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Institutional Contexts
for Socioeconomic Effects
on Schooling Outcomes
HERMAN G. VAN DE WERFHORST
Abstract
In the field of stratification sociology, one of the most important developments of the
past two decades has been an improved understanding of cross-national variations
with regard to the role of education in society. The structure of educational systems
differs in important respects between countries, affecting patterns of inequality. The
central issue that will be addressed in this essay is to what extent educational institutional characteristics are related to the level of inequality of educational opportunity
(IEO) in a country. IEO refers to the association between background variables, most
notably social class origin and race/ethnicity, and schooling outcomes of children.
These outcomes include the highest attained educational level, school continuation
decisions during the educational career, and student test scores. Institutional characteristics that are discussed include early tracking, forms of standardization, the
vocational orientation, and private schooling.
INTRODUCTION
In the field of stratification sociology, one of the most important developments of the past two decades has been an improved understanding of
cross-national variations with regard to the role of education in society.
The setup of educational systems differs in important respects between
countries, and this setup affects patterns of inequality. Many characteristics
of educational systems can be seen as institutions, as they relate to (mostly
formal) rules and regulations that affect human social behavior. The “institutional turn” in the sociology of stratification has been made in two subfields,
concerning the study of inequality of educational opportunity (IEO) and the
study of the relationship between schooling and labor market outcomes.
Although this essay deals primarily with IEO, the labor market studies
have contributed significantly to the understanding of the variability of
educational institutions across countries. Moreover, in judging the possible
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
effects of educational institutions in one domain (IEO), one should bear in
mind that other outcome domains may be differently affected (such as the
labor market).
The central issue that is addressed in this essay is to what extent educational
institutional characteristics are related to the level of IEO in a country. IEO
refers to the association between background variables, most notably social
class origin and race/ethnicity, and schooling outcomes of children. These
outcomes include the highest attained educational level, school continuation
decisions during the educational career, and student test scores. Institutional
characteristics that are discussed include early tracking, forms of standardization, the vocational orientation, and private schooling.
COMPARATIVE RESEARCH ON EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
EARLY CONTRIBUTIONS
Although most of the comparative work on educational institutions and
inequality emerged from the 1990s onwards, Ralph H. Turner has laid
an important foundation with his distinction between “sponsored” and
“contest” mobility regimes in the 1960s (Turner, 1960). Comparing American
and English education systems, Turner argued that the American system of
the 1950s can be characterized as a contest mobility regime. Access to elite
positions is the “prize” of a contest in which contestants are given opportunities as equally as possible (most notably in the high school system). Individual school performance determined the educational careers of American
children, which has led to a meritocratic educational system in which the role
of social origin had been minimized, and positive school attitudes were more
equally distributed across social classes. The English system of the 1950s, by
contrast, was typical of a sponsored mobility regime, where access to elite
positions was governed by a strong alliance between the school structure and
the class structure. By the implementation of early selection into grammar,
secondary modern or technical schools, higher class families were, in this
system, able to transmit their advantage to their children. The American literature has by now provided a lot of evidence of inegalitarian characteristics
of the American high school system, in particular concerning tracking within
schools. Yet, Turner’s distinction between, on the one hand, differentiated
systems in which various school types are institutionalized with the aim of
maintaining social advantage of children of the more advantaged families,
and on the other hand comprehensive systems where equal opportunities are
governing the education of children is still relevant in the literature of today.
Studies in the early 1970s have addressed that the variety of educational
systems is a bit more complicated than the dichotomy Turner suggests.
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
3
It has been suggested that educational systems should also be classified on
the basis of standardization of the selection process of children into school
types or levels. Moreover, vertical (on learning ability) and horizontal (on
types of skills acquired) forms of stratification have been stressed.
