Abstract
The concept of cultural capital has proved invaluable in understanding educational systems in Western countries, and recent work seeks to extend those insights to the diverse educational systems of other geographic regions. Using data from the 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment, the authors explored cultural capital in South Korea by investigating the relationships among family socioeconomic status (SES), cultural capital, and children’s academic achievement. South Korea was compared with Japan, France, and the United States to understand how institutional features of South Korean education shape the role of cultural capital in academic success. Results showed that family SES had a positive effect on both parental objectified cultural capital and children’s embodied cultural capital in South Korea, consistent with evidence from the other countries. Moreover, parental objectified cultural capital had a positive effect on children’s academic achievement in South Korea. In contrast to other countries, however, children’s embodied cultural capital had a negative effect on academic achievement in South Korea, controlling for the other variables. The authors highlighted several institutional features of South Korean education, including a standardized curriculum, extreme focus on test preparation, and extensive shadow education, which may combine to suppress the effect of children’s embodied cultural capital on academic achievement.
Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital 1 — defined as “widely shared high-status cultural signals (e.g. attitudes, preferences, formal knowledge, behaviors, goods, and credentials) used for social and cultural exclusion” (Lamont and Lareau 1988:156)—has been widely used to study social reproduction in France and many other national contexts. From Bourdieu’s cultural capital perspective, children from the upper class are more likely than those from the lower class to succeed in school because they are exposed to high-status culture from birth in their family context, and thus more likely to possess cultural capital, and because school systems reward students with higher cultural capital (Bourdieu 1977, 1997). In short, socialization of children from high socioeconomic status (SES) families into highbrow culture is rewarded in the school system and later in the society in terms of better educational qualifications and jobs (Silva 2005:87). The result is the reproduction of educational and social inequalities.
In recent years, the concept of cultural capital has been increasingly applied in other parts of the world, including East Asia. For example, Yamamoto and Brinton (2010) examined the role of cultural capital in Japan and found that objectified cultural capital (measured by home possessions related to high-status culture) had a positive effect on educational attainment and that embodied cultural capital (measured by participation in cultural activities and reading by parents) had a positive effect on academic achievement. By showing the significant relation of cultural capital to various educational outcomes in Japan, Yamamoto and Brinton (2010) highlighted the relevance of cultural capital in East Asian educational systems and extended our understanding of how high-status culture plays out as capital in East Asian societies.
We build on Yamamoto and Brinton’s (2010) research and extend the conceptual utility of cultural capital to another East Asian society through a study of South Korea (hereafter, Korea). From a comparative perspective, Korea is a particularly appealing case because it not only shares features with Japan but also provides an interesting contrast. In a general sense, Korea’s school system bears many similarities with Japan’s because most of the modern Korean educational system was built during the Japanese occupation (1905-1945; Chung 1998). Like Japan (Yamamoto and Brinton 2010), almost all Korean children go to elementary school for six years, progressing to three years of compulsory middle school and then to three years of noncompulsory academic or vocational high school (i.e., 6-3-3). Also, like Japan (Yamamoto and Brinton 2010), compulsory education is generally organized along egalitarian educational policies with an emphasis on a national standardized curriculum (Kim and Lee 2003). Finally, like Japan (Mori and Baker 2010; Stevenson and Baker 1992), many Korean parents invest heavily in shadow education—“a set of educational activities outside formal schooling that are designed to improve a student’s chance of successfully moving through the allocation process” (Stevenson and Baker 1992:1640)—to help their children do better on high-stakes tests (Park, Byun, and Kim 2011).
However, as will be described in detail later, Korea, compared with Japan, is in many ways more extreme on these key institutional features (i.e., uniformity in the school system, focus on test preparation, and extensive shadow education). Unlike in Japan, where individual secondary schools are allowed to select their students, Korean secondary education still relies on a randomized school assignment system based on place of residence, suggesting a strong egalitarian approach to education (Kim and Lee 2003). In addition, unlike Japan (Yamamoto and Brinton 2010), teacher evaluation plays a less important role than high-stake tests in shaping transitions to upper levels of education in Korea (Kim and Byun 2006). Further, Korean students are more likely than Japanese students to take private tutoring for enrichment purposes (Baker and LeTendre 2005), reflecting a more competitive educational setting in Korea compared to Japan. In fact, Koreans’ obsession for education, often captured by the words “education fever,” is widely recognized by outside observers. Seth (2002) notes:
[In Korea] everywhere there are “cram schools” (hagwon), where elementary, middle, and high school students study late in the evening and on weekends. Every neighborhood has a store selling textbooks, supplementary readings, and guides to the entrance examination. . . . South Korean families invest heavily in the education of their children, and children and young adults spend a huge portion of their time studying and preparing for examinations. Education pops up in conversation often, and the success of a son, daughter, or grandchild at entering a “good” school is a source of great pride. Although education is important in every nation, even casual visitors become aware of the intense preoccupation of South Koreans with schooling. (Pp. 1-2; emphasis added)
This intense academic competition in Korea has produced the largest shadow education system in the world (Baker and LeTendre 2005). A recent national survey revealed that in 2008 Korean families spent approximately 21 trillion Korean won (KRW; approximately US$19 billion), which was nearly one-tenth of the country’s annual budget (Korea National Statistical Office [KNSO] 2009). In sum, the fact that Korea is broadly similar to Japan but arguably more extreme in its institutional characteristics makes Korea an important test case to explore the limits of cultural capital arguments in East Asian educational systems.
The current study extends Yamamoto and Brinton’s (2010) work in several ways. First, we assessed the role of cultural capital in academic achievement in Korea using data from the 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2000) that measured academic achievement among students between 15 and 16 years of age at the time of the assessment. Yamamoto and Brinton (2010) drew on data that were collected from Japanese men and women age 20 to 49, and they measured academic achievement based on respondents’ self-reported grades. As Yamamoto and Brinton (2010) clearly acknowledged, retrospective and self-reported achievement data may not be ideal to assess the role of cultural capital in academic achievement, due to potential bias.
