Educational disadvantage and policy: expanding the spaces of assessment

ABSTRACT The issues that social researchers study and policymakers address are partly determined by how they think about the world around them. Their view of the social world often depends on their position within it. What their research reveals and their policies propose are, in part, a reflection of where they choose to look and how they interpret the world they identify. The result can be a myopic view of the social and a distorted explanation of how social relations work. In this paper, we argue the need to widen the aperture of the lens that social researchers and policymakers use to investigate and ameliorate educational disadvantage. In particular, in matters of education equity, beyond measuring opportunities and outcomes of target groups, we argue the need to consider the substantiveness of opportunities as well as the subjective conditions and objective contexts that mediate how people transform their resources into outcomes. Drawing on the work of both Bourdieu and Sen, we propose an expanded evaluative framework that outlines five spaces for assessing educational disadvantage: position and disposition, capital interaction, capability expansion, conversion ability, and conditioned choices.


Introduction
Even though 'education cannot compensate for society' (Bernstein 1970), it is widely seen as a means for achieving social mobility (Breen and Müller 2020).In which case, inequalities in educational opportunities call for public action.At the core of the modern 'social contract' (Rawolle, Rowlands, and Blackmore 2017) is an expectation that unjust disadvantage demands a public response.When inequality is associated with 'an accident of birth', the moral claim for equitable social arrangements is even stronger.As Scanlon (2018) argues, inequality is morally and politically objectionable if 'it results from violations of a requirement of equal concern for the interests of those to whom the government is obliged to provide some benefit' (p.9).It is on this basis that equityminded or even populist governments and educational institutions put equity policies in place.
The framing of educational disadvantage and equity policies convey at once what is seen as a problem (as something worth addressing or able to be addressed) and what remains unproblematic or unable to be addressed and so left unspoken.In other words, policymaking is 'noisy'-it is characterised by 'undesirable variability in judgments of the same problem' (Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein 2021, 31).Faced with the task of assessing the educational disadvantages of a specific social group, different policy actors make varying judgments about the nature of the problem and necessary responses.The problem may not be variability in judgments per se but the invisibility of some important aspects of individual disadvantages that deserve public action.For example, when educational equity assessment is excessively individualised and insufficiently social, it fails to fully appreciate the structural roots of deprivation (Sen 2000).Also, depending on where social researchers focus their evaluative lens, the needs and conditions of some equity groups may remain obscure.
In assessing educational disadvantage for policy attention, it matters what researchers consider to be the relevant informational basis of judgement.Equity researchers, including those who have published in this journal (JEP), often analyse educational disadvantages in relation to class (e.g.Chesters 2019;Brown and De Lissovoy 2011;Reay 2012;Strathdee 2013), race (e.g.Nikolaidis 2022), gender (e.g.Marshall 2000), refugee-status (e.g.Baak et al., 2021;Hamadeh 2019), and disability (e.g.Done & Andrews, 2020).In many of these analyses, the emphasis remains on who gets what.Equity policies and research that focus on the availability of opportunities as a space of assessment are likely to fail to consider differences in transforming resources into outcomes.
With this in mind, and by bringing together Bourdieu's social reproduction thesis and Sen's capability thesis, we call for policymakers and policy researchers to expand the basis on which they make judgements about educational disadvantage.As we note below, Bourdieu's sociology helps understand interactive forces that reproduce inequality whereas Sen's capability approach emphasises the importance of social arrangements in tackling disadvantages.Separately, each approach does not adequately address the relevant aspects of educational disadvantage and policy responses.However, a synthesis of conceptual tools from Bourdieu and Sen provides a productive way of thinking about educational disadvantages, policy responses, and achieved outcomes.We argue that educational inequality becomes durable when causes of disadvantage are overlooked by policymakers, opportunities are insufficient, and/or outcomes are assessed in isolation from subjective contexts and objective mechanisms that mediate people's choice and conversion ability.The solution, at least in part, lies in acknowledging 'positional dependence' of policy observations and expanding the evaluative spaces of disadvantage, opportunity, and outcomes.For policymakers and researchers alike, the analytical focus should be on (a) what is the problem of educational disadvantage as framed by policy, (b) what aspects of the problem are left as unproblematic, (c) what opportunities are made available to the disadvantaged, and (d) how choice and conversion considerations mediate the ability of equity target groups to transform opportunities into valued outcomes.
In addressing these issues, the paper is organised into three main sections.The first briefly outlines Bourdieu's social reproduction thesis, followed by a second section on Sen's capability thesis.Our particular interest is in how each speaks to the context of education and how this mediates disadvantage.Drawing on and expanding these theses, made possible through their conjoining, the third section provides the paper's unique contribution, outlining five spaces for assessing educational disadvantages aimed at more fully informing educational equity policy.We conclude that educational outcomes (poor or otherwise) for disadvantaged groups are not just a function of their lack of access to financial resources and opportunities.While these are important, social researchers and policymakers also need to pay attention to the particular sociocultural resources and the adequacy, relevance and convertibility of opportunities available to disadvantaged groups.Identifying these often requires beginning analysis from the point of outcomes and backtracking from there.

