scholarly journals Equally Performing, Unfairly Evaluated The social determinants of grade repetition in Italian high schools

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Salza
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Family Background ◽  
School Context ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Social Background ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Grade Repetition ◽  
School Students ◽  
Italian Regions

Grade repetition requires students with lower performance in comparison with their peers to repeat the same grade for an additional year. Educators and parents generally favour such policy. The distribution of grade repetition among different levels of education varies across educational systems, but, in general, all European countries rely on grade repetition to improve performance of students. Yet, little attention has been paid to the link between grade repetition and inequality in educational opportunities. By relying on an ad-hoc large panel dataset which collects the population of secondary school students in three northern Italian regions, the present paper asks to which extent disadvantaged students (in terms of parents’ educational title and migration background) incur in grade repetition on top of prior performance differences. The paper also contributes to further the understanding of the interaction between school context (in terms of track and social composition) and family background in determining a grade repetition. Italy is a relevant case study in the European context; as in other southern European countries, grade repetition typically occurs during high school, significantly fluctuates across tracks, and teachers have a high degree of discretion in implementing this remedial policy. This paper suggests to carefully use grade repetition - especially with regard to students with a disadvantaged economic and social background. Among students with comparable (poor) performance, the risk of grade repetition is substantially higher for students with low educated or migrant parents. By contrast, grade repetition for students with highly educated parents is smaller in academic tracks and schools with a large share of students with tertiary-educated parents. The paper critically assesses likely justification for the observed inequalities in grade repetition such as differences in parents’ support and teachers’ expectations.

scholarly journals Differences in Foreign Language Choice of Students from Different Social Backgrounds

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-86
Author(s):  
Krisztina Sebestyén
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
School Students ◽  
Local Cluster ◽  
Social Backgrounds

According to previous research (e.g. Bernstein, 1971; Gogolin, 2014; Hegedűs et al., 2019), family background plays a decisive role in an individual's mother tongue acquisition and in learning foreign languages. In another study, parents with a high social background (54.0%) chose German for their children, and parents with a low social background (56.9%) chose English in primary school (Sebestyén, 2021). Based on this, in the study I examine what difference can be detected in the foreign language choice of high school students from different social backgrounds. In the study, I analyze the student data (890 people) of my database entitled “German learning and teaching in Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg counties” prepared in the 2018/2019 school year, during which I perform cross-tabulation and cluster analysis with the help of SPSS program. The database contains data on 11th grade high school and vocational high school students who studied German and / or English in high school. As the results, there are differences between the learned foreign languages among secondary school students according to family background. Among the clusters related to high school choice, those belonging to the “Higher Education Oriented Local” cluster are most interested in foreign languages, most German-speaking (74.0%) and English (89,0%) students tend to be in this cluster. Overall, the majority of respondents learn English, while students from higher social backgrounds (also) learn German.

scholarly journals Health Education for High School Students in Spain

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
David Pérez-Jorge ◽  
María Dolores Jorge-Estévez ◽  
Josué Gutiérrez-Barroso ◽  
Milagros De la Rosa-Hormiga ◽  
María Sandra Marrero-Morales
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Secondary Education ◽  
Health Education ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
School Context ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
World Health ◽  
School Students ◽  
Socialization Process

<p class="apa">Education and training in schools are essential elements in the development and socialization process of children from early childhood. The fact of considering health as a complete physical, mental and social wellbeing (World Health Organization (1848), WHO), and not only as the absence of illness, is closely related to the achievement of optimal levels of promotion and improvement in the quality of life and school performance in children. This research, carried out during the 2014-2015 academic year, attempts to analyze the ideas and attitudes of Compulsory Secondary Education (12 to 16 years old; compulsory) and High School (16 to 18 years; non-compulsory) students as regards health promotion in the school context. In order to perform this analysis, an ad hoc questionnaire was developed for 2337 students from the Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain) and 15 follow-up interviews about the students’ answers to emergency situations in the school context were also carried out. Both questionnaire and interviews revealed the existence of unhealthy habits related to the level of education, gender and health training of the students’ parents. The results show that the <em>“Questionnaire about attitudes and knowledge as regards health in the school context” </em>(CACOSA) has been an adequate instrument to detect both important training needs and a lack of responsiveness to emergencies in secondary education schools as regards health education.</p>

Effect of Resource Factors and Quality of Instruction on Performance in Mathematics of Nigeria Secondary School Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Umar Abdullahi ◽  
Musa Sirajo
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Secondary School Students ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Secondary School Student ◽  
Teaching Staff ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
School Students ◽  
Quality Of Instruction ◽  
The Public

It seems that educational system in Nigeria has undergone only quantitative improvement in terms of number of schools and students’ enrolment. However, there has been little effort in respect to the capacity to manage them through provisions of adequate financial, human, material and physical resources. Physical and material resources in secondary schools were discovered to be inadequate and poorly equipped. Some of the secondary school buildings were dilapidated, also the allocated financial resource, teaching and non-teaching staff are grossly inadequate compared with the students’ enrolment. The public, the Ministry of Education and other stakeholders in education are expressing serious concern about the consistency of the poor performance of secondary school students especially in mathematics. Increase in population and the government’s free education programs make people want to take advantage of the education provided. Provision of both professionally qualified and non-qualified teachers by government and non-state providers of education also appear not to ameliorate the problem of declining performances in mathematics. The effect of all these on the public secondary school student academic performance in mathematics concern the researchers of this study. It is against this background that the study sought to empirically investigates effect of resource factors and quality of instruction on performance in mathematics of Nigeria secondary school students.

