph & Fennessey (1983, p. 689) countered in an all too rare response: To repudiate an established relationship between family background and schooling simply because it conflicts with one's goals is neither pragmatically productive nor intellectually respectable behaviour. Nevertheless, in the conservative climate of the time, the kind of position taken by Edmonds and others in the interests of equity could be relatively easily turned to the cause of efficiency and accountability. It was not long before reference to the impact of school intakes on outcomes became seen as an excuse for poor performance. The argument that schools had considerable control over student outcomes required, however, the use of theoretical constructs which could, on the one hand, explain the causal processes which gave schools their power to determine outcomes while,by implication, minimising the causal contribution of school intake characteristics. While most-although not all-early school effectiveness studies acknowledged some impact of individual social class background on achievement, the notion of school 'climate' or 'ethos', was frequently used to explain away processes which might alternatively be seen as the result of school mix [7]. It was typically maintained that school ethos impacted upon students (and teachers) by raising expectations and aspirations and by improving motivation and morale. We need to examine this strategy more closely to determine how plausible it is. The privileged explanatory role accorded to school ethos is most important, for it might reasonably be asked how a school can create an ethos independent of social class mix which is so powerful that it can play a major role in overcoming the social disadvantage encountered by many working class and ethnic minority students. In order to do this I begin by looking at the research of Rutter and his associates (Rutter et al., 1979). Their work has achieved a high profile and constitutes a good example of early school effectiveness research with respect to these two strategies. In Hours, Rutter grasped the central causal issue: Ffteen Thousand The question is whether schools were as they were because of the children they
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admitted or rather whether children behaved in the way they did because of school influences. (1979, p. 181) The question is did he answer it adequately? Rutter found that school 'ethos'-the style and quality of school life, patterns of student and teacher behaviour, management and treatment of students and care of school buildings and grounds-primarily explained many between school differences in academic attainment. He hypothesised that the mean intake characteristics of a schoolwhich he called 'balance of intake'-could be one important variable determining ethos: The presence of a relatively high concentration of pupils in the upper ability groups may work to the advantage not only of the pupils themselves but also to their peers. In a similar way, a largely disadvantaged intake might depress outcomes in some cumulative way over and above the effects of disadvantaged background on the individual pupil. (1979, p. 154) Rutter found that both ability and SES mix were weakly but significantly correlated with academic attainment [8]. He then investigated whether the mix effects identified were direct or mediated through school processes by examining the relationship between the 'balance of intake' measures and the school process variables used by the study. These included the academic emphasis of schools, teacher actions in lessons, rewards and punishments, pupil conditions, children's responsibilities and participation in the school, stability of teaching and friendship groups, and staff organisation. As he found no correlation between any of these process variables and 'balance of intake', he concluded however the balance in the intake to a school may be associated with the pupils' outcomes, it does not have its impact ... on school functioning in terms of the process variables we measured. Instead it presumably has some kind of impact on the children themselves, probably through its influence on the composition and thereby on the attitudes and behaviour of the peer group. (1979, p. 159) There are three interesting points here. First, note that Rutter formulated the problem in terms of ability mix rather than social class mix. Secondly, although Rutter acknowledged a relationship between ability/SES mix and the academic outcome measure, he can not explain how this relationship works. These are both points to which I shall return. Thirdly, and more importantly in terms of this paper, the argument about mix takes second place to those about ethos in Rutter's work, for his conclusion was that variations in outcomes were systematically and strongly associated with the characteristics of schools as social institutions. The patterns of findings suggested ... a causal relationship ... not only were pupils influenced by the way they were dealt with as individuals, but also there was a group influence resulting from the ethos of the school as a social institution. (1979, p. 205) This conclusion is inadequate, however, because the main body of Rutter's analysis suggests that a more balanced treatment of ethos and 'balance of intake' was warranted. Indeed, as both Acton (1980) and Purkey & Smith (1983) have observed, the 'balance of intake' variable came to assume such importance in Rutter's analysis that it is plausible that it, rather than school ethos, was influencing school outcomes. Of course Rutter's is but one study and since it is being claimed that the privileging of school climate or ethos over social class mix has been a general feature of the school effectiveness field we should look at other influential research in this tradition. In a later summary statement on the findings of effective schools research, Rutter (1983)
