23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
The Effect of School Tracking on the Development of Political Interest among Adolescents and Young Adults in Germany
Florian Monstadt, Claudia Schuchart, Benjamin Schimke
Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany
Presenting Author: Monstadt, Florian
Democratic systems depend on active and engaged citizens (Himmelmann, 2016). An important requirement for all types of political participation is the political interest of individuals (Prior, 2010). In contrast to the analysis of voting decisions, there is still too little research regarding political interest. Various studies have shown that adolescence can be seen as a crucial phase for the development of political interest (Russo/Stattin, 2017), in which educational institutions become increasingly relevant, which, is not yet adequately addressed by research.
It has repeatedly been shown that the more one remains in education, the more one’s interest in politics increases (Bömmel/Heineck, 2020). However, less is known about the influence different types of education have on the development of political interest. In many school systems, students are sorted into academic and non-academic/ vocational tracks at the secondary education level (Bol/van de Werfhorst, 2013). The development of political interest under the influence of different types of education with comparable length is the focus of this paper.
Theoretically, different mechanisms of influence of institutional education on political interest can be assumed. First, the curriculum may differ between different types of schools. Second, the division into different tracks is linked to social segregation, e.g. with students from privileged backgrounds and (shaped by family socialization) higher political interest are more likely to be in the academic track. As a result, the development of political interest in the academic track should be more favorable than in the non-academic track. While this assumption is confirmed by some empirical studies (Witschge/van de Werfhorst, 2019), they mostly have the following weaknesses: First, there is a lack of longitudinal studies that allow to separate the influence of selection into different tracks from the influence of the track itself. Second, the effect of changing tracks on political interest have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Third, it has been found that results regarding the relationship between education and political interest are difficult to generalize across countries, because of the complexity of national education systems (Hoskins et al., 2016). Accordingly, it is worthwhile to conduct country studies in order to better address the specifics of national education systems.
In this contribution we use the example of Germany. The German school system is strongly stratified at secondary level I (years 5 – 10, SL1). After primary school, students are sorted into an academic track that lead to the eligibility to study (e.g. Gymnasium) and non-academic tracks (e.g. Realschule) that prepare for vocational education. At secondary level II (years 11-13, SL2), the school system opens up: In addition to the general academic track (a, Gymnasium), there are vocationally oriented tracks that lead to the eligibility to study (b, e.g. Fachgymnasium) and vocational tracks that lead to vocational training qualifications (c, e.g. Berufsschule). Whereas option (c) is non-academic, option (b) can be identified as academic, since nationwide recognition of the eligibility to study obtained via general education (=a) as well as vocationally oriented schools (=b) is ensured by various political agreements on the curricular requirements. Student composition, especially in terms of socioeconomic status, is less favourable in non-academic compared to academic school types (Schuchart/Schimke, 2019). High-performing students who graduate from a non-academic school type at SL1 can move to an academic track, but also to a non-academic (=vocational track) at SL2.
We assume that the type of continuation of the educational biography in upper secondary school has an effect on the development of political interest. In particular, we are interested in the extent to which continuing academic education (a), moving into non-academic education (c), or vice versa (b) has an impact on the development of political interest.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedTo test the mentioned hypotheses, we analyse the data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). The NEPS is a longitudinal survey about the educational processes and competence development. We use the third starting cohort, which begins in fifth grade (SL1) and covers the entire secondary school period as well as entry into the labor market. In order to be able to identify the socialization effect of the different educational trajectories at SL2 on political interest, we have to control for selection effects into these pathways. The NEPS data provide a rich set of variables, that allow us to control for relevant student achievement in SL1. In addition, we control for social and economic background as well as family practices (e.g., political discussions), which could have an impact on selection as well as a direct influence on political interest.