Together, these studies have paved the way for more recent scholarship
on educational institutional variations, which has developed a classification
of educational systems that is still used in contemporary research. The
dimensions on which educational systems are mostly being classified
are the stratification of the system (in particular, curricular tracking), the
standardization of the system (e.g., in terms of central examinations, centralized curricula, or standardized allocation of resources across schools), and
the vocational orientation of the system (in particular, the extent to which
school-work linkages are set up for the production of work-relevant skills. It
has also been suggested that systems differ in ‘track mobility,” indicating the
extent to which students (or families) can enter different routes of education
at different stages in the educational career, independent of the position of a
student in the system at that point. However, comparative research on track
mobility is virtually nonexistent.
So what did early studies find with regard to the relationship between
educational institutions and IEO? Using data from the 1960s on 13-year-old
students in 12 countries, Husen (1973) analyzed whether the high achievers
were held back in comprehensive systems, and concluded that this was
not the case. Given that IEO was found to be higher in early-differentiated
systems, Husen touched upon the absence of what has later been called a
trade-off between equality and efficiency. This trade-off would be implied
if greater equality can only be achieved if lower average performances are
accepted, or higher performance can only be achieved if larger inequalities
are accepted. However, most of the literature to date has falsified the
existence of this trade-off.
THE WEALTH OF SCHOLARS: DATA IMPROVEMENTS
The past decades have seen a great improvement of comparative education
data, particularly collected among youngsters in primary and secondary
school (roughly between ages 9 and 15). The International Association for the
Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) is responsible for a number
of different studies among youth, including the Progress in International
Reading Literacy Survey (PIRLS), the Trends in International Mathematics
and Science Study (TIMSS), and the International Civic and Citizenship
Education Study (ICCS). These surveys used to have different names in
earlier rounds, but altogether comparative data have been collected since
1960. Together with the Programme for International Student Assessment
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
(PISA) data, collected regularly since 2000 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the IEA data are the most
authoritative datasets available for comparative student assessments.
The wealth of data, and the improved statistical knowledge to analyze
them, has led to a great number of studies on IEO in relation to characteristics of educational systems. Two different forms of inequality have been
addressed: inequality as dispersion (i.e., within-country variance in student
test scores), and IEO (i.e., the association between social or ethnic origin
and student test scores in a given country). These are two distinct forms of
inequality, as a limited dispersion could coincide with a rigorous placement
on the achievement scales based on social origin; or a wide dispersion could
coincide with limited effects of social origin on where in the distribution a
student would be placed. Yet, in practice the two are related.
The evidence on the relationship between early differentiation/tracking
and inequality as dispersion is mixed. Some have reported higher dispersions in countries with more intensified forms of between-school
differentiation/tracking, whereas findings of other studies do not point in
that direction.
With regard to inequality in terms of social origin effects, the topic of
this essay, the evidence is more clear: early selection in the educational
system is associated with higher levels of inequality in student test scores
by social origin. Also, with regard to educational attainment, an indicator
that reports the highest attained level of education of citizens, it has been
confirmed that social inequality in educational attainment is larger in
more strongly stratified educational systems. Studies that have explicitly
analyzed the impact of curricular tracking and vocational orientation have
reported that especially tracking, more than the vocational orientation of the
system, is related to various sorts of inequalities. Relatedly, early tracking
is known to be positively related to the dispersions in attitudes on economic
redistribution, whereas the vocational orientation of educational systems is
associated with a lower variability of opinions. More strongly differentiated
systems are also associated with more realistic expectations of students
concerning future educational attainment, which may explain the relatively
early formation of political interests. All these findings together may lead
to the conclusion that early tracking is harmful to equality and shapes
antagonized interests, whereas a strong vocational sector in the education
system functions inclusionary rather than diverging.
A more recent interest is in the institutional effects on ethnic educational
inequalities. Inequalities between migrant children and majority populations
are found to be larger in more strongly stratified education systems relative
to comprehensive systems. Other institutions that are related to lower levels
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
5
of ethnic inequality are an earlier starting age of compulsory education, the
existence of centralized examinations, and a small private schooling sector.
Many of these other institutional characteristics have also been associated
with the level of social class inequality, but the evidence there is much more
mixed. The size of the private schooling sector has been found to be uncorrelated to the level of inequality by social origin. School accountability is
associated with lower inequalities in student achievement by parental education. More generally, it has been suggested that country characteristics related
to resources have limited effects on student learning, whereas other institutional effects relating to the structure of schools have stronger impacts.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
There are several more recent developments that deserve attention. First of
all, in their comparative analysis on student achievement, a few studies have
included a third, intermediating level in the statistical analysis: the school.
