12-25-2025, 04:02 AM
I'm a graduate student in education policy, and I'm designing a qualitative research project for my thesis. I want to explore how school tracking and ability grouping in public high schools reproduce social inequalities, specifically looking at access to advanced placement courses. I'm drawing heavily on the sociology of education, particularly Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital and Lareau's work on concerted cultivation. I'm struggling, however, with designing effective interview protocols for students and teachers that can uncover these often-invisible mechanisms without being leading. Has anyone conducted similar research and can advise on methodological approaches or share examples of questions that successfully elicited nuanced responses about classroom dynamics and opportunity structures?