Studies on the emergence of effects of socioeconomic inequality typically report that socioeconomic background is positively associated with early cognitive abilities. However, studies on looking behaviour in habituation tasks rarely investigate this association, although such tasks are standard in measuring cognitive abilities in infants. The…

This article explores the normative representations of higher education students in seven films and television series from four European countries. Drawing on the concept of the 'independent learner' as an 'ideal construction', I demonstrate how these texts offer complex and at times paradoxical representations of who gets positioned as the…

In recent years, it has been well established that study abroad participation is a socially selective process. Today, scholars generally focus on single social markers, often using cross-sectional data. In this article, we instead adopt an intersectional and longitudinal approach to improve our understanding of the development of social…

Authority is a central issue for teachers and refers to the leadership relationship between teachers and pupils for the purpose of initiating learning. A review of the current state of research shows that the interplay between authority and social inequality has seldom been investigated to date. That is the starting point for the present…

Prior research has shown that students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to graduate. We examine if this can be explained by background-specific pathways into higher education. Many students in Germany enter higher education with a vocational qualification and prior vocational qualifications occur more often among students from…

Social origin affects not only access to higher education but also how students proceed through higher education. Based on the argument that an advantageous family background facilitates linear study trajectories through parents' provision of cultural and economic resources, this article investigates study trajectories in Germany and the United…

Previous research has shown that social inequalities in the transition to higher education are a persistent phenomenon in Germany. Additionally, studies indicate that graduates from vocational schools are less likely to enter higher education, compared to their peers who graduated from general schools. However, research is scarce about how social…

International student mobility (ISM) prepares young people for the challenges of global and multicultural environments. However, disadvantaged students have lower participation rates in mobility schemes and, hence, benefit less from their positive impacts on career progression. Therefore, policymakers aim to make mobility programs more inclusive.…

Students from a high socioeconomic background show relatively homogeneous, high levels of educational attainment, whereas students with a low socioeconomic origin display a large variability in their educational careers. In this paper, we examine whether the varying degrees of students' academic self-efficacy can contribute to an explanation of…

Given their lower socioeconomic background and achievement, immigrants and their descendants have been shown to make more ambitious decisions regarding educational transitions. While previous research has extensively analysed transitions within and after compulsory education, research on late transitions is scarce. This study focuses on the…

This paper presents evidence how pupils choose different types of non-monetary rewards for educational attainment. These rewards are external to the learning process, but unlike cash-for-grades rewards internal to the practice of schooling. We collected data from a non-incentivized survey and an incentivized survey, which was part of a larger…

This paper uses data from PISA 2018 in Germany to explore how the students' chronotype (known as larks and owls) and their academic achievement is related to truancy. We used an adapted version of the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire (MCTQ) to measure the students' chronotype. The results demonstrate a correlation between the students' social jet…

Background: Due to the increasing use of information and communication technology, computer-related skills are important for all students in order to participate in the digital age (Fraillon, J., Ainley, J., Schulz, W., Friedman, T. & Duckworth, D. (2019). "Preparing for life in a digital world: IEA International Computer and Information…

This study aims to illuminate factors that explain changes in literacy skills across up to six years of adulthood, using data from two waves of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; N = 4,359). More specifically, we gauge the relative importance of three groups of factors that previous research and theorizing have highlighted as…

Academic achievement and academic self-concepts are reciprocally related; hence, investigating academic self-concepts should offer a potential approach for gaining a better understanding of immigrant students' (lack of) school success. Proposing that immigrant students' acculturation orientations need to be taken into account, in this study, we…