Conference Agenda

The results of the IQB Trends in Student Achievement 2021 (Stanat et al., 2022), a large-scale national assessment designed to monitor educational standards in Germany, demonstrate that the correlation between social background and educational success remains significant. Moreover, social disparities in educational achievement have increased considerably. These developments underscore mounting challenges confronting primary education systems in addressing both the decline in overall performance and widening educational inequalities, particularly in schools serving socially disadvantaged communities (Klemm, 2016; Stanat et al., 2022; OECD, 2023).

In light of these findings, targeted policy measures to provide additional support for socially disadvantaged students have become increasingly important (OECD, 2023). One such initiative is the school trial “Social Index-Based Resource Allocation” (SR), initiated in a federal state of Germany and implemented in the 2023/2024 school year. Participating schools are selected based on a scientifically developed school social index that was used to identify schools with a socio-economically disadvantaged student body. The allocation of supplementary funding to schools is determined by their ranking on this index. The budget can be utilised for the recruitment of additional personnel, e.g., teaching assistants and school social workers, the implementation of school development projects, and for material expenses, such as learning materials, related to the aforementioned measures.

The implementation of the project is accompanied by a two-year scientific evaluation. The evaluation is based on a standardized online survey of school leaders administered at three measurement points, of which data from the first survey, conducted in October 2025, are already available; further surveys are planned for the end of the 2025/2026 and 2026/2027 school years.

Despite growing international attention to needs-based and equity-oriented education policies, research on how such policies are implemented in schools serving socially disadvantaged communities remains limited (Ainscow & Chapman, 2025; OECD, 2023; Schrader & Hasselhorn, 2020). This study addresses this gap by providing research on early implementation processes and on the institutional and contextual factors perceived by school leaders as facilitating or hindering needs-based policy implementation. Focusing on data from the first measurement point, the primary outcomes examined are school leaders’ early implementation of resource allocation measures and their perceptions of effectiveness, challenges, enabling factors, and emerging support and optimisation needs. Initial findings suggest that additional resources are mainly used for staff recruitment to support students’ individual, social-emotional, and academic needs, while administrative demands and limited budget adequacy are reported as key challenges. Nevertheless, school leaders largely perceive the initiative as useful and as an important contribution to educational equity. Differences between schools with prior project experience and newly participating schools will also be explored.

Children and Youth at high risk with significant emotional and social needs are particularly vulnerable to fragmented support structures, as coordination gaps between schools, youth welfare services, and other support systems persist across educational systems (Baumann, 2014; Düvelmeyer et al., 2024). For children and adolescents whose psychosocial stressors and behavioural challenges exceed the capacities of regular schooling, these discontinuities often result in unstable educational support and limited opportunities for sustained participation (Baumann, 2019, 2024). In Germany, intensive pedagogical measures aim to address these challenges by integrating pedagogical and social pedagogical expertise in some cases/programmes within highly structured school-based settings (Schwabe, 2014; Koß et al., 2018).

Despite the growing relevance of such programmes, empirical research on school-based intensive pedagogical arrangements and their underlying mechanisms remains limited. While multiprofessional cooperation is widely recognised as a central condition for supporting students with complex emotional and social needs, its concrete organisational and interactional forms in intensive pedagogical contexts are still insufficiently examined (Lütje-Klose & Urban, 2014; Speck et al., 2011). Existing studies tend to focus either on general cooperation in inclusive schooling or on youth welfare contexts, leaving a research gap regarding systematically organised cooperation in school-based intensive pedagogical measures (Bathke et al., 2019; Laubenstein et al., 2015; Guthöhrlein et al. 2019).

This poster presents a qualitative, multi-stage study of Drehscheibe, an intensive pedagogical programme implemented at a German special needs educational (SEN) school for emotional and social development. The programme brings together SEN teachers and social pedagogues from youth welfare services in a highly structured setting designed to stabilise educational participation and address high risk complex developmental needs (Baumann, 2024; Düvelmeyer et al., 2024). As an institutionalised form of school–welfare collaboration under, Drehscheibe provides an instructive case for analysing how intensive pedagogical support is organised at the interface of educational and social systems (Koß et al., 2018).