The social reproduction thesis of Pierre Bourdieu
The social reproduction account of educational disadvantage, most notably developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, argues that young people's educational attainment is strongly aligned with the social position of their parents and that educational systems and institutions tend to perpetuate existing inequalities by arbitrarily valuing the cultural capital of the dominant social class and misrecognising it as academic ability (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990).In Bourdieu's account, the concept of 'misrecognition' is imbued with this distinct link to social inequalities perpetrated by education systems and its actors.To paraphrase Bourdieu, the reproduction of disadvantage in and through education is a function of the structure, volume and interaction of specific stakes (capital) within and without the school.The unequal distribution of cultural, social, and economic resources reinforces social positions through their influence over school activities, parental practice, home environment, and the socialisation of children.People are disadvantaged when they have little or no valuable resources that enable them to succeed in a given field (e.g.schooling).
Within the home environment, interactions between adults and children are 'crucial for the "osmotic" transmission of aspirations, values and tastes ' (van Zanten et al. 2015, 32), which convey to children particular ways of being and doing.Bourdieu says that these preferences and actions are derived from the primary pedagogic work of their families and communities and are reflected in their habitus -their generative system of 'durable, transposable dispositions' acquired through gradual internalisation of external conditions (Bourdieu 1990b(Bourdieu , 53 1990)).Clearly, what is valued by the habitus differs between students and their households, but schools tend to be aligned with the dispositions of dominant social groups, positioning children from these groups in ways Bourdieu describes as being like a 'fish in water'.The resulting misrecognition of the compatibility between home and school as superior academic ability, has implications for students' social positions and for the stances they then adopt.Bourdieu refers to this as the 'subjective expectation of the objective probability ' (1990b, p.60) or 'what one can reasonably expect for oneself ' (1990b, p.59).People often adjust their aspirations in relation to opportunities and constraints in ways that match their social position.For example, the disadvantaged social positions of refugee youth mean that many view their participation in higher education as unattainable or impossible (Molla, 2023).The reproductive thesis explains why people from disadvantaged backgrounds do not always make the most of opportunities.
Many sociologists of education (e.g.Archer, Hollingworth, and Halsall 2007;Bathmaker, Ingram, and Waller 2013;Lareau 2011;Lingard, Taylor, and Rawolle 2005;Mills 2008;Reay 2017;van Zanten 2005;van Zanten et al. 2015;Webb et al. 2017) apply Bourdieu's 'thinking tools' to identify and analyse educational inequality.A core assumption is that a person's educational opportunities are mediated by the structure, volume and interaction of capital at their disposal.However, the Bourdieuian analysis of educational inequality is often critiqued for overlooking equally significant aspects of disadvantage.For instance, the social reproduction thesis -which is at the core of Bourdieu's critique -does not account well for interactions of capital acquisition and social mobility (Ilahiane 2001).Also, by overemphasising historical experiences (King 2000) and focusing on structural constraints associated with family investment and school practices as well as on pre-reflective dimensions of action (Sayer 2005), Bourdieuian analyses of inequality can downplay the role of agency and social arrangements (e.g.equity policies) in changing social positions.The increased number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who succeed in schools and universities 'against the odds' shows the possibility of transformation, not just reproduction (Siraj and Mayo 2014).Finally, as Yosso (2005) points out, Bourdieu's account of cultural capital tends to neglect the 'cultural wealth' of minority communities that can contribute to students' success in education and life more generally.

The capability thesis of Amartya Sen
By comparison, Sen's capability thesis begins with a critique of the limitations of resources-and utility-based ways of conceiving disadvantages.Seen from a capability perspective, disadvantage is multidimensional and yet, explicitly or implicitly, policy decisions often rely on two competing informational bases: resources and utility.A resource-based assessment of advantages foregrounds policies that tackle disadvantages by making sufficient resources available to target groups.Here the informational basis of advantage is compared with equality of resources (Dworkin 2002) or 'primary goods' (Rawls and Kelly 2001).Whereas, at the core of utilitarianism is maximising pleasure and avoiding pain.In his moral theory, Jeremy Bentham (1780Bentham ( /2007Bentham ( /2007 defined utility as 'that principle which approves or disapproves every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question' (p.4).Utilitarian policymakers assess wellbeing and advantage in terms of preference satisfaction (Goodin 1995;Mulgan 2007).The core informational basis is the happiness or desire-fulfilment of the individual.
In response to what he saw as critical limits in these two evaluative spaces, economist and philosopher Amartya Sen developed a capability-based assessment of wellbeing and disadvantage in society (Sen 1987(Sen , 1992(Sen , 2003(Sen , 2009(Sen , 2017)).The capability approach (CA) has subsequently been elaborated by several scholars such as Nussbaum (2019), Alkire (2002) and Robeyns (2017).As a normative evaluative framework, CA focuses on people's freedoms as a key informational basis of judgement.It assesses individual advantage and social arrangements in terms of what options people have to be and do rather than what resources they have access to or the level of satisfaction that they can attain.
A person's capability represents their 'ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being' (Sen 1992, 30).The capability thesis maintains that people are disadvantaged when they lack substantive freedoms to achieve what they reflectively value.For Sen (2003), 'if life is seen as a set of "doings and beings" that are valuable, the exercise of assessing the quality of life takes the form of evaluating these functionings and the capability to function' (p.4).People are capable when they have genuine opportunities for wellbeing and agency.With enlarged freedom, individuals can pursue choices they value.A capability-based assessment of disadvantage asks: 'What are you able to do and be, in areas of importance in your life?' (Nussbaum 2019, 241).The analytical focus is on people's capability to function and what they can 'do and be' as a result of possessing or having access to socioeconomic opportunities such as education.In education policy and practice, the answer to this question concerns the extent to which people have expanded educational capability -their substantive opportunities to be well-educated and lead the life they have reason to value.Relatedly, the capability thesis holds that transforming unjust structures along such categories as class, gender, rurality, and refugee status necessitates a 'social commitment'-there is 'a deep complementarity between individual agency and social arrangements' (Sen 1999, p. xii); what sociologists often refer to as the relationship between agency and structure.That is to say, achieving individual agency in society also calls for public action, including institutional strategies and governmental policies and reforms.