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returned to the question of school ethos, citing the work of Brookover (Brookover et al., 1979). Brookover's study examined two pairs of low SES elementary schools-one predominantly white, the other largely black. Each pair shared a similar SES mix but differed considerably in their mean level of achievement. Following fieldwork in each school, observers concluded that there were predictable differences in school climate variables between the low and high achieving schools in each pair. Brookover attributed the differences in achievement between each pair of schools to these school climate variables. Now the question to be asked here is not whether climate variables do make some predictable difference, as the issue that some school policies and practices are more effective than others is not at stake [9]. Rather the key question is the extentof difference that climate variables, stemming from school organisational policies and practices, can make independent of school mix. The central tenet of the school effectiveness literature that there are verifiable examples of exemplary schools that achieve high academic standards with poor urban minority children really underpins this kind of claim. Brookover argued for example: The fact that some low SES white and black schools do demonstrate a high level of academic achievement suggests that the socio-economic and racial variables are not directly causal forces in the school social system. We therefore conclude that the school social climate and the instructional behaviour associated with it are more direct causal links in the production of achievement. (1979, p. 142) Central to this type of claim is the issue of whether in fact schools in studies like this are truly similar in terms of SES composition yet very different in terms of achievement in the first place. It is apparent that 'exemplary' has been at best a relative term. The mean score of the exemplary black school in Brookover's study was considerably less than that of the exemplary white school and the state as a whole. Purkey & Smith (1983, p. 436) pointed out that 'while the black school may have narrowed the gap, the gap remains'. They argued that an 'unusually effective' school serving predominantly low-income and minority students may in fact have considerably lower levels of attainment than a white middle class surburban school because of the pervasive influences of social class on achievement and the possibility that even the 'typical' suburban school has some important advantages over the relatively effective inner-city school. Furthermore they with Rowan et al. (1983) and Ralph and Fennessey (1983)-that suggested-along schools had often been incorrectly identified for other reasons. These include 'exemplary' measurement error, the use of data that is contradicted by other sets of contemporaneous data and follow up studies, and the apparently widespread problem of data tampering within schools. A further kind of evidence for the primacy of school policy over school mix cited by Rutter followed his work in Maughan et al. (1980). Rutter used the presence of an increased correlation between school process measures and pupil measures at the end of secondary schooling compared to the beginning, to infer the direction of causality. As school process measures were found to correlate more strongly with pupil characteristics at the end of school than at intake, he argued that teacher behaviour and school climate shape pupil characteristics rather than the other way round. This argument does not, however, take into account the possibility that pupils' orientations towards schooling might change over time because of processes that have little to do with school policies and practices but rather relate to the influence of wider social structures within and
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beyond the school such as awareness of the labour market or the absence of early school leavers. For instance Brown (1987) shows the importance of students' views of the local labour market in determining their attitudes towards their work and towards school authority in their last years of schooling. The Re-emergence of School Mix as a Theoretical Construct
The question of school mix has always had a presence in school effectiveness literature on one level through the notion of 'ability' mix. A recent review of American literature by Bryk et al. (1990), for instance, suggests that 'schools need a nucleus of motivated and academically able students to provide a stable institutional base' [10] while Smith & Tomlinson's (1989) study of multi-racial British comprehensives also found a weak effect of mean ability on the general progress of students. In much the same vein, Maughan & Rutter (1987), comparing the effectiveness of selective and non selective British schools, conclude vaguely that while an unfavourable (ability) balance was no necessary (Maughan & Rutter's emphabar to attainments, sis) nonetheless in general,(Maughan & Rutter's emphasis) the ability balance in the intakes to ... schools showed an association with the intakes of their more able pupils: the smaller the proportion of able children, the more difficult it was for schools to promote high levels of attainment. (1987, p. 67) While these studies acknowledge 'ability' mix effects, they dismiss or ignore the effects of social class mix. Bryk et al. argue that SES mix effects are 'relatively unimportant' (p. 150) while Smith & Tomlinson do not test for them and Maughan & Rutter fail to mention them. We might ask what agenda is being served by such bald discussion of 'ability' mix without reference to the effects of social class mix in the face of the large body of evidence for a strong relationship, at a general level, between school performance and social class (Halsey et al., 1980). Analyses of 'ability' mix fail to acknowledge the advantage gained by various groups in society at the expense of others by taking political dimensions out of the question of school mix, thereby rendering it a merely technical problem. Nonetheless there are signs that the impact of social class mix is starting to get more consideration in recent school effectiveness literature as the idea that schools can make some difference has become more generally accepted and the proponents of the view less rigid. For instance 'sensitivity to context' researchers in the US and the Netherlands are highlighting the limitations of a comprehensive 'recipe' approach to school effectiveness in schools with different intake characteristics. Wimpleberg et al. (1989, p. 87) notes that: Although many practitioners and academics continue to cling to the classic handful of correlates of effective schools research, extensions of that research persist in exposing context conditions that challenge the more literal readings of the earlier findings. Hallinger & Murphy (1986); Teddlie et al. (1989) and others have looked particularly at the impact of SES context on effectiveness correlates [11]. They have demonstrated that for the most part high and low mean SES schools have quite different effectiveness correlates. This finding contradicts the school effectiveness assumption that effectiveness correlates are generalisable across all schools regardless of school mix and renders