Analytically, the study combines two complementary perspectives. From a system-level perspective, it examines the structural, organisational, and relational mechanisms of multiprofessional cooperation within the programme. Drawing on research on intensive pedagogy (Baumann, 2014, 2019, 2024; Schwabe, 2014) and the four-level cooperation model by Lütje-Klose and Urban (2014), the study conceptualises interface work as a central mechanism through which roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes are coordinated across institutional boundaries. Research on inter-agency cooperation further emphasises the relevance of clearly defined responsibilities, stable communication structures, and shared interpretive frameworks for managing complex cases (Bathke et al., 2019; Speck et al., 2011).

From a complementary perspective, the study situates cooperation structures in relation to their intended pedagogical effects. Although the primary analytical focus lies on cooperation processes, existing research on intensive pedagogy highlights that organisational routines and coordination formats are closely linked to the creation of emotionally secure learning environments and relational continuity for students at risk with significant emotional and social needs (Baumann, 2019, 2024; Schwabe, 2014). This perspective allows cooperation to be analysed not only as an organisational arrangement but also as a condition shaping pedagogical practice.

The study is guided by the following research questions:

(1) How are structural, organisational, and relational forms of multiprofessional cooperation configured within a school-based intensive pedagogical programme?

(2) Which forms of interface work enable or constrain coordinated action between school and youth welfare professionals?

(3) Which organisational and procedural conditions are identified as central for sustaining cooperation in intensive pedagogical settings?

By addressing these questions, the study contributes to current debates on multiprofessional cooperation and the governance of complex learner needs in education.

Over the past few decades, research on the influence of neighborhood characteristics on educational aspirations and outcomes has grown substantially (e.g., Chetty et al., 2016; Nieuwenhuis & Hooimeijer, 2016; Tarkiainen et al., 2024). Neighborhoods may shape educational trajectories through social norms, peer networks, social comparison processes, and access to local resources (Berg et al., 2013; Harding, 2011). However, empirical evidence for Germany remains limited, despite increasing levels of urban socioeconomic segregation (e.g., Helbig, 2023). At the same time, social origin continues to be a key determinant of educational aspirations: students from non-academic households are significantly less likely to intend to pursue higher education than their peers from academic families (Kracke et al., 2024). Against this background, the present study examines whether neighborhood socioeconomic conditions are associated with upper secondary students’ intentions to pursue higher education in Hamburg.

The study extends existing German research on educational aspirations (Niemietz et al., submitted) by focusing on a single urban context and by applying a quasi-experimental approach to address selection into neighborhoods. The analysis is guided by three theoretical perspectives that provide competing expectations regarding neighborhood influences. Relative deprivation and social comparison theory suggests that students from disadvantaged backgrounds may experience lower educational self-concepts when living in socially advantaged neighborhoods, potentially reducing their study intentions (Marsh, 1987; Runciman, 1966). In contrast, collective socialization theory emphasizes the role of positive neighborhood norms and role models, which may encourage higher educational aspirations, particularly among students from non-academic households (Jencks & Mayer, 1989). Finally, epidemic theory posits that social problems and low educational ambitions prevalent in disadvantaged neighborhoods may spread through peer networks, thereby lowering educational aspirations (Crane, 1991). Together, these perspectives frame the question of whether neighborhoods mitigate or reinforce social inequalities in study intentions.

Empirically, the study uses survey data from upper secondary students in Hamburg, combining individual characteristics (e.g., family background, migration background, prior school performance) with school-level information such as school type. Neighborhood context is captured using the Hamburg RISE index, which distinguishes between disadvantaged and advantaged areas. The outcome variable is students’ intention to pursue higher education.

The initial dataset comprised 2,581 cases. After exclusions (see Methods section), the final analytical sample consists of 1,960 students. Missing data were addressed using multiple imputation (van Buuren & Groothuis-Oudshoorn, 2011). To ensure comparability between students from different neighborhood contexts, entropy balancing was applied to each imputed dataset, creating weights that balance key covariates and approximate a quasi-experimental design. Weighted logistic regression models were then estimated and combined using Rubin’s rules (Rubin, 1987).

