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Title
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Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
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Author
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Pallas, Aaron M.
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Research Area
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Social Institutions
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Topic
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Educational Institutions
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Abstract
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The modern life course is characterized by three major trends: (i) schooling has increased worldwide and penetrates virtually all phases of life; (ii) the globalization of the economy has rendered work, and the features of modern life that stem from it, less predictable; and (iii) new technologies and the ongoing institutionalization of the self allow for participation in an ever‐increasing number of communities. These shifts open up new ways of thinking about the life course, moving from the traditional framing of the life course as a sequence of role transitions to a view that highlights competent membership in a configuration of communities of practice, particularly in the domains of work, family, and leisure. This shift also entails moving from schooling as credentials and human capital to understanding what is learned in school that is relevant to being a competent adult. Theories of how what is learned in school might transfer to adult life continue to outstrip the prevailing technologies for assessment of that learning.
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Identifier
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etrds0403
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extracted text
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Schooling, Learning, and the Life
Course
AARON M. PALLAS
Abstract
The modern life course is characterized by three major trends: (i) schooling has
increased worldwide and penetrates virtually all phases of life; (ii) the globalization
of the economy has rendered work, and the features of modern life that stem from
it, less predictable; and (iii) new technologies and the ongoing institutionalization
of the self allow for participation in an ever-increasing number of communities.
These shifts open up new ways of thinking about the life course, moving from the
traditional framing of the life course as a sequence of role transitions to a view that
highlights competent membership in a configuration of communities of practice,
particularly in the domains of work, family, and leisure. This shift also entails
moving from schooling as credentials and human capital to understanding what is
learned in school that is relevant to being a competent adult. Theories of how what
is learned in school might transfer to adult life continue to outstrip the prevailing
technologies for assessment of that learning.
INTRODUCTION
Sociologists and applied developmental psychologists have organized the
study of lives into a model of the life course, the sequence of events that
individuals experience as they age from birth to death. Such models are centered on adulthood, a phase of life that is defined by work and family roles
and responsibilities; earlier life course stages, such as infancy, childhood, and
adolescence, are prefatory to adulthood, and old age, which is characterized
by the gradual relinquishment of roles and responsibilities, follows it.
In this essay, I examine the linkages among schooling, learning, and the life
course. I begin by describing a set of macroforces giving rise to a new, unstable and less predictable life course. I then examine the implications of these
changes for how social scientists tie schooling to the life course, critiquing
the limited attention to learning and the transfer of knowledge in prevailing
models. I conclude with a discussion of the challenges of conceptualizing and
measuring what is learned in school.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE LIFE COURSE
Three potentially contradictory trends characterize the course of lives in
modern societies. First, schooling has become ubiquitous. Across the world,
in virtually every country, a higher proportion of young people attend school
than ever before. Rates of primary, secondary and tertiary enrollment have
skyrocketed, as has the global literacy rate, now estimated at 84% for those
15 and older (Huebler & Lu, 2013). Schooling, the formal organized form
of education, now reaches further into the social fabric, influencing other
social institutions such as the economy, the family, religion, the military,
government, and the civic sphere, to name just a few (Baker, 2014). In the
language of neoinstitutionalists, schooling not only reacts to changes in
other social institutions, but actively creates society, generating new forms of
knowledge, new social roles, and new identities to which other institutions
must adapt. Although individuals spend a relatively small fraction of their
lives enrolled in school, schooling has profound direct and indirect effects
on how those lives unfold. This is particularly true for the socioeconomic
status of an individual and his or her family, as educational attainment is
a major determinant of occupational status, income, and wealth, and the
qualities of life that these assets can purchase.
Second, individual lives have become less predictable. This is most apparent in the stage of life between adolescence and adulthood, however one
defines these terms, but is also evident in adulthood. The empirical regularities of the past have been superseded by a period marked by instabilities
in the spheres of work and family. Arnett (2006) refers to this new stage of
life as emerging adulthood, during which young people explore their identities through frequent transitions among jobs, romantic partners, and leisure
activities. A generation earlier, Namboodiri (1987) referred to this time as the
floundering phase of the life course. The major driver of this instability is a
global economy in which the interests of multinational firms lead to weakened ties between individuals and their employers.
Nowhere is this latter trend clearer than postindustrial Japan, where
eroding linkages between schools and firms, accompanied by truncated
commitments by employers to their workers, have created what Brinton
(2011) refers to as a lost generation of youth, unable to find its location in the
world. Recent college graduates in the United States, though not subject
to as rigid a set of expectations as their Japanese counterparts, also report
difficulty finding meaningful jobs and sustaining romantic relationships
(Arum & Roksa, 2014).
It is too early to tell whether the instabilities facing young people today—a
complex amalgam of heightened choice in some domains, and restricted
choice in others—will reverberate throughout their lives to come. However,
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
3
there is already evidence that economic globalization is amplifying uncertainty and the perception of risk associated with daily life. Neoliberal
state policies deregulating markets and promoting privatization have
weakened the social safety nets that protected individuals from the harshest
consequences of economic downturns; and periods of boom and bust have
become more volatile and less predictable in a global market. In a number
of countries, the standard career for middle-aged men has shifted to a
“patchwork” career of fragmented, contingent jobs (Mills & Blossfeld, 2006).
Third, the social distance between individuals is no longer dictated by the
physical distance that separates them. Technological change, most notably
in the form of new information and communication technologies, now allow
individuals at some geographic distance to engage with one another on matters of mutual interest, both vocational and otherwise. With the ongoing institutionalization and cultivation of the self in Western societies (Gergen, 1991;
Meyer, 1986), individuals may choose to join groups organized around common personal interests, ranging from role-playing games to reading groups
to political action committees. Members of such groups may come to know
one another quite well through social interaction mediated by technology,
even if they have never met face-to-face. Technological change has increased
such opportunities exponentially.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF THE LIFE COURSE
These three trends suggest that the course of lives in modern societies has
become increasingly heterogeneous and unpredictable over the past two
decades. However, social scientists have been slow to incorporate the implications of the growing heterogeneity of individual lives into understandings
of the linkages among schooling, learning, and the life course. Sociologists
developed a typology of life course stages at a time when national economies
were expanding and most families were formed via marital childbearing.
Leaving school, beginning a regular job, getting married, having children,
and moving out of one’s parents’ home all marked a shift from dependence
on the family into which one was born to independence and increased
responsibility for self and others. Although there has always been attention
to variations in the timing and sequencing of these transitions, both across
birth cohorts within a country and across countries, adulthood itself was
viewed as fairly stable. Unplanned and unrehearsed events—for example,
losing one’s job, or becoming a widow—disrupted established patterns but
also were relatively rare.
Schooling did not figure prominently in understandings of the life course,
beyond its association with occupational attainment and, to a lesser extent,
the timing of marriage and family formation. In part, this is due to the
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
lingering influence of human capital theory, developed by economists to
incorporate a more diverse set of production factors into models of economic
productivity, at the macrolevel, and to account for individual investment
decisions in education and other forms of capital at the microlevel. In the
absence of direct measures of individual productivity, economists relied
on educational credentials as a proxy for the knowledge, skills, and values
that employers reward in the labor market. The specific content, form, and
quality of these attributes, lodged deeply within the individual’s head,
were of little interest. To be sure, economists drew a distinction between
general human capital and firm-specific human capital, recognizing that
some knowledge and skills (e.g., knowing something about basic accounting
principles) might be valued in many different firms, whereas other knowledge and skills (e.g., knowing the intricacies of a particular accounting
software platform) might be highly valued in one setting and of little or no
importance in another.
For economists, macro- and microeconomic productivity has been in the
foreground, and schooling has been viewed as in service to it, cultivating
knowledge, skills, and orientations that contribute to productivity, and hence
are valued by employers. Sociologists, however, have treated education and
the economy as two of a more elaborated set of social institutions that organize society. Institutions are associated with social roles, specific positions
with broadly shared expectations about how individuals who inhabit the
position should behave. A social map of the life course can be constructed
by arraying the timing and sequencing of movement into and out of specific
social roles: student, graduate, spouse, parent, widow, worker, and retiree, to
name but a few.
