Inégalités scolaires: a new book bridging sociology and cognitive psychology

Educational inequalities are unusually pronounced in France, and few subjects are debated more fiercely. Why do some pupils acquire fundamental skills more easily than others? Why do gaps in achievement persist despite public policies designed to reduce them? And do these gaps stem above all from the school, the family, the individual characteristics of pupils, or from the interaction between them?

Inégalités scolaires: approche croisée entre sociologie et psychologie cognitive, which we have co-edited with Cléa Girard and Stanislas Morel, takes an unusual approach to these questions. Rather than juxtaposing disciplinary perspectives, each chapter is co-written by a sociologist and a cognitive psychologist working together, so that the complementarities between the two fields become visible.

The contributions explore the interactions between family environment, cognitive development, teaching practices and school learning. Individual chapters address the construction of academic skills, shared reading, behavioural genetics, preschool education, difficulties in learning to read, and dyslexia.

The book grew out of the international seminar series on educational inequalities that we have been co-organising with Stanislas Morel, which has brought sociologists and cognitive scientists into the same room since 2022.

The book is written in French and will be published by the Presses Universitaires de Lyon on 24 September 2026.

More information from the publisher