The results show a positive but statistically non-significant association between living in an advantaged neighborhood and having a high intention to pursue higher education. After covariate balancing and accounting for uncertainty due to multiple imputation, no robust evidence for an independent effect of neighborhood socioeconomic conditions on study intentions was found.

From a theoretical perspective, the results do not provide clear support for relative deprivation, collective socialization, or epidemic theories at this stage of the educational trajectory. Instead, they indicate that neighborhood effects in Germany, if present, may operate earlier in the life course or indirectly through prior educational pathways. The study contributes to the literature by highlighting the limited role of neighborhood socioeconomic conditions for study intentions among upper secondary students.

Across Europe, children and young people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds face a heightened risk of low academic achievement, particularly in mathematics, a subject that strongly shapes educational trajectories and later life chances (OECD, 2023; OECD, 2024a). Although international large-scale assessments consistently document strong socioeconomic gradients in achievement, less is known about how individual protective resources and school contexts jointly shape educational risk within and across education systems.

This poster examines how socioeconomic background, student well-being, and school-level contextual factors interact in shaping mathematics achievement, using data from PISA 2022. While the empirical analyses focus on Slovenia, the study is explicitly embedded in a European and international perspective, treating Slovenia as an analytically informative case within a broader group of education systems characterised by varying levels of school segregation and socioeconomic stratification (Gutiérrez et al., 2020; Chzhen & Leesch, 2023).

The poster addresses four research questions:

1. How are socioeconomic background, student well-being, and school context jointly associated with mathematics achievement?

2. To what extent do student well-being resources mediate the relationship between socioeconomic background and achievement?

3. Do school-level contextual factors moderate socioeconomic inequalities in mathematics achievement?

4. How do the observed patterns correspond to international evidence from PISA on socioeconomic inequality, school composition, and student well-being across European education systems?

The study is guided by an ecological–motivational framework integrating Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2007) with social-cognitive and expectancy–value theories (Bandura, 1997; Eccles & Wigfield, 2020). From this perspective, socioeconomic disadvantage constitutes a structural risk factor that operates across multiple levels of students’ educational environments. At the individual level, psychological resources such as mathematics self-efficacy, perseverance, and sense of belonging shape students’ engagement with learning and may act as protective mechanisms that partially buffer socioeconomic risk (Hofer et al., 2024).

At the institutional level, school contexts define the social and organisational conditions under which learning occurs (Thapa et al., 2013; Leithwood et al., 2006). International research suggests that while positive school contexts are associated with higher achievement overall, their capacity to reduce socioeconomic inequalities is often limited once school composition is taken into account (Perry et al., 2022; Chzhen & Leesch, 2023).

By explicitly linking national findings to established international PISA research, the poster contributes to discussions on educational risk, highlighting how both individual well-being and school-level structures shape unequal learning opportunities for children and youth at risk across Europe.

Living on the brink of multiple crises—ecological, political, and social—raises the question of what it means to exist in close proximity to death (Angelaki 2024). the uncomfortable realities of human vulnerability and mortality have long been repressed within the prevailing cultural narrative of the West (Lysgaard, Bengtsson, & Laugesen, 2019). Children's thinking of death and their ability to grieve has long been underestimated. Their imagination and animistic thinking has been considered as a sign of immature rational thinking. The dominant Western framing of children’s thinking overlooks children’s embodied and affective knowledge; their lived, sensory, and relational awareness they bring to the world (Mercer, 2024).

In this study, we examine how death, dying, and grief are addressed within a forest preschool, and the ways in which children and adults construct a community of grieving that encompasses both human and more-than-human relations. Based on five-day video-ethnography we explore, what kind of support do children have in facing the loss of human and nonhuman life in the secularized, individualized society, as the grief studies show that the community and rituals play a significant role in supporting in bereavement (Klass, 2022). The research question is as follows: How do children and adults in the forest preschool construct communal grieving practices, and what roles do spirituality, rituals and imaginary play have in this?