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problematic the notion that school effectiveness can be theorised independently of school mix. It is interesting to note that British research on contextual issues-apart from the work of Willms and his associates in Scotland-is relatively undeveloped in comparison to the US. Reynolds (1992, p. 16) rightly attributes this to a tendency for British school effectiveness researchers to study homogeneous, socially disadvantaged schools rather than more widely representative samples that would highlight contextual issues. (Perhaps here we can find at least some of the explanation for the privileging of 'ability' mix over social class mix noted above). Narrow sampling seems to be a problem even in School Matters (Mortimore et al., 1988), the most sophisticated and influential British school effectiveness study of recent times. While Mortimore and his associates did find some weak effects of the social class composition of school intakes on student achievement (p. 223), it is questionable whether their sample had sufficient distribution, range or size to properly address the issue. Firstly, most of the students in the study were from working class homes. Secondly, Mortimore et al. only use two broad social class categories for their analysis-manual and non-manual. Thirdly, although they argue that this crude classification is necessary because of the small numbers that would result from a more detailed analysis, they nevertheless base their findings with respect to the contextual influence of school intakes on as few as five students in any school in either of these two crude categories (p. 207). Scheerens (1991, p. 385) suggests that including contextual variables like student body composition ... can be seen as a relatively new and very interesting development in school effectiveness research. Scheerens is correct in a sense: in the school effectiveness literature an overt concern with contextual variables is new. However an undercurrent of the much older school performance tradition established by Coleman which viewed school mix as a key theoretical construct has continued to exist in the sociology of education [12]. This perspective has recently been given added prominence by the findings of McPherson & Willms (1987) and Lauder & Hughes (1990) mentioned earlier. McPherson & Willms's longitudinal study examined the impact of comprehensive reorganisation in Scotland between 1970 and 1984. Contrary to critics of various persuasions who have maintained that comprehensive schooling has failed, they found that comprehensivisation significantly reduced social class inequalities of attainment and improved average levels of attainment when measured against the inequitable pattern established in the preceding six decades. Following earlier work (Willms, 1985, 1986), they attribute the decline of SES inequality in attainment to school mix effects. They found that comprehensivisation resulted in the abolition of selection at 12 years, the closure of many short-course schools, and the redefinition of school catchments which, they argue: led to a reduction in between school segregation in many communities. This reduction allied to the rise in the SES level of the school population, distributed the benefits of a favourable school context more widely, though it must be added that these benefits are not well understood. (1987, p. 23) Lauder & Hughes studied 20 secondary schools with diverse social class mixes and academic outcomes in Christchurch, New Zealand. Their conclusion was that betweenschool differences in school outcomes are primarily determined by school mix rather than school type. In particular they argue that it is the SES mix that makes the difference
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(the sample was ethnically fairly homogeneous). They found that pupils who attended one of the five highest mean SES schools in their sample needed, on average, a DIQ of 112 to pass their national university entrance exams but that pupils that attended one of the five schools with the lowest mean SES required, on average a DIQ of 127 to achieve the same pass (1990, p. 51). In practice this kind of school mix effect meant that working class pupils with similar levels of prior achievement were on average leaving the lowest mean SES schools without national exam passes but were gaining five national examination passes from the schools with the highest mean SES.
A Case for School Mix?: Questions
worth asking
