2000

This paper examines three types of human capital (individual, social, and cultural) in literature relating to immigration. Questions to be addressed in the paper include first, what is meant by these types of human capital and what are their sources in immigrant and other families; second, what is expected of educational systems in developing such capital; and third, given the actual experiences of immigrant children, what, briefly, are the implications we should begin to draw for teacher education. Literature bases that have been particularly useful include studies on individual (human) capital, social capital, and cultural capital, social network theory, and theories of social reproduction as they identify a relationship to any of these three types of capital. In addition, literature on education and immigrant children, both in the United States and in Canada has been examined.

Definitions of these key terms vary somewhat across these studies; the following description of their origins should clarify the subsequent discussion.

In the 1960's, Gary Becker and Theodor Schultz began the development of a theme that had earlier appeared in the work of economist Adam Smith. Smith had taken the four factors of production (land, labour, capital, and enterprise) and expanded the traditional view of "capital" from one of "capital-money" and "capital-goods" (i.e., money and goods that produce other goods and services) to include "human capital", the talent, education and training that individuals bring to the production of goods and services. Human capital theory was used by economists to indicate the importance of the level of education of a population for its productivity and its effectiveness in adapting to change.

More relevant for this discussion than a societal or national level of human capital are the types and levels of human capital in individual immigrant children and youth and their families, as such capital may then be a means of enhancing their chances of success. Hagan (Hagan et al., 1996), for example, moves beyond the usual identification of learning and skills to include motivation and ambitiousness as human capital likely to facilitate advancement. Students own perceptions of their ability and effort were the highest correlates of achievement in Hagan’s study This is particularly significant because this was a study of children whose families had moved away from the supports of familiar, established networks, elsewhere considered as important social capital. Educators commonly see education and family training as principal sources of such individual human capital, as well as any genetic foundation that facilitates making use of such education and training ("nature" as well as "nurture"). The projection by teachers of their expectations for the success of the children is similarly seen as critical, as is any projection of their perception of student achievement and effort; these have a well-known impact upon the students’ own perceptions of their abilities and effort. Rosenthal’s review (1987) found not only that the "Pygmalion" effect clearly exists but also that a prime example of it is the way teachers’ expectations of students influence students’ own performance, accomplishments, and eventual outcomes. Brandis and Bernstein (1974) found this even at the Infant School level.

Families obviously are potential sources of what Hagan saw as individual motivation and ambitiousness --which can confound the initial impact of teacher expectations. Fuligni’s U. S. study (1997) of official school records correlated with the academic attitudes and behaviours reported by students of themselves, their families, and their peers indicated that immigrant and second generation students do better than other Americans when they are characterized by academic commitment. A critical analysis of structural support for families is necessary at this point, however, as what families have to offer their children related to providing motivation and ambition is hardly done independently of the realities they face across generations in their society; the marginalizing and depressing impacts of discrimination and racism are particularly relevant here.

Gibson & Ogbu’s research (1991) on the differences in outcomes among some voluntary (immigrant) and involuntary minorities shows, for example, that immigrants expect the difference between themselves and the dominant society, and their children see such differences as something to be added to their store of culture, rather than as something to subtract from what their families have provided. Involuntary minorities, however, see the differences that continue to exist across generations between themselves and the dominant society as something more threatening and demoralizing, so that the hope that is evident in first and second generations of immigrants is often much less present in them. While they may have equal ambitions regarding career aspirations, the involuntary minorities will have smaller expectations that they will achieve them, and certainly less hope that education will empower them to attain such career statuses, although this is found differentially in males and females (Gibson, in Gibson & Ogbu, 1991).

In examining the family as a source of commitment to academic success, there emerges in some literature an interesting correlate of changes in women’s lives. With modernization comes a greater investment in fostering individual human capital in their children, as women seek quality rather than quantity in their offspring, argues Kathleen Cloud (1996). Cloud looks at this as contributing to economic growth particularly in less developed countries but it is at least as true that women in more developed nations also prefer smaller families and focus on children’s success. This will recur as a theme in a family’s development of social capital; Coleman had earlier (1988) indicated number of children as an inverse indicator of the social capital available to each child.