Brinkmann (2018) uses the expression ‘the society of sorrow’ to address the universal, yet historically contingent nature of grief, and collective practices of mourning and commemoration across cultures and societies. Highlighting the cultural-historical nature of grief, we interpret Brinkmann’s idea of the society of sorrow in the context of education among young children. We will reflect the idea of communal, tangible and visible grieving in the lives of young children who engage death and losses together with their peers and educators in the institutional educational context. We use the notion of ‘community of grieving’ to highlight the children’s intersubjective and shared emotional exploration at a loss with other children, caregivers, and other species present in their educational environment.

We see children’s imaginary play and spirituality as powerful tools to express and explore a variety of emotions such as grief. Previous studies show how play, death, and grief are intertwined in early childhood in various institutional, family, and community settings, and how children ‘play ot their grief’ (e.g. Smith, 1991), and thus, “understand” the meaning of loss. Related to play and spirituality, ritual practices give expression to that which cannot be adequately conveyed in words. Additionally, rituals reinforce a sense of belonging to a community and the continuity of shared experience—elements that have traditionally been central to religious traditions. (Eaude, 2025).

This poster presentation focuses on the experiences of girls in English schools who are at risk of being permanently excluded from mainstream schooling. Exclusion and marginalisation are growing issues for girls in England (Clarke, 2024a, 2024b; Department for Education, 2019b, 2019a; DfE, 2025; Social Finance, 2020) and beyond (European School Education Platform, 2025; WHO/Europe report, 2024). However, this presentation argues that although boys in England are 3x more likely to be PEX than girls, exclusions for girls increased more rapidly than for boys, with year-on-year increases since 2012/13 ​(DfE, 2019)​. Girls are also more likely to experience self-exclusion, informal exclusions and ‘off-rolling’, with criticisms that government policy has consistently emphasised boys’ exclusions, fostering misleading narratives that ‘girls are not a problem’ (Osler et al., 2002; Ringrose, 2007). Osler et al. (2002). This results in girls’ exclusions and marginalisation from education to often remain unseen and unheard in formally reported statistics and in wider research.

The paucity of research and rising number of girls being excluded from mainstream schools in England formed the aims of the research:

• to co-create understandings of schooling for girls at-risk of permanent exclusion

Archer (2004) contended almost 20 years ago that concerns over a ‘crisis of masculinity‘ meant that issues related to girls' education had ‘fallen off the radar’, with school-related issues perceived almost exclusively as a male problem, which appears to have worsened in the intervening years. This was supported by Osler and Vincent (2003), who noted what they perceived to be a ‘lack of interest’ in girls' experiences from policymakers and research funding bodies. Lloyd (2005a) too noted an emphasis on boys' experiences in the literature on emotional and behavioural difficulties—as it was labelled at her time of writing—as well as the preponderance of male authors. This was highlighted over 20 years ago by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Osler et al., 2002), whose report warned that girls were ‘an underestimated minority’ and not a priority in thinking around behaviour and exclusions. More recently, McCluskey (2008, p. 452) noted what she described as a ‘surprisingly high level of disruption’ amongst girls, usually considered to be the ‘hard working majority’. The Timpson Review (Department for Education, 2019c) highlighted issues around girls' exclusions in England which has begun to raise public consciousness, with some mainstream media beginning to report on girls' exclusion rates (Mohdin, 2021), but there have been criticisms that government policy has consistently emphasised boys' underachievement and exclusions, fostering misleading narratives that ‘girls are not a problem’ (Arnot & Ghaill, 2006; Osleret al., 2002; Ringrose, 2007).

Pirrie and Macleod (2009, p. 193) noted a strong association between exclusion from school and being subsequently ‘missing’ from education and/or being ‘hard to find’, with ‘traces of individual young people rapidly fading from view’, further complicating research around girls' experiences of marginalisation. Not only are formally reported rates of exclusions increasing for girls, but girls are also more likely to experience functional or self- exclusion (Agenda, 2021;Arnot & Ghaill, 2006), meaning the actual number lost from school may be higher than recorded, as they are at significant risk of informal exclusion or ‘off-rolling’, early exits and managed moves (Porter & Ingram, 2021).