Obtaining a higher education is critical to financial security, high-status career opportunities, and an increased quality of life. As such, understanding the barriers to educational attainment that certain disadvantaged groups must scale is paramount to creating a more equitable, productive, and diverse workforce. This special issue presents seven papers that focus on how the extant educational culture and structure contribute to or reinforce group-based inequalities in educational outcomes and experiences.
BaumS.PayeaK. (2004). Education pays 2004: The benefits of higher education for individuals and society. Washington, DC: College Board.
2.
BiddleB. J. (2001). Poverty, ethnicity, and achievement in American schools. In BiddleB. (Ed.), Social class, poverty, and education: Policy and practice (pp. 1–29). London, UK: RoutledgeFalmer.
3.
BourdieuP.PasseronJ. C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture. London, UK: Russell Sage.
4.
BowenH. R. (1997). Investment in learning: The individual and social value of American higher education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
5.
CampbellS. D.Carter-SowellA. R.BattleJ. S. (2019). Campus climate comparisons in academic pursuits: How race still matters for African American college students. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 390–402.
6.
CovarrubiasR.LaiducG.ValleI. (2019). Growth messages increase help-seeking and performance for women in STEM. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 434–451.
7.
CroizetJ.-C.GoudeauS.MarotM.MilletM. (2017). How do educational contexts contribute to the social class achievement gap: Documenting symbolic violence from a social psychological point of view. Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 105–110. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.025
8.
CroizetJ.-C.MilletM. (2012). Social class and test performance: From stereotype threat to symbolic violence and vice versa. In InzlichtM.SchmaderT. (Eds.), Stereotype threat: Theory, process, and application (pp. 188–201). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
9.
ElliotA. J.DweckC. S. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of competence and motivation. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
10.
EllisJ.FosdickB. K.RasmussenC. (2016). Women 1.5 times more likely to leave STEM pipeline after calculus compared to men: Lack of mathematical confidence a potential culprit. PLoS ONE, 11. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0157447
11.
FischerC. S.HoutM.JankowskiM. S.LucasS. R.SwidlerA.VossK. (1996). Inequality by design: Cracking the bell curve myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
12.
FloreP. C.MulderJ.WichertsJ. M. (2019). The influence of gender stereotype threat on mathematics test scores of Dutch high school students: A registered report. Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology. doi:10.1080/23743603.2018.1559647
13.
FreemanT. M.AndermanL. H.JensenJ. M. (2007). Sense of belonging in college freshmen at the classroom and campus levels. The Journal of Experimental Education, 75, 203–220. doi:10.3200/JEXE.75.3.203-220
14.
HerrnsteinR. J.MurrayC. (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York, NY: The Free Press.
15.
HillC.CorbettC.St. RoseA. (2010). Why so few? Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Washington, DC: The American Association of University Women (AAUW).
16.
JettenJ.IyerA.ZhangA. (2017). The educational experience of students from low socio-economic status background. In MavorK. I.PlatowM. J.BizumicB. (Eds.), Self and social identity in educational contexts (pp. 112–125). New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
17.
JuryM.AeleneiC.ChenC.DarnonC.ElliotA. J. (2019). Examining the role of perceived prestige in the link between students’ subjective socioeconomic status and sense of belonging. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 356–370.
18.
National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2017). Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering: 2017 (Special Report NSF 17-310). Retrieved from https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19304/
19.
NieuwenhuisM.MansteadA. S. R.EasterbrookM. J. (2019). Accounting for unequal access to higher education: The role of social identity factors. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 371–389.
20.
OakesP. J.HaslamS. A.TurnerJ. C. (1994). Stereotyping and social reality. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
21.
OstroveJ. M.LongS. M. (2007). Social class and belonging: Implications for college adjustment. The Review of Higher Education, 30, 363–389. doi:10.1353/rhe.2007.0028
22.
PernaL. W. (2003). The private benefits of higher education: An examination of the earnings premium. Research in Higher Education, 44, 451–472. doi:10.1023/A:1024237016779
23.
PernaL. W. (2005). The benefits of higher education: Sex, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic group differences. Review of Higher Education: Journal of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, 29, 23–52. doi:10.1353/rhe.2005.0073
24.
RjoskC.RichterD.LüdtkeO.EcclesJ. S. (2017). Ethnic composition and heterogeneity in the classroom: Their measurement and relationship with student outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109, 1188–1204. doi:10.1037/edu0000185
25.
RoyceE. (2018). Poverty and power: The problem of structural inequality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
26.
SansoneC.HarackiewiczJ. M. (1996). “I don’t feel like it”: The function of interest in self-regulation. In MartinL. L.TesserA. (Eds.), Striving and feeling: Interactions among goals, affect, and self-regulation (pp. 203–228). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
27.
SmithJ.PenderM.HowellJ. (2013). The full extent of student–college academic undermatch. Economics of Education Review, 32, 247–261. doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2012.11.001
28.
SteeleC. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist, 52, 613–629. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.52.6.613
29.
SteeleC. M.AronsonJ. (1995). Stereotype vulnerability and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 797–811. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.69.5.797
30.
StephensN. M.FrybergS. A.MarkusH. R. (2011). When choice does not equal freedom: A sociocultural analysis of agency in working class American contexts. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 33–41. doi:10.1177/1948550610378757
31.
StephensN. M.MarkusH. R.PhillipsL. T. (2014). Social class culture cycles: How three gateway contexts shape selves and fuel inequality. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 611–634. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115143
32.
TajfelH.TurnerJ. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In WorchelS.AustinW. G. (Eds.), The psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.
33.
ThomanD. B.LeeG. A.ZambranoJ.GeerlingD. M.SmithJ. L.SansoneC. (2019). Social influences of interest: Conceptualizing group differences in education through a self-regulation of motivation model. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 330–355.
34.
ThomasS. L.PernaL. W. (2004). The opportunity agenda: A reexamination of postsecondary reward and opportunity. In SmartJ. C. (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 19, pp. 43–84). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
35.
VeldmanJ.MeeussenL.van LaarC. (2019). A social identity perspective on the social-class achievement gap: Academic and social adjustment in the transition to university. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 403–418.
36.
WölferR.CaroD. H.HewstoneM. (2019). Academic benefit of outgroup contact for immigrant and nonimmigrant students. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 22, 419–433.