Social Environment and Creativity

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-58
Author(s):  
Jiří Semrád ◽  
Milan Škrabal
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Family Environment ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Family Influence ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
School Students ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family

The paper deals with issues connected with the motivation of high school students to participate in activities aimed at professional creative activity and, in this context, issues of environmental influences, especially from school and the family. It is responding to some of the growing efforts of neoliberalism to over individualize creative expression and activities and completely ignore social influences. It also takes into account the cultural legacy of past generations and the sources of creative power that have taken root in society and from which individuals draw and process their inspiration. Presented within are the results of an empirical probe focused on the influence of the social environment on the creative activity of teenagers. The paper follows the relations to the existing body of knowledge on the relationship between social environment and creativity, with an effort to capture the social conditionality of creative performances—to capture their roots. The results of the probe have confirmed the initial hypothesis that the creative efforts of secondary school students taking part in vocational training is based on the social background of the family and school. However, the family influence on the students’ creativity is not as significant as one would expect. It is the indirect effect of the family environment that has a larger influence.

Social Influences - a Psychological Phenomenon in the Choice of Further Course of Education and Career

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-53
Author(s):  
Petr Hlaďo
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Social Influences ◽  
Compulsory Schooling ◽  
Lower Secondary School ◽  
Main Attention ◽  
School Students ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Psychological Phenomenon ◽  
Research Findings

The aim of this overview study is to synthesize Czech, Slovak and foreign empirical findings on the choice of further course of education and career. Attention is focused specifically on social influences as a psychological phenomenon affecting this decision-making process in lower secondary school students at the end of compulsory schooling. The main attention is paid to the roles of parents and family, particularly the influence of family background and family processes. Another issue is the influence of peers, teachers and career counsellors on the choice of further course of education and career. The synthesis of research findings is based primarily on an analysis of research papers published in journals.

Do primary school libraries affect teenagers’ attitudes towards leisure reading?

IFLA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 034003522098335
Author(s):  
Pamela McKirdy
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Primary School ◽  
Family Background ◽  
School Libraries ◽  
First Year ◽  
Noisy Environments ◽  
Primary School Students ◽  
School Students ◽  
Leisure Reading ◽  
Reading For Pleasure

This study explores how New Zealand primary school students’ experiences of school libraries affected their attitudes towards reading for pleasure once they entered secondary school. Two hundred and seventy-six students in their first year at high school completed a survey asking about their primary school libraries. The students were asked to self-identify as keen readers, occasional readers or non-readers. The results were analysed in a spreadsheet, considering variables such as attitude to reading, former school and family background. The students were mainly positive about their libraries, but were bothered by cramped and noisy environments and books they perceived as babyish. Students from schools with a librarian were more positive about reading for fun than those from schools where the library was not prioritised. Students from a family background where reading was encouraged were more likely to maintain a positive attitude to reading by the time they reached high school.

scholarly journals The Effect of Family Background on Student Effort

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1337-1403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Kuehn ◽  
Pedro Landeras
Keyword(s):  
Parental Education ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Marginal Productivity ◽  
School Students ◽  
Student Effort ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
University Degree ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Students from more advantageous family backgrounds tend to perform better than those from less advantageous backgrounds. But it is not clear that these students exert more effort. We build a model of students, schools, and employers to study the interaction of family background and effort exerted by the student in the education process. Two factors turn out to be key in determining the relationship between effort and family background: (i) the student’s attitude toward risk and (ii) how the student’s marginal productivity of effort depends on her family background. We show that when the degree of risk aversion is relatively low (high) compared to the sensitivity of the marginal productivity of effort, students from more advantageous family backgrounds exert more (less) effort. Empirically, we find that if parental education was reduced from holding a university degree to incomplete compulsory education, primary and secondary school students would exert around 21–23% less effort (approximately equal to a reduction of 2 hours weekly in homework). For primary school students we also find that marginal productivities of effort are higher for those from less advantageous family backgrounds.

Trying to fit in – Upper secondary school students’ negotiation processes between sports culture and youth culture

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stine Frydendal Nielsen ◽  
Lone Friis Thing
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
School Context ◽  
Upper Secondary School ◽  
School Students ◽  
Physically Active ◽  
Sports Culture ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Group Interviews

In this paper we present results concerning how students in a Danish upper secondary school negotiate between sports culture and the prevailing norms of youth culture in a local school context. The study shows that it can be rather difficult for young people to combine sports culture with the local youth culture, because living a healthy and physically active life doesn’t fit very well with the prevailing norms of youth culture, which involve a dominant social arena characterized by parties and alcohol. By applying the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias, this article shows that being included in a sports figuration can result in exclusion from the youth figuration. Young athletic students are therefore in a constant process of negotiation, where they struggle to fit into both sport and non-sport related contexts, because it is important to belong within both. The study is based on 16 focus group interviews [N=120] conducted over four years in one Danish upper secondary school.

scholarly journals Structural Validity of the School Aspirations Questionnaire (SAQ)

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristiano Mauro Assis Gomes ◽  
Evgjeni Gjikuria
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Private School ◽  
Latent Variables ◽  
School Context ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Self Determination Theory ◽  
School Students ◽  
Structural Validity ◽  
Belo Horizonte ◽  
Psychological Instruments

Abstract The self-determination theory claims that three basic needs (autonomy, relatedness, and competency) guide the human motivation. This theory serves as background for many psychological instruments. However, no one differentiates the students’ occurrence perceptions and students’ values about the basic needs. The School Aspirations Questionnaire has this goal, but its structural validity was not investigated yet. The present study evaluated the structural validity of the questionnaire. The sample was composed by 716 middle and high school students from a private school in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. A model was tested. This model possessed eight correlated latent variables representing, in terms of values and occurrence perceptions, the three basic needs and the immediate pleasure domain. The model showed good data fit, permitting the conclusion that the questionnaire is capable of distinguishing in the school context the values and the occurrence perceptions about the basic needs, as well the immediate pleasure domain.

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