Although models of the timing and sequencing of role transitions—especially
those in the spheres of education, family, the economy, and the military—have
dominated empirical research on the sociology of the life course, they have
a limited capacity to contribute to an understanding of the role of schooling
in the life course, and specifically how and why what is learned in school
matters. This is because inhabiting a social role tells us little about whether
an individual is performing a role well. There are qualitative variations in
role performance that are not captured by the binary distinction between
performing and not performing a specific role. A mother may be a “good”
mother or a “bad” mother, an electrician a master or a novice, and a gardener
a recognized expert or one who has difficulty distinguishing the flowers
from the weeds. What is learned in school may be as closely tied to how well
individuals perform social roles as to which social roles they take on.
Moreover, social roles are characterized by a set of norms, or behaviors
that individuals are expected to fulfill while enacting a role. However, these
expected behaviors may be highly detailed, whereas the norms that are
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
5
taught and learned in school are maddeningly abstract. Dreeben (1968)
labeled the key norms, taught in school because other social institutions
were not well situated to convey them, as achievement, independence,
universalism, and specificity. More recently, Brint, Contreras, and Matthews
(2001) identified norms pertaining to basic organizational controls (e.g.,
industriousness), self-regulation and the relation of the self to others,
traditional moral virtues (e.g., fairness, courage), and “modern” values (e.g.,
choice, respect for group differences) as the hidden curriculum of California
primary schools. If these norms are what is learned in school, it is difficult to
see how they mediate the link between schooling and the life course, as they
are so loosely tied to the specific expectations associated with the roles that
adults perform.
A conceptual shift from roles and norms to communities and social practices offers greater promise. Social roles can be reconceptualized as memberships in communities of practice, groups of individuals who are collectively
engaged in a common agenda (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Practices are what community members do to further their common goals; these
practices are derived from a shared repertoire of experiences and negotiation (referred to as participation) and tools, symbols, rules, and documents
(referred to as reification). A community of practice is a community because
its members engage with one another (although this engagement need not be
face-to-face, and can occur entirely online); it is inherently local, rather than
global, because of this mutual engagement. State Supreme Court justices in
Alabama are not part of the same community of practice as their counterparts
in Wisconsin, even though the practices associated with “judging” in one
state may overlap with those in the other. Many of the rules and documents
(e.g., controlling federal laws) may be shared across these two communities,
and the justices may have taken the same array of courses in law school, but a
particular case may have arisen in Alabama, and obliged the justices to come
to terms with one or more issues that justices in Wisconsin would not address.
To the extent that there are continuities in the meaning derived from goals,
membership, experiences, tools, and artifacts across communities of practice
that may be dispersed geographically, we can describe them as a connected
constellation of communities of practice (Pallas, 2001; Wenger, 1998).
RECONCEPTUALIZING SCHOOL KNOWLEDGE AND THE PROBLEM
OF TRANSFER
If the life course is reframed as participation in multiple communities of practice, what is the role of schooling in the life course? How, if at all, is what is
learned in school associated with being a competent member of a community
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of practice? We can retain the premise that schooling is the social institution that society charges with the task of socializing the young to become
competent adults—that is, to perform adult social roles competently. The
socialization process involves assisting students in developing a set of cognitive skills and inculcating in them a set of behaviors, values, norms, and
dispositions. As both of these tasks involve learning, we can state that schooling is primarily about learning, particularly the learning of social practices
usually associated with adult communities of practice. For example, a dispatcher in a factory shipping department may engage in the social practice
of determining how many boxes of various sizes and shapes can be placed on
a truck with particular interior dimensions. Similarly, a social scientist may
engage in the social practice of judging how well an equation fits a particular body of data. These particular practices, no doubt initially learned in
school, draw on a range of mathematical skills necessary for different forms
of adult work.
The notion of transfer—the idea that what has been initially learned in
one context can be extended to other contexts—is highly contested (Barnett
& Ceci, 2002), and an unfortunate consequence of the balkanization of the
social sciences is that economists and sociologists have not been attentive to
psychologists’ and anthropologists’ research and theorizing about learning
transfer. The new knowledge and understandings that are the object of
learning are specific—one learns something in particular—and the new
science of learning has provided new insights into the conditions under
which learning is most likely to occur and to transfer to new settings. The
point is that knowledge often does not transfer. The prior knowledge that
learners bring to a setting matters, and new understandings emerge from
how novel information engages with that prior knowledge. Competence in
many domains requires both factual knowledge and an ability to organize
that knowledge into a framework that facilitates retrieval, remolding, and
application as manifestations of transfer. In addition, learners can exercise
more control over their learning via the use of metacognitive strategies
for monitoring what they understand, and what might advance those
understandings (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).
The Nature of School Knowledge
The new science of learning, which sees knowledge as situated, challenges
existing conceptions of school knowledge, and its implications for adult life.
Most social scientists, and the policymakers they seek to influence, conceive
of school knowledge as existing in the world, independent of the learner,
but received by him or her. This knowledge typically takes the form of facts
(e.g., knowing that four times eight is 32) or principles (e.g., knowing how to
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
7
calculate the area of a rectangle by multiplying the length of the rectangle by
its width). “Knowing that” and “knowing how” are the two most common
ways of thinking about school knowledge (Broudy, 1977). If a child correctly
answers “32 inches” to a test question stating, “find the area of a rectangle that
is 4 inches tall and 8 inches wide,” we generally are willing to conclude that
the child knows that the area of a 4 × 8 rectangle is 32, or knows how to calculate the area of a rectangle. “Knowing that” the area of a 4 × 8 rectangle is 32
involves replicating knowledge that already has been assimilated, whereas
“knowing how” to calculate the area of a rectangle involves applying knowledge acquired in one context to a new and different context (Broudy, 1977).
Knowledge Transfer
Many social scientists typically assume that the knowledge learned in school
transfers quite readily from one context to another. Bransford and Schwartz
(1999) refer to this as the direct application model, in which knowledge transfer is conceived of as the ability to apply what one has previously learned
directly to a new setting or problem. This direct application model of knowledge transfer is clearly evident in the sociology and economics literatures
regardless of whether school learning is treated as a dependent or an independent variable. When school learning is an outcome, it is customary to
assume that the knowledge that students have learned at home transfers to
the school. Conversely, when school learning is an independent variable, as
in studies of occupational achievement or earnings, the assumption that measures of learning (i.e., test scores, or perhaps grades) index human capital
implies that school learning can easily translate into competence at work.
[The workplace as a context that might facilitate or hinder knowledge transfer (Smith, 1999) is rarely taken into account.] Both assumptions are called
into question by a view of school learning as a social activity shaped by its
social and cultural context.
The analytic challenge to linking schooling to the life course via learning
is identifying what social practices are needed to become competent members of the varied communities of practice—in domains such as work, family,
and leisure—in which adults participate. Individuals have a unique configuration of communities of practice with which they are affiliated, and the
practices to be learned may differ substantially across them. The practices
needed to organize a weekend bicycle club may differ from those that make
one a competent illustrator in an advertising agency, or an able advocate for
an ailing parent. However, if we are to link schooling to competent membership in these communities, we must identify these practices, and then map
backward to what is learned in school that might promote learning them.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Assessment
If what is learned in school is a set of social practices that prepare individuals to become competent members of adult communities, how are we to
assess the success of schools and schooling in promoting this learning? In
the absence of sustained social science research on this question, public policy has leapt to fill the void. External school accountability systems, often tied
to standardized assessments, have popped up across and within countries
like so many mushrooms in a summer yard.
Standardized tests arguably can be adequate vehicles for summarizing
factual knowledge (knowing that) and procedural knowledge (knowing
how) although the discussion of transfer above makes the latter problematic.
However, many social practices that identify someone as a competent adult
seem to require a kind of knowing that is not, and perhaps cannot, be tapped
by standardized tests. Broudy (1977) contrasts knowing that and knowing how,
which refer to learning of discrete knowledge and skills, with “knowing
with” a more cumulative set of knowledge and experiences derived through
membership in a community of practice. Bransford and Schwartz (1999)
quote Brody as saying that an individual “thinks, perceives and judges
with everything that he has studied in school, even though he cannot recall
those learnings on demand” (Broudy, 1977, p. 12). “Knowing with” differs
from “knowing that” or “knowing how” because it involves a kind of
interpretation that cannot be reduced to replicating or applying knowledge.
