Can teacher support reduce inequalities in education? Re-examining the relationship between cultural capital and achievement

Abstract

Starting from insights into the inequalities that stem from the effect students’ cultural capital has on their academic achievement, and relatively scarce evidence on whether classroom-level pedagogical interventions could help reduce those inequalities, in this study we aim to explore whether teacher support moderates the relationship between cultural capital and students’ reading performance. In addition, we analysed whether the moderation effect is the same across different education systems, or depends on equity between systems. We used data from PISA 2018 to test a simple moderation model with cultural capital as the independent variable, teacher support – the moderator, and reading performance as the dependent variable. The findings suggest that the correlation between cultural capital and students’ reading performance is moderated by teacher support. However, the nature of the moderation effect differs in education systems with the lowest and education systems with the highest correlation between cultural capital and reading performance.