In the 1960's and ‘70's, in the fields of psychology and sociology there was a growing interest in the levels of social support for individuals and the impact this had on their ability to cope with stress and to achieve. The degree of embeddedness in social networks was identified as an indicator of the likelihood of coping and achieving.

Building on such work, in 1988 James Coleman began publishing his ideas on "social capital", the norms and relationships that enhance the likelihood of success. What he was most interested in was success of children and youth in school, and he looked principally to what parents had to offer their children in this regard, distinguishing between social capital within and without the family. Within the family, he saw social capital as built by parents’ strong bonds with their children, formed through time spent in communication and trust building, and a sense of shared responsibility. This manifested itself in part through involvement with their children’s efforts at school. Also critical was the engagement of their community in parents’ commitment to education. Coleman used the documentation on children in Catholic and Baptist schools in poor but stable neighbourhoods who outperformed children in private schools in well-to-do areas. He attributed this to parental commitment to the children’s success and to community support for such an effort in the Catholic and Baptist neighbourhoods.

Where parents’ communities have dense social ties and shared values, such support is rich social capital for them to draw upon. Since Coleman’s work, the multidimensional nature of social capital has been reinforced by other studies such as that of Furstenberg and Hughes (1995). They refer to it as "the degree to which the parents and children were embedded in a protective social network and were themselves a closely bonded unit with mutual expectations, trust, and loyalty" (p. 589). They found that despite differences in human capital, social capital could offer support for various types of children’s success. Runyan et al. (1998) found that family social capital was highly significant in children’s early years, and linked multiple protective factors for high-risk children to parents’ ties in their low-income communities.

Boisjoly et al. (1995) used a restricted sense of social capital; they saw it as the "to access time or monetary assistance from friends or relatives" (1995:610). They found that it is the perception of this accessibility that is the social capital, whether or not it is ever drawn on, or, once having been drawn on, whether it is ever reciprocated. Isolation of a family is the principal source of a lack of social capital, and this is linked to a lack of education in the head of the family and geographical mobility having disrupted links (1995:628-30). It is not, however, linked to poverty per se; where neighbourhoods had a higher density of poor families, Boisjoly found they had a higher incidence of friendship networks providing social capital. This may be particularly true where residential ethnic enclaves provide access to the assistance of friends, or, as Boisjoly’s team saw it, the perception thereof. Again, however, it is important to remember the sources of isolation of families within societies, which work, with varying degrees of success, to counter the support provided by friends.

Specific to our examination of social capital in immigrant families is a study of Vietnamese youth and their families in New Orleans, conducted by Zhou and Bankston (1996). The researchers found, like Furstenberg and Hughes, that the benefits of social capital can outweigh some of the disadvantages that lower income can bring to families. In particular, the social capital of their immigrant culture (adherence to traditional values serving as a strong bond among them, a strong commitment to a work ethic, and a high degree of personal involvement in the ethnic community) provided a strong basis for successful adaptation to academic success in a new setting. Both the embeddedness of the youth in their community and the community’s sense of responsibility for them provided resources they could count on. This immigrant group thus echoes Coleman’s conclusions of the previous decade on American-born children: family matters, and the community the family has to offer its children matters just as much.

Although cultural capital is less commonly considered in the research on children’s success in schools and beyond, it nevertheless appears earlier in the literature than social capital. Aschaffenburg and Maas (1997) present a summary definition of cultural capital as "proficiency in and familiarity with dominant cultural codes and practices --for example, linguistic styles, aesthetic preferences, styles of interaction" (p. 573). Lamont and Lareau (1988) build on Bourdieu and Passeron and focus their definition thus:

[C]ultural capital [is] institutionalized, i.e., widely shared, high status cultural signals (attitudes, preferences, formal knowledge, behaviors, goods and credentials) used for social and cultural exclusion, the former referring to exclusion from jobs and resources, and the latter, to exclusion from high status groups" (1995:156).