The state of play in assessing this form of knowledge is quite primitive.
The relevant knowledge learned in schools may not be easily distilled either
into a set of facts (knowing that) or even a set of abstract principles (knowing
how). Standardized tests, which Bransford and Schwartz (1999) characterize
as sequestering an individual from the resources that might help him or her
to solve a new problem, rarely deal with “knowing with” as a form of school
knowledge. Moreover, to the extent that “knowing with” in a community of
practice involves interactions with other people, standardized tests fall short,
as they typically assess individual performance isolated from the shared tools
and cognition that exist in the workplace and other settings where people are
working together on tasks (Resnick, 1987).
Perhaps the closest we have come to advancing beyond the measurement
of factual and procedural knowledge—and it is a far cry from the ideal—is
in the form of assessments of critical reasoning. One such measure, the
Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), was the centerpiece of Arum and
Roksa’s (2011) critique of American higher education, Academically adrift:
Limited learning on college campuses. These scholars surveyed students at two
dozen US 4-year postsecondary institutions at various points of their college
careers, concluding that a substantial fraction of college students showed
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
9
no gains on the CLA, despite the fact that it was designed to assess the
kinds of skills that liberal arts institutions claim to cultivate: scientific and
quantitative reasoning, problem-solving skills, and the ability to construct
and critique arguments. Although subsequent studies have yielded slightly
more optimistic results, the persistent message is that US postsecondary
institutions are failing. Calls for the use of assessments such as the CLA in
federal college accountability systems, which gathered steam with the 2006
report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (the “Spellings
Commission”), continue unabated.
Critics of Arum and Roksa’s (2011) conclusions noted the tension between
what colleges teach and what the CLA assesses. Disciplinary knowledge,
presumably central to the college experience, and organized into college
majors and courses, is not assessed. Students may, therefore, be learning
a great deal in college—as research using subject-specific assessments has
demonstrated—but this learning is not what the CLA assesses. In fact, an
assessment such as the CLA must assume only a minimum of disciplinary
knowledge to be appropriate for a wide swath of college students. Whether
assessments of critical thinking such as the CLA can serve as measures of
“knowing with” is still unclear.
Summary
Efforts to understand the role of schooling in the life course have been hampered by inattention to what is learned in school that is relevant to being a
competent adult. In this essay, I have identified a series of changes in the
structure of the life course that have rendered modern life less predictable
and more local, even as global economic forces and technological change
exercise more influence over individual lives. I have sought to reconceptualize the life course as competent membership in a configuration of communities of practice, particularly in the domains of work, family, and leisure.
Doing so draws attention to the social practices on which members of these
communities rely, and the challenge of identifying the antecedents to the
learning of these practices in what is learned in school. Assessment of the
school learning that prefigures competent adult participation remains in its
infancy.
PROMISING DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Among the many possible avenues for advancing our understanding of the
linkage between schooling and the life course, three are especially salient.
First, the field could benefit from a detailed description and analytic accounting of the ways in which communities of practice select members on the basis
10
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of the quantity and quality of their schooling. We know a good deal about this
in particular domains but lack a way of expressing this across social institutions. For example, research on assortative mating can illuminate the extent
to which family members select one another on the basis of schooling credentials, and why. Research on intergenerational mobility can reveal continuities
across generations in the quantity and quality of schooling, and studies of the
school-to-work transition can model the mutual selection of workers, jobs,
and firms on the basis of educational credentials. Scholars studying social
movements, voluntary associations, and political socialization can model the
propensity for civic participation and leisure activities to select on particular configurations of the quantity and quality of schooling. These pursuits,
singly and in combination, can extend our understanding of the existing
empirical associations linking schooling to membership in communities of
practice, and suggest the mechanisms that account for these associations.
Second, we are overdue for a more comprehensive approach to studying
the contribution of schooling to the learning of norms and social practices.
Through much of the twentieth century, there was a shift in research and
policy away from the study of moral and character development and toward
the role of schooling in cultivating specific cognitive skills. We now know far
more about the contribution of schooling, and variations in school organization and practice, to the development of literacy and numeracy skills than
of what are occasionally referred to as soft skills. These skills, which surely
do involve cognition, are also labeled “people” skills, connoting the ability of
individuals to engage with others, as is inevitable in communities of practice.
There is a risk that we will find that schools and schooling are not very successful in transforming these traits and attributes of individuals, bolstering
the institutionalist claim that the perception of schooling’s influence outstrips
its measured effect. Without more systematic research, though, we simply
cannot assess how well schooling prepares individuals for competent participation in an array of communities of practice.
Finally, research on a new generation of educational assessments holds the
promise of measuring the performance of individuals both in isolation and in
group settings. For the latter, it is imperative to move beyond having group
members assess their own and others’ contributions to group learning and
performance. The challenge here is twofold. First, the field of educational
assessment can benefit from a broader appreciation of the desired types of
human performance to be measured. This is primarily a philosophical and
epistemological issue. Second, new programs of research on measuring performance that is situated in a group context can extend the practices of modern testing and assessment theory to this new, more complex environment.
Whether this can be done in ways that meet conventional standards of reliability and validity is an open question.
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
11
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Resnick, L. B. (1987). Learning in school and out. Educational Researcher, 16(9),
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Smith, J. P., III, (1999). Tracking the mathematics of automobile production: Are
schools failing to prepare students for work? American Educational Research Journal,
36, 835–878.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge
University Press: New York, NY.
AARON M. PALLAS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Aaron M. Pallas is the Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has also taught at Johns
Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and Northwestern University, and served as a statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics
in the US Department of Education. Professor Pallas has devoted the bulk
of his career to the study of how schools sort students, especially the relationship between school organization and sorting processes and the linkages
among schooling, learning, and the human life course. He is a Fellow of
the American Educational Research Association and an elected member of
the Sociological Research Association. His most recent projects are explicitly
designed to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about conditions in
New York City public schools.
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Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
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-
Schooling, Learning, and the Life
Course
AARON M. PALLAS
Abstract
The modern life course is characterized by three major trends: (i) schooling has
increased worldwide and penetrates virtually all phases of life; (ii) the globalization
of the economy has rendered work, and the features of modern life that stem from
it, less predictable; and (iii) new technologies and the ongoing institutionalization
of the self allow for participation in an ever-increasing number of communities.
These shifts open up new ways of thinking about the life course, moving from the
traditional framing of the life course as a sequence of role transitions to a view that
highlights competent membership in a configuration of communities of practice,
particularly in the domains of work, family, and leisure. This shift also entails
moving from schooling as credentials and human capital to understanding what is
learned in school that is relevant to being a competent adult. Theories of how what
is learned in school might transfer to adult life continue to outstrip the prevailing
technologies for assessment of that learning.
INTRODUCTION
Sociologists and applied developmental psychologists have organized the
study of lives into a model of the life course, the sequence of events that
individuals experience as they age from birth to death. Such models are centered on adulthood, a phase of life that is defined by work and family roles
and responsibilities; earlier life course stages, such as infancy, childhood, and
adolescence, are prefatory to adulthood, and old age, which is characterized
by the gradual relinquishment of roles and responsibilities, follows it.
In this essay, I examine the linkages among schooling, learning, and the life
course. I begin by describing a set of macroforces giving rise to a new, unstable and less predictable life course. I then examine the implications of these
changes for how social scientists tie schooling to the life course, critiquing
the limited attention to learning and the transfer of knowledge in prevailing
models. I conclude with a discussion of the challenges of conceptualizing and
measuring what is learned in school.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE LIFE COURSE
Three potentially contradictory trends characterize the course of lives in
modern societies. First, schooling has become ubiquitous. Across the world,
in virtually every country, a higher proportion of young people attend school
than ever before. Rates of primary, secondary and tertiary enrollment have
skyrocketed, as has the global literacy rate, now estimated at 84% for those
15 and older (Huebler & Lu, 2013). Schooling, the formal organized form
of education, now reaches further into the social fabric, influencing other
social institutions such as the economy, the family, religion, the military,
government, and the civic sphere, to name just a few (Baker, 2014). In the
language of neoinstitutionalists, schooling not only reacts to changes in
other social institutions, but actively creates society, generating new forms of
knowledge, new social roles, and new identities to which other institutions
must adapt. Although individuals spend a relatively small fraction of their
lives enrolled in school, schooling has profound direct and indirect effects
on how those lives unfold. This is particularly true for the socioeconomic
status of an individual and his or her family, as educational attainment is
a major determinant of occupational status, income, and wealth, and the
qualities of life that these assets can purchase.