Second, while Yamamoto and Brinton (2010) focused on the relationship between cultural capital and academic achievement, we investigated the relationship between family SES and cultural capital in addition to the relationship between cultural capital and academic achievement. The key assumption underlying Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital is that unequal educational outcomes among children are attributable to the unequal distribution of cultural capital among social classes (Bourdieu 1977, 1997), suggesting the significant relationships among family SES, cultural capital, and children’s academic achievement. Therefore, to more fully test the cultural capital hypotheses, it is important to investigate not only the relationship between cultural capital and academic achievement but also the relationship between family SES and cultural capital.
Finally, our comparative study of cultural capital contrasts Korea not only with Japan but also with France and the United States, where much prior theory and empirical research on cultural capital has centered (Bourdieu 1977, 1997; DiMaggio 1982). By more directly comparing the effects of cultural capital on academic success among East Asian and Western societies with the same data, we can better address how differing societal conditions may shape variation in the effects of cultural capital within and between national educational systems. In contrast, most work on cultural capital is country specific (but see Barone 2006 and Hampden-Thompson, Guzman, and Lippman 2008 for comparative research).
It is important to note that following Bourdieu’s (1977, 1997; Bourdieu and Passeron 1997) seminal work, many scholars (e.g., De Graaf 1986; DiMaggio 1982; Dumais 2002; Katsillis and Rubinson 1990) operationalized cultural capital using highbrow cultural activities (e.g., visits at museums or art gallery). The PISA 2000 data include some traditional measures of cultural capital, such as possessions related to classical culture in the family home (e.g., classical literature) and activities related to classical culture (e.g., attendance at an opera, ballet, or classical symphony concert), which Yamamoto and Brinton (2010) used to measure objectified and embodied cultural capital, respectively. In this study, following Yamamoto and Brinton (2010), we focus on two particular forms of cultural capital: parental objectified cultural capital (measured by high-culture possessions at home) and children’s embodied cultural capital (measured by students’ participation in high culture). 2 Unfortunately, as will be described below in detail, the PISA 2000 data do not allow us to use more comprehensive measures of cultural capital indicators, including reading habits. 3 As a result, generalizations from our results should be appropriately qualified.
Conceptual Framework
Studies of a wide range of societies consistently find SES differences in children’s cultural capital. However, evidence regarding the effects of cultural capital on academic achievement is mixed. For example, research in England (Sullivan 2001), the Netherlands (De Graaf 1986), and Greece (Katsillis and Rubinson 1990) suggests that cultural capital has no statistically significant relation to academic achievement. In contrast, some research in the United States (DiMaggio 1982; Dumais 2002, 2006b; Roscigno and Ainsworth-Darnell 1999) and Japan (Yamamoto and Brinton 2010) suggests that cultural capital has a positive effect on academic achievement. This mixed evidence is attributed to various factors, including the broad divergence in the operational definitions of cultural capital variables, the choice of dependent variables, and the type of statistical models employed (Barone 2006; Kingston 2001; Lareau and Weininger 2003).
In this study, we draw on institutional theory to better understand variation in the effects of cultural capital on educational outcomes across nations. From an institutional perspective, social stratification processes can vary by the institutional arrangements of national educational systems or/and cultural and policy environments (Buchmann 2011; Buchmann and Dalton 2002; Kerckhoff 1995). For example, children from single-parent families are less likely to suffer educational disadvantage in countries where extended family structures or social services (e.g., publicly funded after-school programs and housing subsidies) provide support for such families (Buchmann 2011; Hampden-Thompson and Pong 2005; Pong, Dronkers, and Hampden-Thompson 2003). By contrast, children from single-parent families are more at risk of low academic achievement in countries where there is little public and educational assistance (Buchmann 2011; Hampden-Thompson and Pong 2005; Pong et al. 2003).
Likewise, variation in institutional context may account for the divergent effects of cultural capital on school success. For example, Lareau and Weininger (2003) suggest that cultural capital may matter in a country such as France, where the curriculum tends to reflect highbrow culture and thus students’ familiarity with elite culture helps their school performance. Yamamoto and Brinton (2010:79) suggest that the importance of exams and shadow education may increase the impact of embodied cultural capital on academic performance “through its enhancement of motivation and learning skills.” Yamamoto and Brinton (2010:78) also suggest that objectified cultural capital may have a positive impact on educational attainment in a country such as Japan, where teachers play an important role in shaping students’ transition to upper levels of education (e.g., high school or college).
We expect that certain institutional features of Korean education may shape the role of cultural capital in academic success in Korea. Generally speaking, there is reason to expect that highbrow culture may matter to school success in Korea. A growing body of literature in Korea documents that the upper-middle class is more likely to have cultural goods at home or participate in various highbrow cultural activities (Chang 2001; Cho 2005) and that children from higher SES families are more likely to enjoy highbrow culture (Byun and Kim 2008; Kim and Byun 2007). More importantly, in recent years, Korea has made efforts to increase the flexibility in the school curriculum and the diversification of selection criteria for college admission, following the American educational model (Byun and Kim 2010a). 4 This transformation of the school systems in Korea may allow more room in which cultural resources affect academic achievement in this country.
At the same time, there are some unique institutional features of the Korean educational system that may suppress the effect of cultural capital on academic success. Despite recent efforts to introduce a flexible curriculum, the Korean educational system remains extremely uniform in terms of content and standards (Park et al. 2011). In addition, unlike Japan (Yamamoto and Brinton 2010), high-stakes test scores still largely determine students’ transition to upper levels of education in Korea (Kim and Byun 2006). Moreover, test preparation through either self-study or participation in shadow education tends to take a great deal of time, which may allow little time for participation in cultural activities for students. We discuss these features of the Korean system in a comparative context.
