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SOCIAL CAPITAL AND STUDENT LEARNING:

Empirical Results from Latin American Primary Schools


Joan B. Anderson
University of San Diego
Appendix 1
Social Capital and Education: A Literature Review
Social Capital Defined
Social capital consists of a set of social interaction assets such as shared norms and
values, trust, honesty, mutual understanding, tolerance, cooperation, collaboration and
reciprocity that enable people to work with each other in groups. Where people are trusting and
trustworthy and are actively interacting with others in their communities, costs of business and
social transactions are less and the transmission of knowledge from one person to another is
facilitated. It acts as a sociological WD-40 for information diffusion (Putnam, 2000, p. 23).
Social capital is viewed as an intangible asset that belongs to the community rather than the
individual, shifting the focus from individual agents to the relationships between them. The level
of social capital is a function of the quality of relationships, attitudes and discipline between the
individual parties that form a group. Any given individual is likely to participate in several
groups that have varying degrees of social capital.
Economists define a capital good as one whose value is in producing other goods.
Resources are invested in producing physical capital (machinery) that is used to produce other
goods. Furthermore, the increase in productivity that results from using the machinery more than
compensates for the resources invested in producing the machines. The analogy of human
capital to physical capital is that if people invest time and resources into learning a skill and/or
acquiring knowledge, their increased productivity more than compensates for the resources used
up in learning. Thus a person spending 12 years in primary and secondary school and then four

more studying in the field of engineering acquires enough increased productivity to compensate
for all that time of lost production, compensation, and use of educational resources including
school buildings, equipment and teachers. Social capital refers to the investment in relationships,
active connections and/or social networks that result in increased productivity. While physical
capital refers to physical objects and human capital to properties of individuals, social capital
involves mechanisms through which knowledge can be transferred from one person to another
(Putnam, 2000). It provides links and relationships which enhance and augment the productivity
of human capital. Social capital is a quality created between individuals while human capital is a
quality of individuals (Burt, 2000).
Because social capital involves intangibles, defining it has generated a considerable
literature (for example see Robison, Siles & Schmid, 2004). Durston defines social capital as
the substance of certain social relations in which attitudes of trust combine with behaviors of
reciprocity and cooperation such that those who possess this capital have access to greater
benefits than they could enjoy in its absence p. 133 (2004). The foundation of social capital is
trust. Its building blocks are honesty, mutual understanding, shared values, tolerance,
cooperation and collaboration. Hargreaves (2001) describes this set of characteristics as the
cultural component of social capital. The structural component is composed of the networks
between people.
High levels of trust tend to generate strong networks and collaboration between people
within a network, which in turn requires honesty. Trust breeds trust. It is reinforcing and its
development is a cumulative process (Cohen and Prusak, 2001). Creating and expanding social
capital requires investment, just as is true of other forms of capital. At the same time a betrayal

of trust can very quickly undermine and/or destroy social capital. If social capital is low, the
extent to which human capital can be mobilized is limited (Hargreaves, 2001).
The concept has been applied in many different fields arguing that relationships built on
trust and reciprocity facilitate productivity and efficiency. Robert Putnam, in his book Bowling
Alone, applies the concept to the functioning of communities and further argues that it is
declining over time in the U.S. (Putnam, 2000). Social capital may be bonding, meaning an
inward looking community that reinforces exclusive identities and homogeneous groups. Or it
may be bridging when the community is outward-looking, attempting to include people from
different social and racial classes (embraces diversity). Bonding social capital mobilizes
solidarity within a group, described by Smith (2001) as a kind of sociological glue. Bridging
social capital networks provides linkages to external assets and information diffusion. Social
capital facilitates the flow of information, as well as empathy and tolerance between people.
Putnam cites evidence that people who are rich in social capital cope better with traumas and
fight illness more effectively.
Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak (2001) apply social capital to business, arguing that
networks based on trust and reciprocity greatly facilitate efficiency in business (which can also
include schools). They claim that: (1) trust relationships and shared goals result in more
effective knowledge sharing; (2) high levels of trust and cooperation lower transactions costs; (3)
shared understanding leads to a greater coherence of action; and (4) a more compatible,
supportive work environment leads to lower turnover rates and more stability within the
organization (e.g. the school). The edited volume by Eric Lesser, Knowledge and Social Capital
(2000), contains a series of essays that apply the concept to organizations, the success of Siliccon
Valley, the law profession and upper level management, as well as to education.

