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Family Background, Selection and Achievement: The German Experience
... These students are clearly underrepresented in the educational pathways leading to qualifications from grammar schools and institutions of higher education, as well as vocational schools. The same is true for students whose parents have a poor economic and educational background (Baumert & Schümer, 2002;Maaz et al., 2020). These trends suggest that there are structural barriers at work that constrain educational chances for students from specific backgrounds. ...
This open access book explores the nexus between knowledge and space with a particular emphasis on the role of educational settings that are, both, shaping and being reshaped by socio-economic and political processes. It gives insight into the complex interplay of educational inequalities and practices of educational governance in the neighborhood and at larger geographical scales. The book adopts quantitative and qualitative methodologies and explores a wide range of theoretical perspectives by drawing upon empirical cases and examples from France, Germany, Italy, the UK and North America, and presents and reflects ongoing research of international scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds such as education, human geography, public policy, sociology, and urban and regional planning. As such, it provides an interesting read for scholars, students and professionals in the broader field of social, cultural and educational studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners in the fields of education, pedagogy, social work, and urban and regional planning.
... These students are clearly underrepresented in the educational pathways leading to qualifications from grammar schools and institutions of higher education, as well as vocational schools. The same is true for students whose parents have a poor economic and educational background (Baumert & Schümer, 2002;Maaz et al., 2020). These trends suggest that Adapted from Maaz et al. (2020, p. 67). ...
Educational settings, both in and out of the school environment, not only affect one’s educational opportunities, but may also result in structural disadvantages and barriers. In this chapter, we explore political programs and initiatives aimed at improving educational opportunities and related settings on a local scale in Freiburg, Germany. Drawing upon educational statistics and biographical interviews conducted with adolescent students who are confronted with severe educational barriers, we sketch out a local pattern of fragmented geographies. Moreover, we critically assess how the local initiative “Lernen Erleben in Freiburg” (LEIF) implemented the national program “Lernen vor Ort” (Local Learning). With this example, we show that educational programs and initiatives—framed according to the New Public Management paradigm and neoliberal logics of competition, rankings, and best practices—have a limited potential to transform educational landscapes and work against educational inequalities and prevailing fragmented geographies of education.
... Although schools are often intended to be sites of learning for students from diverse social and economic backgrounds, frequently they only succeed in reproducing the inequalities of the economic and social discourses that surround them (School of Barbiana 1969). For example, the socio-economic status of students is a key indicator of academic underachievement and over-representation in disciplinary confrontations with teachers and principals in schools (Baumert and Schumer 2002). A report by Shelter, a charity in England for homeless people, noted that homelessness, including the use of temporary accommodation had a deleterious effect on children's education, health and job opportunities (TES 4 June 2004:4 in Busher 2006. ...
This chapter argues that engaging with students’ voices by listening to the multiplicity of their views on learning and teaching in school helps teachers to construct learning communities with them and tune teaching and learning processes to the social and cognitive needs of students. It takes the view that students as citizens and members of school communities are partners with teachers in processes of learning even if the institutions in which students and teachers work are constructed with unequal power relationships that emphasise performativity in acknowledgement of the neo-liberal discourses of globalisation that surround and penetrate them. In giving students some ownership of the processes of teaching and learning by engaging them in dialogues about teaching and learning and the limits of choice in constructing these to achieve curriculum objectives in particular institutional and policy contexts, teachers encourage students to develop positive and pro-active identities as citizens and learners.
... However, some people leave school at the earliest opportunity with few or no qualifications, low self-esteem as learners and limited opportunities for entering HE. Studies in Germany (Baumert and Schumer, 2002), New Zealand (Thrupp, 1999) and England and Wales (Demack, 2000) indicate that students' socio-economic status is a key indicator of academic under-achievement and unemployability. Although Access to HE courses offer these people a second chance to enter university, recent national policy on these courses has shifted from entry being free and inclusive for all adults wishing to enhance their social and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986), to entry privileging younger people, said to improve the national economy, and being dependent on paying fees. ...
... The inequalities of schooling also reflect the economic and social contexts of the society in which a school is embedded (School of Barbiana 1969). These inequalities are reproduced by discourses in society and through the processes of schooling (Taylor and Robinson 2009) which act as conduits for society's discourses and through the intersectionality of social status, ethnicity, religion and sexuality (Chandra 2012).The socio-economic status of students is a key indicator of academic under-achievement and over-representation in disciplinary confrontations with teachers and principals in schools (Baumert and Schumer 2002). A report by Shelter, a charity in England for homeless people, noted that homelessness, including the use of temporary accommodation had a deleterious effect on children's education, health and job opportunities (TES 4 June 2004:4 in Busher,. ...
Length: 9157 words, including references (1528 words) and abstract (206 words)] Abstract (206 words) This paper argues that engaging with students' voices by listening to the multiplicity of their views on learning and teaching in school helps teachers to construct learning communities with them and tune teaching and learning processes to the social and cognitive needs of students. It takes the view that students as citizens and members of school communities are partners with teachers in processes of learning even if the institutions in which students and teachers work are constructed with unequal power relationships that emphasise productivity in their outputs in acknowledgement of the neo-liberal discourses of globalisation that surround and penetrate them. In giving students some ownership of the processes of teaching and learning by engaging them in dialogues about teaching and learning and the limits of choice in constructing these to achieve curriculum objectives in particular institutional and policy contexts, teachers encourage students to develop positive and pro-active identities as citizens and learners, preparing them for adult life. The paper draws on three studies of student voices that were carried out by the author with colleagues between 2006 and 2012 in England and Lebanon in Primary and Secondary schools to reflect critically on the potentially creative and educative relationships that can develop between teachers and school students. Making sense of the relationships of students and teachers in schools This paper argues that engaging with students' voices by listening to the multiplicity of their views on learning and teaching in school helps teachers to construct learning communities with them and tune teaching and learning processes to meet the purpose of schools. In England this is describe as promoting the learning of academic subjects and the Spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils [sic] at the school and of society ... The preparation of pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life (HMG 1988 Section 1 para. 2)
... It operates quite rigidly in education systems such as England, whereas across Scandinavia mixed-ability teaching is the norm. Even in Germany, a country which is plagued by a segregated and hierarchical secondary school system, with serious consequences for overall school achievement (Baumert and Schümer 2002), there are some outstanding models of alternative practice. These international examples are particularly illuminating given the hierarchical and segregationist nature of differentiation in the UK, and the inherent dangers of stigmatising children as 'less able'. ...
