Transcript Slide 1

Lifelong Learning, Equality and Social
Cohesion
Presentation at
University of Latvia
3.10.2012
Andy Green
Director of ESRC-LLAKES Centre
Institute of Education
University of London
Structure of Presentation
1. Social benefits of education at different levels
-Benefits to individuals
-Education and social capital
-Education and social cohesion
2. Pathways for social effects of learning
-Distributional Effects
-Socialisation
3. The problem of educational inequality
4. Regimes of Social Cohesion, the Crisis and Education
• What holds different societies together?
• Recent trends and vulnerabilities in each regime
Individual Level Effects
Studies for various countries demonstrate that more educated
people have higher levels of :
•
•
•
•
Interpersonal trust and institutional trust
Civic and political engagement
Democratic values
Tolerance
and lower levels of violent crime.
(Nie et al., 1996; Stubager, 2008; Hagendoorn, 1999; Emler and Frazer, 1999;
Putnam, 2000). (Nie et al., 1996; Stubager, 2008; Hagendoorn, 1999; Emler and Frazer,
1999; Putnam, 2000; McMahon, 1999).
Some Findings from Analyses of UK
Longitudinal Data
(Feinstein et al., 2003).
Compared with those educated to level 2:
• Graduates 70-80% more likely to report excellent health
• Graduate males 55% less likely to suffer depression
• Graduates males 3.5 times more likely to be a member of a
voluntary association (F=2.5x)
• Graduates between 30% and 40% more likely to hold positive
attitudes to race and gender equality
• Graduates are 50% more likely to vote
Education and Social Capital
Education is also found to contribute to the social capital of individuals
and groups.
SC defined as ‘features of social life – networks, norms and trust – that
enable to participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared
objectives’ (Putnam, 2006)
Putnam (2000) finds that more educed people are more likely to join
associations and be civically active. Repeated interactions in Groups
increased levels of trust and tolerance.
- Individuals thus benefit from enhanced networks
- Neighbourhoods benefits from more co-operation and cohesion etc
Education and Social Cohesion
Social capital amongst individuals, families and local communities is not
the same thing as social cohesion at the country level.
Intra-group bonding does not always translate into inter-group harmony.
A country can have high levels of social capital in particular communities
but not be at all socially cohesive (eg Northern Ireland would be a good
example : see Schuller, Field et al, 2000).
It follows that:
Individual social benefits through increased learning do not necessarily
translate into societal effects or coincide with increased social cohesion.
The Paradox of Levels
There are a number of reasons for this.
• The individual level effects are ‘relative’ or ‘positional’ ie one
person’s social gain through improved learning outcomes will
be another’s loss through relatively diminished skills.
• Other factors at the national level overwhelm the statistical
relation between education and social outcomes.
• Indirect effects and contextual differences: effects at the
societal level are indirect - ie they work through other factors
which may differ from society to society.
Contextual Effects on Tolerance
Research for a number of countries shows that more educated people tend to be more
tolerant (eg Putnam, 2000). It is argued that education can develop both cognitive
resources and values which protect against racial prejudice (Hagendorn, 1999).
However, there is no clear-cut relationship across countries between levels of education
and tolerance (Green, Preston and Janmaat, 2006). This is probably because other
factors overwhelm education effects at the national level.
The prevailing political climate, for instance, has strong effects on tolerance. Also,
Eurobaromter data suggest that levels of tolerance in EU countries vary according to the
actual and perceived proportion of immigrants (Halman, 1994).
In a study of EVS data Jasinska-Kania (1999) shows that the impact of education on
racial tolerance is greater in countries with higher levels of immigrants (perhaps
because there are more circumstantially-driven racist attitudes that can be countered by
education).
Contextual Effects on Civic Participation
Various studies (eg Emler and Fraser, 1999) have shown a strong relationship at
the individual level between civic knowledge and civic activity. However, this
relationship does not necessarily hold at a national level.
The IEA Civic Education study of 14-year olds in 28 countries (Torney-Purta et al,
2001) found that levels of civic knowledge were relatively high in Finland, Norway,
Poland, Slovak Republic and Czech Republic. The context of the political changes
occurring in the transition countries no doubt contributed.