II. Social Capital and Education


The first known use of the term social capital was applied to education by Lydia
Judson Hanifan (1916), a state supervisor of West Virginia rural schools. He used the term to
describe the importance of community involvement for a schools success. He named the
elements of good will, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse among individuals and
families as key and argued that the community as a whole benefits from the cooperation of its
parts. Beginning in the 1980's, a literature on the role of social capital in education began to
emerge (Bourdieu, Coleman, 1988, 1990 among many others). Coleman emphasized the
importance of the social context to learning. He argued that learning is enhanced through the
interpersonal relationships built through community building, networking and relationships
which have high levels of trust and mutual respect. The strong networks and collaborative
efforts that denote high social capital enable a school to transform its human capital into child
learning. For example, teachers will share their knowledge of what works in the classroom with
each other. Teaching and learning in the classroom becomes a collaborative effort between the
teacher and students and, in turn, students help each other and collaborate on school work.
Social capital in the classroom is asserted to engender respect and authentic
communication that facilitates learning. Putnam, showing a strong correlation between social
capital and child development, contends that social capital is second only to poverty in affecting
childrens lives. He states that social capital keeps bad things from happening to good kids
(2000; p. 296). Smith (2001) asserts that communities with a good stock of social capital are
more likely to have higher educational achievement, as well as lower crime rates, better health
and more economic growth.
.

Figure 1 attempts to schematically illustrate social capital interactions within the


classroom and convey some of their complexity. The boxes represent physical and human
capital in schools, children, teachers, school administration and parents. The lines between them
represent interactions, i.e. social capital. Human capital includes the experience and education
embodied in each of the actors, including teachers, classmates and parents, while social capital
has to do with the interactions between the actors in ways that enable human and physical capital
to translate into learning (James Coleman, 1990). The arrows in Figure 1, relating the physical
and human capital embodied in the boxes, can be thought of as the interactions that generate
social capital. The arrows from physical capital to the childs learning are unidirectional since
the childs learning does not affect the levels of physical capital. However, under ideal
conditions the exchange of social capital goes both directions, as illustrated by the double
arrows. While the flow of knowledge may be stronger going from the parent and teacher to the
child than it is going back from the child, the childs growing knowledge base and experiences
also flow back to the family and teacher and indirectly between those two from the child.. The
system between parents, teacher and child only has full closure if there are direct relationships
between the parents and the teacher, as illustrated by the bottom double arrow, underlining the
importance of parent-teacher interaction to the childs classroom learning. Children also learn
from other classmates as illustrated by the box to the far right. The empirical part of this study
emphasizes the social capital flows between the teacher and child, between the classmates and
the child, and to a lesser extent between family and teacher interactions. The diagram is oversimplified in that it focuses on the classroom and omits interactions between school
administration, classmates families and the wider community.

Childs
Learning

Physical
School
Characteristics

Classmate
Characteristics

Family
Characteristics

SES

Siblings

Teacher
Characteristics
Parents
Education

Education,
Training

Experience

Teaching
Style

Figure 1
Impact of Physical, Human and Social Capital on the Childs Learning

Responding to the importance Coleman placed on the level of social capital between
parents and the school community (the double arrow between parents and teacher in Figure 1),
several empirical studies have tested the effectiveness of level of parental participation in the
school on their childs learning. For example, Ho and Willms (1996) and Carbonaro (1998) both
use number of contacts between the school and parents during a year as one measure of this
connection, along with parent participation levels as volunteers and Parent-Teacher Organization
(PTO) participants. Others have emphasized networks among parents, using such measures as
the number of parents of the childs friends known to the parents (Muller, 1995 and Horvat,
Weininger and Largeau, 2003, among others). The Horvat, et al. ethnographic study of U.S. high
school students indicates that social class has a big effect on the types of social networks that
develop. Middle class networks tend to be much more connected to the school and school
activities, giving them more social capital that can be directed toward solving problems at school
and enhancing learning for their children. Furthermore, they found that middle class social
networks have more access to professionals to aid in problem solving. Social networks among
working class and poor families tend to be formed around kinship ties with very little help in
matters pertaining to schooling.
Other studies have focused on the effects of developing social capital within the
classroom through the use of teaching techniques that involve active participation on the part of
students and tap into the possibilities of students learning from each other. In U.S. classrooms
use of cooperative learning techniques such as Kagan Structures (Kagan, 1989-90) and the
Tribes Learning Community (Gibbs, 1995) have been shown to affect learning achievement.
According to Dotson (2002), of 67 studies on cooperative learning, 61 percent showed
significant gains in learning achievement. Instilling concepts of respect, trustworthiness,

