PARTICULARITIES OF ACQUIRING CULTURAL CAPITAL IN EASTERN EUROPE

PARTICULARITIES OF ACQUIRING CULTURAL CAPITAL IN EASTERN EUROPE: BENEFITS FOR UKRAINIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN CANADA Max Antony-Newman, Ph. D Student, OISE/University of Toronto

EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE of minority students is vital for their integration in increasingly diverse societies. The public attention is often focused on educational patterns of ethnic groups suffering from: - racial discrimination or stereotyping - exhibiting higher than average drop-out rates Invisible minority groups are often under researched with only a handful of studies dedicated to them.

UKRAINIAN STUDENTS IN CANADA Ukrainian Canadians constitute 1. 2 million people (3. 9% of total population) and between 2001 and 2011 30, 000 Ukrainians became permanent residents of Canada. There are four Ukrainian Catholic Schools in GTA. Scarce research on Ukrainian students and their comparative educational attainment is available (Samuel, Krugly-Smolska and Warren (2001), Mouzitchka, 2006).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS To analyze the academic experience of Ukrainian students in Canada I asked the following questions: 1) How does social and cultural capital of Ukrainian immigrant and international students affect their educational experience in Canadian universities? What type of capital successfully crosses the border? 2) What are the elements of respondents' culture that influenced their educational experience and success both in Canada and Ukraine?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK To get an insight into the educational experience of Ukrainian students we decided to use the concept of social and cultural capital put forward by Pierre Bourdieu and analyze how this form of capital translates into university persistence and success among Ukrainian students in Canada.

CAPITAL (social capital, cultural capital, and linguistic capital) -similar to economic capital, but pretends to be neutral - reproduces social inequality (Moore, 2008). Capital is the “currency of the field”, which defines what has value in the field and what has not, who is included or excluded and what is required to boost one's power or status based on distinction. Not surprisingly, distinction creates hierarchies, which result in inequality (Grenfell, 2009). Capital fuels the communication between the field and the habitus.

1) Field is understood here as the autonomous microcosm within the social world, which has its own rules, and hierarchical position among participants struggling for capital (Wacquant, 2008). 2) Habitus is a subconscious set of dispositions, which define our perception and actions in the world based on our exposure to social structures (Wacquant, 2008).

TYPES OF CAPITAL - Social capital – current and potential resources contained in networks of lasting institutionalized relations (Grenfell, 2009). - Cultural capital – exposure/participation to/in highbrow culture (opera, theatre, ballet, galleries and museums), selected dispositions (reading) and educational resources (parental education). - Linguistic capital – competence of a legitimate language valued at the market (Bourdieu, 1976)

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL IN EDUCATION RESEARCH - Through education dominant groups impose arbitrary culture and value the type of achievement, which corresponds to their interests (Broadfoot, 1978). - “Symbolic violence” of education prevents many non-elite students from succeeding academically as they lack the values and linguistic capital, which children of privileged backgrounds share with their teachers. - Instead of increasing social mobility education preserves the status quo and even some success of lower-class students gives the system the appearance of meritocracy instead of challenging such system (Sullivan, 2001).

METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION -Qualitative paradigm was used to generate rich descriptive data in the spirit of an open inquiry (Friedman, 2012) and also allowed to connect various dimension of students’ everyday life with their educational experience. - Case study design frame ensures looking at multiple variables defining social and cultural capital (role of children, importance of education, parental education, popularity of reading, language skills) in few (nine) students from one university in Canada.

- Participants were recruited among Ontario university students (undergraduate and postgraduate) via the personal network of the researcher with the aid of the International Cooperation Centre. -Semi-structured interviews with 9 Ukrainian immigrant and international students; questions asked dealt with a) family and education in Ukraine; b) education in Canada; c) cultural preferences and linguistic repertoire; and d) life in Canada. - Transcribed data was subjected to content analysis.

Table 1. Participants’ demographic characteristics Place of birth Age Number of years in Canada First language Ivan Luhansk 19 3 Russian, Ukrainian Natasha Bila Tserkva 19 1 Ukrainian, Russian Lena Kyiv 32 10 Russian Sonya Cherkassy 33 4 Russian Yana Rivne 38 9 Ukrainian, Russian Mykhaylo Lutsk 27 1 Ukrainian Olya Kalush 23 3 Ukrainian Sasha Lutsk 27 4 Ukrainian Zina Chernivtsi 32 8 Ukrainian, Russian

RESULTS Research question 1: Social and cultural capital and academic experience. Ukrainian students enjoy considerable academic success in Canadian universities: - High GPA: When I came here last year my major academic achievement was GPA of 4. 0. This year it is also pretty good: also As! - External funding for graduate students: I am also a recipient of OGS. It’s my second OGS. Also I was shortlisted this year for the SSHRC. I was told actually to put it on my resume.