Lamont and Lareau assert that Americans (compared to the French studied by Bourdieu) focus on cultural capital less as a source of exclusion than as a means of social mobility, and, to sum up rather simplistically a very complex and sophisticated piece of research, they find there is cultural capital specific to each class, including marginalized groups. For North America, the rigid definition of cultural capital as setting boundaries for rather closed classes is less accurate than it is in France. How this will translate into educational practices that empower students whose families have alternate forms of cultural capital is not yet clear, and will require much further work, but some have begun this.

Somewhat akin to the thinking of Lamont and Lareau, for example, it can be argued that besides the automatically valued "dominant cultural codes and practices" there are some forms of behaviours and attitudes that serve at least as well as cultural capital for school attainment and social mobility; certainly the Zhou and Bankston study indicate this: the codes of the Vietnamese families and their community mandated a behaviour in its youth that clearly supported academic achievement. While "high culture" has been shown to be a contributor to school attainment, it is not a single, much less an uncomplicated, indicator, as Dimaggio’s differing results for boys and girls showed (1982).

Cultural capital as related to "high" culture nevertheless must be taken seriously. The impact of a family’s cultural capital on the life chances of its offspring is a common one in social reproduction literature, as spelled out by Bourdieu (1977; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), social mobility literature (Kalmijn & Kraaykamp, 1996) and others (e.g., Collins, 1979; DiMaggio, 1982; DiMaggio & Mohr, 1985). In a study of families in Czechoslovakia, Wong (1998) lists cultural capital as one of four types that families possess: human capital, financial capital, social capital, and cultural capital. Family lifestyles and consumption patterns, he argues, are a critical source of children’s cultural formation, which formation, in turn, provides valuable educational resources that foster children’s motivation to learn and their academic performance. Through external activities such as regular visits to theatres, concerts, galleries, and libraries, or though access at home to books, classical music, and other resources, the parents’ cultural capital establishes the intellectual climate for children’s educational aspirations, motivation to achieve, and performance in schools (Wong, 1998). This is the only study thus far to use all three types of capital in a family in an analysis of children’s opportunities for success, and it is instrumental in its approach, acknowledging implicitly that dominant structures may serve as barriers to children’s success, yet leaving an analysis of this to others.

Wong sees, for example, that families and their communities are not the only source of cultural capital. Citing what he identifies as the "central tenet" of social reproduction theory, he points out "that schools are not socially neutral institutions and that the apparently neutral academic standards are laden with specific cultural resources, typically from the dominant classes, acquired at home" (1998:5).

While his last paragraph highlights the impact of social class upon the amassing of cultural capital, it is no less relevant in discussions of human and social capital. Intellectual curiosity, a type of individual human capital, is surely developed and stimulated by the nature of the experiences families can offer children, as well as their promptings to reflect upon those experiences, and the richness of the vocabulary they provide for such reflection. This individual human capital is thus linked to what is available to families, defined in many cases by their socio-economic status. Yet so is the social networking commonly thought of as critical social capital: whom one knows, whom one can call upon to secure an internship or an apprenticeship or a beginning job for one’s offspring will be drawn from the networks in one’s social class. Whether the capital be individual, social, or cultural, it will be supported or even derived from the class of the dominant society or of the ethnospecific society from which their families come. Thus within each source of such capital, there are differences by class, both the class of the families and that of the educational context of the students, as studies on outcomes of children in inner-city vs. suburban or magnet schools indicate (Portes & MacLeod, 1996).

When the cultural capital is that derived from the culture of an immigrant or other minority group family, however, it must be valued by the dominant society’s institutions, especially that of education, for it to serve most successfully as "capital": a resource to be drawn upon in building further resources. This is a crucial point to be examined in detail later, but Stanton-Salazar (1997), in creating what he refers to as "a social capital framework" of analysis, shows that for minority children to thrive, they must retain their own cultural capital, to which they add that of the dominant group, and from this base create for themselves the bicultural networks of social capital that will support their success. This, he argues, is more easily done as a communal effort, ideally by minority and majority groups together, as the alienation and isolation of the child who attempts to go it alone is hardly conducive to thriving.