Employing random intercept (or random slope) multilevel models (models that take account of the “nestedness” of students within schools), the
individual-level variance component then refers to the within-school variance, rather than the within-country variance. The inclusion of the second
level has large repercussions on the findings related to differentiation effects
on inequality. Logically, in a three-level model, the (within-school) effects of
social origin are smaller in more strongly tracked systems, given that there is
much more homogeneity within schools in such systems.
A second development concerns the study of institutional effects on
inequality in final educational attainment. While much of the literature to
date has focused on mid-teenage test scores, it is arguably more important
from a societal perspective whether inequalities in achievement translate
in inequalities in final educational attainment in the long run. More precisely, a country’s educational institutional structure seems to be related to
inequalities in educational choices conditional on achievement, suggesting
that institutions do not only affect inequality in achievement but also in
attainment over and above inequalities produced by unequal achievements.
A third development is that it is increasingly known that inequalities in
education translate into inequalities in later life, for instance, concerning
health and earnings. This new agenda illustrates that the study of educational inequalities are important to understand much wider inequalities
during later life.
A fourth development is that many advanced statistical techniques have
been employed to deal with the cross-sectional nature of most comparative
education data, including difference-in-difference designs (where changes
in inequality are compared across time between countries), instrumental
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
variables regression (where a policy reform has been used to understand
the causal effect of institutions), and regression discontinuity approaches
(where groups that are very similar, except being affected by a regulation/institution, are compared). Such techniques have been developed
to improve on the causality claims that can be made on institutional
effects. Most of these techniques have, however, been employed to study
average student achievement, rather than inequality by social origin or
race/ethnicity.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research could expand on the number of outcomes in relation to educational systems. Much of the literature is about student test scores, final
educational attainment, or labor market entry, leaving other skills that students may or may not learn out of the picture. Given the recent surge in
studies on civic education, civic skills may be studied more explicitly in relation to the setup of educational systems. Analyzing a wider set of outcomes
may furthermore lead us more evidently to potential trade-offs in how educational systems can be organized, for instance, between reducing inequality
and preparing for work, or between preparing for work and preparing for
civic engagement.
One of the institutional characteristics that has received little attention thus
far in comparative research concerns the extent to which students can move
between different tracks throughout the educational career. Track mobility
has been shown to be relevant to reduce inequalities. Furthermore, there
are indications that there are interaction effects between institutional characteristics predicting student learning. Studying interaction effects may help
researchers avoid interpretations of results in terms of changing educational
institutions within countries, as it may reveal that a particular combination of
institutions explains the level of inequality in student learning, a combination
that may be far less easily modified by means of education policy.
A perhaps more ambitious agenda for the future would be to develop a
comparative data set on student learning that is longitudinal, that is, follow
students throughout (part of) the educational career. Longitudinal data
would provide us more rigorously with evidence of the “value-added”
schooling systems. Moreover, longitudinal data would help us understand
social background effects on student achievement and on student choices
conditional on earlier achievement, and how such patterns differ between
societies. Conclusions on the impact of educational systems have been
necessarily driven too much by cross-sectional data.
On a theoretical level, research may be more strongly concerned with specifying precise mechanisms of how inequalities are produced in particular
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
7
institutional contexts. The literature on educational system effects has been
oriented towards macro-level explanations, without clear explanations of
how families’ educational decision making is affected by institutions.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Thanks to the vast progress in data availability and quality, there is ample
evidence that the level of educational inequality by social and ethnic origin
varies across countries. Inequalities are a function of educational institutional characteristics, of which especially early differentiation has been
demonstrated to be important. A lot of issues remain unresolved, however,
in particular with regard to the precise influence and choice processes in
families in particular institutional contexts. More relevant knowledge on the
impact of educational systems may be produced if comparative longitudinal
education data were available.
