Disentangling the Interplay of the Sense of School Belonging and Institutional Channels in Individuals’ Educational Trajectories.

Accumulating evidence indicates that students’ sense of school belonging has a substantial posi-tive effect on educational attainment. At the same time, life-course and life-span developmental theories suggest that the benefits of a sense of school belonging could be weakened by the channelling effects of education systems that assign students to distinct educational tracks that lead otherwise similar students to quite different educational destinations. The current study analysed the extent to which the sense of school belonging predicted educational trajectories in a system that partially channels students into distinct tracks. It assessed educational trajectories as they relate to transitions at two critical junctures of the system — the transition from lower- to upper-secondary education, and from upper-secondary to tertiary (university) education. The study used data from a panel survey that followed participants from age 15 to 30 (n = 4986). Findings from structural equation models indicated that students with a stronger sense of school belonging were significantly more likely to continue in or transition into academic tracks, but that the benefits of students’ sense of belonging were bounded by the system’s channelling structure. While, for students in academic tracks, the sense of school belonging strongly predicted the probability of continuing in academic tracks, it only marginally predicted the probability of moving into academic tracks for those whose educational career began in more vocationally oriented tracks. Hence the sense of school belonging may influence academic trajectories only inasmuch as institutional structures allow it to, because these structures differentially enable and constrain such trajectories

Revisiting the power of future expectations and educational path dependencies

Individuals from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and those with loftier future expectations typically have higher educational attainment. However, it is important to understand just how consequential future expectations are for educational attainment independent of socioeconomic origins because these expectations might enable intergenerational social mobility. Moreover, it is unclear whether institutional structures moderate the influences of socioeconomic origins and future expectations on educational attainment. I address these questions by analyzing educational attainment as it relates to transitions in a system that offers multiple educational tracks. Using data from a 15-year longitudinal study conducted in Switzerland (N = 4986), I analyze transitions from lower- to upper-secondary education (academic vs. vocational tracks) and from there to university. Path models reveal that both socioeconomic origins and future expectations are significantly associated with individuals' probability of moving along academic paths and into university, but future expectations have a strong unique predictive power even when controlling for socioeconomic origins. However, because the education system partially channels educational trajectories along distinct educational tracks, it minimizes the beneficial effect of future expectations on educational attainment and by extension intergenerational social mobility. I conclude that socioeconomic advantage and optimistic future expectations may only shape educational attainment to the extent that institutional opportunity structures allow such resources to take effect

Disentangling the interplay of the sense of belonging and institutional channels in individuals’ educational trajectories

Accumulating evidence indicates that students’ sense of school belonging has a substantial positive effect on educational attainment. At the same time, life course and life span developmental theories suggest that the benefits of a sense of school belonging could be weakened by the channeling effects of education systems that assign students to distinct educational tracks that lead otherwise similar students to quite different educational destinations. The current study analyzed the extent to which the sense of school belonging predicted educational trajectories in a system that partially channels students into distinct tracks. It assessed educational trajectories as they relate to transitions at two critical junctures of the system—the transition from lower- to upper-secondary education, and from upper-secondary to tertiary (university) education. The study used data from a nationally representative panel survey that followed participants from age 15 to 30 (N = 4,986, 44% male, 12.9% immigrants). Findings indicated that students with a stronger sense of school belonging were more likely to continue in or transition into academic tracks. However, the benefits of students’ sense of belonging were bounded by the system’s channeling structure. While for students in academic tracks, the sense of school belonging strongly predicted the probability of continuing in academic tracks, it only marginally predicted the probability of moving into academic tracks for those whose educational career began in more vocationally oriented tracks. Hence the sense of school belonging may influence academic trajectories only inasmuch as institutional structures allow it to, because these structures differentially enable and constrain such trajectories

Can children break the cycle of disadvantage? Structure and agency in the transmission of education across generations