Second, individual lives have become less predictable. This is most apparent in the stage of life between adolescence and adulthood, however one
defines these terms, but is also evident in adulthood. The empirical regularities of the past have been superseded by a period marked by instabilities
in the spheres of work and family. Arnett (2006) refers to this new stage of
life as emerging adulthood, during which young people explore their identities through frequent transitions among jobs, romantic partners, and leisure
activities. A generation earlier, Namboodiri (1987) referred to this time as the
floundering phase of the life course. The major driver of this instability is a
global economy in which the interests of multinational firms lead to weakened ties between individuals and their employers.
Nowhere is this latter trend clearer than postindustrial Japan, where
eroding linkages between schools and firms, accompanied by truncated
commitments by employers to their workers, have created what Brinton
(2011) refers to as a lost generation of youth, unable to find its location in the
world. Recent college graduates in the United States, though not subject
to as rigid a set of expectations as their Japanese counterparts, also report
difficulty finding meaningful jobs and sustaining romantic relationships
(Arum & Roksa, 2014).
It is too early to tell whether the instabilities facing young people today—a
complex amalgam of heightened choice in some domains, and restricted
choice in others—will reverberate throughout their lives to come. However,
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
3
there is already evidence that economic globalization is amplifying uncertainty and the perception of risk associated with daily life. Neoliberal
state policies deregulating markets and promoting privatization have
weakened the social safety nets that protected individuals from the harshest
consequences of economic downturns; and periods of boom and bust have
become more volatile and less predictable in a global market. In a number
of countries, the standard career for middle-aged men has shifted to a
“patchwork” career of fragmented, contingent jobs (Mills & Blossfeld, 2006).
Third, the social distance between individuals is no longer dictated by the
physical distance that separates them. Technological change, most notably
in the form of new information and communication technologies, now allow
individuals at some geographic distance to engage with one another on matters of mutual interest, both vocational and otherwise. With the ongoing institutionalization and cultivation of the self in Western societies (Gergen, 1991;
Meyer, 1986), individuals may choose to join groups organized around common personal interests, ranging from role-playing games to reading groups
to political action committees. Members of such groups may come to know
one another quite well through social interaction mediated by technology,
even if they have never met face-to-face. Technological change has increased
such opportunities exponentially.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF THE LIFE COURSE
These three trends suggest that the course of lives in modern societies has
become increasingly heterogeneous and unpredictable over the past two
decades. However, social scientists have been slow to incorporate the implications of the growing heterogeneity of individual lives into understandings
of the linkages among schooling, learning, and the life course. Sociologists
developed a typology of life course stages at a time when national economies
were expanding and most families were formed via marital childbearing.
Leaving school, beginning a regular job, getting married, having children,
and moving out of one’s parents’ home all marked a shift from dependence
on the family into which one was born to independence and increased
responsibility for self and others. Although there has always been attention
to variations in the timing and sequencing of these transitions, both across
birth cohorts within a country and across countries, adulthood itself was
viewed as fairly stable. Unplanned and unrehearsed events—for example,
losing one’s job, or becoming a widow—disrupted established patterns but
also were relatively rare.
Schooling did not figure prominently in understandings of the life course,
beyond its association with occupational attainment and, to a lesser extent,
the timing of marriage and family formation. In part, this is due to the
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
lingering influence of human capital theory, developed by economists to
incorporate a more diverse set of production factors into models of economic
productivity, at the macrolevel, and to account for individual investment
decisions in education and other forms of capital at the microlevel. In the
absence of direct measures of individual productivity, economists relied
on educational credentials as a proxy for the knowledge, skills, and values
that employers reward in the labor market. The specific content, form, and
quality of these attributes, lodged deeply within the individual’s head,
were of little interest. To be sure, economists drew a distinction between
general human capital and firm-specific human capital, recognizing that
some knowledge and skills (e.g., knowing something about basic accounting
principles) might be valued in many different firms, whereas other knowledge and skills (e.g., knowing the intricacies of a particular accounting
software platform) might be highly valued in one setting and of little or no
importance in another.
For economists, macro- and microeconomic productivity has been in the
foreground, and schooling has been viewed as in service to it, cultivating
knowledge, skills, and orientations that contribute to productivity, and hence
are valued by employers. Sociologists, however, have treated education and
the economy as two of a more elaborated set of social institutions that organize society. Institutions are associated with social roles, specific positions
with broadly shared expectations about how individuals who inhabit the
position should behave. A social map of the life course can be constructed
by arraying the timing and sequencing of movement into and out of specific
social roles: student, graduate, spouse, parent, widow, worker, and retiree, to
name but a few.
Although models of the timing and sequencing of role transitions—especially
those in the spheres of education, family, the economy, and the military—have
dominated empirical research on the sociology of the life course, they have
a limited capacity to contribute to an understanding of the role of schooling
in the life course, and specifically how and why what is learned in school
matters. This is because inhabiting a social role tells us little about whether
an individual is performing a role well. There are qualitative variations in
role performance that are not captured by the binary distinction between
performing and not performing a specific role. A mother may be a “good”
mother or a “bad” mother, an electrician a master or a novice, and a gardener
a recognized expert or one who has difficulty distinguishing the flowers
from the weeds. What is learned in school may be as closely tied to how well
individuals perform social roles as to which social roles they take on.
Moreover, social roles are characterized by a set of norms, or behaviors
that individuals are expected to fulfill while enacting a role. However, these
expected behaviors may be highly detailed, whereas the norms that are
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
5
taught and learned in school are maddeningly abstract. Dreeben (1968)
labeled the key norms, taught in school because other social institutions
were not well situated to convey them, as achievement, independence,
universalism, and specificity. More recently, Brint, Contreras, and Matthews
(2001) identified norms pertaining to basic organizational controls (e.g.,
industriousness), self-regulation and the relation of the self to others,
traditional moral virtues (e.g., fairness, courage), and “modern” values (e.g.,
choice, respect for group differences) as the hidden curriculum of California
primary schools. If these norms are what is learned in school, it is difficult to
see how they mediate the link between schooling and the life course, as they
are so loosely tied to the specific expectations associated with the roles that
adults perform.
A conceptual shift from roles and norms to communities and social practices offers greater promise. Social roles can be reconceptualized as memberships in communities of practice, groups of individuals who are collectively
engaged in a common agenda (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Practices are what community members do to further their common goals; these
practices are derived from a shared repertoire of experiences and negotiation (referred to as participation) and tools, symbols, rules, and documents
(referred to as reification). A community of practice is a community because
its members engage with one another (although this engagement need not be
face-to-face, and can occur entirely online); it is inherently local, rather than
global, because of this mutual engagement. State Supreme Court justices in
Alabama are not part of the same community of practice as their counterparts
in Wisconsin, even though the practices associated with “judging” in one
state may overlap with those in the other. Many of the rules and documents
(e.g., controlling federal laws) may be shared across these two communities,
and the justices may have taken the same array of courses in law school, but a
particular case may have arisen in Alabama, and obliged the justices to come
to terms with one or more issues that justices in Wisconsin would not address.
To the extent that there are continuities in the meaning derived from goals,
membership, experiences, tools, and artifacts across communities of practice
that may be dispersed geographically, we can describe them as a connected
constellation of communities of practice (Pallas, 2001; Wenger, 1998).