All participants mention that most of their high school friends continued to the university level: All my friends from my class went to universities. …in terms of percentage I think over 90% of people I know went to universities or at least decided to get some education even if they think they will not work in this area. Portable capital: social versus cultural I am more of an international guy. . . I just decided not to join something like this, because it would potentially limit my circle of friends. I don’t belong to any of these groups. I probably should, but again, because of time, I can’t really fit anything into my schedule. Because we live kind of very far from where most Ukrainians would live, so I don’t have as many connections, as I would love to.

Research question 2: Ukrainian background and educational experience in Canada Ukrainian students possess high levels of cultural capital due to: 1) the centrality of children (Robila and Krishnakumar, 2004) My mom spent all her time on me. I went to different groups. I learnt English since I was five. I was going to the dancing club, swimming, all of that stuff. All my childhood I spent with her. What about school? She cared a lot about that, because education is the main part of my family, so our parents want us to be educated. . .

2) status of education (Jankowska, 2011) I think in Ukraine school is just something you have to do and you don’t have any other options! I guess I always knew I would have to go. It wasn't really a choice. It was something everybody does and I didn't think about it a lot. Thinking was about where you would, what kind of university, but whether to go was not a question. 3) high parental educational capital (Mouzitchka, 2006) Eight out of nine participants had at least one parent with university education.

Table 2: Parental education Participant Father Mother Ivan university Natasha university Lena university Sonya university Yana college university Mykhaylo high school vocational school Olya High school university Sasha university Zina university

4) popularity of reading, which is a clear predictor of academic achievement (De Graaf and De Graaf, 2000) If you look at all Soviet families, you know, almost all Soviet families, especially middle-class, they all tried to have own libraries at home. Imagine walking into someone’s home and there will be bookshelves somewhere there. My father had a kind of obsession with getting books. He read them and made us read them.

5) high level of linguistic capital (Derwing et al. , 2010) One of the best predictors of academic success during study abroad is the proficiency in the language of instruction and Ukrainian students are uniquely positioned to reap the rewards of linguistic capital.

Acquiring cultural capital in Eastern Europe Communist countries were characterized by lower levels of inequality compared to Western capitalist nations. Attempts were made to prevention social reproduction in education (Evans, Kelly, Sikora, &Treiman, 2010). - availability of print - wide access to extracurricular activities - popularity of enriched curriculum

1) Availability of print The availability was not a sign of an upper socio-economic class. Even my grandmother, who lived in a village, she was a bookkeeper at the sugar plant she had books in her house. She had different books. These were not cheap romances, she had Balzac and history books. She lived in the village. When we were going for the summer breaks we were given the list of literature we had to read – Ukrainian literature and World literature, so we had to read, whether we liked or not.

2) Access to extracurricular activities At the time it was still Soviet Union or post-Soviet Union time that is why most of the activities were free of charge, which meant no financial burden on my parents, which meant I could do pretty much everything I wanted to. For example one of my friends went to arts school and I decided to go along and I attended an arts school for over a year… I did track and field, I did volleyball and even tried basketball, but I was too short for it, so I didn’t make a team. I did ballet dancing, but my partner quit, so I quit as well. I did very many things!

3) Popularity of enriched curriculum I actually wanted to get into that best school – English/French/German school in our city, but I couldn’t as it was Ukrainian and I didn’t know a word of Ukrainian at the time that’s why I had to switch to Ukrainian school, study Ukrainian for a year, then I attempted to and I passed the exams and was admitted to that high-end school.

Obstacles experienced by Ukrainian students 1) Though proficient in English many students underlined the difficulty of making presentations, which disadvantages them compared to the Canadian-born peers. The following sentiment was echoed by many participants: . . . it’s not that I don’t like it, but I think it is the main disadvantage of Ukrainian education or Eastern European education, because we did not learn how to do presentation and we don’t practice, while people from North American schools used to do it. 2) Many students from post-communist countries find the curriculum not demanding enough (Asanova, 2005): In terms of the rigor of the program I think the program could be more rigorous. I don't feel that they are rigorous enough, so it depends.

CONCLUSIONS Ukrainian students possess high levels of cultural and social capital, which helps them to achieve significant academic success in Canada due to the importance of education and centrality of family. Ukrainian students have such advantages as free or inexpensive extracurricular activities, access to print and parents with higher education credentials, which can be considered the legacy of communism, but help a more equitable distribution of symbolic capital, which differs from Canada, US, France or other Western countries. Ukrainian students face obstacles due to lack of presentation skills and dissatisfaction with curriculum.

IMPLICATIONS For university administrators: invisible minority students are not monolithic and they do require support on campus For university professors: acknowledge different learning styles, multiple intelligences and classroom cultures For educational researchers: cultural capital in post-socialist countries is accumulated differently from capitalist nations For school teachers: availability of print is crucial for educational outcomes, especially while working with diverse learners

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