Do all roads lead to inequality? Trends in French upper secondary school analysed with four longitudinal surveys

Ichou, Mathieu; Vallet, Louis‐André

doi:10.1080/03054985.2011.559350

Cited by 40 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The focus on upper-secondary education is important because, despite the educational expansion and the consequential reduction of inequality of educational opportunities (IEO) in the enrolment at this level in Italy, social inequality is 'effectively maintained' (Lucas 2001) via the association between socioeconomic background and track choice (Panichella and Triventi 2014;Guetto and Vergolini 2017). Such a pattern has been documented in other countries (Erikson and Jonsson 1996;Breen and Jonsson 2000;van de Werfhorst and Mijs 2010), making the analysis of different curricula or tracks in secondary education a core topic of investigation in the literature on IEO (Ichou and Vallet 2011;Schneider and Tieben 2011). Although IEO in upper-secondary education in Italy has been extensively studied, it is not clear how the spread of 'nonstandard' FAs has affected IEO.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family arrangements and children’s educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school

Guetto¹,

Panichella²

2019

DemRes

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BACKGROUND This paper studies whether new family patterns fostered inequality of educational opportunities in upper-secondary education in Italy. OBJECTIVE To analyse the association between children's educational outcomes and a wide range of family arrangements, including the time of exposure to marriage (never married, married before or after the birth). Empirical analyses also consider whether these demographic characteristics of the origin family more strongly affect children from more or less well-off families, and whether these effects change when different educational outcomes are considered. METHODS Analyses are based on the Italian Labour Force Survey (2005-2014) and apply Linear Probability Models on a sample of 123,045 children aged 15 and 16. RESULTS Children living in single-parent households or with two cohabiting biological parents have worse educational outcomes compared to children of two married biological parents. Children of highly educated parents are more penalized if access to the most prestigious academic track is considered, whereas the penalty is stronger among children of low-educated parents if the risk of not being enrolled in upper-secondary schools that give access to university is analysed. Finally, the analysis of the exposure to marriage suggests that social selectivity may drive the negative effects of cohabitation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family arrangements and children’s educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school

Guetto¹,

Panichella²

2019

DemRes

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“…In this research, we use Goldthorpe's (2007) social class schema, which has become the standard method, particularly in Europe, for exploring the effect of social class on educational outcomes and is used consistently in research on educational and occupational stratification (Ichou & Vallet, 2011). We do not wish to pit economic and sociological traditions against each other in this research, nor do we seek to suggest that social class theoretical models are superior to socioeconomic status ones.…”

Section: Social Class Versus Socioeconomic Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

An information distortion model of social class differences in math self-concept, intrinsic value, and utility value.

Parker¹,

Marsh²,

Guo³

et al. 2018

Journal of Educational Psychology

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In this paper we develop an information distortion model (IDM) of social class differences in self-beliefs and values. The IDM combines psychological biases on frame-of-reference effects with sociological foci on ability stratification. This combination is hypothesized to lead to working class children having more positive math self-beliefs and values than equally able salariat children. We further suggest that the same conditions that give rise to the working class benefit in self-beliefs and values are associated with signaling effects, which suppress educational aspirations and attainment. These hypotheses are tested in one cross-sectional multi-national and one longitudinal study. The results in favor of the IDM challenge cultural models of social class differences and have implications for rational action theory. Educational Impact And Implications StatementWorking class children have higher academic self-concept and task value than equally able, more advantaged, peers in school systems that are stratified by academic ability. However, our cross-national and longitudinal research shows that this advantage does not appear to translate into higher aspirations or attainment. We suggests that the very educational structures that give rise to self-concept and task value advantage for poorer children simultaneously restrict the possibility of their using this advantage to their benefit in terms of educational attainment.

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“…While recent comparative empirical analyses (see Breen, Luijkx, Mu¨ller, & Pollak, 2009;Breen, Luijkx, Muller, & Pollak, 2010) have demonstrated that the change-resistance of inequality of educational opportunity is less pronounced than previous studies suggested (see, mainly, Shavit & Blossfeld, 1993), it is indisputable that, despite the generalised improvement of living standards and the variety of educational policies aimed at counteracting the partly social constructed ability gaps across social groups, the socioeconomic status of the family in which individuals live still exerts a substantial influence on their educational outcomes. In France, the country on which this paper focuses, while the equalising trend in educational opportunity is extremely clear (see The´lot & Vallet, 2000), although quantitatively modest (see Vallet & Selz, 2007, p. 69), individuals' social backgrounds continue pervasively to impact on the highest educational level that they reach (see Selz & Vallet, 2006), on the kind of upper secondary tracks that they choose (see Duru-Bellat, Kieffer, & Reimer, 2011;Ichou & Vallet, 2011) as well as on their chances of entering the most prestigious tertiary level educational institutions (see Albouy & Wanecq, 2003). In light of this empirical evidence, therefore, it still seems justified to consider the stratification of educational outcomes across social backgrounds as a puzzling macro-level explanandum.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Educational Choices and Social Interactions: A Formal Model and a Computational Test

Manzo¹

2013

Comparative Social Research

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In their authoritative literature review, Breen and Jonsson (2005) claim that 'one of the most significant trends in the study of inequalities in educational attainment in the past decade has been the resurgence of rational-choice models focusing on educational decision making'. The starting point of the present contribution is that these models have largely ignored the explanatory relevance of social interactions. To remedy this shortcoming, this paper introduces a micro-founded formal model of the macro-level structure of educational inequality, which frames educational choices as the result of both subjective ability/benefit evaluations and peer-group pressures. As acknowledged by Durlauf (2002Durlauf ( , 2006 and Akerlof (1997), however, while the social psychology and ethnographic literature provides abundant empirical evidence of the explanatory relevance of social interactions, statistical evidence on their causal effect is still flawed by identification and selection bias problems. To assess the relative explanatory contribution of the micro-level and network-based mechanisms hypothesised, the paper opts for agent-based computational simulations. In particular, the technique is used to deduce the macro-level consequences of each mechanism (sequentially introduced) and to test these consequences against French aggregate individual-level survey data. The paper's main result is that ability and subjective perceptions of education benefits, no matter how intensely differentiated across agent groups, are not sufficient on their own to generate the actual stratification of educational choices across educational backgrounds existing in France at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By computational counterfactual manipulations, the paper proves that network-based interdependencies among educational choices are instead necessary, and that they contribute, over and above the differentiation of ability and of benefit perceptions, to the genesis of educational stratification by amplifying the segregation of the educational choices that agents make on the basis of purely private ability/benefit calculations.

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Do all roads lead to inequality? Trends in French upper secondary school analysed with four longitudinal surveys

Cited by 40 publications

References 29 publications

Family arrangements and children’s educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school

Family arrangements and children’s educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school

An information distortion model of social class differences in math self-concept, intrinsic value, and utility value.

Educational Choices and Social Interactions: A Formal Model and a Computational Test

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