Institutional Features of Korean Education
Uniformity of Curriculum and Standards
One of the key institutional features of Korean compulsory education is small variation among schools in terms of school resources, school curriculum, and teacher quality, largely shaped by Korea’s egalitarian approach to education (Kim and Lee 2003). In Korea, a majority of primary and middle school students spend most of the day in the same homeroom classroom with the same classmates. In addition, until very recently, most Korean primary and middle school students were taught the same curricular content at the same pace and promoted at the same time from grade to grade with their same-age peers, regardless of their academic ability (Byun and Kim 2010a), which is in contrast to many other countries, such as the United States, where differentiated curricular contents (Schneider, Swanson, and Riegle-Crumb 1998) and grade retention (Jimerson 2001) are not uncommon. Furthermore, most Korean secondary schools enforce a strict dress code and grooming standard, resulting in a classroom setting in which students sit with the same school uniform and similar haircuts.
Korea’s egalitarian approach to upper secondary education can be best characterized by the so-called high school equalization policy 5 (HSEP; Kim and Lee 2003). The HSEP refers to the school assignment system in which academic high school–bound students are randomly assigned to schools within their place of residence, regardless of academic ability. This random school assignment applies to both private and public schools, resulting in less variation in the socioeconomic background and academic ability of incoming students between these two types of schools. This contrasts sharply with the situation in other Western countries, such as the United States, where there are substantial differences in students’ family and academic backgrounds between private and public schools (Coleman and Hoffer 1987). In addition, Korean private schools are to a large extent subsidized and controlled by the government; they are often called quasi-public schools. Furthermore, public school teachers are rotated among public schools every four to five years in a region, reflecting another dimension of Korea’s egalitarian approach to education. In sum, most Korean primary and secondary school students are taught with the common curriculum content within a similar learning environment regardless of whether they attend a private or public school.
Extreme Focus on Test Preparation
Like in Japan (Stevenson and Baker 1992), Korean postsecondary institutions are highly stratified with a small number of elite four-year institutions. As high-stakes tests play a vital role in gaining access to these selective colleges (Byun and Kim 2010b), most Korean secondary schools, especially college-prep high schools, focus exclusively on test preparation. In addition, because the test contents tend to be tied to the common curriculum framework, it is not uncommon for Korean college-prep high schools to cover their required curriculum within the first two years and then use the final year of high school to repeat the curriculum—emphasizing rote memorization—to prepare students for the College Scholastic Ability Test 6 (CSAT), the Korean version of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. It is also not unusual for Korean college-prep high schools to replace art and music classes with core subjects such as math and English, which are tested in the CSAT during the final year of high school. Most Korean college-prep high schools offer additional supplemental lessons mainly focusing on English and math before and after regular lessons and even in late-night study sessions.
Class sizes are very large in Korea, with approximately 36 students on average at the lower secondary level, 7 which was the highest among the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries as of 2006 (the OECD average was 24; OECD 2008). Most Korean school lessons involve a teacher-centric lecture format focused directly on material that the students have to cover for their school exams or the CSAT. This instructional format involving low levels of student participation may dampen the tendency to discriminate among students based on subtle social cues (Byun 2007). The Korean system discourages family involvement in schools, reducing another potential route for cultural capital effects. The high level of uniformity and standardization in the Korean educational system tends to substantially restrict parents’ direct influence on the educational processes that occur inside school (Park 2008; Park et al. 2011). Korean parents also generally do not often visit schools unless they are contacted by schools (Park et al. 2011). And, unlike in Japan (Yamamoto and Brinton 2010), Korean teachers seldom visit their students’ homes. 8
Shadow Education
One of the important strategies that Korean students employ to prepare for high-stake exams is to take shadow education (Byun 2009; Park et al. 2011). Shadow education has long been practiced as individual tutoring in Korea, but it has evolved in recent years to include cram schools (hagwon), correspondence courses (hagseupji), and online tutoring, all of which are more structured and commercialized than individual tutoring. Regardless of its type, shadow education institutions focus on helping students memorize large amounts of material for particular tests in a very short period of time, rather than fostering critical thinking. In 2008, almost 8 of 10 Korean students participated in some form of shadow education (KNSO 2009).
Although it is unclear whether shadow education is effective in improving academic achievement (Byun 2009), many Korean parents make sacrifices to provide their children shadow education (Park et al. 2011), as they are keenly aware of the role that academic credentials play in their children’s future opportunities (e.g., access to selective colleges and ultimately prestigious jobs at top-ranked corporations and government ministries). In 2008, on average, Korean families spent approximately 230,000 KRW (approximately US$210) per month on shadow education (KNSO 2009).
In sum, the distinctive features of Korean education, including uniformity of curriculum and standards, extreme focus on test preparation, and extensive shadow education, lead us to expect a somewhat different picture not only from Western societies but also from other East Asian societies, such as Japan, with regard to the role of cultural capital in academic success.
Hypotheses
Effects of Family SES on Cultural Capital
As noted, prior literature across a wide range of societies suggests the positive effects of family SES on cultural capital. Recent research in Korea also documents subtle but highly significant differences in cultural tastes and consumption across social classes (Chang 2001; Cho 2005) as well as the SES gap in high-status cultural activities among young Korean students (Byun and Kim 2008; Kim and Byun 2007). Accordingly, we expect a positive relationship between family SES and both forms of cultural capital (i.e., parental objectified cultural capital and children’s embodied cultural capital) in Korea, consistent with other countries (Hypothesis 1).
However, high-SES Korean parents arguably focus more on shadow education (Byun 2009; Park et al. 2011). Indeed, there is a significant gap in shadow education activities between children from high- and low-income families in Korea. In 2008, 9 out of 10 Korean students whose monthly average family income was more than 7 million KRW received at least one or more forms of shadow education, whereas only 4 out of 10 students whose monthly average family income was less than 1 million KRW did so (KNSO 2009). Thus, we expect that the extent to which parental objectified cultural capital mediates the relationship between family SES and children’s embodied cultural capital may be relatively small in Korea compared with the other countries (Hypothesis 2).
