There are four types of capital: economic, human, cultural, and social. The distribution of capital in home and school settings affects the types of educational outcomes and the quality of lifelong opportunities that individuals are able to enjoy. Resource availability and accessibility influence the success levels at which teaching and learning is experienced. Capital possession or acquisition impacts the ability to navigate the academic pipeline and to recognize the appropriate tools by which to do so. Minimal attempts have been taken to address different perspectives related to economic, human, cultural, and social capital. This book identifies the various tenets of capital as having shared similarities and/or differences, as well as reveals how the distribution of capital impacts educational settings. More specifically, this book reveals that given the increases in the parental education or the cultural capital of African Americans, no significant changes have occurred in the number of years that African-American children attend schools. This finding remains consistent in terms of the sort of cultural capital that they are able to gain. In sum, the research concludes that cultural capital does assume a significant role in the transfer of advantages that stem from middle- and upper-level socioeconomic backgrounds.

The Authors: RoSusan D. Bartee is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. Dr. Bartee’s research interests are K-12 education leadership, organizational culture and social contexts of schools, and university-school partnerships. She teaches graduate courses in educational leadership, research methods, and cultural contexts of education. Dr. Bartee previously served as the Associate Director at the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) in Washington, DC for the Reading First Teacher Education Network (RFTEN), a $4.5 million dollar federal grant focused on restructuring teacher education programs using evidence-based research. Dr. Bartee received her Ph.D. in educational policy studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, her M.A. in liberal studies from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a B.A. in English from Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. M. Christopher Brown II is Professor and Dean of the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He previously served as Vice President for Programs and Administration at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), Director of Social Justice and Professional Development for the American Educational Research Association (AERA), as well as Executive Director and Chief Research Scientist of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of the United Negro College Fund. Dr. Brown has held faculty appointments at The Pennsylvania State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.