RECONCEPTUALIZING SCHOOL KNOWLEDGE AND THE PROBLEM
OF TRANSFER
If the life course is reframed as participation in multiple communities of practice, what is the role of schooling in the life course? How, if at all, is what is
learned in school associated with being a competent member of a community
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of practice? We can retain the premise that schooling is the social institution that society charges with the task of socializing the young to become
competent adults—that is, to perform adult social roles competently. The
socialization process involves assisting students in developing a set of cognitive skills and inculcating in them a set of behaviors, values, norms, and
dispositions. As both of these tasks involve learning, we can state that schooling is primarily about learning, particularly the learning of social practices
usually associated with adult communities of practice. For example, a dispatcher in a factory shipping department may engage in the social practice
of determining how many boxes of various sizes and shapes can be placed on
a truck with particular interior dimensions. Similarly, a social scientist may
engage in the social practice of judging how well an equation fits a particular body of data. These particular practices, no doubt initially learned in
school, draw on a range of mathematical skills necessary for different forms
of adult work.
The notion of transfer—the idea that what has been initially learned in
one context can be extended to other contexts—is highly contested (Barnett
& Ceci, 2002), and an unfortunate consequence of the balkanization of the
social sciences is that economists and sociologists have not been attentive to
psychologists’ and anthropologists’ research and theorizing about learning
transfer. The new knowledge and understandings that are the object of
learning are specific—one learns something in particular—and the new
science of learning has provided new insights into the conditions under
which learning is most likely to occur and to transfer to new settings. The
point is that knowledge often does not transfer. The prior knowledge that
learners bring to a setting matters, and new understandings emerge from
how novel information engages with that prior knowledge. Competence in
many domains requires both factual knowledge and an ability to organize
that knowledge into a framework that facilitates retrieval, remolding, and
application as manifestations of transfer. In addition, learners can exercise
more control over their learning via the use of metacognitive strategies
for monitoring what they understand, and what might advance those
understandings (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).
The Nature of School Knowledge
The new science of learning, which sees knowledge as situated, challenges
existing conceptions of school knowledge, and its implications for adult life.
Most social scientists, and the policymakers they seek to influence, conceive
of school knowledge as existing in the world, independent of the learner,
but received by him or her. This knowledge typically takes the form of facts
(e.g., knowing that four times eight is 32) or principles (e.g., knowing how to
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
7
calculate the area of a rectangle by multiplying the length of the rectangle by
its width). “Knowing that” and “knowing how” are the two most common
ways of thinking about school knowledge (Broudy, 1977). If a child correctly
answers “32 inches” to a test question stating, “find the area of a rectangle that
is 4 inches tall and 8 inches wide,” we generally are willing to conclude that
the child knows that the area of a 4 × 8 rectangle is 32, or knows how to calculate the area of a rectangle. “Knowing that” the area of a 4 × 8 rectangle is 32
involves replicating knowledge that already has been assimilated, whereas
“knowing how” to calculate the area of a rectangle involves applying knowledge acquired in one context to a new and different context (Broudy, 1977).
Knowledge Transfer
Many social scientists typically assume that the knowledge learned in school
transfers quite readily from one context to another. Bransford and Schwartz
(1999) refer to this as the direct application model, in which knowledge transfer is conceived of as the ability to apply what one has previously learned
directly to a new setting or problem. This direct application model of knowledge transfer is clearly evident in the sociology and economics literatures
regardless of whether school learning is treated as a dependent or an independent variable. When school learning is an outcome, it is customary to
assume that the knowledge that students have learned at home transfers to
the school. Conversely, when school learning is an independent variable, as
in studies of occupational achievement or earnings, the assumption that measures of learning (i.e., test scores, or perhaps grades) index human capital
implies that school learning can easily translate into competence at work.
[The workplace as a context that might facilitate or hinder knowledge transfer (Smith, 1999) is rarely taken into account.] Both assumptions are called
into question by a view of school learning as a social activity shaped by its
social and cultural context.
The analytic challenge to linking schooling to the life course via learning
is identifying what social practices are needed to become competent members of the varied communities of practice—in domains such as work, family,
and leisure—in which adults participate. Individuals have a unique configuration of communities of practice with which they are affiliated, and the
practices to be learned may differ substantially across them. The practices
needed to organize a weekend bicycle club may differ from those that make
one a competent illustrator in an advertising agency, or an able advocate for
an ailing parent. However, if we are to link schooling to competent membership in these communities, we must identify these practices, and then map
backward to what is learned in school that might promote learning them.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Assessment
If what is learned in school is a set of social practices that prepare individuals to become competent members of adult communities, how are we to
assess the success of schools and schooling in promoting this learning? In
the absence of sustained social science research on this question, public policy has leapt to fill the void. External school accountability systems, often tied
to standardized assessments, have popped up across and within countries
like so many mushrooms in a summer yard.
Standardized tests arguably can be adequate vehicles for summarizing
factual knowledge (knowing that) and procedural knowledge (knowing
how) although the discussion of transfer above makes the latter problematic.
However, many social practices that identify someone as a competent adult
seem to require a kind of knowing that is not, and perhaps cannot, be tapped
by standardized tests. Broudy (1977) contrasts knowing that and knowing how,
which refer to learning of discrete knowledge and skills, with “knowing
with” a more cumulative set of knowledge and experiences derived through
membership in a community of practice. Bransford and Schwartz (1999)
quote Brody as saying that an individual “thinks, perceives and judges
with everything that he has studied in school, even though he cannot recall
those learnings on demand” (Broudy, 1977, p. 12). “Knowing with” differs
from “knowing that” or “knowing how” because it involves a kind of
interpretation that cannot be reduced to replicating or applying knowledge.
The state of play in assessing this form of knowledge is quite primitive.
The relevant knowledge learned in schools may not be easily distilled either
into a set of facts (knowing that) or even a set of abstract principles (knowing
how). Standardized tests, which Bransford and Schwartz (1999) characterize
as sequestering an individual from the resources that might help him or her
to solve a new problem, rarely deal with “knowing with” as a form of school
knowledge. Moreover, to the extent that “knowing with” in a community of
practice involves interactions with other people, standardized tests fall short,
as they typically assess individual performance isolated from the shared tools
and cognition that exist in the workplace and other settings where people are
working together on tasks (Resnick, 1987).
Perhaps the closest we have come to advancing beyond the measurement
of factual and procedural knowledge—and it is a far cry from the ideal—is
in the form of assessments of critical reasoning. One such measure, the
Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), was the centerpiece of Arum and
Roksa’s (2011) critique of American higher education, Academically adrift:
Limited learning on college campuses. These scholars surveyed students at two
dozen US 4-year postsecondary institutions at various points of their college
careers, concluding that a substantial fraction of college students showed
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
9
no gains on the CLA, despite the fact that it was designed to assess the
kinds of skills that liberal arts institutions claim to cultivate: scientific and
quantitative reasoning, problem-solving skills, and the ability to construct
and critique arguments. Although subsequent studies have yielded slightly
more optimistic results, the persistent message is that US postsecondary
institutions are failing. Calls for the use of assessments such as the CLA in
federal college accountability systems, which gathered steam with the 2006
report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (the “Spellings
Commission”), continue unabated.
Critics of Arum and Roksa’s (2011) conclusions noted the tension between
what colleges teach and what the CLA assesses. Disciplinary knowledge,
presumably central to the college experience, and organized into college
majors and courses, is not assessed. Students may, therefore, be learning
a great deal in college—as research using subject-specific assessments has
demonstrated—but this learning is not what the CLA assesses. In fact, an
assessment such as the CLA must assume only a minimum of disciplinary
knowledge to be appropriate for a wide swath of college students. Whether
assessments of critical thinking such as the CLA can serve as measures of
“knowing with” is still unclear.
Summary
Efforts to understand the role of schooling in the life course have been hampered by inattention to what is learned in school that is relevant to being a
competent adult. In this essay, I have identified a series of changes in the
structure of the life course that have rendered modern life less predictable
and more local, even as global economic forces and technological change
exercise more influence over individual lives. I have sought to reconceptualize the life course as competent membership in a configuration of communities of practice, particularly in the domains of work, family, and leisure.
Doing so draws attention to the social practices on which members of these
communities rely, and the challenge of identifying the antecedents to the
learning of these practices in what is learned in school. Assessment of the
school learning that prefigures competent adult participation remains in its
infancy.
PROMISING DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Among the many possible avenues for advancing our understanding of the
linkage between schooling and the life course, three are especially salient.