Effects of Cultural Capital on Academic Achievement
The intense focus on test preparation, minimal parent-teacher and student-teacher interactions, and large class sizes in the educational system may leave less room for cultural capital to affect academic achievement in Korea compared with other countries. Nonetheless, we expect that parental objectified cultural capital still may be important in shaping academic performance in Korea (Hypothesis 3), not through teachers’ recognition but potentially through this form of capital’s influence on children’s “motivation and learning skills” by which children’s embodied cultural capital is believed to affect academic achievement in Japan (Yamamoto and Brinton 2010:79). Indeed, some prior Korean research documents the positive effect of parental objectified cultural capital on students’ cognitive test scores (Chang 2008; Kim and Byun 2007).
On the other hand, because many of their waking hours are devoted to studies, Korean students may not be able to enjoy highbrow culture as frequently as their counterpart students in other countries. One study suggests that Korean adolescents spend almost half of waking hours doing schoolwork, whereas their Japanese and U.S. counterparts spend a third and a quarter of waking hours, respectively (Larson and Verma 1999). In addition, a recent news article in Korea reported that more than 70 percent of the first-year middle school students “had never participated in cultural activities such as visits to museums or classical symphony concerts during the past year,” 30 percent of the surveyed students indicated “they do not have time (for cultural participation) due to shadow education,” while another 30 percent answered “they simply do not have time” (Shin 2006). In fact, given Korea’s intensely competitive system, it is quite possible that children’s cultural activities may have negative consequences for school performance in Korea (Hypothesis 4). Indeed, a growing body of Korean literature supports this proposition by showing the negative effects of students’ cultural participation on their academic performance (Byun 2007; Byun and Kim 2008; Chang 2008; Kim and Byun 2007).
Data and Methods
Sample
To test these hypotheses, we used data from PISA 2000, an internationally standardized assessment developed by the OECD (OECD and UNESCO-UIS 2003). PISA 2000 measured academic performance among 15-year-old students attending school with a focus on reading. PISA employed a two-stage stratified sampling design—where a representative sample of schools was first drawn and then students were randomly selected within the sampled schools—for most participating countries (OECD and UNESCO-UIS 2003). Twenty-eight OECD countries and 4 non-OECD countries participated in 2000. 9 Our main focus is Korea (N = 4,982), but as noted earlier we also included Japan (N = 5,256), France (N = 3,926), and the United States (N = 3,846) as relevant comparisons. For multivariate analyses, we included all individuals assessed in each country.
PISA 2000 is particularly useful for our study, providing several advantages over other international achievement studies (e.g., the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS]). First, PISA 2000 included several questions about home possessions related to classical culture and students’ cultural activities that have been widely used as measures of cultural capital in empirical research (Bourdieu 1977; DiMaggio 1982; Dumais 2002; Sullivan 2001; Yamamoto and Brinton 2010). Second, while TIMSS mainly assesses math and science achievement, PISA 2000 primarily focused on the assessment of reading literacy, where cultural capital measures may have a larger effect (DiMaggio 1982; Dumais 2006b; Hampden-Thompson et al. 2008). Finally, whereas TIMSS offers information only about parental education and home educational resources, PISA provides a wide range of information about family socioeconomic background including parental education, parental occupation, and family wealth, yielding better measures of family SES.
Measures
Family SES
Family SES was measured with the following four indicators: (1) parental education, (2) parental occupation, (3) family wealth, and (4) home educational resources. Parental education was measured by the highest level of either parent on the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), from 1 (ISCED Level 1 [primary education]) to 6 (ISCED Level 5A, 5B, or 6 [tertiary education]). Parental occupation was measured by the highest score of either parent on the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status, which measures the SES and prestige of occupations (Ganzeboom, DeGraff, and Treiman 1992). Values on this index range from 0 to 90, with high values representing high SES. The index (sum) of family wealth was derived from students’ reports on availability (i.e., 0 = no, 1 = yes) of a dishwasher, a room of their own, educational software, and a link to the Internet, and by number (e.g., 0 = none, 3 = three or more) of cellular phones, television sets, computers, motor cars, and bathrooms at home. Values on this index range 0 from 19, with high values indicating wealthier families. The index (sum) of home educational resources were derived from students’ reports on availability (i.e., 0 = no, 1 = yes) of a dictionary, a quiet place to study, a desk for study, and textbooks, and by number of calculators at home (e.g., 0 = none, 3 = three or more). Values on this index range from 0 to 7, with high values indicating more educational resources at home. We conducted factor analysis using a varimax-rotated solution for each country to determine whether the family SES indicators clustered together within each country. We found that the SES indicators held together in a similar way across countries, with a few exceptions (e.g., home educational resources for France; see the appendix). To facilitate easy comparisons across the countries, the index of family SES was scaled to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1 for students within each country, not across the countries, in order to avoid capturing between-country differences in this measure (Park 2008). It should be noted that because the PISA 2000 data contain no and very limited information about parental education and occupation, respectively, for Japan, only family wealth and home educational resources were used for creating the index of family SES for this country. Accordingly, results for Japan should be interpreted with caution.
Cultural capital
Parental objectified cultural capital was derived from students’ reports on the availability (i.e., 0 = no, 1 = yes) of classical literature, books of poetry, and works of art at home. Values on this index (sum) range from 0 to 3. Children’s embodied cultural capital was derived from students’ reports on how often they had participated in the following activities during the preceding year: (1) visited a museum or art gallery; (2) attended an opera, ballet, or classical symphony concert; and (3) watched live theater. Students responded to each statement on a 4-point scale with the following categories: 0 = never or hardly ever, 1 = once or twice a year, 2 = three or four times a year, and 3 = more than four times a year. As with family SES, we conducted factor analysis using a varimax-rotated solution for each country to determine whether the embodied cultural capital items clustered together within each country. We found that they held together in a similar way across countries (see the appendix). Again, measures were scaled to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1 for students within each country for easy comparisons across the countries.
