Parental Education and Social and Cultural Capital in Academic Achievement

The relationship between social and cultural capital and academic achievement was explored in this study by administering the Social and Cultural Capital Questionnaire (SCCQ) to 320 undergraduate students majoring in English language, and correlating the respective subscales with the learners' university GPA. All five factors of SCCQ were found to be correlated significantly with the learners' GPA. Moreover, having conducted the regression analysis, the researchers found out that literacy and cultural competence were predictive of higher GPA. The researchers then entered parents' educational levels into the regression model. The results of this analysis indicated that, together with literacy, mother's educational level predicted 23% of the variances in learners' GPA. However, father's educational level was not a good predictor of academic achievement. The implications of the results were discussed within a foreign language context and suggestions were made for future research.