Nordic countries scored low in support for different forms of political participation and
the Czech Republic low in support for non-conventional forms of civic engagement.
The Slovak Republic scored in high civic knowledge, but low in support for rights for
women and ethnic minorities (like Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania).
Contextual Effects on Education and
Crime
In countries such as England and Germany father absence was associated
with higher delinquency, whereas in Nordic countries this was not the case.
This is possibly due to different welfare arrangements between countries
whereby single parent families receive more support in Nordic states (JungerTas, 2000).
Similarly, whereas there was a relation between large peer groups and
delinquency in some countries, this was not the case in southern Europe where,
arguably, these are more common.
Robert Nie on Political Engagement and Network Centrality
Robert Nie et al. (2006), using OLS regressions over time on US data, find that
it is the relative, rather than absolute, level of education that is important in
determining levels of political engagement.
More educated people have more opportunity to achieve ‘network centrality’
Giving access to politicians, thus giving individuals an incentive to participate.
However, network centrality is a ‘zero-sum’ property - the gains for
one individual will automatically entail losses for others.
Thus while average education levels may be getting higher in North America
this does not necessarily lead to higher level of political engagement.
Learning effects on social capital (joining, volunteering and engagement)
Status
Network centrality
Learning
Joining
volunteering
civic engagement
Cognitive resources
(knowledge, skills etc)
Adapted from R. Nie
Which Effects are Absolute rather than Positional?
If individual social effects from learning are ‘absolute’ they are likely to
aggregate into societal effects. If the are ‘relative’ or ‘positional’ they
may not do so.
Campbell (2006) has argued that it is only when people are in direct
competition with one another that social effects are positional. He indeed
only finds a positional effect on ‘competitive political activity’.
However, recent research shows positional effects for
• voter turnout (Burden, 2009; Tenn,2007),
• political sophistication (Highton, 2009)
• and democratic citizenship (Persson and Oscarsson, 2010).
LLAKES Research on Macro-Social Benefits
In our early research (Green, Preston and Janmaat, 2006) we found no
correlations across countries between levels of adult skills and levels of:
• Trust
• Tolerance
Strong correlations between skills equality and various measures of
social cohesion. Since this contradicts the relationships at the individual
level, we surmised from that learning effects are typically:
•
•
•
indirect (working through something else and thus highly dependent
on context)
Positional
distributional
Educational Equality and Social
Cohesion
Our research suggests that it is not so much the
average level of education in a country which matters
most for social cohesion, but rather how the skills
acquired are spread around.
Correlations between Adult Skills
Distribution and Trust
We measured skills inequality using IALS crosscountry data on adult numerical skills, using the
‘test score ratio method’
Trust in other people is based on World Values
Survey Data.
70
NW
60
DEN
NL
SW
CAN
50
General Trust
FIN
IRL
D
40
AU
SZ
US
PO
30
UK
B
POR
20
10
0
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
Education Inequality
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.60
1.50
USA
POR
Income inequality
1.40
CAN
1.30
PO
SZ
IRL
B
AU
FIN
1.20
NW
UK
NL
SW
DEN
D
1.10
1.00
20.00
25.00
30.00
35.00
Test score ratio
40.00
45.00
Inequality and Trust
Countries with more equal skills distributions have higher levels of trust.
This probably works partly through the effects of skills distribution on
income distribution, but the correlation exists independently of income
distribution. If the relationship is causal , causality probably works both
ways.
• Greater inequality of skills and incomes produces stress through
creating high-stakes competition which reduces the capacity to trust in
others.
• Inequalities in levels of education and skill increases CULTURAL
DISTANCE between individuals and groups and makes trusting more
difficult.
Over Time Analysis
Using time series data on education inequality, income
inequality and social cohesion measures over time (19601990) for industrialised countries.
• Measure of educational inequality: Education Gini based
computed from data on highest level of education
• Measure of unrest comprising riots, strikes and
demonstrations.
• Measure of civil liberties based on freedom house scale.