First, the field could benefit from a detailed description and analytic accounting of the ways in which communities of practice select members on the basis
10
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of the quantity and quality of their schooling. We know a good deal about this
in particular domains but lack a way of expressing this across social institutions. For example, research on assortative mating can illuminate the extent
to which family members select one another on the basis of schooling credentials, and why. Research on intergenerational mobility can reveal continuities
across generations in the quantity and quality of schooling, and studies of the
school-to-work transition can model the mutual selection of workers, jobs,
and firms on the basis of educational credentials. Scholars studying social
movements, voluntary associations, and political socialization can model the
propensity for civic participation and leisure activities to select on particular configurations of the quantity and quality of schooling. These pursuits,
singly and in combination, can extend our understanding of the existing
empirical associations linking schooling to membership in communities of
practice, and suggest the mechanisms that account for these associations.
Second, we are overdue for a more comprehensive approach to studying
the contribution of schooling to the learning of norms and social practices.
Through much of the twentieth century, there was a shift in research and
policy away from the study of moral and character development and toward
the role of schooling in cultivating specific cognitive skills. We now know far
more about the contribution of schooling, and variations in school organization and practice, to the development of literacy and numeracy skills than
of what are occasionally referred to as soft skills. These skills, which surely
do involve cognition, are also labeled “people” skills, connoting the ability of
individuals to engage with others, as is inevitable in communities of practice.
There is a risk that we will find that schools and schooling are not very successful in transforming these traits and attributes of individuals, bolstering
the institutionalist claim that the perception of schooling’s influence outstrips
its measured effect. Without more systematic research, though, we simply
cannot assess how well schooling prepares individuals for competent participation in an array of communities of practice.
Finally, research on a new generation of educational assessments holds the
promise of measuring the performance of individuals both in isolation and in
group settings. For the latter, it is imperative to move beyond having group
members assess their own and others’ contributions to group learning and
performance. The challenge here is twofold. First, the field of educational
assessment can benefit from a broader appreciation of the desired types of
human performance to be measured. This is primarily a philosophical and
epistemological issue. Second, new programs of research on measuring performance that is situated in a group context can extend the practices of modern testing and assessment theory to this new, more complex environment.
Whether this can be done in ways that meet conventional standards of reliability and validity is an open question.
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
11
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Resnick, L. B. (1987). Learning in school and out. Educational Researcher, 16(9),
13–20+54.
Smith, J. P., III, (1999). Tracking the mathematics of automobile production: Are
schools failing to prepare students for work? American Educational Research Journal,
36, 835–878.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge
University Press: New York, NY.
AARON M. PALLAS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Aaron M. Pallas is the Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has also taught at Johns
Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and Northwestern University, and served as a statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics
in the US Department of Education. Professor Pallas has devoted the bulk
of his career to the study of how schools sort students, especially the relationship between school organization and sorting processes and the linkages
among schooling, learning, and the human life course. He is a Fellow of
the American Educational Research Association and an elected member of
the Sociological Research Association. His most recent projects are explicitly
designed to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about conditions in
New York City public schools.
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Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
13
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Schooling, Learning, and the Life
Course
AARON M. PALLAS
Abstract
The modern life course is characterized by three major trends: (i) schooling has
increased worldwide and penetrates virtually all phases of life; (ii) the globalization
of the economy has rendered work, and the features of modern life that stem from
it, less predictable; and (iii) new technologies and the ongoing institutionalization
of the self allow for participation in an ever-increasing number of communities.
These shifts open up new ways of thinking about the life course, moving from the
traditional framing of the life course as a sequence of role transitions to a view that
highlights competent membership in a configuration of communities of practice,
particularly in the domains of work, family, and leisure. This shift also entails
moving from schooling as credentials and human capital to understanding what is
learned in school that is relevant to being a competent adult. Theories of how what
is learned in school might transfer to adult life continue to outstrip the prevailing
technologies for assessment of that learning.
INTRODUCTION
Sociologists and applied developmental psychologists have organized the
study of lives into a model of the life course, the sequence of events that
individuals experience as they age from birth to death. Such models are centered on adulthood, a phase of life that is defined by work and family roles
and responsibilities; earlier life course stages, such as infancy, childhood, and
adolescence, are prefatory to adulthood, and old age, which is characterized
by the gradual relinquishment of roles and responsibilities, follows it.
In this essay, I examine the linkages among schooling, learning, and the life
course. I begin by describing a set of macroforces giving rise to a new, unstable and less predictable life course. I then examine the implications of these
changes for how social scientists tie schooling to the life course, critiquing
the limited attention to learning and the transfer of knowledge in prevailing
models. I conclude with a discussion of the challenges of conceptualizing and
measuring what is learned in school.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE LIFE COURSE
Three potentially contradictory trends characterize the course of lives in
modern societies. First, schooling has become ubiquitous. Across the world,
in virtually every country, a higher proportion of young people attend school
than ever before. Rates of primary, secondary and tertiary enrollment have
skyrocketed, as has the global literacy rate, now estimated at 84% for those
15 and older (Huebler & Lu, 2013). Schooling, the formal organized form
of education, now reaches further into the social fabric, influencing other
social institutions such as the economy, the family, religion, the military,
government, and the civic sphere, to name just a few (Baker, 2014). In the
language of neoinstitutionalists, schooling not only reacts to changes in
other social institutions, but actively creates society, generating new forms of
knowledge, new social roles, and new identities to which other institutions
must adapt. Although individuals spend a relatively small fraction of their
lives enrolled in school, schooling has profound direct and indirect effects
on how those lives unfold. This is particularly true for the socioeconomic
status of an individual and his or her family, as educational attainment is
a major determinant of occupational status, income, and wealth, and the
qualities of life that these assets can purchase.
Second, individual lives have become less predictable. This is most apparent in the stage of life between adolescence and adulthood, however one
defines these terms, but is also evident in adulthood. The empirical regularities of the past have been superseded by a period marked by instabilities
in the spheres of work and family. Arnett (2006) refers to this new stage of
life as emerging adulthood, during which young people explore their identities through frequent transitions among jobs, romantic partners, and leisure
activities. A generation earlier, Namboodiri (1987) referred to this time as the
floundering phase of the life course. The major driver of this instability is a
global economy in which the interests of multinational firms lead to weakened ties between individuals and their employers.
Nowhere is this latter trend clearer than postindustrial Japan, where
eroding linkages between schools and firms, accompanied by truncated
commitments by employers to their workers, have created what Brinton
(2011) refers to as a lost generation of youth, unable to find its location in the
world. Recent college graduates in the United States, though not subject
to as rigid a set of expectations as their Japanese counterparts, also report
difficulty finding meaningful jobs and sustaining romantic relationships
(Arum & Roksa, 2014).
It is too early to tell whether the instabilities facing young people today—a
complex amalgam of heightened choice in some domains, and restricted
choice in others—will reverberate throughout their lives to come. However,
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
3
there is already evidence that economic globalization is amplifying uncertainty and the perception of risk associated with daily life. Neoliberal
state policies deregulating markets and promoting privatization have
weakened the social safety nets that protected individuals from the harshest
consequences of economic downturns; and periods of boom and bust have
become more volatile and less predictable in a global market. In a number
of countries, the standard career for middle-aged men has shifted to a
“patchwork” career of fragmented, contingent jobs (Mills & Blossfeld, 2006).
Third, the social distance between individuals is no longer dictated by the
physical distance that separates them. Technological change, most notably
in the form of new information and communication technologies, now allow
individuals at some geographic distance to engage with one another on matters of mutual interest, both vocational and otherwise. With the ongoing institutionalization and cultivation of the self in Western societies (Gergen, 1991;
Meyer, 1986), individuals may choose to join groups organized around common personal interests, ranging from role-playing games to reading groups
to political action committees. Members of such groups may come to know
one another quite well through social interaction mediated by technology,
even if they have never met face-to-face. Technological change has increased
such opportunities exponentially.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF THE LIFE COURSE
These three trends suggest that the course of lives in modern societies has
become increasingly heterogeneous and unpredictable over the past two
decades. However, social scientists have been slow to incorporate the implications of the growing heterogeneity of individual lives into understandings
of the linkages among schooling, learning, and the life course. Sociologists
developed a typology of life course stages at a time when national economies
were expanding and most families were formed via marital childbearing.