To move beyond the shortcomings of overly structuralist elements of sociological analyses, many equity scholars in education employ Amartya Sen's capability approach (CA) as a normative framework to explore educational disadvantage (e.g.Gale and Molla 2015;Saito 2003;Szekely and Mason 2019;Tikly and Barrett 2011;Unterhalter 2003;Vaughan 2016;Walker 2006Walker , 2010;;Walker et al. 2020;Walker and Unterhalter 2007;Wilson-Strydom 2015).These and other scholars have shown that a capability-based account of educational inequality emphasises the importance of social arrangements in removing barriers and the conversion abilities of equity targets.The capability thesis does not negate the explanatory power of structural analyses of educational disadvantages.Rather, it complements the reproduction thesis by emphasising the role of social arrangements and conversion abilities of policy targets (see below).Seen from a capability perspective, disadvantage is not all about the absence of resources but also the deprivation of real opportunities to accomplish what one reflectively values.Even so, CA is not without limitations.For instance, by emphasising the characteristics of the individual as an informational basis of evaluation, it often overlooks how the interplay of objective contexts and subjective conditions influence conversion abilities and individuals' choices, and it sees 'adaptive preferences' (Elster 1983) as stable conditions of life.Further, Sen emphasises the importance of considering people's achieved functionings and their capability to achieve them.However, in assessing social arrangements (e.g.equity policies and programs), the evaluative focus might be on the relevance and sufficiency of the opportunities to enable people to achieve what they have reason to value.The justification might be that a person can have a genuine advantage and still 'muff' them or sacrifice one's wellbeing for other goals (Sen, 1993).But given the considerable diversity of human beings, people's ability to convert opportunities into valued outcomes may vary due to external and internal conditions-meaning, equity in opportunities cannot be a reliable measure of justice.

Expanding the evaluative spaces of educational disadvantage
Given these limitations of both Bourdieu's social reproduction thesis and Sen's capability approach, we suggest that there is merit in synthesising their concepts to produce a more nuanced account of educational disadvantage.In our view, a more complete understanding of inequality requires consideration of the intersection between inequalities and the role of transformative equity instruments.Although there exists emerging literature that combines Bourdieu's sociological concepts with Sen's capability approach (e.g.Abel 2008;Molla 2021;Gandrup 2016;Hart 2013Hart , 2019;;Lemistre and Ménard 2019;Pham 2019), there is little regard in this literature for the interplay between position and disposition to explain inequality.We address this gap by expanding the evaluative spaces of educational disadvantage.By evaluative spaces, we mean the informational bases on which policymakers frame educational inequality as a problem and which thus inform policy decisions.This expanded evaluative space: (a) explains how social position and embodied dispositions interact to mediate one's educational disadvantage, opportunity, and outcomes; (b) analyses the substantiveness of educational opportunities in terms of capital interaction and capability expansion; and (c) employs concepts of conversion ability and conditioned choices to problematise relations between opportunity and outcome.
In assessing the educational disadvantage of equity target groups -such as young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds and/or with refugee status -what relevant information should researchers and policymakers be looking for in order to construct a policy that will make a difference?Commonly, educational disadvantage is conceived by policymakers in terms of a lack of access to opportunities.As a result, equity policies in education start with a recognition of disadvantage that affects a specific social group (e.g.refugees, rural populations, people with disabilities, and so on), and then seek to provide compensatory opportunities to benefit the group (e.g.special university entry schemes) from which the policy assumes relatively equal learning outcomes for all.However, often the problem of educational inequality persists due in part to these policies' restrictive informational bases of assessment.In these policies, disadvantage is often viewed through a narrow lens or within confined spaces of consideration -a practice akin to what statisticians refer to as holding some variables constant to avoid them 'confounding' the problem -which reduces the policy problem to simply foregrounding barriers to access.So even in contexts where educational opportunities are made available through equity policies and programs, people from disadvantaged backgrounds can fall short of achieving valued outcomes due to external issues that shape their conversion abilities and choices.Such policies fall short of achieving their goal because they ignore intersectional inequalities affecting target groups.For instance, personal heterogeneities, socioeconomic challenges, and racialised relations mean that disadvantaged groups may not be equally positioned to benefit from equity considerations (Walker 2006).In such circumstances, a fair distribution of resources takes us only halfway to addressing unjust educational inequality.
Broadening the spaces for assessing educational inequality is critical, partly because, as Ken Burke notes, 'A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing -a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B' (1984, p.49).In our proposed conceptual model, which synthesises analytical tools from Bourdieu and Sen and builds on earlier theoretical explications (see Molla 2021), we propose five evaluative spaces needed to more fully inform assessments of educational disadvantage.These are: position and disposition (the interplay between social location and personal orientation), capital (valuable material and symbolic resources at home and beyond that influence educational attainment), capability (people's substantive freedoms to be well-educated), conversion (the transformation of resources into valued outcomes), and choice (the preferences and interests of groups and individuals targeted by equity policies).Figure 1 shows the relations we imagine between each of these.