Research has shown that parents tend to pass educational advantage or disadvantage on to their children. However, little is known about the extent to which the intergenerational transmission of education involves children’s agency. In this study we drew from two traditions in sociological and social psychological theorizing—the theory of cultural and social reproduction and the theory of human agency—to examine whether agency influences children’s educational performance, and if so, whether this influence can be observed among children across social classes. We used data from the Spanish sample of the Program for International Student Assessment (N = 25,003 15-year-olds). Results indicate that the level of child agency was weakly positively related to social class, that child agency impacted on a child’s educational performance, and that the positive effect of agency on educational performance did not vary by social class. This suggests that strategies to enhance disadvantaged children’s agency may prove useful in reducing social gradients in educational performance. More generally, our findings may ignite a debate about the role that social structure and human agency play in shaping social inequality and mobility

Mental health, gender, and higher education attainment

We compared the mental health of higher education students with that of nonstudents. Moreover, we examined whether the mental health of students predicts their probability of obtaining a higher education degree, and whether the extent to which mental health affects educational attainment varies by gender. Drawing on a risk and resilience framework, we considered five facets of mental health that may be implicated in distinct ways in the educational attainment process: positive attitude towards life, self-esteem, self-efficacy, negative affectivity, and perceived stress. We used data from a nationally representative panel study from Switzerland (N$_{students}$ = 2070, 42.8% male; N$_{nonstudents}$ = 3755, 45.9% male). The findings suggest that overall, the mental health of higher education students was relatively similar to that of nonstudents, although students exhibited slightly higher self-esteem, slightly weaker self-efficacy, greater negative affectivity, and higher levels of perceived stress. The effects of different facets of mental health on higher education degree attainment were mostly statistically and/or practically insignificant. However, positive attitudes towards life had a substantial positive effect on the probability of being awarded a higher education degree. Mental health was equally important for male and female students’ educational attainment

A multistate model for early decision making in oncology

The development of oncology drugs progresses through multiple phases, where after each phase a decision is made about whether to move a molecule forward. Early phase efficacy decisions are often made on the basis of single arm studies based on RECIST tumor response as endpoint. This decision rules are implicitly assuming some form of surrogacy between tumor response and long-term endpoints like progression-free survival (PFS) or overall survival (OS). The surrogacy is most often assessed as weak, but sufficient to allow a rapid decision making as early phase studies lack the survival follow up and number of patients to properly assess PFS or OS. With the emergence of therapies with new mechanisms of action, for which the link between RECIST tumor response and long-term endpoints is either not accessible yet because not enough data is available to perform a meta-regression, or the link is weaker than with classical chemotherapies, tumor response based rules may not be optimal. In this paper, we explore the use of a multistate model for decision making based on single-arm early phase trials. The multistate model allows to account for more information than the simple RECIST response status, namely, the time to get to response, the duration of response, the PFS time and time to death. We propose to base the decision on efficacy on the OS hazard ratio (HR), predicted from a multistate model based on early phase data with limited survival follow-up, combined with historical control data. Using three case studies and simulations, we illustrate the feasibility of the estimation of the OS HR using a multistate model based on limited data from early phase studies. We argue that, in the presence of limited follow up and small sample size, and on assumptions within the multistate model, the OS prediction is acceptable and may lead to better decisions for continuing the development of a drug

L'analyse du droit à l'éducation des enfants réfugiés en Côte d'Ivoire au regard de la politique d'intégration dans le système éducatif ivoirien

Parmi les différents principes de la Convention relative aux droits de l’enfant (ci-après : CDE), ceux concernant l’accès à l’éducation en constituent un élément clé. Les réfugiés, du fait de leur statut, représentent une population fragilisée et particulièrement vulnérable, surtout parce qu’elle ne maîtrise pas son avenir. Or, pour aider les réfugiés à accéder à un peu de normalité et à se reconstruire, il faut leur donner de l’espoir et qui mieux que l’École peut participer à cette démarche. La recherche que nous avons menée traite justement de l’éducation des enfants réfugiés, à travers le cas de la Côte d’Ivoire. Il s’agira en particulier d’étudier la politique d’intégration des enfants réfugiés dans le système éducatif ivoirien. L’étude portera sur les différentes politiques expérimentées en Côte d’Ivoire au profit des enfants réfugiés et sur les résultats obtenus. Enfin, des recommandations seront suggérées de façon à optimiser le rôle des différents acteurs concernés