Academic achievement
Academic achievement was measured by students’ performance in reading literacy. In PISA, reading literacy is defined as “the ability to understand, use, and reflect on written texts in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate effectively in society” (OECD and UNESCO-UIS 2003:19). Using item response theory, PISA provided five plausible values that were generated for each student based on their responses to the test items given and the performance of students to other items with similar characteristics. Plausible values are more appropriate than a fixed value to estimate population parameters such as mean and variance, as they are randomly drawn from the posterior distribution for a student’s ability (OECD 2002). These plausible values were scaled to have an average score of 500 and a standard deviation of 100 across all students of the OECD countries participating in PISA. Our analyses presented in this study were based on the first of the five plausible values. 10
Control variables
To control for confounding variables, we included several control variables that may shape academic achievement. Those control variables included (1) family structure (1 = nonintact family), (2) number of siblings, (3) gender (1 = female), (4) homework or study hours per week on the language subject area (no time [reference category] vs. less than 1 hour vs. between 1 and 3 hours vs. 3 hours and more), (5) student interest in reading (composite score; see the appendix for more information), and (6) school location (1 = city with a population of more than 100,000). It is important to note that we additionally controlled for shadow education, given the high prevalence of shadow education in Korea (KNSO 2009) and Japan (Mori and Baker 2010). Shadow education was measured by the extent of participation in private tutoring outside school to improve academic achievement during the last three years (never [reference category] vs. sometimes vs. regularly).
Analytic Strategies
First, to assess the relationship between family SES and two forms of cultural capital (Hypothesis 1), we conducted ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses predicting each form of cultural capital by family SES with the control variables. For OLS analysis predicting children’s embodied cultural capital, we additionally included parental cultural capital as an independent variable along with the family SES and other control variables. The aim was to examine the extent to which parental objectified cultural capital mediated the relationship between family SES and children’s embodied cultural capital (Hypothesis 2). Then, we replicated all these OLS regression analyses for Japan, France, and the United States. Finally, using a z test, we tested whether the relationships among family SES, parental objectified cultural capital, and children’s embodied cultural capital observed in Korea differed from those in the other countries.
Second, to investigate a potential contrasting relationship between two forms of cultural capital and academic performance in Korea (Hypotheses 3 and 4), we conducted OLS regression analyses predicting academic performance. To more systematically evaluate the relationship between cultural capital and academic performance, we estimated the two OLS regression models: The first model included the family SES variable and the control variables only and the second model added the cultural capital variables. 11 The aim was to assess the extent to which the cultural capital variables explained additional variance in academic achievement among Korean students, beyond family SES and the control variables. Then, using a z test, we tested the differences in the estimated regression coefficients between parental objectified cultural capital and children’s embodied cultural capital to examine differences in the magnitude of the impact on academic achievement between these two forms of cultural capital. Next, we replicated these OLS regression analyses for Japan, France, and the United States. Finally, using a z test, we examined whether the observed relationships between cultural capital and academic achievement in Korea significantly differed from those in the other countries. 12
Missing data
For the missing data for the control variables (see Table 1), we employed a multiple imputation technique with the ice option in the Stata software package (Royston 2004). For each country, we generated five data sets with five different sets of imputed values and averaged the coefficients and standard errors from analyses across the five data sets using the mim option in Stata (Royston 2004).
Weighted Descriptive Statistics for Variables Included in Analyses
For Japan, only family wealth and home educational resources were used for creating the index of family socioeconomic status (SES) because of no information and very limited information available for parental education and occupation, respectively, in the PISA 2000 data.
These variables are standardized (i.e., M = 0, SE = 1) within each country. For more information about these variables, see the appendix.
Correction for design effects
Following PISA’s recommendation (OECD 2002), the final student weights (w_fstuwt) supplied by PISA were used to correct for design effects after being normalized for each country, which allow results to be generalized to the target population in each country. Given the nested nature of the PISA data (i.e., students within sampled schools), we used the cluster option in Stata, which adjusts for the inflated standard errors resulting from the violation of the independent errors assumption (Rogers 1993).
Results
Descriptive Findings
In Table 1, we present weighted descriptive statistics for the variables used in the analysis for each country. Because it is difficult to compare the overall levels of those standardized indices (i.e., family SES, children’s embodied cultural capital, and interest in reading) across the countries, we also present descriptive statistics for the individual items before standardizing for each country in the appendix. In brief, Korean students showed the highest level of academic performance on reading. In contrast, Korean students reported lower levels of parental education and occupation, compared with students in France and the United States (see the appendix). Korean students also reported lower levels of family wealth and home educational resources, compared with their counterparts in Japan, France, and the United States (see the appendix), reflecting Korea’s lower level of economic development.
When it comes to cultural capital, Korean students had the highest level of parental objectified cultural capital but the lowest level of embodied cultural capital, along with Japanese students (see the appendix). To better understand this pattern, we utilized the PISA index of students’ cultural activities, which were derived from the same items that we used for this study but scaled for all students across all PISA 2000 participating countries (i.e., M = 0, SD = 1; OECD and UNESCO-UIS 2003). 13 Figure 1 graphs relative levels of participation in highbrow culture among young students in four countries, where 0 indicates the PISA average. Korea and Japan fall well below the PISA average. Our supplemental analyses showed that Korea and Japan had the lowest level of students’ cultural activities of all PISA countries. France showed lower levels of student participation than one might have expected. The United States had levels of student participation in highbrow culture that were higher than the PISA average.
PISA Index of Students’ Highbrow Cutural Acitivites for Korea, Japan, France, and the United States
There were some observed differences in the other background characteristics between Korea and the other countries. For example, Korean and Japanese students alike were less likely to come from nonintact families compared with their counterparts in France and the United States. In addition, Korean students spent more time doing homework or studying than did Japanese students, but were similar to French and American students. 14 Finally, Korea showed the most frequent use of private tutoring.