Leaving school, beginning a regular job, getting married, having children,
and moving out of one’s parents’ home all marked a shift from dependence
on the family into which one was born to independence and increased
responsibility for self and others. Although there has always been attention
to variations in the timing and sequencing of these transitions, both across
birth cohorts within a country and across countries, adulthood itself was
viewed as fairly stable. Unplanned and unrehearsed events—for example,
losing one’s job, or becoming a widow—disrupted established patterns but
also were relatively rare.
Schooling did not figure prominently in understandings of the life course,
beyond its association with occupational attainment and, to a lesser extent,
the timing of marriage and family formation. In part, this is due to the
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
lingering influence of human capital theory, developed by economists to
incorporate a more diverse set of production factors into models of economic
productivity, at the macrolevel, and to account for individual investment
decisions in education and other forms of capital at the microlevel. In the
absence of direct measures of individual productivity, economists relied
on educational credentials as a proxy for the knowledge, skills, and values
that employers reward in the labor market. The specific content, form, and
quality of these attributes, lodged deeply within the individual’s head,
were of little interest. To be sure, economists drew a distinction between
general human capital and firm-specific human capital, recognizing that
some knowledge and skills (e.g., knowing something about basic accounting
principles) might be valued in many different firms, whereas other knowledge and skills (e.g., knowing the intricacies of a particular accounting
software platform) might be highly valued in one setting and of little or no
importance in another.
For economists, macro- and microeconomic productivity has been in the
foreground, and schooling has been viewed as in service to it, cultivating
knowledge, skills, and orientations that contribute to productivity, and hence
are valued by employers. Sociologists, however, have treated education and
the economy as two of a more elaborated set of social institutions that organize society. Institutions are associated with social roles, specific positions
with broadly shared expectations about how individuals who inhabit the
position should behave. A social map of the life course can be constructed
by arraying the timing and sequencing of movement into and out of specific
social roles: student, graduate, spouse, parent, widow, worker, and retiree, to
name but a few.
Although models of the timing and sequencing of role transitions—especially
those in the spheres of education, family, the economy, and the military—have
dominated empirical research on the sociology of the life course, they have
a limited capacity to contribute to an understanding of the role of schooling
in the life course, and specifically how and why what is learned in school
matters. This is because inhabiting a social role tells us little about whether
an individual is performing a role well. There are qualitative variations in
role performance that are not captured by the binary distinction between
performing and not performing a specific role. A mother may be a “good”
mother or a “bad” mother, an electrician a master or a novice, and a gardener
a recognized expert or one who has difficulty distinguishing the flowers
from the weeds. What is learned in school may be as closely tied to how well
individuals perform social roles as to which social roles they take on.
Moreover, social roles are characterized by a set of norms, or behaviors
that individuals are expected to fulfill while enacting a role. However, these
expected behaviors may be highly detailed, whereas the norms that are
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
5
taught and learned in school are maddeningly abstract. Dreeben (1968)
labeled the key norms, taught in school because other social institutions
were not well situated to convey them, as achievement, independence,
universalism, and specificity. More recently, Brint, Contreras, and Matthews
(2001) identified norms pertaining to basic organizational controls (e.g.,
industriousness), self-regulation and the relation of the self to others,
traditional moral virtues (e.g., fairness, courage), and “modern” values (e.g.,
choice, respect for group differences) as the hidden curriculum of California
primary schools. If these norms are what is learned in school, it is difficult to
see how they mediate the link between schooling and the life course, as they
are so loosely tied to the specific expectations associated with the roles that
adults perform.
A conceptual shift from roles and norms to communities and social practices offers greater promise. Social roles can be reconceptualized as memberships in communities of practice, groups of individuals who are collectively
engaged in a common agenda (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Practices are what community members do to further their common goals; these
practices are derived from a shared repertoire of experiences and negotiation (referred to as participation) and tools, symbols, rules, and documents
(referred to as reification). A community of practice is a community because
its members engage with one another (although this engagement need not be
face-to-face, and can occur entirely online); it is inherently local, rather than
global, because of this mutual engagement. State Supreme Court justices in
Alabama are not part of the same community of practice as their counterparts
in Wisconsin, even though the practices associated with “judging” in one
state may overlap with those in the other. Many of the rules and documents
(e.g., controlling federal laws) may be shared across these two communities,
and the justices may have taken the same array of courses in law school, but a
particular case may have arisen in Alabama, and obliged the justices to come
to terms with one or more issues that justices in Wisconsin would not address.
To the extent that there are continuities in the meaning derived from goals,
membership, experiences, tools, and artifacts across communities of practice
that may be dispersed geographically, we can describe them as a connected
constellation of communities of practice (Pallas, 2001; Wenger, 1998).
RECONCEPTUALIZING SCHOOL KNOWLEDGE AND THE PROBLEM
OF TRANSFER
If the life course is reframed as participation in multiple communities of practice, what is the role of schooling in the life course? How, if at all, is what is
learned in school associated with being a competent member of a community
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of practice? We can retain the premise that schooling is the social institution that society charges with the task of socializing the young to become
competent adults—that is, to perform adult social roles competently. The
socialization process involves assisting students in developing a set of cognitive skills and inculcating in them a set of behaviors, values, norms, and
dispositions. As both of these tasks involve learning, we can state that schooling is primarily about learning, particularly the learning of social practices
usually associated with adult communities of practice. For example, a dispatcher in a factory shipping department may engage in the social practice
of determining how many boxes of various sizes and shapes can be placed on
a truck with particular interior dimensions. Similarly, a social scientist may
engage in the social practice of judging how well an equation fits a particular body of data. These particular practices, no doubt initially learned in
school, draw on a range of mathematical skills necessary for different forms
of adult work.
The notion of transfer—the idea that what has been initially learned in
one context can be extended to other contexts—is highly contested (Barnett
& Ceci, 2002), and an unfortunate consequence of the balkanization of the
social sciences is that economists and sociologists have not been attentive to
psychologists’ and anthropologists’ research and theorizing about learning
transfer. The new knowledge and understandings that are the object of
learning are specific—one learns something in particular—and the new
science of learning has provided new insights into the conditions under
which learning is most likely to occur and to transfer to new settings. The
point is that knowledge often does not transfer. The prior knowledge that
learners bring to a setting matters, and new understandings emerge from
how novel information engages with that prior knowledge. Competence in
many domains requires both factual knowledge and an ability to organize
that knowledge into a framework that facilitates retrieval, remolding, and
application as manifestations of transfer. In addition, learners can exercise
more control over their learning via the use of metacognitive strategies
for monitoring what they understand, and what might advance those
understandings (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).
The Nature of School Knowledge
The new science of learning, which sees knowledge as situated, challenges
existing conceptions of school knowledge, and its implications for adult life.
Most social scientists, and the policymakers they seek to influence, conceive
of school knowledge as existing in the world, independent of the learner,
but received by him or her. This knowledge typically takes the form of facts
(e.g., knowing that four times eight is 32) or principles (e.g., knowing how to
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
7
calculate the area of a rectangle by multiplying the length of the rectangle by
its width). “Knowing that” and “knowing how” are the two most common
ways of thinking about school knowledge (Broudy, 1977). If a child correctly
answers “32 inches” to a test question stating, “find the area of a rectangle that
is 4 inches tall and 8 inches wide,” we generally are willing to conclude that
the child knows that the area of a 4 × 8 rectangle is 32, or knows how to calculate the area of a rectangle. “Knowing that” the area of a 4 × 8 rectangle is 32
involves replicating knowledge that already has been assimilated, whereas
“knowing how” to calculate the area of a rectangle involves applying knowledge acquired in one context to a new and different context (Broudy, 1977).