In each case, however, it will be necessary to examine the studies showing the interactivity of various factors such as gender, length of time in Canada, command of English upon arrival, and age on arrival; family background, including social class, the number of generations in Canada and whether the family is a voluntary or involuntary minority here, and school context (Gibson & Ogbu, 1991). While not intending to compare components of human, social, and cultural capital, many studies yet give us insights into this interactivity of factors.

The various forms of what has come to be seen as capital, the wealth out of which more wealth comes, need examination specifically for their implications for the education of immigrant children and youth, since society counts on the institution of education to produce and enhance such capital for them. A major issue arises, however, when we acknowledge the school as an institution of control of a given society, reflecting and repeating that society’s view of what acceptable perspectives, knowledge and skills are. Like Wang, other theorists of social reproduction have elaborated the power that schools and teachers have to reinforce restrictive codes of meaning (see, for example Bernstein, 1974; Brandis & Bernstein, 1974), and to relegate to a clear minority status with unvalued capital those it has not yet "assimilated" into the classes and cultures the school represents (see, for example, Gibson & Ogbu, 1991; Cummins, 1988).

Most commonly identified as individual "human capital" are whatever individuals bring to bear upon their endeavours that is seen as "intelligence" (as opposed to their labour, land, or enterprise). This intelligence is sometimes defined as the cognitive capacity of the child; akin to this are such gifts as creativity and flexibility in thinking. Others are cognitive skills like languages, literacy, and numeracy, as well as technical skills, business skills, and cognitively linked accomplishments like specific knowledge bases. Teachers of young children have traditionally identified the development of intellectual skills and knowledge as their primary responsibility.

Physical gifts that children possess, like athletic ability, strength, energy, and good health are relevant here; and some immigrants have been able to use these to good advantage, although children who arrive with skills specific to certain cultural activities may not find them here, and find that no one is interested in seeing if they are transferable to activities here, much less in introducing new "foreign" activities. (Witness the length of time it took for soccer to be recognized by schools in North America.) There are also strengths of personality, like interpersonal or team skills, self-discipline, motivation, and ambition; schools are expected to facilitate the child’s development of this type of capital. But personality traits that are esteemed are valued specifically according to the perspective of the society. The literature is rife with examples of children whose superb manners from one culture, as manifested by a quiet respect for others, a reluctance to promote themselves, a patience in waiting to be called upon, are viewed in other societies as signs of backwardness.

Schools are mandated by their funders, either public or private, to be vehicles for developing the perspectives, knowledge, and skills that will contribute to children’s individual capital, and thus that will enable all children, including immigrant children, to succeed. For this to happen, what the schools select as their perspectives reflected in policy, the knowledge they choose to impart, and the skills they attempt to develop must all be designed to support such success.

Perspectives here may be defined as the points of view, the attitudes and values, that empower children to see themselves as successful in school and in society, the latter both at present and in the future. Critical to students’ academic success are the perspectives the school imparts about its expectations of students for success, and the respect it clearly has for their families and themselves, as well as for the community in which they are embedded. This includes the language, heritage, and culture of the various groups in the community, and is manifested most clearly in the presence in the schools of professionals from such groups: teachers, principals, and others. All adults in the school project an expectation of student achievement, and a view of families as important partners in education. Languages are viewed as significant accomplishments, and once learned, are to be maintained and developed further

Knowledge bases here are defined as those derived from the humanities, social and physical sciences, mathematics, technology, business, and the fine arts. The school presents them as what the society deems it important for people to know. Ideally, they are identified as deriving from as many cultures as possible, especially those that relate to the culture of the children in the school and other significant groups in the community.

