Svetlomir Zdravkov, postdoctoral student of the JustEdu project’s took part at the ECER 2023 Conference: The Value of Diversity in Education and Educational Research held in-person between the 22nd and the 25th of August 2023 in Glasgow, United Kingdom: ECER 2023, Glasgow | EERA (eera-ecer.de)
This conference aimed to address the many different forms of diversity in educational research, be they conceptual, contextual or methodological, and explore the creation of a wide range of practices within and between each. Ultimately it sought to highlight the successes and challenges resulting from the commitment of educational researchers and educational research to address and include diversity in all aspects of what we do. More specifically, it addressed two main questions:
How does educational research contribute to unpacking challenges that are brought about by the increasing visibility of different forms of diversity?
How does it account for different approaches, methods and outcomes that have been developed in educational contexts around the globe, and provide insights to elaborate inclusive educational policy measures?
Dr. Zdravkov presented the paper Inequalities in Participation in Online Courses Across Europe: The Heuristic Potential of Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital Theory, prepared within the JustEdu project.
Abstract
The presentation is focused on understanding participation disparities in online courses, utilizing data from the EU Information and Communications Technologies Usage by Households and Individuals for 2021. The results rely on a dataset consisting of 95,345 adults from 28 countries, aged 25-64, to investigate the factors influencing participation in online courses. Employing logistic regressions and multilevel modelling techniques, the associations between individual and macro-level variables are explored.
In order to understand the educational inequalities shaping online courses and explain why the individuals from some countries are less interested in participation, an analytical framework that takes into account the broader context of educational and social inequalities is needed to systematically explain the empirical phenomena under study. This is why this article examines online courses from the point of view of Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory.
The study revealed that cultural capital, encompassing embodied, objectified, and institutionalized dimensions, significantly impacts participation in online courses. Notably, institutionalized cultural capital, measured by the level of education, emerged as the most robust predictor. It is found that manual workers exhibit lower odds of engaging in online courses compared to non-manual workers, highlighting the role of economic fields in shaping participation patterns.
Moreover, the study uncovered that a country’s level of innovation can mitigate the impact of cultural capital inequalities, particularly in terms of education and access to devices, though not digital skills. These findings underscore the importance of nation-states in the global educational landscape and their influence on participation disparities in online courses.