The preceding discussion has served to illustrate that the relationship between school mix and school achievement has been an enduring problem in quantitative research on school performance and student achievement. While there has been some research to suggest that school mix has no significant effect, the limitations of that research cannot be ignored. On balance, taking into account the dispositions of researchers in this area in the past, there does seem to be at least a prima facie case for the existence of a significant relationship between school mix and school achievement. That accepted, six related questions appear to form a research agenda around the problem of the impact of school mix. These are questions about the existence, size, causes and universality of a school mix effect, as well as questions about the policy implications of a school mix effect for both individual schools and national education systems. They include: (i) Does a genuine school mix effect exist or is it a proxy for some other variable? The statistical correlations found between school mix and successful school processes do not prove the existence of a genuine school mix effect because we cannot be sure of the direction of causal influence. The correlation could theoretically come about because of measurement error (Gray et al., 1990) or because (a) successful school processes cause 'school mix'; (b), 'school mix' causes successful school processes; or (c), some third variable causes both. For example one school variable that might influence school mix might be the calibre of the school principal. If good principals attract a disproportionate number of pupils from relatively privileged families because of their standard of school leadership we have an instance of case (a). If schools with a disproportionate number of pupils from relatively privileged families attract good principals because of the school mix we have an example of case (b). If schools in certain parts of a city attract disproportionate numbers of good principals and pupils from relatively privileged families because of their geographic location (e.g. they are in high cost residential areas) we have an example of case (c). The difficulty with this question as a whole is that the problem of causal direction is a particularly stubborn one that is likely to continue to resist any kind of conclusive answer. (ii) If a school mix effect does exist, how significant is it? We have seen that much of the quantitative literature suggests that a school mix effect, if it does exist, is very small while other research attributes a much greater degree of influence to school mix. The importance of any school mix effect will clearly depend on its size in relation to other variables. (iii) If a school mix effect does exist, how is it caused?
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For instance, would a school mix effect be caused (a), directly in some way by students from different social classes being in contact with each other at school (what might be called the 'differential peers' hypothesis) or (b), by the impact of school policies and practices that are possible in relatively mixed schools but not in more working class schools (the 'differential instruction' hypothesis), or (c), both of the above? [13]. The question of the causal mechanisms underlying the school mix effect is a critical one in further developing the case for or against school mix, a point to which I shall return shortly. (iv) If a school mix effect does exist, is it universally optimal or working class preferential? A number of writers have claimed that while typically middle class strong achievers may lose to some degree by mixing with largely working class low achievers, the gains of the weaker students would far outweigh the loss of the stronger (Summers & Woolfe, 1977; Henderson et al., 1978; Lauder & Hughes, 1990). Yet Willms (1986) argues that school composition is likely to be a zero sum game-that all students achieve better at higher SES schools such that balancing school mix would have a negative effect on present levels of middle class achievement. This is a key issue because a universally optimal effect is likely to make policies to balance school mix much more acceptable than an effect which could only achieve working class success at considerable expense to those who are currently successful. (v) If a school mix effect does exist, to what degree can schools promote successful school characteristics irrespective of their mix? We might ask whether the purposeful academic ethos or climate that Rutter and others have argued is a characteristic of successful schools is something that all schools can emulate or whether its existence depends on intake characteristics. The likelihood that many school policies and practices follow student characteristics has been raised recently by Glass & Matthews (1991) who suggest that Chubb and Moe's argument that 'school organisation is primarily a cause of student achievement and not a result of it' (1990, p. 114) is an article of faith, and by Kreft (1993, p. 125) who considers it likely that 'the influence of the student body is crucial to the creation and maintenance of a beneficial school climate'. Certainly there are a number of recent findings to substantiate the view that intakes strongly influence school policies. Kilgore (1991), for example, found that tracking policies reflect the SES mix of schools, while Raudenbush et al. (1992) argue that teachers' sense of self-efficacy is related to the kinds of students they teach. Thus an important question that would be highlighted by research into the effects of school mix is the extent to which schools are able to insulate themselves from the wider social processes their intakes represent or are dependent upon them. (vi) If a school mix effect does exist, what implications does this hold for national education policy? A central feature of national education systems is between-school SES segregation, often based on residential segregation. The effective schools literature has generally taken the effects of this as 'given', a contextual factor not able to be addressed by educational policies even if it is significant. For instance, Scheerens (1992, p. 93) argues that 'high numbers of disadvantaged pupils and ethnic minorities push down the performance of the entire pupil population. Because the central concern is with the construction of "effective schools" no further attention will be given to these contextual characteristics.' This kind of approach fails to acknowledge, however, that national
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education policies may affect school mix. For instance, recent market policies such as 'Open Enrolment' are seen by critics as likely to intensify between-school segregation (Bowe et al., 1992). Given that the existence of a significant school mix effect would suggest the importance of policies to balance school mix through state intervention, the question of school mix is central to recent debate over the role of the state in education.
Theorising the Causal Mechanisms Underlying School Mix: a way forward