Effects of Family SES on Cultural Capital
The first set of analyses examined the impact of family SES on two forms of cultural capital. Recall that we expected a positive effect of family SES on two forms of cultural capital in Korea, consistent with the other countries (Hypothesis 1), but a relatively small effect of parental objectified cultural capital on children’s embodied cultural capital in Korea, compared with the other countries (Hypothesis 2). Because our interests are in the relationships among family SES, parental objectified cultural capital, and children’s embodied cultural capital, we present only the estimated coefficients of these variables without showing results of the other control variables (for the full results, see the online supplementary Tables A and B available on the journal Web site).
Parental objectified cultural capital
Table 2 presents the OLS coefficient of the family SES variable predicting parental objectified cultural capital for each country. Results showed that family SES had a positive effect on parental objectified cultural capital in Korea, consistent with the other countries. However, comparing Korea’s results with those of the other countries revealed that the effect of family SES on parental objectified cultural capital was much smaller in Korea than in the United States. One standard deviation increase in the index of family SES was associated with an increase in parental objectified cultural capital by .348 in Korea, while the corresponding increase was .449 in the United States. On the other hand, results showed that the effect of family SES on parental objectified cultural capital was larger in Korea than in Japan, but this result should be interpreted with caution due to the limited measure of family SES used for Japan (i.e., relying only on two SES indicators, not on all four).
Varying Relationships between Family Socioeconomic Status and Parental Objectified Cultural Capital across Four Countries
Note: Model includes controls for family structure, number of siblings, gender, student interest in reading, hours of study, shadow education, and school location. SES = socioeconomic status.
R2 based on one complete and imputed data set.
denotes significant differences from Korea under p < .05.
p < .001 (two-tailed tests).
Children’s embodied cultural capital
Table 3 presents the OLS coefficients of the family SES and parental cultural capital variables predicting children’s embodied cultural capital for each country. Model 1 included the family SES variable and the control variables, and Model 2 added the parental cultural capital variable. Model 1 showed that family SES had a positive impact on children’s embodied cultural capital, consistent with the other countries. Model 2 showed that parental objectified cultural capital had a positive effect on children’s embodied cultural capital in Korea. This was also true for the other countries. Yet there was some variation in the magnitude of the impact of parental objectified cultural capital on children’s embodied cultural capital. As expected, the impact of parental objectified cultural capital on children’s embodied cultural capital was smallest in Korea but largest in the United States. Specifically, a one-unit increase in parental objectified cultural capital was associated with an increase in the index of children’s embodied cultural capital by .106 in Korea, whereas the corresponding increase was .238 in the United States. Further, the extent to which the parental objectified cultural capital variable additionally contributed to explaining variation in children’s embodied cultural capital beyond family SES and the other controls was less than 1 percent for Korea but about 6 percent for the United States (see R2 changes in Table 3). The effect of family SES on children’s embodied cultural capital was larger in Korea than in Japan, but again this result should be interpreted with caution due to the limited measure of family SES for Japan.
Varying Relationships between Family Socioeconomic Status and Children’s Embodied Cultural Capital across Four Countries
Note: Models includes controls for family structure, number of siblings, gender, student interest in reading, hours of study, shadow education, and school location. SES = socioeconomic status.
R2 and R2 change based on one complete and imputed data set.
denotes significant differences from Korea under p < .05 (based on Model 2).
p < .05. ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests).
Effects of Cultural Capital on Academic Achievement
The next set of analyses examined the effects of two forms of cultural capital on academic achievement. Recall that we expected a positive impact of parental objectified cultural capital on children’s academic achievement (Hypothesis 3) but a negative impact of children’s embodied cultural capital in Korea (Hypothesis 4). As our interests lie in the relationships among family SES, cultural capital, and academic achievement, we present only the estimated coefficients of these variables while omitting those of the other control variables in Table 4 (for the full results, see the online supplementary Table C).
Varying Relationships between Cultural Capital and Academic Achievement across Four Countries
Note: Models includes controls for family structure, number of siblings, gender, student interest in reading, hours of study, shadow education, and school location. SES = socioeconomic status.
R2 and R2 change based on one complete and imputed data set.
denotes significant differences from Korea under p < .05 (based on Model 2).
p < .01. ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests).
denotes significant differences from children’s embodied cultural capital under p < .05 (based on Model 2).
For Korea, Model 1 (including only the family SES variable and the control variables) showed the significant SES gap in academic achievement. Model 2, where the cultural capital variables were added, showed that parental objectified cultural capital had a positive effect on children’s academic achievement, whereas children’s embodied cultural capital had a negative effect. Specifically, a one-unit increase in parental objectified cultural capital was associated with about a 4-point increase in Korean children’s academic achievement, whereas a one-unit increase in the index of children’s embodied cultural capital was associated with about a 5-point decrease in their academic achievement. In contrast, both forms of cultural capital had positive effects on academic achievement for all other countries, with the United States being the exception. The effect of children’s embodied cultural capital on academic achievement was positive but insignificant in the United States.
Comparing the results of Model 2 for Korea with those of the other countries revealed that the effect of parental objectified cultural capital on children’s academic achievement was much smaller in Korea than in France. In fact, the effect of parental objectified cultural capital was largest in France: A one-unit increase in parental objectified cultural capital was associated with about a 7-point increase in children’s academic achievement. Noteworthy is that the effect of family SES on children’s academic achievement was much smaller in Korea than in France and the United States. A 1 standard deviation increase in the index of family SES was associated with about a 14-point increase in children’s academic achievement in Korea, whereas the corresponding increases were about 22 and 31 points in France and in the United States, respectively. Although the impact of family SES on children’s embodied cultural capital was larger in Korea than in Japan, once again this result should be taken with caution due to the limitation of the family SES measure for Japan.