FURTHER READING
Allmendinger, J. (1989). Educational systems and labor market outcomes. European
Sociological Review, 5(3), 231–250.
Brunello, G., & Checchi, D. (2007). Does school tracking affect equality of opportunity? New international evidence. Economic Policy, 22(52), 781–861.
Cobb-Clark, D. A., Sinning, M., & Stillman, S. (2012). Migrant youths’ educational
achievement the role of institutions. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 643(1), 18–45. doi:10.1177/0002716212440786
Dronkers, J., Van Der Velden, R., & Dunne, A. (2012). Why are migrant students better off in certain types of educational systems or schools than in others? European
Educational Research Journal, 11(1), 11–44. doi:10.2304/eerj.2012.11.1.11
Hanushek, E. A., & Woessmann, L. (2011). The economics of international differences
in educational achievement. In E. A. Hanushek, S. Machin & L. Woessmann (Eds.),
Handbook in the economics of education (Vol. 3, pp. 89–200). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: North-Holland/Elsevier.
Husén, T. (1973). The standard of the elite: Some findings from the IEA International
Survey in Mathematics and Science. Acta Sociologica, 16(4), 305–323.
Kerckhoff, A. C. (1995). Institutional arrangements and stratification processes in
industrial societies. Annual Review of Sociology, 15, 323–347.
Shavit, Y., & Müller, W. (1998). From school to work. A comparative study of educational
qualifications and occupational destinations. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Turner, R. H. (1960). Sponsored and contest mobility and the school system. American
Sociological Review, 25(6), 855–867.
Van de Werfhorst, H. G., & Mijs, J. J. B. (2010). Achievement Inequality and the
Institutional Structure of Educational Systems: A comparative perspective. Annual
Review of Sociology, 36, 407–428.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
HERMAN G. VAN DE WERFHORST SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Herman G. van de Werfhorst is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Amsterdam. His research is about cross-national variations in how education
is related to social inequality, the labor market, and civic engagement.
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Economies (Sociology), Heike Solga
-
Institutional Contexts
for Socioeconomic Effects
on Schooling Outcomes
HERMAN G. VAN DE WERFHORST
Abstract
In the field of stratification sociology, one of the most important developments of the
past two decades has been an improved understanding of cross-national variations
with regard to the role of education in society. The structure of educational systems
differs in important respects between countries, affecting patterns of inequality. The
central issue that will be addressed in this essay is to what extent educational institutional characteristics are related to the level of inequality of educational opportunity
(IEO) in a country. IEO refers to the association between background variables, most
notably social class origin and race/ethnicity, and schooling outcomes of children.
These outcomes include the highest attained educational level, school continuation
decisions during the educational career, and student test scores. Institutional characteristics that are discussed include early tracking, forms of standardization, the
vocational orientation, and private schooling.
INTRODUCTION
In the field of stratification sociology, one of the most important developments of the past two decades has been an improved understanding of
cross-national variations with regard to the role of education in society.
The setup of educational systems differs in important respects between
countries, and this setup affects patterns of inequality. Many characteristics
of educational systems can be seen as institutions, as they relate to (mostly
formal) rules and regulations that affect human social behavior. The “institutional turn” in the sociology of stratification has been made in two subfields,
concerning the study of inequality of educational opportunity (IEO) and the
study of the relationship between schooling and labor market outcomes.
Although this essay deals primarily with IEO, the labor market studies
have contributed significantly to the understanding of the variability of
educational institutions across countries. Moreover, in judging the possible
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
effects of educational institutions in one domain (IEO), one should bear in
mind that other outcome domains may be differently affected (such as the
labor market).
The central issue that is addressed in this essay is to what extent educational
institutional characteristics are related to the level of IEO in a country. IEO
refers to the association between background variables, most notably social
class origin and race/ethnicity, and schooling outcomes of children. These
outcomes include the highest attained educational level, school continuation
decisions during the educational career, and student test scores. Institutional
characteristics that are discussed include early tracking, forms of standardization, the vocational orientation, and private schooling.
