Overcoming Inequality: How Schools Compensate for Socioeconomic Gaps in Children’s Learning

Abstract

This dissertation views schools’ compensatory mechanisms from a mixed methods approach, consisting of both quantitative and qualitative data that were collected from a larger study on summer learning in Canada (see Davies & Aurini, 2012). Overall, these chapters contribute to Downey and Condron’s (2016) framework that schools partially compensate for class-based inequalities in education. However, lacking from this framework is how schools compensate for low SES children’s education, especially when educational resources are not available by their families. The goal of this dissertation, therefore, is to fill in these gaps with empirical and theoretical contributions as discussed in each of the three chapters.