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

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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.

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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 school’s 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

children’s 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.

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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 child’s learning are unidirectional since

the child’s 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 child’s 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 child’s 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 over-

simplified in that it focuses on the classroom and omits interactions between school

administration, classmates’ families and the wider community.

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Child’s Learning

Physical School

Characteristics

Classmate Characteristics

Teacher Characteristics

SES Siblings Parent’s Education

Education, Training Experience

Teaching Style

Family Characteristics

Figure 1 Impact of Physical, Human and Social Capital on the Child’s Learning

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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 child’s 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 child’s 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,

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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 Friend’s 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 Raúl Atria and Marcelo Siles,

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(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 Eighth-Grade 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 Raúl 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

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Eductional Change, ed. A Hargreaves, et. al., Great Britain: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1314-1338. 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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