AERS Schools and Social Capital Project 1 Education and Inequalities : defining and measuring social capital

Social Capital has been identified as a construct that may mediate learner outcomes in school and in their transition from school. The Schools and Social Capital Network in the Applied Education Research Scheme (AERS) has been formed to explore whether social capital is related to outcomes of schooling, and whether enhancing social capital in a community can lead to enhanced outcomes for schools and their participants. Social capital requires cooperation, trust, reciprocity, civic engagement and collective well being. Putnam (1993, 177-181) drew this conclusion from a study commenced in 1970 of the first twenty years of regional governance in Italy. These conditions foster individuals, and support growth and development for the society as a whole. The conditions under which we learn to cooperate matter a great deal to the outcomes. Cooperation and trust and reciprocity depend on norms built over time, and on a network of interdependent cooperative arrangements that makes it costly for a person to exploit the reciprocity principle, by taking but not returning (Putnam, 1993, 169). In order to explore the implications of these theories for schooling, and assess the ways in which they might be applied in order to challenge inequalities, it is necessary to attempt to define and to quantify social capital. This is the focus of the first project in the Schools and Social Capital Network. In this paper, definitions of some categories of 1 Delma Byrne from University of Edinburgh located six of the eight surveys that are referenced in this paper. 2 Prof. Jenny Ozga, Edinburgh University and Prof. Julie Allan, University of Stirling, have provided valuable comments on this paper. social capital are considered; criteria for selecting indicators of social capital at national level are discussed; and the potential utility of a range of public statistical collections is assessed against the criteria. Introduction: Social Capital: a contested concept Like many terms that are widely used in political and policy debates, as well as in the academic research community, there are many views about what constitutes social capital, and criticisms of the construct. In the AERS proposal, reference was made to the concept as described by Putnam (1993), namely as: ‘features of social life-networks, norms and trust – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives. The norms include reciprocity, cooperation and tolerance’. The intended outcome of enhancing social capital is as ‘a means of bonding fragmented social life, and bridging communities to their external environments’. Several authors have expressed reservations about the use of social capital as a tool for reform (e.g. Scanlon, 2004) and about the appropriateness of using quantitative methods to measure social capital (e.g. Horvat et al, 2003). These debates connect to wider debates about current policy. The first one concerns the potential of any form of performance measurement for progressive use in challenging, rather than reinforcing, inequalities. The second is focused on the penetration of policy into hitherto private areas of life, often with the requirement of evidence of ‘responsible’ behaviour as a precondition of some form of entitlement or recognition. The Network recognises that the term is contested, and seeks to interrogate the validity of the construct and to acknowledge and encourage alternative views. This working paper is part of that process. Official and Research data on Social Capital In order to assess the usefulness of social capital as a concept that could be applied in education in order to reduce inequalities we need to assess the currently available data. There is a range of public surveys that include information relevant to monitoring social capital in Scotland. Drawing on Putnam (2000), criteria are proposed for selecting those public surveys that are recommended for use in the AERS network projects. The core principle that Putnam advocates is 'no single source of data is flawless'. Hence he advocates what amounts to triangulation of data sources around any significant component of social capital. Multiple sources allows a search for congruity among outcomes across components of social capital to secure evidence of current status and more importantly, of change over time. There may be some indicators that provide seemingly conflicting data, and care will be needed to distinguish genuine post hoc explanations of difference from rationalisation or wishful thinking. The criteria outlined below are continuity, comparability, and comprehensiveness.