COMPARATIVE RESEARCH ON EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
EARLY CONTRIBUTIONS
Although most of the comparative work on educational institutions and
inequality emerged from the 1990s onwards, Ralph H. Turner has laid
an important foundation with his distinction between “sponsored” and
“contest” mobility regimes in the 1960s (Turner, 1960). Comparing American
and English education systems, Turner argued that the American system of
the 1950s can be characterized as a contest mobility regime. Access to elite
positions is the “prize” of a contest in which contestants are given opportunities as equally as possible (most notably in the high school system). Individual school performance determined the educational careers of American
children, which has led to a meritocratic educational system in which the role
of social origin had been minimized, and positive school attitudes were more
equally distributed across social classes. The English system of the 1950s, by
contrast, was typical of a sponsored mobility regime, where access to elite
positions was governed by a strong alliance between the school structure and
the class structure. By the implementation of early selection into grammar,
secondary modern or technical schools, higher class families were, in this
system, able to transmit their advantage to their children. The American literature has by now provided a lot of evidence of inegalitarian characteristics
of the American high school system, in particular concerning tracking within
schools. Yet, Turner’s distinction between, on the one hand, differentiated
systems in which various school types are institutionalized with the aim of
maintaining social advantage of children of the more advantaged families,
and on the other hand comprehensive systems where equal opportunities are
governing the education of children is still relevant in the literature of today.
Studies in the early 1970s have addressed that the variety of educational
systems is a bit more complicated than the dichotomy Turner suggests.
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
3
It has been suggested that educational systems should also be classified on
the basis of standardization of the selection process of children into school
types or levels. Moreover, vertical (on learning ability) and horizontal (on
types of skills acquired) forms of stratification have been stressed.
Together, these studies have paved the way for more recent scholarship
on educational institutional variations, which has developed a classification
of educational systems that is still used in contemporary research. The
dimensions on which educational systems are mostly being classified
are the stratification of the system (in particular, curricular tracking), the
standardization of the system (e.g., in terms of central examinations, centralized curricula, or standardized allocation of resources across schools), and
the vocational orientation of the system (in particular, the extent to which
school-work linkages are set up for the production of work-relevant skills. It
has also been suggested that systems differ in ‘track mobility,” indicating the
extent to which students (or families) can enter different routes of education
at different stages in the educational career, independent of the position of a
student in the system at that point. However, comparative research on track
mobility is virtually nonexistent.
So what did early studies find with regard to the relationship between
educational institutions and IEO? Using data from the 1960s on 13-year-old
students in 12 countries, Husen (1973) analyzed whether the high achievers
were held back in comprehensive systems, and concluded that this was
not the case. Given that IEO was found to be higher in early-differentiated
systems, Husen touched upon the absence of what has later been called a
trade-off between equality and efficiency. This trade-off would be implied
if greater equality can only be achieved if lower average performances are
accepted, or higher performance can only be achieved if larger inequalities
are accepted. However, most of the literature to date has falsified the
existence of this trade-off.
THE WEALTH OF SCHOLARS: DATA IMPROVEMENTS
The past decades have seen a great improvement of comparative education
data, particularly collected among youngsters in primary and secondary
school (roughly between ages 9 and 15). The International Association for the
Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) is responsible for a number
of different studies among youth, including the Progress in International
Reading Literacy Survey (PIRLS), the Trends in International Mathematics
and Science Study (TIMSS), and the International Civic and Citizenship
Education Study (ICCS). These surveys used to have different names in
earlier rounds, but altogether comparative data have been collected since
1960. Together with the Programme for International Student Assessment
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
(PISA) data, collected regularly since 2000 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the IEA data are the most
authoritative datasets available for comparative student assessments.
The wealth of data, and the improved statistical knowledge to analyze
them, has led to a great number of studies on IEO in relation to characteristics of educational systems. Two different forms of inequality have been
addressed: inequality as dispersion (i.e., within-country variance in student
test scores), and IEO (i.e., the association between social or ethnic origin
and student test scores in a given country). These are two distinct forms of
inequality, as a limited dispersion could coincide with a rigorous placement
on the achievement scales based on social origin; or a wide dispersion could
coincide with limited effects of social origin on where in the distribution a
student would be placed. Yet, in practice the two are related.