... The very different orientation of Gillborn and Mirza's and Biddle's work has already been referred to. It would be salutory for Anglo-American researchers in the school effectiveness tradition to examine recent statistical work on the PISA study from the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin-exemplary in combining statistical rigour with political and philophical evaluation (see Baumert & Schümer [2002] for summary in English). ...
School Effectiveness (SE), as a research paradigm and, more widely, as a set of political practices in school management and development, is examined in terms of the concept of ‘reductionism’. The article serves to systematise an ongoing critique of Effectiveness by Ball, Morley, Fielding, Slee, etc. Building upon studies by the biologist Steven Rose and colleagues of reductionism from psychology to biology, the reductionism of the Effectiveness discourse is analysed in its methodological, contextual, historical and moral aspects. Finally, the article explores the impact of SE upon the dominant model of School Improvement in England in particular, and the need for transformation within that paradigm.
... Particular socioeconomic contexts have a considerable impact on the way in which teachers can teach and manage the behaviour of pupils and on middle leaders' strategies for managing the curriculum or departments. For example, studies in Germany (Baumert & Schumer, 2002), New Zealand (Thrupp, 1999) and England and Wales (Demack, 2000) all point to the socioeconomic status of students being a key indicator of academic under-achievement and over-representation in disciplinary confrontations with teachers and headteachers in schools. Such students include those in homes suffering family crises or disturbed social circumstances. ...
This paper argues that studies of middle leaders have focused too much on their functions and characteristics, taking insufficient account of the influence of social and political contexts on leaders’ choices of actions. Use of the analytical framework of Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998) can address this oversight, but it pays insufficient attention to the dynamic processes by which people interact and make meaning of their interactions. The paper concludes that combining existing theories of power with the framework of Communities of Practice gives a more complete view of middle leaders at work than current approaches.
This chapter looks at two different societies to see how the relationship between home and school has evolved over time, and examines its current state. It analyzes how education policy related to parental involvement in education has changed in both societies and how those policies re‐defined parent roles and teacher‐parent interaction in education. The chapter outlines the challenges of family and school relationships facing both Switzerland and Hong Kong. It shows that the challenges across those Western European and Eastern cultures are comparable in terms of the early separated home‐school relationship, late decentralization policy efforts to involve parents in education more, and hesitation of both sides in doing so. The current status of home and school relationships in Hong Kong and Switzerland show that the roles of parents in education are developing toward a more active one than ever before, increasing the amount of collaboration between schools and families in both societies.
In two studies, we investigated the extent to which research using case vignettes of fictitious students is able to yield research results that are ecologically valid representations of teachers' assessments of students' educational achievement in their real classrooms. The type of assessment was teachers' tracking decisions from primary to secondary school. In Study 1, which was conducted in the German educational system, teachers decided which secondary school track their own students would attend and were subsequently confronted with the same decision for fictitious students described in vignettes. Study 2 was a replication in the Luxembourgish educational system. Ordinal and logistic regression models were used to compare decision making in the two conditions of actual students versus case vignettes. No major differences were found between the two conditions. Results are discussed with respect to the ecological validity of research designs that use case vignettes.
This paper outlines a conceptual framework for a school as an organisation. In this there are three core elements: people (including students), power to energise or prevent action and culture that is constructed by a community's members to reflect its norms, values and beliefs. However, in this construction some people are more influential than others. An organisation's culture is sometimes called a micro-culture to distinguish it from national or local community cultures. The curriculum, at the core of a school's purpose and process, is a cultural construction legitimated by the authority of those responsible for a school's management. © 2008 British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society.
This article documents some of New Labour's education policies which, despite a rhetoric of inclusion, have largely ensured that education remains divided and divisive. Continuing faith in market choice and competition; continuing selection by private, grammar and specialist schools; a ‘diversity’ of schools with unequal intakes and resources; a standards agenda that requires more testing, assessment and centralised control of teachers and the curriculum; and a retention of an academic-vocational divide has sharpened divisions and insecurities rather than working for the common good. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In a longitudinal study of a random sample of Baltimore youngsters starting first grade, the mathematics achievement level of African-Americans and whites was almost identical. Two years later, African-American students had fallen behind by about half a standard deviation. We use mathematics test score changes over the summer when school is closed to estimate "home" influences, and we investigate three major hypotheses that might account for lower mathematics achievement among African-Americans. The most important source of variation in mathematics achievement is differences in family economic status, followed by school segregation. Two-parent (father-present) vs. one-parent (father-absent) family configurations are probably negligible as a cause when economic status is controlled. Poor children of both races consistently lose ground in the summer but do as well or better than better-off children in winter when school is in session. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.
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Sozialisation und Auslese durch die Schule
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- R H Lehmann
- R Peek
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Das Bild der Schule aus der Sicht von Schülern und Lehrern II
- M Kanders