Chapter 3: Understanding the Impact of Disadvantage on Academic Achievement

Classrooms around the world are increasingly filled with students from various backgrounds and cultures. This more heterogeneous population is presenting new challenges: How to ensure that students from all backgrounds reach their full academic potential, experience a sense of belonging at school, and learn to get along with each other in a world that is increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse. Although social scientists have been grappling with these questions for some time, and from various angles, we have not yet been very successful at providing good solutions to these challenges. This chapter discusses gains we have made in one particular area: understanding some of the social psychological factors that play a role in the achievement gap between students from advantaged and less advantaged backgrounds.