At a time when the school effectiveness literature is opening up and entertaining the notion of school mix (Sheerens, 1991) and noticeable political shifts in the US and elsewhere appear likely to relax some of the constraints of the last decade, it is appropriate to ask if there is some way in which the research on school mix can be advanced. If this is the agenda, then it has been a theme of this paper that we need to widen the methodological perspectives used to explore school mix. For so long as the impact of school mix continues to be seen as a largely technical problem which merely requires a more rigorous, precise and well controlled version of the same large scale quantitative approach, the questions posed above are likely to remain unanswered. This is because the methods currently favoured by school effectiveness researchers, despite their increasingly sophisticated multi-level nature, will fail to capture the subtle processes represented by the concept of a school mix effect. Given the problems inherent in more of the same, investigation of possible causal mechanisms through micro-level qualitative methodology is likely to be a more rewarding direction for further research. In effect this approach would attempt to answer questions about the existence and significance of a school mix effect by demonstrating how it could work [14]. Although the resulting analysis would be unlikely to provide generalisable answers to the stubborn causal questions at the heart of the concept of school mix, it should nonetheless serve to illuminate the causal mechanisms working in particular contexts. There is some support within existing school effectiveness literature for such a research agenda. As we saw earlier, Rutter could not properly explain how 'balance of intake' effects worked: he concluded (1979, p. 155) that 'our analysis can only represent the beginnings of attempts to unravel the network of interacting influences'. Others in the school effectiveness field over the last three decades have also noted the need for detailed research into the mechanisms underlying school mix effects (Campbell & Alexander, 1965; Erbring & Young, 1979; Clifford & Heath, 1984; Willms, 1985; Bryk et al., 1990) yet it is noteworthy that this challenge has not, to date, been taken up by school effectiveness researchers. It is also clear, however, that the problem of theoretical and methodological isolation has not been confined to the school effectiveness field as the task of unpacking school mix has also been ignored by qualitative researchers. Nonetheless their work may indirectly provide some valuable starting points. For instance, the ethnographies of Lacey (1970), Willis (1977), Ball (1981), Brown (1987) andJones (1991) mentioned earlier are particularly useful for illustrating the problems and the potential presented by qualitative analyses for the 'differential peers' hypothesis [15]. Underpinning these ethnographies is the theory that society is deeply structured by class, gender and ethnic relations and that school subcultures reflect this. Class based school subcultures are seen to interact in a variety of ways with the organisation and culture of schools to produce different outcomes for different subcultural groups. From this view schools primarily reflect dominant or ruling class culture, the culture of high
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SES groups such as those from professional and managerial backgrounds. It follows that students from high SES backgrounds have an organic class relationship to the school (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Connell et al., 1982). In Bourdieu's terms, ruling class students find that the school's values, expectations and perspectives are largely consistent with their own world views. These students are amenable towards and accepted by the school such that they are able to convert their cultural capital into high credentials. As they usually perceive the school working in their interests, they generally take a positive, normative approach to the social and academic goals of the school. Working class students on the other hand will usually be instrumental or alienated rather than normative because, as a result of their significantly different class cultural background, they lack the cultural capital needed to identify with and/or be favourably received by the dominant ruling class culture of the school. Consequently many working class students struggle with their schooling and most fail to achieve academic qualifications. Now with respect to this kind of analysis it might be argued that in a school with a reasonably balanced mix, the predominant ethos of the school and of the high SES students with cultural capital would somehow 'rub off' on working class students, lifting their academic performance compared to their counterparts in predominantly working class schools. That is, the normal working class subcultural response to schooling is in some way modified or altered in schools with a more balanced SES mix [16]. Yet how this might happen depends very much on the manner in which the subcultures themselves are theorised. This issue, a central concern of the ethnographic literature on school subcultures, relates to Rutter's question about causal direction cited earlier: whether children influence schools or schools influence children. It translates in this context as the question of whether (i), subcultures result from the influence of the school; or (ii), subcultures have already been determined by children's class cultural backgrounds so that the school makes little difference; or (iii), subcultures result from the interaction