Discussion
In the examination of the relationships among family SES, cultural capital, and children’s academic achievement in Korea using the PISA 2000 data, we posited a positive effect of family SES on both measures of objectified and embodied cultural capital (Hypothesis 1) but a relatively small effect of parental objectified cultural capital on children’s embodied cultural capital, compared with the other countries (Hypothesis 2). We also suggested a positive effect of parental objectified cultural capital on academic achievement (Hypothesis 3) but a negative effect of children’s embodied cultural capital on their academic achievement (Hypothesis 4). Our empirical analyses of the PISA 2000 data support these hypotheses and expectations.
We found that family SES had a positive impact on both parental objectified cultural capital and children’s embodied cultural capital in Korea, consistent with evidence in the other countries. Yet the impact of family SES on parental objectified cultural capital was much smaller in Korea than in the United States. Furthermore, Korea showed the weakest tie between parental objectified cultural capital and children’s embodied cultural capital. With respect to the effects of cultural capital on academic achievement, we found the positive effect of parental objectified cultural capital but the negative effect of children’s embodied cultural capital in Korea.
We highlighted several unique institutional features of Korean education (e.g., standardized curriculum, intense competition for entering elite colleges, extensive shadow education, etc.) that might undercut the mechanisms through which children’s embodied cultural capital is believed to shape school success. Cultural capital arguments presume that the curriculum (or testing standards) rewards students for participation in highbrow culture. In Korea, however, tests tend to assess student learning directly related to the common curriculum, rather than testing students’ highbrow cultural knowledge. Further, given Korea’s intensive test preparation inside and outside school and highly competitive educational setting, students’ excessive participation in high culture may leave less time for test preparation and consequently have negative returns for academic performance. Our findings of the hindering aspects of embodied cultural capital in shaping academic achievement confirm past findings in Korea (Byun 2007; Byun and Kim 2008; Chang 2008; Kim and Byun 2007).
However, the finding of the negative effect of children’s embodied cultural capital on academic achievement should not be considered as evidence that the concept of cultural capital is irrelevant in Korean society. For one thing, our finding of the positive role of parental objectified cultural capital in mediating the relationship between family SES and children’s academic achievement partially supports the relevance of cultural capital in Korea. For another, institutional cultural capital (e.g., educational qualifications or academic credentials) that the present study did not examine plays a considerably important role not only in the labor market but also in the marriage market in Korean society. In Korea, there has been a stronger tendency than in any other country for people to marry within their own educational group (Smits, Ultee, and Lammers 1998). This tendency has been increasingly observed over the past five decades especially among those with a college degree (Park and Smits 2005). In other words, a college degree vastly increases the likelihood that one will marry a spouse from a high-status background in Korea. Therefore, the role of cultural capital in social reproduction should not be underestimated in Korean society as a whole.
For Japan, we found that parental objectified cultural capital and children’s embodied cultural capital were equally important for predicting academic achievement. The latter is consistent with Yamamoto and Brinton’s (2010) finding. However, our finding of the significant role of objectified cultural capital in Japan is inconsistent with Yamamoto and Brinton’s, who observed significant effects only for attainment. But, as noted, our measure of family SES for Japan was limited due to lack of information for parental education and occupation in the PISA 2000 data. So, our estimate of the influence of parental objectified cultural capital on academic achievement may be overstated for Japan. Further research is needed to clarify the effect of objectified cultural capital on academic achievement in the Japanese educational system as well as the role of cultural capital in other East Asian educational systems.
For France, where prior empirical evidence is limited and mixed, our results showed that both objectified and embodied cultural capital had positive effects on academic achievement. Furthermore, our analyses showed that the effects were far larger in France than in Korea, Japan, and even the United States. These findings highlight the importance of cultural capital in France. In a study of class reproduction in France, Robinson and Garnier (1985) found little tendency for higher SES fathers to convert their economic capital to educational capital for their children in France. They concluded that “the role of educational capital in reproducing class is much overstated by reproduction theory” in France (Robinson and Garnier 1985:277). However, evidence from the PISA data set reaffirms the salience of cultural capital for social reproduction in France.
Finally, for the United States where prior research findings on the role of cultural capital in academic success are mixed, our results showed that parental objectified cultural capital had a positive effect on children’s academic achievement, while children’s embodied cultural capital had a positive but insignificant effect. The latter is inconsistent with some prior research (e.g., DiMaggio 1982; Dumais 2006b; Roscigno and Ainsworth-Darnell 1999) but consistent with some other research in the United States (e.g., Dumais 2006a). Further, our analyses showed that the extent to which the cultural capital variables additionally contributed to explaining variance beyond family SES and the control variables was relatively small in the United States (5 percent), even compared to East Asian countries such as Korea (8 percent) and Japan (9 percent). Noteworthy is that the direct effect of family SES on academic achievement was much larger in the United States than in any other countries, including France. This finding may indicate that in the United States family SES has a more direct effect on children’s academic achievement, rather than via its influence on cultural capital. Indeed, some previous research in the United States suggests that students’ cultural activities have a very modest effect on academic achievement (Bodovski and Farkas 2008; Dumais 2006b). Further, several researchers have suggested that certain features of the American education system, such as decentralization and nonstandardization, tend to increase the direct influence of family SES on children’s educational outcomes (Buchmann, Condron, and Roscigno 2010; Lareau 1989; Park 2008). Taken together, our findings suggest that the effects of family SES and cultural capital on children’s school success may be contingent on the institutional characteristics of a country’s educational system, an idea that supports institutional theory.
The present study has several limitations that could be addressed in future research. First, we are limited to the conventional measures of cultural capital available in the PISA data set. We lack subtle measures of cultural attitudes, behaviors, and linguistic styles that would support a more in-depth evaluation of cultural capital arguments. More fundamentally, conventional measures of cultural capital largely reflect a Western elite culture (Buchmann 2002; Hampden-Thompson et al. 2008). Although we have offered some rationales and evidence of the validity of high-culture possessions and cultural participation as measures of cultural capital in Korea, it is still questionable whether these measures of cultural capital best represent high-status culture in this society.