In what follows, we map these five spaces of equity assessment and then draw key implications for equity research, policy, and practice in education.To more fully illustrate the various aspects of the analytical framework, we use the case of how refugees are positioned within and by equity policies in Australian higher education.

Position and disposition
In educational equity research and sociology more broadly, there are longstanding debates over the primacy of agency or structure in shaping the opportunities and outcomes of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.In his theory of practice, Bourdieu (1990b) holds that individuals internalise objective structures (rules, norms, expectations, values) through a gradual process of socialisation, including practices both past and present (Molla and Gale 2019).According to Bourdieu, these internalised structures form generative dispositions (the habitus) that function as schemes of perception and action.In this account, the habitus represents 'the individual's embodied orientation towards the world' (McNay 2014, 72).Agents are 'incorporated bodies' who internalise objective contexts (external expectations), which orient their  Bourdieu (1990aBourdieu ( , 1990b) ) and Sen (2003Sen ( , 2009Sen ( , 2017)).
dispositions, thoughts, and actions (Molla and Gale 2022;Swartz 2002).As such, notwithstanding formal rules and regulations, one's position in the field of practice influences their tactics of engagement and life course trajectories.Put simply, our practices tend to reflect our deeply engrained dispositions.Our dispositions inform what and how we act, think, perceive and approach the world and our role in it.Social position determines access to and acquisition of valuable resources.For example: [. ..] cultural capital is unequally distributed through stratified school systems as much as it is through milieus and families; access to social capital is regulated through class barriers as much as it is through language codes; and the unequal distribution of income is the primary marker of privilege or social disadvantage (Abel and Frohlich 2012, 239) One of the key insights from Bourdieu's sociology is that practice (including navigating educational opportunities, making choices, and learning) is mediated by dialectical interactions of objective contexts and subjective conditions-i.e. an interplay between position and disposition (see Figure 1).Social positions represent 'a mode of embodied being, an orientation to the world that is lived out unconsciously in daily practices' (McNay, 2008, p.34).Personal aspirations and inclinations of individuals are often constrained by expectations, norms, and power relations in a given social space.Further, people in disadvantaged positions can internalise their conditions of inequality and deprivation.In other words, positions shape aspirations (Gale 2022).As Bourdieu (1990b) argues, 'agents shape their aspirations according to concrete indices of the accessible and the inaccessible, of what is and is not "for us"' (p.64).Hence, in assessing educational inequality, what is not often fully appreciated are links between social location and embodied agency, specifically, the negative effects of deprivation and disadvantage on people's dispositions and aspirations.For example, people living in disadvantaged circumstances may misrecognise the structural causes of their predicaments as an acceptable arrangement and learn to adapt to their conditions.That is, through socialisation and acculturation, they may transform objective structures of deprivation into subjective dispositions of complicity reluctance.As McNay stresses: When they are reproduced in the body, chronic inequalities may be realised as a habitus of disempowerment, as feelings of resignation, despair and vulnerability, which make it difficult for some individuals to act as autonomous political agents in their own interests.(2014, p.207)This is not to say that individuals cannot transcend the perspective generated by their social position.Far from it.Through disjuncture and critical reflexivity, people can question their position in a given social space (Bourdieu 1990a;Nolan and Molla 2018).When people face situations of rapture and crisis, they may enter a state of uncertainty and reflexivity that can lead to what Bourdieu (1990b) refers to as awakening a 'critical consciousness', leading to changes in their dispositions.People have what Bourdieu calls a 'margin of freedom', the space of creative agency (2000, p.235).Individuals can be creatively agentic in their responses to the challenges and structures they face.In fact, one's habitus is in a state of permanent revision.In the words of Bourdieu (2016), 'the habitus is not a fate, not a destiny' (p.45) -that is, dispositions are durable but not permanent.Habitually acquired dispositions are open to invention and improvisation.They can be transformed through intentional problematisation or 'conscious deliberation' on 'unconscious dispositions' (Reay, David, and Ball 2005, 438).Left unchallenged, those working with a Bourdieuan lens would argue that dispositional factors can impede young people from disadvantaged backgrounds from aspiring for higher-level education and training.In a pioneering paper that applied the capability approach to assess equity policies in education, Walker (2006) argued that people from disadvantaged social positions tend to adapt their preferences to what is 'available' to them and modulate their aspirations accordingly.
A sociological analysis of inequality is mindful of how the interplay between position and disposition contributes to the persistence of educational disadvantage.To begin with, social position mediates one's advantage and disadvantage as well as opportunities and outcomes.From a CA perspective, capabilities are closely connected with social location and associated public actions.As Sen (1999) notes, there is 'a deep complementarity between individual agency and social arrangements' (p.xii).Here, social arrangements signify a collective commitment to providing people in disadvantaged circumstances with the necessary resources.In other words, individual entitlements and agency are mediated by the extent to which rights are protected and responsibilities are met.Also, the unfettered neoliberal market logic tends to individualise disadvantage, with little regard to social location and associated structural issues of inequality (Castillo 2020;Connell 2013).
