Safe Mobility: University after Technical College Pathway

The Influence of Ethnicity on Teacher Expectations and Teacher Perceptions of Student Warmth and Competence

“…Various opinion surveys have showed that they are perceived as people with low competence (see, for example, Levada-Center, 2013). The same trend is observed in relation to migrant children in the context of Russian schools -teachers perceive them as less competent than Russian students (Akifyeva, 2015;Alexandrov et al, 2012). We believe that our research confirms this tendency, but the results have turned out to be more complicated.…”

“…This data suggests that the stereotypes in relation to adult migrants would be rather "contemptuous" or "paternalistic", that is that their perceived "competence" is low. Apparently, it is also typical of teachers to perceive one and a half, and the first generation migrant students as incompetent because of their real difficulties with the Russian language, which is not native, as well as the perception of them as children in need of adaptation to the new environment (Akifyeva, 2015;Alexandrov, Ivaniushina, Kostenko, Savelyeva, & Tenisheva, 2012). In this study, we have also tested the hypothesis that teachers perceive migrant students from Central Asia more paternalistic or contemptuous and have lower expectations for them compared to non-migrant students that will be correlated with the perception of their low "competence".…”

Slipping Past the Test: Heterogeneous Effects of Social Background in the Context of Inconsistent Selection Mechanisms in Higher Education

“…Such students also tend to spend more time finding adequate employment, and their efforts are not necessarily compensated by higher wages (Büchel and Helberger 1995). In fact, we know that in Russia, hybrid pathways lead to less prestigious higher education (Kosyakova et al 2016) and less lucrative part-time education (Alexandrov et al 2015), which, in turn, yield lower returns in the labor market (Gerber and Schaefer 2004). This situation might temper both the optimistic and pessimistic implications of hybrid pathways for broader social inequality.…”

“…Many secondary vocational and higher education institutions echoed these arguments, although motivated largely by pragmatic interest. These schools recognized the possibility of such transfers, and their specific status with respect to the USE, as an important opportunity in an expanding post-Soviet educational market (V. Bolotov, personal communication, September 2017 3 ; see also Alexandrov et al 2015).…”

“…By focusing on the interplay between students’ academic abilities and social background in shaping their educational pathways in Russia, our study contributes to the existing literature in three important respects. First, we contribute to the body of research exploring the effect of social background on track mobility and transitions from vocational programs to higher education: for example, Dougherty and Kienzl (2006) in the United States; Moodie and Wheelahan (2009) in Australia; Tieben (2011) in the Netherlands; Hartlaub and Schneider (2012) in Germany; Alexandrov, Tenisheva, and Savelyeva (2015) in Russia; Breen and Jonsson (2000) in Sweden; and Holm et al (2013) in Denmark. Second, we show how the theory of relative risk aversion (Breen and Goldthorpe 1997), which has become widely appreciated in educational stratification research, can explain why the possibility of enrolling in higher education via the vocational track promotes social mobility among children from less-advantaged backgrounds.…”