of both school and class cultural processes. The first view is taken by Lacey (1970) and Ball (1981). They argue that the development of school subcultures stem from the internal sorting and selecting arrangements of schools [17]. Over time, pupils placed in low streams/bands (invariably working class) develop anti-school values while those students placed in upper streams/bands (generally middle class) exhibit pro-school and pro-academic attitudes. Lacey and Ball's work implies that working class students prefer to take a normative or at least instrumental orientation to school but are constrained from doing so by school influences which cause them to develop negative, anti-school attitudes and values. It follows that if it is the school that 'cools out' working class pupils then it may be the modification of school processes in some way that allows working class students to improve their achievement in schools with a broad school mix. Most obviously, it might be thought that schools with a broad school mix have less internal selection and therefore are less likely to alienate students. However significant school mix effects have often been found even where schools are formally stratified [18]. This model may also point to direct rather than indirect influences of high SES peers as the source of school mix effects. Perhaps despite school selection processes that alienate working class students, the presence within the school of large numbers of high SES students is helpful to working class students, influences their aspirations and lifts subsequent working class academic performance. The problem with this hypothesis is that Lacey, Ball and others have shown that there is little contact between working class and high SES students in schools. Within classrooms students from different social class backgrounds are kept apart by
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school differentiation but they are also hostile and distant out of classtimebecause their become friendshipgroups polarised. In contrastto this approach,Willis (1977) argues the second view, that workingclass students fail not because school processeswork against them but because of their own class cultural characteristics.His position is that the 'lads' prefer to take an alienated orientationto their schooling. Thus Willis'saccount recognisesthat workingclass pupils might be unwillingto succeed academicallyratherthan unable to do so. From this point of view a school mix effect would only occur because workingclass studentsare less able to form an alienatedsubculturein schools:greaterworkingclass successin sociallymixed schools would essentiallybe imposed. This might occur because the relative balance of power between the class-based orientationsof students in schools and thereforethe effectivenessof school processesis modified by school mix. In socially mixed schools, working class students may achieve better academic results beca-usethey are forced to meet the more efficient and more academic demands of the school created by its higher mean SES mix. An alienated orientationwould be more difficultto sustain here for several reasons. Firstly,given the large scale of compliance, the general administrative/disciplinary system of the school will be able to be more effective, more demanding of resisters.Secondly, teachers may be able to give more time and energy to 'difficult'pupils given that they are less likely to be swamped by motivational,behavioural and learning difficultiesthan those who teach in predominantlyworkingclass schools. A furtherreason why resistancewould be more difficultin sociallymixed schools is that there would simply be fewer studentswith alienated orientationsto provide support to resisters.The situation might be similar to that noted by Willis in the years prior to the 'coming out' of the 'lads': Even if there is some form of social division in the junior school, in the first years of the secondary school everyone it seems is an 'ear'ole'. Even the few who come to the school with a developed delinquent eye for the social landscapebehave in a conformistway because of the lack of any visiblesupport group. (1977, p. 60) This model poses difficultiesfor the concept of a school mix effect because if working class studentsare inherentlyalienated it is doubtfulwhether schools could exert such a powerfulinfleuncethat they could overcome that alienation.In any case, Willis'sanalysis is clearly flawed. He dismissesas ideological dupes the great majorityof working class studentswho do not openly resist school. Furthermore,his work does not explain why school resistancedoesn't surface much earlier. Given that it is being viewed as a class cultural attribute,an alienated orientation might be expected to show up in the early school years but there is no evidence of this. The third, interactionalview is offeredby Brown (1987) andJones (1991) who discard the dichotomy inherent in the previous approacheswhereby pupils are seen as either accepting, normativeand pro-schoolor rejecting,alienated and anti-school.They argue that the majority of working class 'ordinary kids' fit into neither of these categories. Rather they comply with the school and go along with its processes for instrumental reasons:as a means to working class ends. Brownusefullyproposesthe notion of 'framesof reference'(FORs)to highlighta range of workingclass responsesto schooling. Workingclass pupils are typicallyseen to either accept the school, (a normative 'getting out' FOR), reject it (an alienated 'getting in' FOR) or, most commonly,just comply with it (an instrumental'gettingon' FOR). FORs, the focal concerns of working class youth, represent different selections from the