The evidence on the relationship between early differentiation/tracking
and inequality as dispersion is mixed. Some have reported higher dispersions in countries with more intensified forms of between-school
differentiation/tracking, whereas findings of other studies do not point in
that direction.
With regard to inequality in terms of social origin effects, the topic of
this essay, the evidence is more clear: early selection in the educational
system is associated with higher levels of inequality in student test scores
by social origin. Also, with regard to educational attainment, an indicator
that reports the highest attained level of education of citizens, it has been
confirmed that social inequality in educational attainment is larger in
more strongly stratified educational systems. Studies that have explicitly
analyzed the impact of curricular tracking and vocational orientation have
reported that especially tracking, more than the vocational orientation of the
system, is related to various sorts of inequalities. Relatedly, early tracking
is known to be positively related to the dispersions in attitudes on economic
redistribution, whereas the vocational orientation of educational systems is
associated with a lower variability of opinions. More strongly differentiated
systems are also associated with more realistic expectations of students
concerning future educational attainment, which may explain the relatively
early formation of political interests. All these findings together may lead
to the conclusion that early tracking is harmful to equality and shapes
antagonized interests, whereas a strong vocational sector in the education
system functions inclusionary rather than diverging.
A more recent interest is in the institutional effects on ethnic educational
inequalities. Inequalities between migrant children and majority populations
are found to be larger in more strongly stratified education systems relative
to comprehensive systems. Other institutions that are related to lower levels
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
5
of ethnic inequality are an earlier starting age of compulsory education, the
existence of centralized examinations, and a small private schooling sector.
Many of these other institutional characteristics have also been associated
with the level of social class inequality, but the evidence there is much more
mixed. The size of the private schooling sector has been found to be uncorrelated to the level of inequality by social origin. School accountability is
associated with lower inequalities in student achievement by parental education. More generally, it has been suggested that country characteristics related
to resources have limited effects on student learning, whereas other institutional effects relating to the structure of schools have stronger impacts.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
There are several more recent developments that deserve attention. First of
all, in their comparative analysis on student achievement, a few studies have
included a third, intermediating level in the statistical analysis: the school.
Employing random intercept (or random slope) multilevel models (models that take account of the “nestedness” of students within schools), the
individual-level variance component then refers to the within-school variance, rather than the within-country variance. The inclusion of the second
level has large repercussions on the findings related to differentiation effects
on inequality. Logically, in a three-level model, the (within-school) effects of
social origin are smaller in more strongly tracked systems, given that there is
much more homogeneity within schools in such systems.
A second development concerns the study of institutional effects on
inequality in final educational attainment. While much of the literature to
date has focused on mid-teenage test scores, it is arguably more important
from a societal perspective whether inequalities in achievement translate
in inequalities in final educational attainment in the long run. More precisely, a country’s educational institutional structure seems to be related to
inequalities in educational choices conditional on achievement, suggesting
that institutions do not only affect inequality in achievement but also in
attainment over and above inequalities produced by unequal achievements.
A third development is that it is increasingly known that inequalities in
education translate into inequalities in later life, for instance, concerning
health and earnings. This new agenda illustrates that the study of educational inequalities are important to understand much wider inequalities
during later life.
A fourth development is that many advanced statistical techniques have
been employed to deal with the cross-sectional nature of most comparative
education data, including difference-in-difference designs (where changes
in inequality are compared across time between countries), instrumental
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
variables regression (where a policy reform has been used to understand
the causal effect of institutions), and regression discontinuity approaches
(where groups that are very similar, except being affected by a regulation/institution, are compared). Such techniques have been developed
to improve on the causality claims that can be made on institutional
effects. Most of these techniques have, however, been employed to study
average student achievement, rather than inequality by social origin or
race/ethnicity.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Future research could expand on the number of outcomes in relation to educational systems. Much of the literature is about student test scores, final
educational attainment, or labor market entry, leaving other skills that students may or may not learn out of the picture. Given the recent surge in
studies on civic education, civic skills may be studied more explicitly in relation to the setup of educational systems. Analyzing a wider set of outcomes
may furthermore lead us more evidently to potential trade-offs in how educational systems can be organized, for instance, between reducing inequality
and preparing for work, or between preparing for work and preparing for
civic engagement.
