Educational systems differ across countries. The latest comparative research has mainly focused on tracking i.e., the grouping of students for instructional purposes based on actual or assumed differences in academic development or interests.
The seminar introduces the different ways in which tracking takes place and provides a sociological tool to analyse its consequence on different outcomes such as competence development, intelligence, educational aspirations, attitudes towards learning, political engagement and social, gender and ethnic inequality of educational opportunity. In the seminar, we will also focus on teachers and their role in tracked systems.
Course objectives:
- Understand how macro factors influence micro-processes
- Define and identify the ways in which tracking takes place
- Examine how tracking influences different micro-level outcomes