Skills are defined here as abilities to do things well. They may be physical (starting with fine and gross motor skill development, in sports, for example, but also in building and making things), social (such as interpersonal and team skills), and intellectual (such as, in no particular order, writing, critiquing, analyzing, synthesizing, mastering information technology, speaking different languages, public speaking, etc.). They are built incrementally, recognising what learning children have acquired and where the next growth should occur. They provide an excellent career base, so that children’s socio-economic status and possibly even significant social mobility are secured. The school focuses on cooperative, collaborative, and intercultural skills, and presents them as prized for life in an increasingly diverse world.

Social capital, it has been seen, is found both within and without the family. In terms of the school’s contribution to intra-family social capital, while it can enhance the expectations of younger children by the success of older siblings, a greater contribution will obviously be to the social capital the family has in the community. Parents as a community of partners in education and as a community of learners themselves can be facilitated to form networks that will serve as potential sources of support for that learning and for other needs. Both formal and informal parental sharing can occur, for on-going problem solving and for enhancing opportunities for themselves and their children. School-based family resource centres (called Parenting Centres in the Toronto Board of Education) are a superb form of such facilitation, an increasingly respected mechanism for empowering families, and particularly young ones. Children are thus empowered for their school years and for the future through networks of friends made at play and at work in the school. The school designs programs to facilitate this; they are athletic and social as well as academic. Parents and children alike can be linked through the school to community networks of social agencies, organizations, and institutions. The school can become a locus for the development of healthy group extracurricular activities for all ages, and the social capital of the community can rise exponentially.

Schools have traditionally been the place where a sense of civic identity is instilled in the society’s youth, where they are to develop a larger sense of their identity and worth beyond their family, where they come to see themselves as valued members of groups and communities in their society. Schools have most often been a locus for scout and guide troops, which perform early important tasks in this regard.

Schools are expected also either to introduce young children to the higher elements of the society’s culture, its music, drama, art, and literature, or to continue what their parents had already begun. They are to delineate clearly for children what the society deems the hallmarks of an educated citizenry, which are ready to build or to add to its civil society. Schools are expected to provide students with oownership of, and appreciation for, the community’s scientific, artistic, and other accomplishments and symbols of sociocultural status. Again, all groups within the community see themselves reflected in this picture if the schools are supporting all children’s development.

Educational efforts, however, are not accomplished in isolation from the families, whose role in partnership with the schools is clear. The focus of the paper now will be on identifying and implementing the implications for teacher education of research on human, social, and cultural capital as experienced by immigrant families and their children. Professional training, particularly that training regarding the teaching of children offered in Faculties of Education and programs of early childhood education, will perforce include training regarding this partnering with families, with all that this implies of a broad awareness of the full role of the school in the life of the community.

Given the research on the relative absence of teachers as role models for minority youth (Farkas et al., 1990; Stanton-Salazar & Dornbusch, 1995, for example) and the repeated experiences of teachers’ and guidance counselors’ lower expectations of immigrants (Farkas et al.,1990, Lynch, 1993, Portes & MacLeod, 1996, for example), faculties of education themselves need to provide an integrated faculty, as must programs to train early childhood educators. This will not only model the appropriateness of inclusive hiring, it will, more importantly, make clearer to the future teachers the expectations they may have of all communities’ children, not just those of the dominant groups.

An inclusive curriculum in faculties of education is critical if student teachers are to learn what is expected of them in the classroom and counteract the exclusion that immigrant and other minority children have experienced there (Farkas et al., 1990, Gibson, 1998, Stanton-Salazar & Dornbusch, 1993, White & Kaufman, 1997, for example). This inclusiveness refers not only to academic content but also to different modes of learning, with many types of significant, interactional participation. Bonnie Benard’s work (1992, 1993, 1997) in reviewing studies of high risk students identified three categories of protective factors that student teachers must provide for students’ success: caring and supportive relationships with and among students; positive and high expectations for their success; and opportunities for meaningful participation. Student teachers must be encouraged to become fluent in at least one other language, and demonstrate their value of it, given the experience immigrant students have had of being discouraged from using their first language. Faculties must develop teachers’ skills in using multilingual books to enhance student learning of English while maintaining fluency in and comfort in their first language, to produce a fully bilingual next generation (Cummins, 1996; Feuerverger, 1997).