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various class cultural and educational resources available to working class youth. Brown argues that working class academic success depends neither solely on pupils' attitudes to school nor on the evaluations of students by teachers but on the interplay between pupils' collective understandings of being in school and the school's own selection processes. Brown's approach presents a number of further implications for a school mix effect beyond those posed by the previous models. It suggests that working class students make various types of educational decisions based on the cultural and educational resources available to them and that their school orientations represent some kind of selection from those resources. The model implies, therefore, that a school mix effect could work in different ways and to different extents for different groups of working class students. For instance, it may be that for students with a normative 'out' FOR school mix is important because it extends the resources available, given that, as Lacey and Ball would have it, they are already positively disposed towards academic success. For students with an alienated 'in' FOR, school mix might overcome their cultural resistance in imposed ways as described in relation to Willis's work. However it is for the 'ordinary kids' with an instrumental 'on' FOR that school mix may be particularly significant. These pupils usually comply with their schooling, that is they accept the school's offerings in a kind of passive, non-decision making way. In this case the influence of higher SES students may 'rub off as the exposure to more cultural capital modifiestheir cultural attitudes, values, knowledge and world views and leads to greater academic success. Conclusion Qualitative analyses pose problems for the idea of a school mix effect but also rich possibilities when compared to the offerings of the school effectiveness field. They suggest that one fruitful approach to understanding how a school mix effect could work would be to examine how school mix modifies the school based resources available to different groups of working class pupils (the material and cultural offerings of both the school and its student body) thus altering the way students with different orientations make decisions based on those resources. Given the present state of our knowledge about the effects of school mix as well as the recent development of neo-liberal market policies in education likely to intensify intake differences between schools, such research is needed urgently. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Hugh Lauder, Phil Brown and Roger Dale for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. Martin Thrupp, School of Education, University of Waikato, Private Bag Correspondence: 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand. Email: thrupp@Waikato.ac.nz. NOTES
[1] The school mix effect might be caused by process variables merely associated with different social class mixes, such as teacher quality, rather than being more directly causal. [2] Coleman's work is often ambiguous as to whether he is attributing achievement gains primarily to the effects of students' ethnic, social class or prior achievement characteristics. He frequently combines two or more of these variables in his discussion. For instance Coleman (1990, p. 212) discusses the assumption that 'integration-at least in majority middle class white schools-would automatically improve the achievement of lower class black children'. This limitation in Coleman's work appears to result from the
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limitations of methodological empiricism noted here-that it focuses on school effects without much considerationof causal mechanisms. For a review of research on the effects of desegregationon student achievement see Mahard & Crain (1983). See Coleman (1990, pp. 165-235) for a discussion of desegregationand resegregation.Recent researchhas raisedthe questionwhetherthe particulardesign of desegregation plans may have influenced the extent of resegregation: Welch (1987) and Carr & Zeigler (1990) suggestthat this is likelybut Smock and Wilson (1991) are less optimistic. See for example Alexander & Eckland (1975). In recent years Coleman has moved away from the position that school desegregationis likely to bring about achievementgains for disadvantaged minorityyouth. He suggests(1990, pp. 212-213) 'It probably is true that desegregationunder optimal conditionswill increase achievement.But that is not the point: very likely any school changes, under optimal conditions,will have this effect. What we must look for is the effect on disadvantagedchildren that occurs under the variety of conditionsin which desegregation is actually carried out'. Coleman raises two issues here. That the practical effects of policy on real situations is what counts seems well-founded. On the other hand, school mix may well be a more significantvariable than Coleman himself has come to allow. For the controversystemming from Sewell and Armer's study see the October 1966 issue of American SociologicalReview, for Hauser see Barton(1970). These critiquesgenerallyfocus on the way school mix is specified.Sewell and Armer, for instance, credited the social class compositionof the high school with only that part of the variance in college plans that remained after the relationshipbetween ability and college plans had already been taken into account. This procedurewas disputedby Turner, Boyle and Michael because it assumedthat studentsattendedhigh SES schools