6
4
2
0
-2
0
.2
.4
edgini
.6
.8
2
0
-2
-4
-6
0
.2
.4
edgini
.6
.8
Relationships
• Education inequality highly correlated with unrest
but the relationship is non-linear. As education
inequality rises ‘unrest‘ first drops slightly and
then rises sharply.
• Educational inequality is generally negatively
related to civil liberties but the relationship is
again non-linear. As education inequalities rise,
civil liberties first decline, then rise and then drop
sharply.
The Contextual influence of the Labour Market
Marie Duru-Bellat analyses the relationships between educational
inequality (amongst school students), returns to education and social
cohesion at the school level.
• Social cohesion is a composite measure based on questions to students
in the PISA surveys (relating to trust in the school and its teachers;
feeling at home in school, and whether school is useful for them).
• Education equality is based on variance and social gradients in PISA.
• The return to education measure is based on employment rates and
incomes of graduates compared to those with less than US education.
She finds no relation between educational equality and the student social
cohesion measure. However, there is a negative correlation between
returns to education and social cohesion.
Socialisation Effects
Citizenship Education and /Civic Competences
An important component of social cohesion is Civic Competence: the knowledge, skills
and values that people need to participate effectively in a liberal democratic society.
We examined the links between education system characteristics and the levels and
distributions of civic competences across countries using the cross-national Cived data.
Amount of citizenship education unrelated to the acquisition of civic competences.
However, learning through social participation and dialogue, both inside and outside
school, shows a strong positive relationship with Citizenship knowledge and skills, and
active citizenship dispositions, across a wide range of countries.
(Hoskins, Janmaat, and Villalba forthcoming).
Education Systems and Civic Competences
When compared with comprehensive systems, selective
education systems have:
• higher levels of social segregation across classrooms;
• greater disparities in civic knowledge and skills;
• larger peer effects on civic knowledge and skills - meaning
that the latter are strongly affected by the social backgrounds
and achievement levels of other students in the class.
(Janmaat forthcoming).
Classroom Diversity and Values
Students who spend longer in mixed-ability classes are more likely to
share basic values in areas such as tolerance and patriotism, regardless of
their social own ethnic group (Janmaat & Mons 2011).
Ethnic diversity in the classroom seems to promote tolerance in some
countries, but not in all.
In Germany and Sweden, native majority students tend to be more
tolerant when in ethnically diverse classrooms.
In England, no such relationship was found. Furthermore, in English
classrooms white students were less tolerant the better their minority
ethnic peers performed in terms of civic knowledge and skills. This may
again be related status and competition anxiety.
Relationship between System Organisation and Collective Values
Qualitative research (Morris) has shown that in countries in East Asia,
with highly centralised education systems, the curriculum (and
particularly moral and civic education) has powerful effects on student
values.
In recent research (Janmaat, Han and Morris) we have tested the
relationships between system centralisation and socialisation across a
range of countries using data on system characteristics from existing
datasets (INCA) and data we collected ourselves from panels of experts.
We find that more centralised education systems tend to be associated
with a stronger propensity towards ‘collective values’.
Composite Indicators
Measures derived from questions to panel of experts regarding
characteristics of national education systems.
Composite indicator for Centralisation:
• Civics and Moral Ed compulsory with specified hours
• State control of Curriculum
• State approval of textbooks
Collective Values Composite
• Substantive rather than procedural values
• Low emphasis on Moral autonomy/critical thinking
• Focus on collective rather than individual
• Focus on ethnic rather than civic identity
Macro Social Benefits Less Likely in
Unequal Education Systems
Outcomes of learning are much more unequal in
some countries than others.
• Nordic and East Asian countries ted to have relatively
equal outcomes
• ‘Liberal’ and ‘Social market countries tend to have
rather unequal outcomes.
LLL more successful in promoting social cohesion in
the first group
Total Variance in Scores By Country Group: PISA 2000, 2009
Between School Variance by Country Group, 2009, 2009
Part Three: Regimes of Social
Cohesion
Historical and contemporary evidence suggests
that countries ‘hold together’ in different ways.
