Education is a fundamental human right and a key driver of social and economic progress. It influences how individuals understand and engage with the world around them while equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities needed to achieve personal aspirations, contribute to community development, and improve life outcomes in areas such as employment, income, health, and well-being.
Despite the recognised importance of education, persistent socio-economic inequalities can significantly influence an individual’s access to high-quality educational opportunities. Across diverse national and cultural contexts, factors such as household income, parental educational attainment, access to resources, social class, gender, ethnicity, geographical location, and disability shape educational experiences and outcomes. This often grants advantages for some groups in society while disadvantaging others. These structural inequalities continue to affect educational participation, attainment, wellbeing, and longer-term life trajectories, contributing to a cycle of social and economic disparities across generations.
This Collection invites interdisciplinary scholarship that explores the relationship between socio-economic inequalities and educational outcomes across diverse cultural, historical and institutional contexts. We welcome contributions from across the humanities and social sciences, including education studies, psychology, sociology, economics, human geography, social policy, history, and related fields.
We invite papers that engage with topics including (but not limited to):
- Educational experiences of disadvantaged, marginalised and underrepresented populations
- Intersections of socio-economic status with race, ethnicity, language, gender, disability and migration
- Cultural capital, social capital and educational participation
- Socio-economic participation gaps in higher education
- Educational policy, governance and interventions aimed at reducing inequality
- Geographic inequalities in education, including urban, rural and regional disparities
- Family, community and intergenerational influences on educational outcomes
- Mental health, wellbeing and socio-economic disadvantage in educational settings
- Media, culture and public narratives surrounding educational inequality
- Comparative and cross-cultural perspectives on educational opportunity and achievement
- Lifelong learning, skills development and social mobility
- Methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding educational inequality
- Educational outcomes, such as dropout rates, academic achievement and educational attainment, as well as the methods used to assess and measure these
Editors
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