The first observation of the outcome variable political interest is in grade 8, which is close to the end of SL1. It is measured using a single item. Due to the focus on SL2 we can use the first measurement in grade 8 as a base line to analyse the development from grade 11 through 12/13. The item has been used in several international surveys, e.g. in the European Social Survey (Bömmel et al., 2020). For our analysis, we use multilevel mixed effects linear regression models. The five observation points are nested in individuals, so that processes can be examined with regard to various influencing factors at the individual level. The independent variable on educational trajectory is based on the combination of the type of school attended by the students in SL1 and SL2. In SL1, academic education occurs exclusively at the Gymnasium, while all other types of schools (e.g., Realschule) are defined as non-academic. In SL2, all tracks that award the eligibility to study (a, b) are defined as academic (e.g. Fachgymnasium, Fachoberschule). All tracks that provide vocational training (Berufsschule) and/or award non-academic school certificates (c) are considered non-academic.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAccording to other studies we find, that students who came from the academic track have a greater political interest at the beginning of SL2, than students who remain in the non-academic track. Overall, political interest seems to be stabilized during SL2, (see also Prior (2010)). Looking at specific trajectories, a convergence effect in the course of SL2 can be observed. Contrary to initial assumptions, the academic and non-academic educational trajectories converge, with a slightly decrease of students in the academic track and a slightly increase of students in the non-academic track. This could indicate that it is not so much the type of education that has an effect on political interest, but rather remaining in institutionalized education itself. Therefore, the sorting into tracks in highly stratified systems such as in Germany seems not to be associated with stable track-specific effects over the educational biography as suggested by other studies (Janmaat, 2022; Witschge et al., 2019). To deepen these results, the next step is to compare them to other countries by taking greater account of characteristics of national educational systems. First, countries that also have a strong vocational training system with a fixed share of general education including political education, such as Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark (Poulsen/Eberhardt 2016), come into question for this purpose. Second, the comparison with countries that have a similarly stratified education system, for example, the Czech Republic and Hungary (Bol/van de Werfhorst, 2013), seems very useful to further investigate the effect of educational trajectory on political interest. The lessons that can be learned are relevant for all democracies, even beyond Europe, as they all depend on interested and engaged citizens.
ReferencesBol T. & van de Werfhorst H-G. (2013). Educational systems and the trade-off between labor market allocation and equality of educational opportunity. Comparative Education Review, 57(2), 285–308.
Bömmel, N., & Heineck, G. (2020). Revisiting the Causal Effect of Education on Political Participation. 13954, 1–27.
Bömmel, N., Gebel, M., & Heineck, G. (2020). Political Participation and Political Attitudes as Returns to Education in the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Conceptual Framework and Measurement. NEPS Survey Papers.
Himmelmann, G. (2016). Demokratie Lernen: Als Lebens-, Gesellschafts- und Herrschaftsform ; ein Lehr- und Studienbuch (4. Auflage). Wochenschau Verlag.
Hoskins, B., Janmaat, J. G., Han, C., & Muijs, D. (2016). Inequalities in the education system and the reproduction of socioeconomic disparities in voting in England, Denmark and Germany: The influence of country context, tracking and self-efficacy on voting intentions of students age 16–18. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 46(1), 69–92.
Janmaat, J. G. (2022). School social segregation and social inequalities in political engagement among 16 to 20 year olds in fourteen countries. Research Papers in Education, 37(1), 52–73.
Prior, M. (2010). You’ve Either Got It or You Don’t? The Stability of Political Interest over the Life Cycle. The Journal of Politics, 72(3), 747–766.
Russo, S., & Stattin, H. (2017). Stability and Change in Youths’ Political Interest. Social Indicators Research, 132(2), 643–658.
Schuchart, C. / Schimke, B. (2019): Lohnt sich das Nachholen eines Schulabschlusses? Alternative Wege zur Hochschulreife und ihre Arbeitsmarkterträge. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 71, 237–273.
Witschge, J., & van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2016). Standardization of lower secondary civic education and inequality of the civic and political engagement of students. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 27(3), 367–384.