The different traditions of thought in political
philosophy and sociology on social cohesion and
social solidarity suggest different models of
social cohesion in different parts of the world.
Liberal Regime
• Emphasis on an active civil society, particularly at the local
level. A vibrant civil society is believed to incubate trust
spontaneously through repeated social interactions between
individuals and groups.
• The role of the central state is played down, including its
institutional roles for providing welfare and social protection
and for promoting equality through re-distribution.
• The core values which help to bind society in the liberal
regime are tolerance, meritocracy and opportunity.
• A wider set of shared values and a common identity are
thought to be incompatible with individual freedom and
cultural diversity.
Republican Regime
• The republican discourse emphasises the state rather than civil
society.
• The state promotes social cohesion through its institutions for
welfare, social protection and re-distribution.
• It also plays a role in disseminating (through public education)
a common (national) identity and a broad set of shared values
which emphasise belonging to, and active participation in, a
political community at the national rather than local level.
• The state also plays a supervisory role in relation to key
institutions in civil society which are seen to intermediate
conflicts, such as professional and employer institutions.
Social Democratic Regime
• The social democratic discourse follows the republican
discourse in most of its essentials, except that here the
stress on equality is more profound.
• Like republican theory social democratic theory
emphasises both the role of the state and that of
autonomous but state- sanctioned national civil society
organisations
• Social partnership is a key concept in both
contemporary traditions pointing to importance of
conflict intermediation through representative civil
society organisations.
Recent Research
Our recent research in LLAKES uses a wide range of
measures to test whether these different regimes
can be identified in contemporary societies.
The data:
• Data on social attitudes from international surveys
(such as WVS and ISSP)
• International administrative data
Component
Tradition/regime
Inequality
Social Democratic (-)
Wage
regulation
Liberal (+)
Social Democratic (+)
Social Market (+)
Indicator(s)
Indicators based on administrative data
Gini coefficient on household income


Union coverage
Centralization of wage bargaining
Liberal (-)
Employment
protection
State
involvement
Welfare state
Ethno-racial
diversity
Crime /
disorder
Liberal (-)
Employment protection legislation 1998
Social market (+)
Liberal (-);
Public employment as percentage of total employment 2000
Social democratic (+);
Social market (+);
Liberal (-);
Public social expenditure as percentage of GDP 2000
Social democratic (+)
Liberal (+)
Proportion of the population born abroad 2000
East-Asian (-)
Liberal (+)
East Asian (-)


Homicide rate
Violent crime 2000
Measures based on survey data
Social trust
Social democratic (+)
Percentage saying most people can be trusted
Social Market (-)
Value diversity
East Asian (+)
Social market (-)
Composite indicator representing the dispersion of opinions
East Asian (-)
Liberal (+)
Active civic participation Liberal (+)
East Asian (-)
Passive participation in
Social market (+)
nationwide organizations
Social democratic (+)
Freedom vs equality
East Asian (-)
Liberal (+);
Number of different voluntary organizations worked for
Number of different organizations belonging to
Freedom or equality more important; percentage preferring freedom
Social market (-);
Merit vs equality
Social democratic (-)
Liberal (+);
Pay according to performance
Social market (+);
Ethnocultural versus
civic identities
Social democratic (-)
Romantic conservative (+); East Asian (+); Strength of cultural relative to political conceptions of national identity
Liberal (-)
Ethnic tolerance
Liberal (+); Romantic conservative (-);
East Asian (-)


Social hierarchy
East Asian (+);
Percentage saying one should always love and respect one’s parents
Gender equality
Social market (+)
East Asian (-)
Percentage disagreeing that in times of scarcity men have more right to a job than women
Social market (-)
Social democratic (+)
Xenophobia index; average (inverse indicator)
Percentage not mentioning minding foreigners as neighbours
Liberal
Social Democratic
Social Market
East Asian
Mean: -.70
Minimum: -7.25
Maximum: 16.44
Mean: 2.07
Minimum: -3.43
Maximum: 13.80
Mean: -.59
Minimum: -10.97
Maximum: 5.50
Mean: .09
Minimum: -9.34
Maximum: 11.85
Included components
Included components
Included components
Included components
Inequality +
Diversity +
Welfare state State involvement Wage regulation
-(Union
coverage)
Wage
regulation
–
(Centralized bargain)
Empl protection Crime + (homicide)
Inequality Diversity Welfare state +
State involvement+
Wage regulation + (Union
coverage)
Wage
regulation
+
(Centralized bargain)
Crime – (homicide)
Diversity +
Welfare state +
Empl protection +
Wage regulation + (Union
coverage)
Wage
regulation
+
(Centralized bargain)
Diversity Welfare state Empl protection +
Crime – (homicide)
Active part +
Passive part Value diversity +
Merit +
Freedom +
Ethnic
tolerance
(neighbours measure)
Gender equality +
Active part +
Passive part +
Value diversity Merit Freedom +
+
Gender equality Active part Passive part Value diversity Merit +
Freedom Ethnic
tolerance
(neighbours measure)
Gender equality Active part Passive part Value diversity Merit +
Social hierarchy +
- Ethnic
tolerance
(neighbours measure)
–
Results
The statistical analysis uses :
•
•
•
•
Correlations and scatter plots
Cluster analysis
Factor Analysis
Composite indicators and indexes.
