Conference Agenda

In Sweden, students’ choice of upper-secondary school is fiercely competitive for both students and schools. In a unique quasi-market, public and charter schools compete for students with their established reputations and specialized programs (Lundahl, 2002). Grade-nine students may choose the upper-secondary school they wish to attend but they must also be accepted by those schools who rank students by their grades. In urban settings such as Stockholm, placement at high-status schools is limited and highly competitive. Stockholm itself is socially and economically segregated, a phenomenon that is similarly seen in schools and counter to the promises of the school-choice model (Alexiadou et al., 2016; Forsberg, 2018). For recent migrants and other marginalized populations residential segregation can combine with a number of other barriers to limit school choice options (Fjellman et al., 2019). Previous research has suggested that opportunities are not equally available for all students and that social and inherited assets strongly influence educational trajectories (Bunar & Ambrose, 2016; Ball et al., 2002). Unfamiliarity with a new school system and insufficient support from schools have also been identified as reasons for recently-migrated to have fewer opportunities when transitioning to upper-secondary school (Bunar, 2010; Hertzberg, 2017). However, there is a lack of research exploring recently-migrated students’ own experiences and attitudes towards school choice (Bunar, 2010; Nilsson Folke, 2017; Svensson & Eastmond, 2013). Considering the increase in migration to Europe in recent years, a better understanding of the challenges that recently-migrated students experience can contribute to education policy that better serves their needs.

The aim of this study is to investigate the influences that recently-migrated students have toward their understanding of the upper-secondary school process and the barriers that they face when acting towards their educational aspirations. To understand the experiences of these students a number of theories are used. First, careership theory (Hodkinson & Sparkes, 1997) acts as a theoretical base for the study. Horizon for action, the array of options seen as possible, is a point of departure for understanding the choice process. Relating to upper-secondary school choice, a person’s horizon for action is changeable when people or experiences influence the education trajectories that are viewed as desirable and attainable. These influences, called turning points by Hodkinson and Sparkes (1997), involve a transformation of identity that guides decision making. A number of additional theories contribute to this concept. The importance and influence of information shared in social settings are framed through the concept of the grapevine (Ball & Vincent, 1998). Parents, peers and school counsellors all act as sources of information that guide and informs students while they consider different upper-secondary schools. Theories of social capital (Bourdieu, 2002; Coleman, 1988) emphasize the importance of assets that are available from membership in social networks. Finally, the existence of boundaries shapes student preference and ability to choose upper-secondary schools in the Swedish school market (Barmark & Lund, 2016).

The so called New Educational Governance – based on the two pillars of deregulation and privatization of (formerly) welfare state responsibility for education and, at the same time, stronger central control via quantitative (output) indicators – has profoundly changed educational policies and systems in normative and structural-organisational terms in many countries. In Germany, a phase of deregulation in the 1990s was followed by the development and implementation of a new national overall strategy for the development and assurance of the quality of teaching and schools (KMK 2002), employing performance studies, national educational standards, competence-oriented instruction, indicator-based education reporting and the quest for evidence-based education (KMK 2015). The starting-point for the proposed paper is that within this new regulatory framework also the issue of educational inequality, which had been lost out of sight in the 1980s, was brought back on the agenda. In ongoing reforms, the improvement of the educational success of children and young people with a migration history and/or a socioeconomically deprived family background has been declared a priority and education became a main field of “integration work” (KMK 2006: 2). Yet tensions between the school effectiveness and egalitarian educational goals became evident in many areas of school work and in the growing institutional segregation of pupils with a (flight-)migration background (SVR 2018).

The proposed paper seeks to understand more precisely the connections between the New educational governance and the reproduction of social inequalities or the possibilities of inclusive school development in the post-migration societal context. In ideal-typical abstraction, I also refer to the heterogeneous concepts, instructions and practices of New Governance as the school effectiveness approach. The school effectiveness approach operates on different levels of the discourse simultaneously: as a scientific research paradigm in the narrower sense, as a political strategy and as a set of specific instruments and practices for dealing with school-pedagogical problems.