because of their ability and ignored the possibilitythat the social class of the school affectedability.They reanalysedSewell and Armer'sdata to show the greater percentage of variance in college plans that resulted from taking into account the relationshipbetween ability and school social class composition. This study also differed from most ratherthan the mix of specific previouswork in that it measuredthe SES compositionof neighbourhoods, schools. Brookoveret al. (1979) usefully illustrate the development of the main causal argument used by the effective schools movement to privilege ethos or climate over the effects of school composition. Their study began by looking back to the work of McDill & Rigsby (1973) on school climate. However instead with school composition caused of arguing with McDill that normative climate variables associated achievement variance across schools, Brookover and colleagues followed Hauser (1971) to take this of independent argument a step further and suggest that normative climate variableswere really relatively school composition.In their large scale analysisof variablesdrawn from Michigan elementaryschools, they found that after controllingfor SES and ethnicity,school climate variablesstill differedsignificantly between schools and that achievement seemed to be linked to these differencesin normative climate rather than school composition.Now, although Brookoverand his colleagues admittedthat this finding did not constitute 'sufficientproof to eliminate school mix as a causal variable because of the possible influence of third variables,they still used it to assert the view (pp. 141-142) that 'school climate rather than family background as reflected in student body composition has the more direct effect on achievement'. Rutter et al. are able to suggest that the effect of ability mix on academic outcomes is more significant than social class mix and largely independent of it because of the sampling procedures used. Their sample, comprisingworking class South London schools, was relativelyhomogenous. Had they chosen a more heterogenoussample it is most likelythat they would have found that, in general,there is a strong correlationbetween social class and school achievement outcomes. However I would argue with Hallinger& Murphy (1986) and Teddlie et al. (1989) that particularschool policies and practicesare effectivewith particulartypes of studentsinstead of with all studentsas school effectivenessresearchershave frequentlyclaimed. They cite in particularthe multi-levelwork of Barr & Dreeben (1983) who, in a relativelydetailed study of primary classrooms,show that the characteristicsof a student group influence teachers' work to a considerableextent and that classroomswith a predominantlylow ability mix are the most problematic teaching environments. Hallinger & Murphy (1986, p. 347) found for instance that 'High and low SES effective schools (are) characterisedby different patterns of curricularbreadth, time allocation, goal emphasis, instructional leadership, opportunitiesfor student reward, expectations for student achievement and home-school relations'. See for instance Summers & Wolfe (1977), Henderson et al. (1978) and Shavit & Williams (1984).
[3]
[4] [5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
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[13] See Dreeban & Barr (1988) and the responseby Hallinan (1988) for two perspectiveson these different hypotheses. Thrupp (1993) also examines these issues. to examine a questionwhich has emergedfrom research [14] This is, of course, employinga realistframework undertakenwithin a positivistparadigm. Epistemologicalblinkershave considerablyhindered research into the effects of school mix. instruction'hypothesisalthoughperhaps [15] These ethnographiesae also useful for exploringthe 'differential to a lesser extent. See for instance Gamoran & Berends (1987) and Thrupp (1993). [16] This is suggestedby Lauder & Hughes (1990). [17] Hammersley (1992) provides a useful analysis of Lacey and Ball's 'differentiation-polarisation' theory. [18] In Lauder& Hughes study,for example, virtuallyall the schoolswere banded. On the other hand, Shavit & Williams (1985) suggest that school mix effects may be largely replaced by group mix effects where schools are internallystratified.It might also be, of course, that socially mixed schools are less alienating in more subtle ways for working class students than formal school arrangementssuggest.
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The School Mix Effect - The History of An Enduring Problem in Educational Research, Policy and Practice

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The School Mix Effect: The History of an Enduring Problem in Educational Research, Policy and Practice Author(s): Martin

BritishJournal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1995

University of Waikato,New Zealand

Mix Effect TheSchool Coleman et al. and Liberal Educational Intervention

The SchoolMix Effect

The SchoolMix Effect

TheSchool Mix Effect

TheSchool Mix Effect

A Case for School Mix?: Questions

Mix Effect TheSchool

Theorising the Causal Mechanisms Underlying School Mix: a way forward

TheSchool Mix Effect

TheSchool Mix Effect

TheSchool Mix Effect

M. (1992) What's Wrong with Ethnography(London, Routledge). HAMMERSLEY,

(New York, Basic Books). Inequality

R. L. (1983) Research on minority achievementin desegregatedschools, in: C. H. R. E. & CRAIN, MAHARD,

Mix Effect TheSchool

the basic findingsreconsidered,in: F. MOSTELLER M. (1972) Equalityof educationalopportunity: & D. SMITH,

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