One does not simply track students: the relationship between teachers’ perceived public track regard and their job satisfaction in a context of rigid tracking

Although there is a wealth of research on the educational and broader outcomes of tracking in education, there is virtually no research that investigates teachers’ track identities on such outcomes. Building on research that focuses on the determinants of teachers’ job satisfaction, tracking outcomes and social categorization theory, this study tests the relationship between the perceived public regard of a teachers’ track and their job satisfaction, in a Belgian context of within- (vocational, technical and general education tracks) and between-school tracking (multilateral versus categorical schools). Data of the Belgian SIS (School, Identity and Society)-survey, a large-scale dataset gathered in 2017, containing the self-reports of 324 teachers, clustered in 43 secondary schools is used to test particular hypotheses regarding this relationship. The results of a multilevel analysis show that the relationship between teachers’ public track regard and their job satisfaction varies according to the track they teach and whether they work in a categorical or multilateral school. The findings highlight the importance of carrying out further research on tracked identities in education.

Parallel Fish School Tracking Based on Multiple Appearance Feature Detection

A parallel fish school tracking based on multiple-feature fish detection has been proposed in this paper to obtain accurate movement trajectories of a large number of zebrafish. Zebrafish are widely adapted in many fields as an excellent model organism. Due to the non-rigid body, similar appearance, rapid transition, and frequent occlusions, vision-based behavioral monitoring is still a challenge. A multiple appearance feature based fish detection scheme was developed by examining the fish head and center of the fish body based on shape index features. The proposed fish detection has the advantage of locating individual fishes from occlusions and estimating their motion states, which could ensure the stability of tracking multiple fishes. Moreover, a parallel tracking scheme was developed based on the SORT framework by fusing multiple features of individual fish and motion states. The proposed method was evaluated in seven video clips taken under different conditions. These videos contained various scales of fishes, different arena sizes, different frame rates, and various image resolutions. The maximal number of tracking targets reached 100 individuals. The correct tracking ratio was 98.60% to 99.86%, and the correct identification ratio ranged from 97.73% to 100%. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to advanced deep learning-based methods. Nevertheless, this method has real-time tracking ability, which can acquire online trajectory data without high-cost hardware configuration.

Unequal Civic Development? Vocational Tracking and Civic Outcomes in Germany

Vocational education and training (VET) is a common form of upper secondary school tracking in countries around the world. There are ongoing debates regarding the effects of this differentiation on academic and labor market outcomes; however, evidence on civic outcomes is lacking. Using a unique cohort study in Germany ( N = 2461) and a doubly robust weighting approach with a rich set of baseline covariates to address selection bias, we estimated the effects of VET (relative to academic upper secondary school) on political interest, internal political efficacy, and intent to vote across 15 years of late adolescence and early adulthood. We estimated negative effects of VET on these civic outcomes, particularly as participants grew older. Implications for future research and VET policy are discussed.

Can We Trust Education for Fostering Trust? Quasi-experimental Evidence on the Effect of Education and Tracking on Social Trust

Education is one of the most commonly proposed determinants of social trust (generalized trust). Nevertheless, the empirical evidence of a causal relationship between education and social trust is inconclusive. This study contributes to this discussion in two ways. First, its design provides strong grounds for causal inference across multiple countries by exploiting numerous European compulsory schooling reforms. Second, it considers how the structure of education, specifically between-school tracking, impacts the relationship between education and social trust. The article argues that less tracking is positive for social trust because it entails intergroup contacts between children with different social backgrounds. The results do not give support for a general positive effect of education on social trust as the effect of reforms that extend compulsory education is positive but small and not statistically significant. However, reforms that reduce tracking have a somewhat larger, but still modest, positive and statistically significant effect on social trust. The effect is more pronounced for individuals with poorly educated parents. The positive effect of detracking reforms goes hand-in-hand with more understanding attitudes towards persons with a different background than one’s own. The lack of a clear effect of reforms that extend compulsory schooling on social trust reinforces the findings of recent single-country studies that have been unable to confirm a causal effect of education on social trust. However, the effect of detracking reforms, albeit modest, shows that education can have a positive effect on social trust but that the institutional character of education may be a conditioning factor.

Short and long-term consequences of high-school tracks for earnings in Israel

Vocational and academic curricula are said to hold both short-term and long-term consequences for economic outcomes. The literature on this topic, however, fails to address the long-term consequences of educational tracking. Just as important, this literature did not examine returns to high-school tracking within levels of further education. This paper aims to fill these gaps in the literature. Utilizing longitudinal data of Israeli men and women who graduated high school in the late 1980s and entered the labor market in the early 1990s, we examine their earning trajectories throughout age 50 in 2013. The results indicate that for men without college degrees, vocational education provides pay premiums at labor-market entry. With time, however, these earnings’ premiums decline and diminish. A similar pattern characterizes degree holders, though the decline in the pay premiums is less steep when compared to men without a college degree. For women we do not find similar vocational effects. Taken together, our results indicate that the more substantial differences in earnings trajectories in Israel, among men and women alike, are associated with level of education and not with high-school tracks. The theoretical and potential policy implications of these findings are discussed.