Making it to the Academic Path in a Tracked Education System: The Interplay of Individual Agency and Social Origin in Early Educational Transitions.

Mele, Francesca; Buchmann, Marlis; BURGER, Kaspar

doi:10.1007/s10964-023-01846-y

Article (Scientific journals)

Making it to the Academic Path in a Tracked Education System: The Interplay of Individual Agency and Social Origin in Early Educational Transitions.

Mele, Francesca; Buchmann, Marlis; BURGER, Kaspar

2023 • In Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 52 (12), p. 2620 - 2635

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https://hdl.handle.net/10993/57272

DOI
10.1007/s10964-023-01846-y

PubMed
37659970

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Keywords :

Educational transitions; Individual agency; Longitudinal; Social origin; Tracking; Social Psychology; Education; Developmental and Educational Psychology; Social Sciences (miscellaneous)

Abstract :

[en] Little is known about the role of agency in transitions in tracked education systems or whether it varies by socioeconomic background. This study addressed this gap by estimating structural equation models based on longitudinal data that are representative of the German- and French-speaking parts of Switzerland (N = 1273 individuals, surveyed from age 6 to 18, mean age at wave 1: Mage = 6.54, SDage = 0.50, female = 49%). The findings reveal that agency (captured by study effort and occupational aspirations) and socioeconomic background (measured by parental education and family income) significantly predicted students' transitions to academically demanding tracks in lower- and upper-secondary education. In the transition to upper-secondary education, students with fewer socioeconomic resources benefitted less than their more advantaged peers from ambitious aspirations, but they benefitted more from exerting effort. These findings suggest that both an optimistic forward-looking orientation and the exertion of effort are required to make it to an academic track. Effort may serve as a "substitutive" resource for less socioeconomically advantaged students, whereas ambitious aspirations may enhance the positive effect of family socioeconomic resources on academic educational trajectories. Overall, the evidence from this study calls for greater attention to investigating not only how agency shapes adolescents' educational trajectories and opportunities but also how its role differs across social groups.

Disciplines :

Sociology & social sciences

Author, co-author :

Mele, Francesca ; Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland. francesca.mele@jacobscenter.uzh.ch ; Department of Sociology, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland. francesca.mele@jacobscenter.uzh.ch

Buchmann, Marlis ; Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland ; Department of Sociology, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland

BURGER, Kaspar ; University of Luxembourg ; Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland ; Department of Sociology, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland ; Social Research Institute, Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK

External co-authors :

yes

Language :

English

Title :

Making it to the Academic Path in a Tracked Education System: The Interplay of Individual Agency and Social Origin in Early Educational Transitions.

Publication date :

December 2023

Journal title :

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

ISSN :

0047-2891

eISSN :

1573-6601

Publisher :

Springer, United States

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

2620 - 2635

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10964-023-01846-y.pdf

Funders :

Swiss National Science Foundation

Funding text :

This study is part of a project for which KB has received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation under the Grant Agreement No. PCEFP1_181098. The COCON study has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant numbers: 405240-69015; 10FI13_122369; 10FI14_134674; 10FI14_150996). We also acknowledge funding from the Jacobs Foundation. Open access funding provided by University of Zurich.The authors thank the children, parents, and teachers for participating in the study and all the undergraduate research assistants who supported the data collection. The authors are grateful to Translabor for copy-editing, to Thomas Poppenwimmer for support regarding formatting, and to Ioannis Katsantonis for the statistical advice. For their helpful comments on earlier versions of the study, the authors also thank colleagues from the Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich as well as attendees of the 2021 European Consortium for Sociological Research meeting, the 2021 GESIS Workshop on Causality in Social Sciences III, the 4thInternational TREE Conference, the 2022 GEBF Pre-Conference for Early Career Researchers, and the 2022 RC28 Social Stratification and Mobility meeting.

Data Set :

Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences

The data are available for scientific use in the repository of the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences

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since 31 October 2023

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