In contrast, our call for an expansive space of equity assessment stems from an assumption that personal disadvantage has social roots.Educational attainment has positional effects.Our social location plays a critical role in determining to what we aspire, whether we believe our aspirations are realistic or improbable, and the extent to which we take up opportunities available to us (Gale and Parker 2015).Realistic aspirations and navigational capacity (Gale and Parker 2014) are nurtured through practice, trial and error within supportive communities.For instance, students from advantaged backgrounds have opportunities to test their aspirations with knowledgeable family and community members.They draw on this 'archive of experience' as a map to orient their imaginations and successfully navigate their futures (Appadurai 2013, 213).Conversely, disadvantaged people are more likely to form dispositions that incline them to lower their 'subjective expectation' of opportunities and 'objective probability' of success (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990, 156).For example, to be a refugee is to be uprooted from the familiar and detached from valued connections and possessions.Loss of livelihood, separation from families and displacement from cultural roots affect refugees' educational opportunities and outcomes.They are highly susceptible to chronic traumatic stress that interferes with their learning.It is, therefore, imperative to consider how circumstances over which disadvantaged individuals have little or no control might shape their aspirations, choices, and functionings.
Addressing unjust inequalities begins with recognising 'the social production of persons and the social structuring of positions' (Brubaker 2015, 37).

Capital interaction
Educational disadvantage may also result from having little or no capital endowment.Here, capital is broadly understood as 'the set of actually usable resources and powers' that become objects of social struggle (Bourdieu 1984, 261).According to Bourdieu, capital takes three primary forms: economic capital (e.g.income, property, financial stocks), cultural capital (e.g.embodied, symbolic and institutionalised resources such as durable dispositions, cultural knowledge, and skills, credentials and books), and social capital, which includes material and non-material resources that one mobilises through a network of connections (Bourdieu 1986).People's positions and dispositions are defined by competition and cooperation for specific stakes (capital) in the social space (field).
Drawing on Bourdieu (1986), Abel and his colleagues (Abel 2008;Abel and Frohlich 2012;Veenstra and Abel 2019) use the notion of capital interaction to show how different forms of capital interact to reproduce social position.Here, we focus on three forms of capital interaction: transmission, accumulation, and conversion.Transmission refers to the phenomenon whereby different forms of capital are transmitted from one generation to another.For example, productive family interactions enable children to inherit symbolic assets from parents and/or form 'scholarly habitus' that make educational growth possible (Watkins and Noble 2013).Through socialisation at an early stage (at home and in schools), children develop durable dispositions that inform their future decisions and choices in later stages of life.As van Zanten et al. (2015) shows, interactions between adults and children in the context of strong cultural capital at home are 'crucial for the "osmotic" transmission of aspirations, values, and tastes' (p.32).Institutions such as the school also play critical roles in transmitting capital.Bourdieu (1971) argues, 'Those whose culture . . . is the academic culture conveyed by the school have a system of categories of perception, language, thought and appreciation' (p.200) that differentiates them from other students.For instance, children from middle-income families are better off educationally because the values they acquire at home and extended family/ community interactions are congruent with school practices.
Capital also accumulates.In Bourdieu's words, 'capital attracts capital ' (1996, p.331); it has 'a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in identical or expanded form' (Bourdieu 1986, 241).Money can be invested in the stock market to make more money.It can also be used to pay for elite school fees where the cultural capital of advantaged groups is accumulated, and elite schools are also the site for the accumulation of social capital -strong social ties that make possible more networks.Over time, through formal and informal learning, people accumulate privileged forms of knowledge (cultural capital), and they use that knowledge to build networks (social capital) through which they can acquire and reproduce their material assets (economic capital).In these processes, they accumulate capital that defines their social position (symbolic capital).This chain of capital (re)production also suggests that one form of capital acquisition is conditional on the existence of a similar or another form of capital.In essence, through time, initial capital accumulates.The idea that advantage tends to reproduce advantage is captured in what sociologist Robert Merton (1979) referred to as the Matthew Effect, which draws on a verse from the Gospel of Matthew (13:12): 'whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance'.For instance, cultural capital is essential in acquiring social capital; certain values, communication styles and behavioural skills are expected from all those who want to belong to and participate in powerful social networks.Thus, refugee-background students who have access to relevant social networks are more likely to have the right information about alternative pathways to higher education than their peers who lack such resources.
Finally, capital is convertible (Bourdieu 1986).Financial assets can be converted into cultural and social forms of capital.People invest money (economic capital) to learn and achieve higher-level education (cultural capital) so that they can access well-paid jobs and valuable networks (social capital).Parental investment in education is a way of converting economic capital into cultural capital (knowledge and qualifications).In a school system that is segregated by income and where public spending is minimal, the role of education in reproducing advantaged and disadvantaged social positions is pronounced (Jerrim and Macmillan 2015;Abel 2008;Abel and Frohlich 2012).For example, in Australia, most students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds (as measured by low income and limited parental education) are concentrated in underfunded government schools.They account for less than 10% of students in well-resourced nongovernment schools (Hetherington 2018).In contrast, socio-economically advantaged families live in local catchment areas of prestigious schools and support their children's talents and skills through 'concerted cultivation' (Lareau 2011).They draw on their social and economic assets to deliberately nurture their children's aptitudes and competence.
In this respect, refugees live mostly in disadvantaged suburbs where schools are underresourced.Early educational disadvantage and limited academic resources at home also mean refugee students may find it difficult to engage in complex and demanding learning activities.Recent arrival refugees are less likely to have an extended social network on which to rely.Familiarity with education systems is a critical prerequisite for refugees to successfully navigate the educational landscape in destination societies.As a result, young people from refugee backgrounds are more likely to have greater educational and support needs than other new migrants.Even so, in Australia, refugees remain invisible in higher education equity policies (Molla 2021).They are grouped under the low socioeconomicstatus-background category, which reduces complex factors of disadvantage to financial hardship and masks the specific educational needs of refugees.Exclusion from a policy purview further precipitates the persistence of their educational disadvantage.
Inequality in capital distribution and mobilisation means people have different rates of capital interaction and are differently positioned to navigate educational pathways and opportunities.Low capital interaction reproduces disadvantaged social positions in so far as it inhibits people from accessing and converting educational opportunities.It is also imperative to note that no single form of capital fully explains the reproduction of social position; it takes the interaction of all three forms of capital, and even then, conversion is not a given process.Possession of financial resources does not necessarily support cultural capital acquisition.Two parents with equivalent income may choose, depending on their 'taste' (a reflection of their stock of cultural capital but also which of these has the most symbolic value), to invest their finances in different things: e.g. a new car, books or educational tours, as well as a regard for particular kinds of these.Differences in taste lead to what Bourdieu (1984) refers to as 'distinction', which is reflected in and definitive of social positions.

Capability expansion
While capital interaction is about drivers of the reproduction of social position, capability expansion concerns the availability of substantive (i.e.relevant and sufficient) opportunities that enable people to achieve what they value in life.A resource-based assessment of advantages and disadvantages does not take into account people's ability to benefit from such resources -the focus is on distribution, not on its disparate effects.Having equal access to resources does not guarantee equality of outcomes -in fact, equality of opportunities can go hand in hand with inequality of outcomes (Sen 2017).This is mainly because a resource-based evaluation of equity that concentrates on the distribution of assets ignores differences in people's ability to make use of the resources available to them.In objecting to a resource-based evaluation of equality and wellbeing, Sen (2004) argues: Certainly, people have 'needs', but they also have values, and, in particular, they cherish their ability to reason, appraise, act and participate.Seeing people in terms only of their needs may give us a rather meagre view of humanity . . .We are not only patients, whose needs demand attention, but also agents, whose freedom to decide what to value and how to pursue it can extend far beyond the fulfilment of our needs.(p.10, emphasis in original) Resources-oriented policies focus on the distribution of opportunities, with little or no regard to factors that contribute to differences in outcomes.Likewise, equity policies informed by utilitarianism tend to focus on enabling students to achieve their personal preferences.For example, the widening participation agenda in the higher education sector emphasises individual choices and labour market preferences (Sapir 2022).This utilitarian logic overlooks the impact of conformity on agency goal formation.In explaining why preferences satisfaction is a problematic indicator of advantage, Sen (2009) argues: The utilitarian calculus based on happiness or desire-fulfilment can be deeply unfair to those who are persistently deprived, since our mental make-up and desires tend to adjust to circumstances, particularly to make life bearable in adverse situations.It is through 'coming to terms' with one's hopeless predicament that life is made somewhat bearable by the traditional underdogs.(pp.282-283)Contrary to the utilitarian approach to policy assessment that prioritises promoting the maximum total of utilities and preferences satisfaction, a capability-based evaluation recognises the role of 'adaptive preferences' (Elster 1983;Sen 2009).The argument is that people in disadvantaged positions might defensively adjust their expectations and scale down their aspirations such that the achievement of agency goals set in the context of deprivation may not indicate equity in real opportunities.For example, Souto-Otero and Manuel Souto-Otero (2010) showed that when aspirations are not fulfilled, people from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to adjust their expectations to what they think is achievable.Making university places accessible to all assumes that all prospective students can form viable agency goals and navigate the available opportunities that can help them achieve these goals.
Capability expansion is assessed against the backdrop of social arrangements for addressing unjust education inequality.Seen from a CA perspective, widening evaluative spaces of educational disadvantage means broadening the informational focus in judging and comparing opportunities and outcomes across different target groups.As Sen (2009) points out, in policy decisions key actors need to be conscious of their 'positional illusions' that may confine the informational basis of their evaluations of public concerns.They need to recognise that real equity requires considerations beyond making resources available to or measuring the level of preference satisfaction of target groups.
Applying this to our refugee example, by voluntarily resettling forcibly displaced people, governments and societies implicitly acknowledge their ethical obligation to provide refugees with substantive opportunities for successful integration.Access to quality education is particularly critical because, with improved knowledge and skills, refugees become economically productive and socially engaged.However, equity policy that defines the educational disadvantage of refugee youth as a mere lack of access is likely to fall short of achieving its goal because such framing overlooks intersectional factors of inequality, including limited navigational capacity, disrupted educational trajectories and negative interpersonal relationships (e.g.racial bias and stigma in educational institutions).Possession of resources is crucial but the assessment of advantage should not stop there.The equalisation of resources does not necessarily translate to the equalisation of real opportunities.The ability to transform educational opportunities into valued outcomes is not an automatic process.To illustrate, a university may offer to admit refugee students through a special consideration arrangement.Yet at the same time, the university maintains that it is a requirement that all applicants need to have high-level English language proficiency.Given most refugees come from non-English speaking countries, the equity provision of this university does not constitute a real opportunity, at least not for all refugees -only for those from privileged backgrounds who are proficient in English.In short, the policy is not responsive to the unique conditions and needs of equity target groups such as refugees from non-English speaking countries.In assessing the educational opportunities of refugees and others from disadvantaged backgrounds, we need to recognise the multidimensional and multidirectional nature of their disadvantage.

Conversion ability
While governments may put in place redistributive policy instruments to ensure that disadvantaged people have access to adequate and relevant opportunities, what matters most is the extent to which target groups benefit from the opportunities.Sen stresses that interpersonal variations in conversion opportunities represent 'pervasive variations in the human condition and in relevant social circumstances ' (2009, p.261) and 'equality of holdings of primary goods or resources can go hand in hand with serious inequalities in actual freedoms enjoyed by different persons ' (2017, p.352).The argument is that the means (resources) to achieve are distinctly different from the freedom (capability) to achieve and from actual achievements (functionings).In making judgements about people's educational advantages and disadvantages, a sole focus on measuring the outcomes of target groups is restrictive.As Nussbaum (2019) observes, 'while resourcebased approaches have a pleasing appearance of neutrality, they bias the approach in favor of those already positioned to use resources without impediment ' (p.240).
The substantiveness of people's opportunities is defined derivatively from what they can achieve (Sen, 1993).In other words, a capability-informed policy analysis moves backwards from how well life is going for the community, to ask what opportunities people have had to achieve other alternative functionings.A 'backward' analysis -akin to what Lingard et al. refer to as 'backward mapping from a set of desired outcomes' (2003, p. 400) -is instrumental in shedding light on why two or more groups or individuals with similar educational capability sets, might end up achieving different levels of outcomes.Only convertible resources constitute substantive opportunities.The variability in conversion rates implies that an equitable distribution of resources takes us only halfway to addressing inequality.It is equally necessary to tackle issues that impede people's agencytheir ability to act and bring about change.When equity target groups are able to 'be and do' what they reflectively value using the resources at their disposal, then we can say they are capable and agentic.
People have substantive opportunities to the extent they can make use of them to achieve what they value in life.Equality in resources does not necessarily translate into equality of outcomes.For instance, education opportunities are substantive to the extent that people's conversion abilities are not constrained by internal and external factors associated with systemic arrangements, institutional practices, interpersonal relations and personal conditions.The idea of conversion ability shifts our attention from the availability of educational opportunities to the capacity of equity groups to take up the opportunities.It highlights that people of different social and cultural origins may not benefit in equivalent ways from similar provisions of equal access to education.As such, inequality of outcomes is unjust if it is a consequence of differences in conditions-if people are not equally positioned to take advantage of opportunities made available through policy provisions and support services.
The social environment is a critical factor in one's conversion ability.To illustrate with our refugee example, the capability thesis maintains that substantive educational opportunities require the removal of barriers that inhibit refugee youth from transforming resources into valued achievements.With the rise of populist politics, visibly distinct refugee groups such as those from African countries have faced racial Othering and deprivation of equal respect, which in turn has undermined their ability to take advantage of the educational opportunities made available through equity programs.This form of disadvantage amounts to what Therborn (2013) calls 'existential inequality', which refers to 'the unequal allocation of personhood, i.e. of autonomy, dignity, degrees of freedom, and of rights to respect and self-development ' (p.49).Experiences of racial bias and discrimination circumscribe people's 'social abilities'-their substantive freedom 'to appear in public without shame" and "to take part in the life of the community' (Sen 2000, 13).Individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, stunted by humiliation and degradation are unlikely to participate actively in the socioeconomic lives of society.A society that tolerates racial discrimination in schools and beyond cannot realise genuine equality.Notwithstanding the availability of educational opportunities, racialised youth may not be able to benefit from the opportunities available.
The practical implication is that policy analysts need to pay attention to objective and subjective conditions that impede equity targets from capitalising on their opportunities.Differences in educational attainment tell us little about the issue of disadvantage until we assess the degree to which people can transform their resources into valuable outcomes.Understanding unjust inequality in educational outcomes necessitates taking the conversion abilities of individuals' equity targets into account.The notion of conversion ability underscores the role of personal features and social and environmental conditions in shaping the extent to which a person benefits from the available educational opportunities; it emphasises the importance of removing barriers that force people to live less or be less.It shifts our attention from the availability of educational opportunities to the interaction of internal and external forces that influence how and the extent to which equity groups take up these opportunities.

Conditioned choice
A capability-based assessment of disadvantage and opportunity also foregrounds the ability of people to exercise choices and enhances their freedom to act in the light of these choices.But choice is not solely personal; it is a function of socialisation.As noted above, the choices people make, and the outcomes they achieve in part depend on the interplay between their position and disposition.Not all decisions rest on 'strategic calculation' (Bourdieu 1990b).One's disposition to act in a particular way is derived from internalising opportunities and constraints.When dispositions and preferences are accrued in the context of disadvantage, these tend to generate modulated or unrealistic aspirations.As such, people in socially disadvantaged circumstances tend to 'defensively' adjust their expectations (Nussbaum 2019;Sen 1987Sen , 1992)); that is, they narrow their object of desire to avoid what some have termed 'cruel optimism' (Berlant 2011), 'blighted hope or frustrated promise' (Bourdieu 1984, 150).It is thus deficient to assess educational disadvantages based solely on what people have chosen to be and do (or not be or do) vis-à-vis available social arrangements.
In other words, 'dispositional inequalities' can reproduce students' disadvantaged social positions by 'downwardly biasing self-assessments, depressing occupational aspirations and educational investments' (Brubaker 2015, 53).Although not everyone from disadvantaged backgrounds lacks aspirations for education (Gale and Parker 2015), individuals who have experienced deprivation in the past, regardless of present opportunities, tend to have restricted aspirations aligned with their experiences of disadvantage (Appadurai 2013;Elster 1983).In this way, inequality in educational attainment does not necessarily imply inequality in opportunities -it can result from conditioned choices.For instance, making decisions about transitioning into higher education and choosing courses involves an element of 'agency freedom' engendered, at least partly, by generative dispositions that operate as schemes of perception and interpretation of opportunities.Beyond measuring the achievement of 'agency goals' set in a context of deprivation, equity programs should also consider sociocultural factors that inform the educational preferences and choices of people from disadvantaged backgrounds, such as those of refugee youth (Molla, 2021).Without intervention to disrupt adaptive preferences, people in deprived circumstances are more likely to develop a sense of 'putting up with fate' and conform to conditions of unjust inequality.From a policy perspective, 'the fulfilment of disciplined desires is not a sign of great success' (Sen 1987, 11).
Hence, in assessing educational inequality, we should be mindful of the contexts of aspiration formation and decision-making as well as disadvantaged individuals' tendency to have diminished 'anticipatory dispositions' (McNay, 2008).Capability and the capacity to aspire are interactive: The capacity to aspire provides an ethical horizon within which more concrete capabilities can be given meaning, substance, and sustainability.Conversely, the exercise and nurture of these capabilities verifies and authorises the capacity to aspire and moves it away from wishful thinking to thoughtful wishing.(Appadurai 2013 193) Take again the case of refugees.Their socioeconomic locations and cultural backgrounds shape how they imagine their futures, develop strategies to realise their aspirations and explore current opportunities to achieve future goals.Negative effects of forced displacement coupled with marginal existence in destination societies may create constraints internal to the individual.Without a supportive context for aspiration formation, people in disadvantaged social positions lack 'the privilege of risk-taking' (Appadurai 2019).Hence, in assessing equity policies, as noted earlier, it is important to move from what people have achieved backwards to what choices they made in relation to the opportunities they had, in order to determine what they reflectively see as valuable.From a policy perspective, refugees may have the option to go to university but their ability to consider the option might be influenced by their priorities, conditioned judgements and navigational capacities.Refugees have genuine educational capabilities when they can escape the trap of conditioned choices.

Conclusion
In democratic societies, it is generally accepted that people's educational opportunities should not be limited by their social origin.However, across many education systems, equity provisions notwithstanding, the problem of inequality endures (Gerrard, Savage, and O'Connor 2017;OECD 2021).The persistence of educational inequality can, at least in part, be attributed to narrow spaces of policy assessment that overlook how the dialectical interplay between subjective conditions and objective contexts shapes people's dispositions, aspirations, choices, and conversion abilities.In this respect, our proposed expansive evaluative framework redresses the minimalist notion of equity that solely focuses on widening access, instead offering a far richer account of who gets what and under what conditions.
The message for policy researchers and policymakers is three-fold.First, educational disadvantage is not just a lack of access due to limited financial resources.It can also result from a lack of 'useful' socio-cultural resources as well as dispositional inequalities associated with marginal social positions.As such, understanding the reproduction of educational disadvantage necessitates analysing both the social positions of people and the social arrangements of society.
Relatedly, providing opportunities should not stop at making equity provisions available.The means to achieve (resources) are distinctly different from the freedom to achieve (capability) -the latter entails genuine opportunities to be and do what one reflectively values.The practical implication is that policy provisions should be assessed based not just on what resources are allocated to address unjust inequalities but also on the extent to which the opportunities are adequate, relevant and convertible.Documenting who gets what is not enough.Conditions of access and participation equally matter.For example, in assessing whether refugee-background students benefit from equity policies, one needs to consider the sufficiency of provisions, student lifecourse trajectories (e.g.history of learning disruption and traumatic experiences), parental educational attainment and aspirations, the availability of ongoing targeted institutional support and social barriers to meaningful academic engagement (e.g.racial and cultural discrimination).In policymaking and research, limitations in people's ability to capitalize on their opportunities deserve attention.
Finally, differences in educational outcomes tell us little until we assess conversion issues and contexts of preference formation.Policy analysts can capture these issues and contexts by moving backward from what people have achieved to what opportunities they have had and what might have inhibited them from converting those opportunities into valuable outcomes.Hindsight is an important element in identifying shortcomings and planning for the future.Regardless of the availability of higher education equity provisions, it is possible that some members of society continue to have low educational attainment.If that is the case, it is imperative to ask why they did not benefit from the equity policies.Perhaps they had other more immediate priorities that distracted them from taking up the opportunities or they might not see higher education as attainable for people like them.The policy implication is that equity provisions need to widen options so that disadvantaged people do not adjust their preferences to their circumstances.Importantly, those who lag in the educational race should not get blamed for their own disadvantage.Education opportunities are substantive to the extent that people's conversion abilities are not constrained by systemic arrangements, institutional practices, interpersonal relations and personal conditions.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Tebeje Molla is an ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Deakin University, Australia.His research focuses on educational disadvantage and policy responses at systemic, sectoral, and institutional levels.Tebeje's latest projects investigate educational experiences and outcomes of African heritage Australian youth with refugee experiences.His interdisciplinary research draws on critical sociology and the capability approach to social justice and human development.
Trevor Gale is Professor of Education Policy and Social Justice at The University of Glasgow, UK.He is a critical sociologist of education with research interests in the policy and practice of socially just education.His research focuses on the reproduction of inequalities in and through policies and practices in formal education systems, particularly in schools and higher education.Recent major publications include 'Higher vocational education as a work of art' in an edited collection published by Palgrave (2022) and 'The politics of critical policy sociology' in Critical Studies in Education (2021).