One of the institutional characteristics that has received little attention thus
far in comparative research concerns the extent to which students can move
between different tracks throughout the educational career. Track mobility
has been shown to be relevant to reduce inequalities. Furthermore, there
are indications that there are interaction effects between institutional characteristics predicting student learning. Studying interaction effects may help
researchers avoid interpretations of results in terms of changing educational
institutions within countries, as it may reveal that a particular combination of
institutions explains the level of inequality in student learning, a combination
that may be far less easily modified by means of education policy.
A perhaps more ambitious agenda for the future would be to develop a
comparative data set on student learning that is longitudinal, that is, follow
students throughout (part of) the educational career. Longitudinal data
would provide us more rigorously with evidence of the “value-added”
schooling systems. Moreover, longitudinal data would help us understand
social background effects on student achievement and on student choices
conditional on earlier achievement, and how such patterns differ between
societies. Conclusions on the impact of educational systems have been
necessarily driven too much by cross-sectional data.
On a theoretical level, research may be more strongly concerned with specifying precise mechanisms of how inequalities are produced in particular
Institutional Contexts for Socioeconomic Effects on Schooling Outcomes
7
institutional contexts. The literature on educational system effects has been
oriented towards macro-level explanations, without clear explanations of
how families’ educational decision making is affected by institutions.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Thanks to the vast progress in data availability and quality, there is ample
evidence that the level of educational inequality by social and ethnic origin
varies across countries. Inequalities are a function of educational institutional characteristics, of which especially early differentiation has been
demonstrated to be important. A lot of issues remain unresolved, however,
in particular with regard to the precise influence and choice processes in
families in particular institutional contexts. More relevant knowledge on the
impact of educational systems may be produced if comparative longitudinal
education data were available.
FURTHER READING
Allmendinger, J. (1989). Educational systems and labor market outcomes. European
Sociological Review, 5(3), 231–250.
Brunello, G., & Checchi, D. (2007). Does school tracking affect equality of opportunity? New international evidence. Economic Policy, 22(52), 781–861.
Cobb-Clark, D. A., Sinning, M., & Stillman, S. (2012). Migrant youths’ educational
achievement the role of institutions. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 643(1), 18–45. doi:10.1177/0002716212440786
Dronkers, J., Van Der Velden, R., & Dunne, A. (2012). Why are migrant students better off in certain types of educational systems or schools than in others? European
Educational Research Journal, 11(1), 11–44. doi:10.2304/eerj.2012.11.1.11
Hanushek, E. A., & Woessmann, L. (2011). The economics of international differences
in educational achievement. In E. A. Hanushek, S. Machin & L. Woessmann (Eds.),
Handbook in the economics of education (Vol. 3, pp. 89–200). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: North-Holland/Elsevier.
Husén, T. (1973). The standard of the elite: Some findings from the IEA International
Survey in Mathematics and Science. Acta Sociologica, 16(4), 305–323.
Kerckhoff, A. C. (1995). Institutional arrangements and stratification processes in
industrial societies. Annual Review of Sociology, 15, 323–347.
Shavit, Y., & Müller, W. (1998). From school to work. A comparative study of educational
qualifications and occupational destinations. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Turner, R. H. (1960). Sponsored and contest mobility and the school system. American
Sociological Review, 25(6), 855–867.
Van de Werfhorst, H. G., & Mijs, J. J. B. (2010). Achievement Inequality and the
Institutional Structure of Educational Systems: A comparative perspective. Annual
Review of Sociology, 36, 407–428.
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
HERMAN G. VAN DE WERFHORST SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Herman G. van de Werfhorst is Professor of Sociology at the University of
Amsterdam. His research is about cross-national variations in how education
is related to social inequality, the labor market, and civic engagement.
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