Explaining Educational Choice

Abstract

Past research on educational choice has revealed good correlations between it and social class. Such research has two weaknesses; it fails to specify a mechanism connecting structural attributes and individual behaviour, and it cannot account for deviants. One attempt to remedy these deficiencies is supplied by explanations cast in terms of class values. This paper criticises such explanations, and suggests that the real determinant is to be found in economic differences which are only properly visible over the whole working career. Such economic differences partly cross-cut traditional occupational divisions. Economic experience is projected to construct models of the world which are used in making decisions.