The question arises, then, whether there is an elite culture in Korea, which is widely recognized by most Koreans but exclusively shared by the members of the upper class and which benefits children’s academic success. One possible marker of cultural capital in contemporary Korean society may be acquisition of English (O 2000). The desire to learn English is pervasive in Korean upper-middle-class society (Lett 1991; Park and Abelmann 2004). Many upper-middle-class parents send their children to an English kindergarten or a cram school or even to English-speaking countries to learn English at an early age. Children from lower SES families, on the other hand, are often at a disadvantage because their families cannot afford the costs of private tutoring or foreign travel. Further, English is reflected in the school curriculum from the third grade in elementary school and plays an increasingly important role in college entrance and the labor market. Unfortunately, the PISA 2000 data set does not include the measures needed to explore this possibility. Future research is needed to examine the role of English as a form of cultural capital and to identify and measure additional markers of cultural capital in the Korean context. 15
Finally, we highlighted several aspects of the Korean education system that may account for the negative effect of children’s embodied cultural capital on academic achievement. These features include a high degree of standardization, intense focus on test preparation inside and outside school, and extensive shadow education. At the same time, we noted some other features of the educational system that may allow more room for children’s embodied cultural capital (and parental objectified cultural capital as well as family SES) to affect children’s academic achievement. These features include a high degree of decentralization and a reliance on noncognitive criteria such as extracurricular activities and recommendation letters. If the aforementioned institutional features indeed combine to either suppress or increase the influence of children’s embodied cultural capital (and parental objectified cultural capital as well as family SES) on academic achievement, the implications go beyond the Korean educational system because the use of standardized tests (Kamens and Mcneely 2010) and shadow education (Baker and LeTendre 2005) has become an increasingly worldwide phenomenon. For example, it may be possible that in a country like the United States where educational reform is increasingly emphasizing student assessment and testing (Grodsky, Warren, and Felts 2008), and there is a growing demand for shadow education to enhance students’ standardized test scores (Buchmann et al. 2010; Byun and Park 2012), the influence of children’s embodied cultural capital on academic achievement may decrease over time. In contrast, in a country like Korea in which school reforms are geared toward a differentiated school curriculum and looser linkage between curriculum and assessments (Byun and Kim 2010a), the influence of children’s embodied cultural capital (and parental cultural capital as well as family SES) may increase over time. Yet it remains to be seen how institutional transformation changes the mediating role that cultural capital plays in linking family SES to children’s academic success and in turn changes the processes and contours of social stratification over time within a country.
Footnotes
Appendix
Descriptive Statistics for Original Items for Standardized Indices
| Korea |
Japan
a
|
France |
United States |
|||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M | (SE) | Factor loading | % of variance explained by items | M | (SE) | Factor loading | % of variance explained by items | M | (SE) | Factor loading | % of variance explained by items | M | (SE) | Factor loading | % of variance explained by items | |
| Family SES | 46 | 60 | 45 | 52 | ||||||||||||
| Parental education | 4.54 | (.02) | .69 | – | – | – | 4.83 | (.02) | .76 | 5.22 | (.02) | .69 | ||||
| Parental occupation | 42.67 | (.22) | .73 | – | – | – | 49.17 | (.27) | .77 | 51.51 | (.31) | .73 | ||||
| Family wealth | 9.47 | (.04) | .71 | 10.01 | (.04) | .78 | 10.07 | (.05) | .68 | 12.75 | (.06) | .77 | ||||
| Home educational resources | 5.79 | (.02) | .56 | 6.34 | (.01) | .78 | 6.53 | (.01) | .38 | 6.00 | (.03) | .68 | ||||
| Children’s embodied cultural capital b | 62 | 52 | 52 | 59 | ||||||||||||
| Visited a museum or art gallery | 0.39 | (.01) | .73 | 0.33 | (.01) | .71 | 0.57 | (.01) | .77 | 0.86 | (.01) | .73 | ||||
| Attended an opera, ballet, or classical symphony concert | 0.13 | (.01) | .81 | 0.13 | (.01) | .72 | 0.14 | (.01) | .66 | 0.34 | (.01) | .78 | ||||
| Watched live theater | 0.15 | (.01) | .82 | 0.16 | (.01) | .73 | 0.44 | (.01) | .74 | 0.74 | (.02) | .79 | ||||
| Student interest in reading c | 65 | 63 | 69 | 71 | ||||||||||||
| Reading is one of my favorite hobbies. | 2.18 | (.01) | .85 | 2.17 | (.02) | .85 | 2.11 | (.02) | .86 | 2.13 | (.02) | .86 | ||||
| I like talking about books with other people. | 2.11 | (.01) | .84 | 2.15 | (.01) | .80 | 2.16 | (.02) | .82 | 2.16 | (.02) | .83 | ||||
| I feel happy if I receive a book as a present. | 2.42 | (.01) | .78 | 2.28 | (.01) | .82 | 2.21 | (.02) | .82 | 2.23 | (.02) | .84 | ||||
| I enjoy going to a bookstore or a library. | 2.44 | (.01) | .77 | 2.84 | (.01) | .70 | 2.40 | (.02) | .80 | 2.48 | (.02) | .84 | ||||
For Japan, only family wealth and home educational resources were used for creating the index of family socioeconomic status (SES) because of no information and very limited information available for parental education and occupation, respectively, in the PISA 2000 data.
Students responded to each statement on a 4-point scale with the following categories: 0 = never or hardly ever, 1 = once or twice a year, 2 = three or four times a year, and 3 = more than four times a year.
Students responded to each statement on a 4-point scale with the following categories: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, 4 = strongly agree.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank David Bills, John Robert Warren, and several anonymous reviewers of Sociology of Education for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. We also wish to thank David W. Chapman, Christine Min Wotipka, Darwin Hendel, Robin Sakamoto, and Hyunjoon Park for their valuable input. Any remaining errors are the authors’ responsibility.