Strategic knowledge and migrant-specific inequalities in educational attainment in Germany

• Applicant: Dr. Melanie Olczyk
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2021 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465927481

Migrant-specific inequalities in educational attainment are observed across the entire educational career in Germany. While children and adolescents of immigrant origin attain below-average results in achievement tests more often, ambitious educational aspirations and educational decisions are observed more frequently for this group, given the same performance and socio-economic background. One possible explanation for this is the endowment with strategic knowledge about the German education system. Knowledge of the available educational options and means of support, their advantages and disadvantages, and the prerequisites for them, as well as knowledge of one's own room for maneuver, are important resources that can be used strategically in the educational process. Immigrant families whose parents acquired their educational and vocational qualifications abroad may have limited information about the educational system in Germany. Consequently, educational differences between children and adolescents from immigrant and long-term resident families could also be based on the degree of information available to the families. Therefore, the overarching goal of this project is to examine the importance of strategic knowledge in explaining migrant-specific differences in the transition to lower secondary education. For this purpose, the arguments mentioned in the literature are incorporated within the framework of an action-theoretical model. The focus hereby is on the elaboration of theoretical considerations with regard to the transition decision at the end of primary school, taking into account different aspects of knowledge. Based on this, differentiated predictions for different groups of origin, generations (own immigration, immigration of parents, grandparents) as well as different regulations for the transition can be derived. The theoretically derived expectations will then be tested with NEPS data, namely with the data of the Starting Cohort 2.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants