Erin McNamara Horvat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Urban Education
Dept. of Teaching & Learning

Ritter Hall 246
1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19122-6091

phone: (215) 204-6178
erin.mcnamara.horvat@temple.edu

 

 

Education

  • Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, CA, Education
  • M.A. University of California, Los Angeles, CA, Education
  • B.A. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, Psychology

Areas of Professional Interest

For many years I have tried to understand and illustrate how educational institutions reproduce and create inequality. While previous research has established that kids and families come to schools unequally prepared to benefit from what school has to offer, much of my work has been aimed at revealing how schools exacerbate these inequitable beginnings. I have drawn extensively on the work of Pierre Bourdieu in these investigations, especially notions of social and cultural capital. I explore how schools and other educational institutions exacerbate or “reproduce” inequalities based on birth and background factors such as racial and ethnic origin, socioeconomic status and the like. I have examined these issues in a variety of educational settings through the educational pipeline. I have studied how access to higher education is shaped by these background factors and how students’ experiences in schools are affected by the cultural and social capital students and families bring. I am motivated to study how schools reproduce inequality because I think that it is largely invisible to many. The most important and dangerous ways that inequality is reproduced are the ways that are so easily accepted and woven into the fabric of our ideology about education – our basic assumptions and beliefs about how schools should operate. I have endeavored to reveal these often taken for granted or invisible forms of inequality in schools.

Youth Build Philly Charter SchoolLately, I have become interested in working with educational institutions that provide examples of how schools can be places of equity and access. My work with YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School and YouthBuild USA are examples of this. YouthBuild provides education, job training and life skills assistance to high school dropouts who are ready to turn their lives around. In addition to participating in a major research project with YouthBuild USA, I served as a member of the Philadelphia board for ten years and chaired the board for four years. Other recent and ongoing work includes a historical case study of a K-8 school focusing on the role of parents in school improvement and the creation of a strong school community in an urban setting as well as an exploration of social class integration in urban school settings.

My work has been published in Sociology of Education, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Youth and Society and American Educational Research Journal. I Co- edited (with Carla O’Connor) Beyond Acting White: Reframing the Debate on Black Student Achievement and published The Beginners Guide to Doing Qualitative Research with Teachers College Press.  I have received funding from the Ford Foundation, The Spencer Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beyong Acting White Doing Qualitative Research

 

 

Recent Scholarship

Horvat, Erin McNamara (2012) Pushing Parents Away: School District Bureaucracy, Middle Class Parents and Social Class Integration.  In The Politicization of Parenthood: Shifting Private and Public Responsibilities in Education and Child Rearing Martina Richter and Sabine Andresen Eds. New York: Springer. 

Horvat, Erin McNamara. (2011) Pioneer Parents and Creating Pathways for Involvement: A Historical Case Study of School Change and Collective Parental Involvement pp163-187. In Including Families and Communities in Urban Education Catherine Hands and Lea Hubbard Eds. New York: Information Age Publishing.

Horvat, Erin McNamara, Juliet DiLeo Curci & Michelle Chaplin Partlow. (2010) Parents Principals and Power: A Historical Case Study of “Managing” Parental Involvement  Journal of School Leadership 20(6) pp. 702-727.

Horvat, Erin McNamara and James Earl Davis. (2010) Schools as Sites for Transformation: Exploring the Contribution of the Habitus. Youth and Society.


Cucchiara, Maia and Erin McNamara Horvat. (2009) Perils and Promises: Middle-Class Parental Involvement in Urban Schools. American Educational Research Journal v. 46 pp. 974-1004.

Horvat, Erin McNamara & Carla O'Connor, Eds. 2006. Beyond Acting White: Reframing the Debate on Black Student Achievement.  Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Horvat, Erin McNamara & Kristine Lewis. (2003) Reassessing the "Burden of Acting White:" The Importance of Black Peer Groups in Managing Academic Success. Sociology of Education v. 76 (October) pp. 265-280.

Horvat, Erin McNamara, Elliot Weininger & Annette Lareau. (2003). From Social Ties to Social Capital: Class Differences in the Relation Between School and Parent Networks. American Educational Research Journal 40:2 pp. 319-351.

Horvat, Erin McNamara, (2003). The Interactive Effects of Race and Class in Educational Research: Theoretical Insights from the Work of Pierre Bourdieu. Perspectives on Urban Education. http://www.urbanedjournal.org/

Horvat, Erin McNamara. (2001). Rebuilding the Lives of Hight School Dropouts: Lessons from a Successful Program. Journal of Research in Education 11:1 88-95.

Horvat, Erin McNamara, (2001). Understanding Equity and Access in Higher Education: The Potential Contribution of Pierre Bordieu. In Higher Education Handbook Of Theory and Research, William G. Tierney, Ed. New York: Agathon Press pp. 195-238.

Lareau, Annette & Horvat, Erin McNamara, (1999). Moments of Social Inclusion and Exclusion: Race, Class and Cultural Capital in Family-School Relationships. Sociology of Education 72:1 37-53. (Reprinted in: Schools and Society: A Sociological Approach to Education, (Edited by J.H. Ballantine and J. Spade), Wadsworth, 2000).

Horvat, Erin McNamara & Antonio, Anthony L., (1999). "Hey Those Shoes Are Out of Uniform": African-American Girls in an Elite High School and the Importance of Habitus. Anthropology and Education Quarterly. 30(3):317-342.