Including empirical results of an as yet unfinished discourse analysis, the following questions will be elicited: How are aspects of inclusion, social justice and democratic participation incorporated into the New Governance at the intersection of political school reform and migration/integration discourse in Germany between the years 2000 and 2020 and thereby (re)conceptualised, distorted or excluded? How do national, culturalising or racialising differentiations (also in intersectional entanglement with other lines of inequality) inscribe themselves in politics, institutions and society in new ways through the restructuring of educational governance - including the changed relationship between educational research, politics and school practice? And what consequences result from this for the professional actions of teachers and schools as well as for the educational access and experiences of pupils and parents? In order to be able to grasp and classify the essential aspects and interrelations of this complex of problems, I will first explore relevant theoretical points of reference: the conception of epistemological politics (Ricken 2011), theories of governance and governmentality (Amos 2016). These complementary perspectives focus on how "statehood as a field of political intervention and thus the field of the political itself" (Krasmann 2007: 285) are produced as an effect of government technologies and social practices. In connection with concepts of plurality, justice and discrimination, they open up a heuristic framework for examining the extent to which discursive inclusions and exclusions and potential gateways for discrimination or new possibilities for inclusive schooling are opened up or institutionalised within the framework of the new governance in connection with the functionalisation and functionality of scientific knowledge.

Research has shown that migrant students in Europe tend to perform below their native peers, as well as have shorter and less successful school careers (Teltemann & Schunck, 2016). Despite this, little is known about the school characteristics which make a difference for them (Reynolds & Neeleman, 2021). This historical gap in knowledge within the school effectiveness field is partially justified by the repeated empirical verification of the theories of social reproduction, posed by educational and social class sociologists for the first time six decades ago. Schools have been shown to mainly reproduce pre-existing inequalities by making everyone’s performance progress (or regress) at the same rate, regardless of student or school characteristics (Strand, 2016).

This, according to Strand, denies the existence of differential school effectiveness, and points to a need to shift focus from between-school differences to within-school processes, in the search for equity outcomes. I propose, following Seawright’s definition of ‘exceptional cases’ (2016), that the study of schools which go against the trend by either diminishing or increasing inequalities amongst their students is crucial. Studying such deviant cases allows us to formulate new hypothesis, and test others proposed by previous research, regarding the conditions for the occurrence of sustained change at the organizational and systemic levels (Ibid.).

This paper summarizes the preliminary results of an exploratory study on the mechanisms behind (empirically) rare instances of differential school effectiveness for migrant students. In primary schools where these students’ chances of succeeding are consistently higher than usual, what aspects of the school culture are behind this unexpected success?

Generally speaking, a continually improving school should have (i) a professional learning community committed to clear and common goal setting, strategy definition and monitoring of student success; (ii) involvement of all members of the school community in decision making; (iii) spaces for reflection; iv) adequate technical, material and human resources; (v) a combination of transformational and instructional leadership (Reynolds & Neeleman, 2021). For migrant students, there seems to be other factors to consider. They benefit particularly from the trust their teachers place on them as students (Dewulf, van Braak & Van Houtte, 2017). Additionally, some qualitative studies suggest that raising student voice, promoting increased parental involvement, having a stable school leadership that sees the value in and promotes initiatives geared towards teacher acquisition of intercultural skills are essential in diverse schools (Hajisoteriou, Karousiou & Angelides, 2018).

Moreover, recent literature has placed emphasis on the impacts of different school approaches to diversity on migrant educational outcomes. Immigrants tend to experience more success and positive teacher relationships in schools with egalitarian or multiculturalist diversity approaches (Baysu et al., 2021; Celeste et al., 2019). This might be because assimilationist views create feelings of rejection and lower school belonging amongst migrant students, which are known to affect educational performance (Agirdag, Jordens & Van Houtte, 2014).

Little is still known about the conditions for developing multicultural sensibilities in diverse schools. There is some evidence suggesting that group threat theory might explain the lower resistance to these approaches in schools with a majority of immigrant students, and higher resistance in schools with a low immigrant intake (Strobbe et al., 2017). A school culture of openness to change, experimentation and reflection has also been put forward as an important factor (Van Der Wildt, Van Avermaet & Van Houtte, 2017).