This paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between social capital and student math and language achievement and the probability of promotion, using data gathered from fourth grade classrooms in public schools in four Latin American cities. The results suggest that social capital among teachers in a school, between teacher and students, and among the students in a classroom contribute significantly to learning achievement and the probability of promotion. Furthermore, social capital between the students matters at least as much as the teacher's social capital. Children learn from each other and the networks allowing that to happen can be very important. The current pressure on teachers to achieve results on reading and math scores has tended to push teachers to “teach to the test”. Ironically, this study's results indicate that spending time in creating social capital within the classroom environment is associated with higher language and math test scores.
Economists define a capital good as a good whose value is derived from producing other goods. 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. It 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. 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. Its level is a function of the quality of relationships, attitudes and discipline between the individual parties that form a group. If social capital is low, the extent to which human capital can be mobilized is limited (Hargreaves, 2001). A betrayal of trust undermines and/or destroys social capital.
Beginning in the 1980s, a literature on social capital and its role in education began to emerge (Bourdieu, 1986; Carbonaro, 1998; Coleman, 1988; Ho Sui-Chu & Willms, 1996; Horvat, Weininger, & Largeau, 2003; Putnam, 2000, among many others). Instilling concepts of respect, trustworthiness, honesty and empathy into 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. Some studies have shown that the effects of developing social capital within the classroom, for example use of cooperative learning techniques such as “Kagan Structures” (Kagan, 1989–1990) and the “Tribes Learning Community” (Gibbs, 1995) are related to learning.
The purpose of this paper is to extend the current literature by focusing on social capital within the classroom and within Latin America. It empirically tests the contention that more social capital is associated with more learning by statistically estimating the effects of social capital within the classroom on learning achievement and the probability of promotion, using data from fourth grade children in four large Latin American cities: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Santiago, Chile and Leon, Mexico.
The sample was divided into schools in poor neighborhoods and schools in non-poor neighborhoods in order to address the research question on whether social capital is equally effective in poor and non-poor classrooms or whether there is a difference in how social capital affects learning and promotion between those two environments. In the language equations of the sub samples, social capital variables matter more in the non-poor schools, explaining 73.4% of the between school variation compared to 56% in the poor sub sample. For the math equations, however, the contribution of social capital is roughly the same, adding 33% in the poor sub sample and 34.5% in the non-poor sub sample to the explanatory value. Social capital between the children and teacher, especially the children's attitude towards school, liking the teacher and the teacher's estimate of the classes ability contribute to increased learning in the poor sub sample, but none of the variables measuring social capital between children are statistically significant in either the language or math equations. The significance of social capital between the teacher and students underlines the importance of having well-trained, effective teachers in low SES schools in the Latin American urban settings of the sampling universe.
In contrast, in the non-poor sub sample, variables reflecting social capital among the children predominate especially in explaining the language score. In fact, teacher–student social capital variables only explain 24.2% of the total variation in language and student–student social capital variables explain 58.5%. Significant student-to-student indicators were, in order of importance, the proportion of students having both parents in the home, having grouped furniture in the classroom and the class average family socioeconomic level. In math, the teacher's expectation of the students’ ability, the number of questions asked and the percent with both parents are the significant variables. Social capital among children in non-poor schools appears to affect the probability of promotion, as well, with both the class average SES and proportion of families with two parents being statistically significant.
