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Research Article Analysis Paper Anchita Karwande

Jessica Calarco’s “’I need help!’ Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School” article explored “children’s role in educational stratification” (Calarco, 2011). Her research focused on how students in different classes of society, specifically middle and working classes, activated their class backgrounds and cultural capital to succeed in school. Calarco argues that middle-class children had made engaged more actively in class and requested help from teachers more frequently than the working class students. Because there has been research done on how the inequalities in the system and differences in cultural potential of the classes impacting children in school, Calarco feels that it is necessary to closely at how students are directly using their available resources in school. This article draws from a variety of sub topics including but not limited to social classes, culture, and poverty. Calarco mentions Mehan’s reviews and praises on research that examines “how culture operates at individual and institutional levels” (Calarco, 2011) in creating and maintaining inequalities. This relates to Calarco’s research in that her research is focused on examining culture at an individual level by looking at how the individual student and their culture operates. Calarco also brings importance to her research by adding in how Lareau highlights that a child’s class-based behaviors in school have a more significant impact and lasting consequence than other actions in other settings(Calarco, 2011) Calarco uses an observational study to look at the way students from the middle and working classes engage in school. She selected Maplewood Elementary School, a 500 student K5 grade school in a suburb next to a large, Eastern City, to conduct her study. In designing her study, Calarco followed four classrooms with students from 3rd to 5th grade. Calarco did not want

to involve the intricacies of the impact of race in her study so she decided to choose 56 middle and working class white students in the group. She distinguished working from middle class by sending a survey out as well as looking at parents’ educational attainment and their occupational status. The advantages of this are that she excluded race from her sample and was able to have results that exclude any prejudices race might bring from the teachers and the social biases from surrounding peers. Although race was excluded to an extent the social biases of being in a certain group (dorks, popular, etc.) are still relevant. If a student felt like it was unpopular to ask a question then there would be a larger impact. In choosing whether to seek help, the middle class students were prompt in voicing their questions and pushing to find answers to their problems, oftentimes interrupting class or the teacher. Working class students, even when confused or needing help, did not reach out as easily to the teacher for clarification or guidance. In choosing how to seek help, the middle class students used direct and proactive strategies ranging from calling out and walking towards the teacher instead of passively raising their hands. In contrast, working class students chose to be less proactive in asking for help and raised their hands waiting for the teacher to answer them. The conclusion is that middle class students were able to use their cultural background to ask questions and invest proactively in their education. Unlike this, the working class tended to be quite and have passive ways to engage in the class and ask for help and clarity. I cautiously agree with this article because of the amount of factors that were not studied or regulated. There was no way to regulate the prejudices of the teachers. The state and area this study was done has severe cultural impacts on the administration and the students, therefore a more liberal society could have differing impacts than a remote town. I believe that middle class students are more confident but to say that this will happen as a majority is a stretch. One way this article could be

improved is to have a control group in the elementary school and sampling throughout the nation instead of just one school.

Works Cited: Calarco, J., 2011. “I Need Help!” Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School. American Sociological Review, 76(6), pp.862-882....