honesty and empathy into the group relationships along with conflict resolution and problem
solving skills, learning to say thank you and give complements as well as to express misgivings
and anger are all part of the development of social capital between children in the classroom.
Another example of the importance of social capital in the classroom is an evaluation of
special programs developed to enhance learning by Stringfield, Millsap and Herman (1998).
They conclude that collectively these studies indicate that the quality of the implementation of
the programs is the determining factor for program success. Implementation involves intangible
actions and interactions, including the creation of trust, development of networks, high levels of
cooperation and reciprocity, all forms of social capital.

References for Literature Review


Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The Forms of Capital. In John G. Richardson, ed. Handbook of
Theory and Research of the Sociology of Education, New York: Greenwood Press, 241-258..
Burt, Ronald S. (2000) The Contingent Value of Social Capital, in Lesser, Eric L., ed.,
Knowledge and Social Capital, Boston, MA: Butterworth & Heinmann, 255-286.
Carbonaro, William J. (1998). A Little Help from my Friends Parents: Intergenerational
Closure and Educational Outcomes. Sociology of Education. 71, 295-313.
Coleman, James S. (1988) Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital, American Journal
of Sociology, 94: S95-S120.
Coleman, James S. (1990) Foundations of Social Theory, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press.
Cohen, Don and Laurence Prusak (2001) In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes
Orangizations Work, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Dotson, Jeanie M. (2002) Cooperative Learning Structures Can Increase Student Achievement,
Kagan Online Magazine, Kagan Publishing, http://www.kaganonline.com/Articles/index.html.
Durston, John (2004). Social Capital: part of the problem, part of the solution. How it can
perpetuate or deter poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Ral Atria and Marcelo Siles,

(eds.). Social Capital and Poverty Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago,
Chile: CELAC.
Gibbs, Jeanne (1995) Tribes, A New Way of Learning and Being Together, Sausalito, CA:
CenterSource Systems.
Gibeon, Barbara H. (2002) Structuring Schools for Teacher Collaboration, Principal
Leadership, vol. 3, September, 41-44.
Hanifan, Lydia Judson (1916) The Rural School Community Center, Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 67: 130-138.
Hargreaves, David H. (2001) A Capital Theory of School Effectiveness and Improvement,
British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 27, No. 4, 487-503.
Ho Sui-Chu, Esther and J. Douglas Willms (1996) Effects of Parental Involvement on EighthGrade Achievement. Sociology of Education: 69:126-141.
Horvat, Erin McNamara, Elliott B. Weininger and Annette Largeau (2003) From Social Ties to
Social Capital: Class Differences in the Relations between Schools and Parent Networks,
American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 40, no. 2, Summer, 319-351.
Kagan, Spencer (1989-90) The Structural Approach to Cooperative Learning, Educational
Leadership, vol. 47, 12-15.
Lesser, Eric L., ed. (2000) Knowledge and Social Capital, Boston, MA: Butterworth &
Heinmann.
Muller, Clandra (1995). Parental Ties to the School and Community and Mathematics
Achievement. In Peter W. Cookson and Barbara Schneider (Eds), Transforming Schools. New
York and London: Garland Publishing.
Putnam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling Alone, New York, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Smith, M. K. (2001) Social Capital, The Encyclopedia of Informal Education,
www.infed.org/bibio/social_capital.htm.
Robison, Lindon J., Marcelo E. Siles, A. Allan Schmid (2004). Social Capital and poverty
reduction: Towards a mature paradigm. In Ral Atria and Marcelo Siles, (eds.). Social Capital
and Poverty Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago, Chile: CELAC.
Smith, M. K., (2001). Social Capital, The Encyclopedia of Informal Education,
www.infed.org/bibio/social_capital.htm.
Stringfield, Sam, Mary Ann Millsap, and Rebecca Herman (1998) Using Promising Programs
to Improve Educational Processes and Student Outcomes, in International Handbook of

Eductional Change, ed. A Hargreaves, et. al., Great Britain: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 13141338.
Valenzuela, Angela (1999) Subractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of
Caring, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.

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