Different regimes of social cohesion can be readily identified.
On all the tests countries and their social cohesion
characteristics cluster very much as the theory would
suggest.
Rank order of countries on the four indexes
Liberal
Country
CAN
GB
IRE
GER
NL
AU
DEN
SP
ITA
POR
FRA
FIN
SWE
B
Social Democratic
Social Market
East Asian
Score
Country
Score
Country
Score
Country
Score
16.81
SWE
15.90
AU
5.59
KOR
11.66
9.24
4.43
-.14
-.74
-1.93
-2.05
-2.13
-2.27
-2.49
-2.86
-3.96
-4.48
-5.49
-6.08
DEN
NL
FIN
B
AU
GER
IRE
SP
GB
FRA
CAN
ITA
10.76
8.15
7.42
3.11
.81
.28
.19
-.42
-.80
-1.10
-2.62
-2.92
-3.26
-5.39
POR
GER
FRA
ITA
B
SWE
FIN
NL
SP
DEN
IRE
GB
CAN
3.12
3.05
2.27
1.82
.83
.45
-.37
-.59
-1.74
-2.84
-3.14
-5.54
-6.76
-11.33
JAP
CZE
POL
ITA
SP
POR
SLV
GER
AU
IRE
FRA
FIN
GB
NL
B
DEN
CAN
SWE
9.10
3.37
2.65
2.34
2.02
1.97
1.21
-.12
-.52
-.89
-1.35
-2.00
-2.03
-2.49
-3.40
-3.69
-4.23
-7.24
-8.13
POR
Trends
Trends in Social Trust
55
50
45
40
Liberal
Social Market
Southern European
35
East Asian
30
25
20
1981
1990
2000
2005
Trends in Political Trust
65
60
55
50
45
Social Democratic
Southern European
Social Market
40
Liberal
35
30
25
20
1981
1990
2000
2005
Current Vulnerabilities in Each Regime
Each regime of social cohesion is currently vulnerable at
the points most essential to its model.
• The Liberal Regime relies on opportunity and the belief in
meritocratic rewards to hold the together. This is challenged
by rising inequality and declining social mobility (in UK
and the US) particularly.
• The Republican Regime has traditionally relied on widely
shared common values. This is increasingly challenged by
cultural diversity.
• The Social Democratic Regime relies heavily on its
universalist welfare state. This is challenged by
globalisation and immigration.
Conclusion
Precipitous declines in levels of social and political trust
in many countries are one of the most graphic indications
of the widespread weakening of social cohesion.
Education can have a major role to play in counteracting
this.
However, it is not how much education a country has that
makes the difference, but how it is shared around.
References
Green, Preston and Janmaat (2006) ‘Education,
Equality and Social Cohesion’, Palgrave.
Green and Janmaat (2011) ‘Regimes of Social
Cohesion: Societies and the Crisis of
Globalisation’, Palgrave.
Llakes.org