Student teachers need also the specific insights and skills to prevent their students experiencing exclusion; that is, the research indicates they must be aware of its sources (particularly those related to inappropriate assessment), types, and manifestations, as well as how to prevent and remedy it (Bernhard et al. 1994, Gibson, 1998, Putnam, 1995, for example). They must learn themselves, and learn to teach, good cross-cultural communication skills, power analyzing and power sharing, conflict resolution, cooperative learning, global education; these are skills young teachers should acquire for the sake of all their students, obviously, not just immigrant students, as all will benefit from what Cummins calls transformative pedagogy (1996).

Given the experience of many immigrant students of the school as alienating and disempowering them and their families, one of the principal tasks of faculties of education is to present to young teachers the conceptual framework of the school as a locus of engagement of the community, as well as a resource centre and resource link for the community (Boisjoly et al., 1995, Furstenburg & Hughes, Prager, Teachman & Paasch, 1996, 1997, for example). The school should be seen as a base for networking communities into denser, richer sources of mutual support.

To accomplish this, student teachers should leave at the end of their professional education with a good introduction to the existing resources of the communities where they trained. They will also need a good idea of how to discover the services and other resources in the communities where they will teach, as well as how to analyze their review of such services to realize what gaps exist. This leads to another skill for professional teachers, that of advocate for families and children.

Families as partners in their children’s education and teachers as a source of empowerment for families are also critical perspectives for young teachers, and not ones they readily arrive at on their own (Boisjoly et al., 1995, Hagan et al., 1996, Parcel & Menaghan, 1993, Portes & MacLeod, 1996, Zhou & Bankston, 1994, for example). A commitment to power-sharing is important, as is a commitment to their role as facilitator rather than as expert (Corson, 1998). Power-sharing Families’ Councils for each school should be seen as a permanent norm rather than as one variation of parent or community associations.

Given the research on the delegitimation of the cultural capital immigrant children bring with them to school (Bernhard et al., 1994, Gibson, 1998, Portes & MacLeod, 1996, for example), faculties of education must manifest their commitment to engage and honour the contributions of communities from all cultures, and in a genuinely collaborative way. In courses on child development, pedagogy, curriculum, etc., their valuing of the heterogeneous communities in this globalizing world must be obvious. This will include a presentation of the history, the recent past, and the present situation of various groups in the community. It will also include active support for the design and implementation of programs for first language retention and development. This should provide ample support for the kind of solid, achievement-based self-esteem in immigrant children that is the outcome of possessing useful cultural capital. It should also lay the groundwork for their full participation in the duties and privileges of citizenship at multiple levels.

Several tasks now suggest themselves in the area of research. One is the further development of insights based on this model of human capital through a continued examination of research being conducted around the world on new developments in integrating migrant children into the education success of schools. A second task is to undertake a case study of a particular immigrant group using this model to test its initial usefulness. Ideally, this would be followed by a comparison with other groups in Canada to provide a clearer picture of some of the reasons for the comparative success of children in one group rather than another, with a view to remedying gaps in educational practice and facilitating children’s success. In both cases, it will be essential to identify what supports and what hinders the ability of immigrant families to enhance their own capital and that of their children.

In addition, a further task is obvious in the area of policy formation: to identify clearly the implications of selecting one of the two following options:

To select only those immigrants whose individual, social, and cultural capital is already that of the native-born middle or upper class, or to approximate that as best we can, and let these immigrants attempt to sustain and build upon it as individuals; or

To use the educational and other institutions and systems of the nation to recognize, develop and enhance the individual, social, and cultural capital of immigrant families and their children.

This paper fully supports the latter option as the most conducive to social cohesion and individual strength.

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