Social differentiation in career decision-making processes and higher education intentions: the role of family background and school composition in the use of different sources of information

ABSTRACT

The way in which young people’s post-school intentions and pathways reflect their social background has been the subject of a good deal of research. However, much less attention has been paid to social differentiation in the amount and kind of career guidance information received by young people and its role in reinforcing or ameliorating social differentiation in transitions. This article contributes by examining the extent to which sources of information and guidance activities vary by social background and school social mix and the consequences of this variation for intentions to go on to higher education. The paper draws on data from a large-scale longitudinal study of young people in Ireland, the Growing Up in Ireland study. It finds that young people from more advantaged backgrounds are much more reliant on their parents as a source of information and advice, reflecting access to insider knowledge of the educational system, and are more likely to pay for private guidance services. In contrast, young people from less advantaged backgrounds and those attending schools with a concentration of working-class students are more reliant on school-based sources of information, though these resources are insufficient to boost their chances of making the transition to higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• guidance
• social class
• school composition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. There are also a number of private higher education institutions. Since the period covered by the data, five technological universities have been formed by the amalgamation of institutes of technology.

2. A fifth of the cohort was actually 18 years of age at the time of the interview. However, for ease of presentation, the young people are referred to as 17-year-olds in this article.

3. Mother’s and father’s educational levels are strongly correlated. Mother’s education is used here given previous research indicating it having a stronger effect on child achievement than that of fathers (see, for example, Sylva et al., 2010).

4. For the purposes of the factor analysis and models, those who did not use a particular source of information were assigned to the ‘not very important’ category.

5. This approach was seen as clearer than using interaction terms between guidance and social background, given the difficulty in interpreting interaction effects.

Additional information

Funding

Growing Up in Ireland data were accessed through the Irish Social Science Data Archive, UCD. This research was partially funded by the Understanding Inequalities project. Understanding Inequalities (UI) was a three-year project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [ESRC Grant Reference ES/P009301/1], which aimed to explore the causes and consequences of inequalities in Scottish society and beyond.

Notes on contributors

Emer Smyth

Emer Smyth is a Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), adjunct Professor at Trinity College Dublin and Principal Investigator of the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study. Her main research interests centre on education, school to work transitions, gender and comparative methodology. She has conducted a number of studies on the effects of schooling contexts on student outcomes and educational inequality has been an important focus of her research. Her work has increasingly adopted a broader view of education, looking at the way in which out-of-school activities influence within-school learning and the impact of school processes on broader wellbeing, including socio-emotional difficulties, anti-social behaviour and health behaviour.