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
The Hidden Curriculum of Well-being Initiatives in Higher Education
Laura Louise Sarauw, Eva Bendix Petersen
Roskilde University, Denmark
Presenting Author: Sarauw, Laura Louise;
Petersen, Eva Bendix
The paper engages with the growing number of discourses and initiatives revolving around higher education (HE) students’ well-being, which we situate in conjunction with a changed conception of the role, purpose, and governance of the university.
We start from the position that ‘problems’ with students’ well-being are not given but social and discursive constructions that carry particular ways of defining problems and solutions, and that we must pay particular attention to problematisation, that is, what the problem is constructed to be (Bacchi, 2009). Based on empirical examples from recent policy and practice developments in Denmark and the United Kingdom, our analysis shows how the well-being agenda entrenches and furthers a psychological language in higher education. So, at a general level student ‘well-being’ is constructed as a psychological rather than, say, sociological or pedagogical problem. In one way, this language appears well-aligned with dominant student-centered learning tropes. However, it can also be seen as a further individualisation of structural challenges because it shifts the educational point of gravity from being about students’ knowledge and learning to a focus on the mindsets, attitudes and emotions with which students approach themselves and their learning.
The analysis builds on a post-structuralist policy analytical framework that invites us to consider how the ‘psy-disciplines’ play out in higher educational institutions and contexts (Foucault, 1977, 2001; Petersen and Millei, 2015; Zembylas, 2021). The psy-disciplines were and are not only about inserting and stabilising a new language, but it was also always and continues to be a form of governmentality, a conduct of conduct (Rose, 1998). When recent responses to the student well-being crisis, at policy level and through recent response initiatives, project student mental health as a significant new responsibility for higher education, it shifts how the role and purpose of higher education is conceived, from engagement in matter and competencies (Biesta, 2021) to developing, quite explicitly, politically desired psychological dispositions, emotions, and attitudes.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn the first part of the paper, we depict how the well-being of higher education students over the last 5-10 years has been constructed as a problem in higher education. We take recent Danish policies (Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Research, 2017, 2019, 2019b; 2020) as an empirical starting point for unraveling a wider international tendency and draw parallels to international policies, e.g., from the World Economic Forum. In the second part of the paper, we draw attention to three specific examples of responses or ‘solutions’ to the well-being ‘problem’ which, in different ways, project new ways of thinking about the role and purpose of the university hand in hand with a new figure of the desired student, who is increasingly depicted in terms of psychological dispositions.
The three examples are:
1) THE LEARNING QUESTIONNAIRE, which is a new nationwide student survey, introduced by the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Research in 2019 (https://ufm.dk/en/education/OLDfocus-areas/laeringsbarometer/information-about-the-survey). The questionnaire is modeled after similar student surveys in other countries, such as the National Survey of Student Engagement (USA), National Student Survey (UK) and HowULearn (Finland), but the Danish version stands out in that students’ responses about their well-being may determine up to 5 percent of the institutional basic grants for education.
2) STUDENT MINDS, which is a UK-based student mental health charity that seeks to “empower students and members of the university community to look after their own mental health, support others and create change” (https://www.studentminds.org.uk/).
3) HOWDY.CARE, which is a digital tool that monitors students’ mental and physical wellbeing and provides both students and their institutions with feedback about the students’ scores (https://howdy.care/product/).
The examples of initiatives are selected for their power to enable a critical assessment of currently available responses and tools. They are not necessarily representative of all initiatives currently being developed in higher education contexts around the globe. Yet while the examples we bring forth here are different on the face of it, they carry similar constructions of the ‘problem’ and similar forms of ‘solution’, particularly through recourse to positive psychology.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe paper contributes to the research on HE students’ well-being (e.g., Dinter et al., 2011; Parpala et al., 2013; Pekrun et al., 2011; Wulf-Andersen & Larsen, 2021) by challenging the idea that policies and practices react to pre-existing problems, and instead it argues that these policies and practices are also active in producing those ‘problemsʼ as well as legitimising politically desirable ‘solutions’ (Shore & Wright, 2011). By drawing attention to the co-constitutive effects of diverse responses to the so-called well-being crisis in HE our analysis sheds light on the ways in which it can also be seen as a mode of governance that invisibly propels important normative shifts in how we think and talk about the good student, teacher, and institution. First, our analysis shows a new responsibilisation of teachers and institutions for how students ‘feel’ rather than what they learn is currently taking place. Second, regardless of their different forms and origin, the three well-being initiatives presented in the analysis are colonised by the language of positive psychology, that is, a particular school of psychology that focuses on the individual’s’ ‘self-efficacy’ or ‘resilience’ towards outer challenges, and which goes hand in hand with a new depiction of ‘the good student’ as one who is willing to and capable of developing the desired positive ‘growth mindset’. This mindset, we argue, can be seen as a new hidden curriculum that transforms the university and its population in remarkable and perhaps unforeseen ways.
ReferencesBacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: what’s the problem represented to be? Pearson: Australia.
Biesta, G. (2021). World-Centred Education: A View for the Present. Taylor and Francis
Bekerman, Z., & Zembylas, M. (2018). Psychologized language in education: Denaturalizing a regime of truth. Springer.
Danish Ministry of Education and Research (2019). Uddannelses- og forskningspolitisk redegørelse 2019, https://ufm.dk/publikationer/2019/uddannelses-og-forskningspolitisk-redegorelse-2019
Danish Ministry of Education and Research (2019b). Bekendtgørelse af lov om universiteter (universitetsloven) LBK nr 778 af 07/08/2019 [The Danish University Law].https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2019/778
Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Research (2017). Aftale mellem Regeringen […] om en reform af bevillingssystemet for de videregående uddannelser, 24. november 2017, ohttps://ufm.dk/lovstof/politiske-aftaler/endelig-aftale-nyt-bevillingssystem-for-de-videregaende-uddannelser.pdf (August 2020)
Dinther, M.V., Dochy, F., & Segers, M.S. (2011). Factors affecting students' self-efficacy in higher education. Educational Research Review, 6, 95-108.
EVA/Danmarks Evalueringsinstitut (2019). Et nyt perspektiv på trivsel: Studierelaterede følelser uddannelser, https://www.eva.dk/videregaaende-uddannelse/studierelaterede-foelelser-paa-videregaaende-uddannelser
Foucault, M. (2001). Madness and Cilivilization, 2nd edition. Routledge: London
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish. The birth of the prison. Penguin: London
Parpala, A., Lindblom-Ylänne, S., Komulainen, E., & Entwistle, N. (2013). Assessing students’ experiences of teaching–learning environments and approaches to learning: Validation of a questionnaire in different countries and varying contexts. Learning Environments Research 16:2, 16(2), 201–215. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10984-013-9128-8
Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Frenzel, A. C., Barchfeld, P., & Perry, R. P. (2011). Measuring emotions in students’ learning and performance: The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ). Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36(1), 36–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CEDPSYCH.2010.10.002
Petersen, E., & Millei, Z. (2015). Interrupting the Psy-Disciplines in Education. Palgrave Macmillan UK. http://link.springer.com/10.1057/978-1-137-51305-2
Rose, N., & Lentzos, F. (2017). Making Us Resilient: Responsible Citizens for Uncertain Times. In S. Trnka & C. Trundle (Eds.), Competing responsibilities: the politics and ethics of contemporary life (pp. 27–48). Duke University Press.
Rose, N. (1998). Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Shore, C., Wright, S. and Per., D. (eds.) (2011). Policy worlds: Anthropology and the anatomy of contemporary power. EASA Series. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 1–25.
Sarauw, LL., Bengtsen, S.& Felippakou O. (in press, 2023). The psychological turn in higher education, Policy Futures in Education, 2022.
Wulf-Andersen, T. Ø., & Larsen, L. (2020). Students, psychosocial problems and shame in neoliberal higher education. Journal of Psycho-Social Studies, 13(3), 303-317.
Zembylas, M. (2021). Against the psychologization of resilience: towards an onto-political theorization of the concept and its implications for higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 1-12.
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