Knowledge Transfer
Many social scientists typically assume that the knowledge learned in school
transfers quite readily from one context to another. Bransford and Schwartz
(1999) refer to this as the direct application model, in which knowledge transfer is conceived of as the ability to apply what one has previously learned
directly to a new setting or problem. This direct application model of knowledge transfer is clearly evident in the sociology and economics literatures
regardless of whether school learning is treated as a dependent or an independent variable. When school learning is an outcome, it is customary to
assume that the knowledge that students have learned at home transfers to
the school. Conversely, when school learning is an independent variable, as
in studies of occupational achievement or earnings, the assumption that measures of learning (i.e., test scores, or perhaps grades) index human capital
implies that school learning can easily translate into competence at work.
[The workplace as a context that might facilitate or hinder knowledge transfer (Smith, 1999) is rarely taken into account.] Both assumptions are called
into question by a view of school learning as a social activity shaped by its
social and cultural context.
The analytic challenge to linking schooling to the life course via learning
is identifying what social practices are needed to become competent members of the varied communities of practice—in domains such as work, family,
and leisure—in which adults participate. Individuals have a unique configuration of communities of practice with which they are affiliated, and the
practices to be learned may differ substantially across them. The practices
needed to organize a weekend bicycle club may differ from those that make
one a competent illustrator in an advertising agency, or an able advocate for
an ailing parent. However, if we are to link schooling to competent membership in these communities, we must identify these practices, and then map
backward to what is learned in school that might promote learning them.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Assessment
If what is learned in school is a set of social practices that prepare individuals to become competent members of adult communities, how are we to
assess the success of schools and schooling in promoting this learning? In
the absence of sustained social science research on this question, public policy has leapt to fill the void. External school accountability systems, often tied
to standardized assessments, have popped up across and within countries
like so many mushrooms in a summer yard.
Standardized tests arguably can be adequate vehicles for summarizing
factual knowledge (knowing that) and procedural knowledge (knowing
how) although the discussion of transfer above makes the latter problematic.
However, many social practices that identify someone as a competent adult
seem to require a kind of knowing that is not, and perhaps cannot, be tapped
by standardized tests. Broudy (1977) contrasts knowing that and knowing how,
which refer to learning of discrete knowledge and skills, with “knowing
with” a more cumulative set of knowledge and experiences derived through
membership in a community of practice. Bransford and Schwartz (1999)
quote Brody as saying that an individual “thinks, perceives and judges
with everything that he has studied in school, even though he cannot recall
those learnings on demand” (Broudy, 1977, p. 12). “Knowing with” differs
from “knowing that” or “knowing how” because it involves a kind of
interpretation that cannot be reduced to replicating or applying knowledge.
The state of play in assessing this form of knowledge is quite primitive.
The relevant knowledge learned in schools may not be easily distilled either
into a set of facts (knowing that) or even a set of abstract principles (knowing
how). Standardized tests, which Bransford and Schwartz (1999) characterize
as sequestering an individual from the resources that might help him or her
to solve a new problem, rarely deal with “knowing with” as a form of school
knowledge. Moreover, to the extent that “knowing with” in a community of
practice involves interactions with other people, standardized tests fall short,
as they typically assess individual performance isolated from the shared tools
and cognition that exist in the workplace and other settings where people are
working together on tasks (Resnick, 1987).
Perhaps the closest we have come to advancing beyond the measurement
of factual and procedural knowledge—and it is a far cry from the ideal—is
in the form of assessments of critical reasoning. One such measure, the
Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), was the centerpiece of Arum and
Roksa’s (2011) critique of American higher education, Academically adrift:
Limited learning on college campuses. These scholars surveyed students at two
dozen US 4-year postsecondary institutions at various points of their college
careers, concluding that a substantial fraction of college students showed
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
9
no gains on the CLA, despite the fact that it was designed to assess the
kinds of skills that liberal arts institutions claim to cultivate: scientific and
quantitative reasoning, problem-solving skills, and the ability to construct
and critique arguments. Although subsequent studies have yielded slightly
more optimistic results, the persistent message is that US postsecondary
institutions are failing. Calls for the use of assessments such as the CLA in
federal college accountability systems, which gathered steam with the 2006
report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education (the “Spellings
Commission”), continue unabated.
Critics of Arum and Roksa’s (2011) conclusions noted the tension between
what colleges teach and what the CLA assesses. Disciplinary knowledge,
presumably central to the college experience, and organized into college
majors and courses, is not assessed. Students may, therefore, be learning
a great deal in college—as research using subject-specific assessments has
demonstrated—but this learning is not what the CLA assesses. In fact, an
assessment such as the CLA must assume only a minimum of disciplinary
knowledge to be appropriate for a wide swath of college students. Whether
assessments of critical thinking such as the CLA can serve as measures of
“knowing with” is still unclear.
Summary
Efforts to understand the role of schooling in the life course have been hampered by inattention to what is learned in school that is relevant to being a
competent adult. In this essay, I have identified a series of changes in the
structure of the life course that have rendered modern life less predictable
and more local, even as global economic forces and technological change
exercise more influence over individual lives. I have sought to reconceptualize the life course as competent membership in a configuration of communities of practice, particularly in the domains of work, family, and leisure.
Doing so draws attention to the social practices on which members of these
communities rely, and the challenge of identifying the antecedents to the
learning of these practices in what is learned in school. Assessment of the
school learning that prefigures competent adult participation remains in its
infancy.
PROMISING DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Among the many possible avenues for advancing our understanding of the
linkage between schooling and the life course, three are especially salient.
First, the field could benefit from a detailed description and analytic accounting of the ways in which communities of practice select members on the basis
10
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
of the quantity and quality of their schooling. We know a good deal about this
in particular domains but lack a way of expressing this across social institutions. For example, research on assortative mating can illuminate the extent
to which family members select one another on the basis of schooling credentials, and why. Research on intergenerational mobility can reveal continuities
across generations in the quantity and quality of schooling, and studies of the
school-to-work transition can model the mutual selection of workers, jobs,
and firms on the basis of educational credentials. Scholars studying social
movements, voluntary associations, and political socialization can model the
propensity for civic participation and leisure activities to select on particular configurations of the quantity and quality of schooling. These pursuits,
singly and in combination, can extend our understanding of the existing
empirical associations linking schooling to membership in communities of
practice, and suggest the mechanisms that account for these associations.
Second, we are overdue for a more comprehensive approach to studying
the contribution of schooling to the learning of norms and social practices.
Through much of the twentieth century, there was a shift in research and
policy away from the study of moral and character development and toward
the role of schooling in cultivating specific cognitive skills. We now know far
more about the contribution of schooling, and variations in school organization and practice, to the development of literacy and numeracy skills than
of what are occasionally referred to as soft skills. These skills, which surely
do involve cognition, are also labeled “people” skills, connoting the ability of
individuals to engage with others, as is inevitable in communities of practice.
There is a risk that we will find that schools and schooling are not very successful in transforming these traits and attributes of individuals, bolstering
the institutionalist claim that the perception of schooling’s influence outstrips
its measured effect. Without more systematic research, though, we simply
cannot assess how well schooling prepares individuals for competent participation in an array of communities of practice.
Finally, research on a new generation of educational assessments holds the
promise of measuring the performance of individuals both in isolation and in
group settings. For the latter, it is imperative to move beyond having group
members assess their own and others’ contributions to group learning and
performance. The challenge here is twofold. First, the field of educational
assessment can benefit from a broader appreciation of the desired types of
human performance to be measured. This is primarily a philosophical and
epistemological issue. Second, new programs of research on measuring performance that is situated in a group context can extend the practices of modern testing and assessment theory to this new, more complex environment.
Whether this can be done in ways that meet conventional standards of reliability and validity is an open question.
Schooling, Learning, and the Life Course
11
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Smith, J. P., III, (1999). Tracking the mathematics of automobile production: Are
schools failing to prepare students for work? American Educational Research Journal,
36, 835–878.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge
University Press: New York, NY.
AARON M. PALLAS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Aaron M. Pallas is the Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has also taught at Johns
Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and Northwestern University, and served as a statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics
in the US Department of Education. Professor Pallas has devoted the bulk
of his career to the study of how schools sort students, especially the relationship between school organization and sorting processes and the linkages
among schooling, learning, and the human life course. He is a Fellow of
the American Educational Research Association and an elected member of
the Sociological Research Association. His most recent projects are explicitly
designed to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about conditions in
New York City public schools.
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