Systemic obstacles to lifelong learning: the influence of the educational system design on learning attitudes

ABSTRACT

Comparative research has often emphasized the importance of external barriers (e.g. enrolment costs) to explain inequalities in lifelong learning participation. However, individuals, in particular the low educated, are often not only prevented from participation by external barriers, but also by negative psychological dispositions about learning. In this article, we study how dispositions about learning as measured in PIAAC (2012) vary between countries. In particular, we assess how these cross-country differences are related to a number of design characteristics of the initial school system. We improve the cross-sectional research design by controlling attitudes among adults for attitudes collected among primary school students, making use of diff-in-diff and pseudo-panel-techniques. Overall, we find that strong external differentiation mechanisms, in particular tracking students at a young age and making extensively use of grade retention, are associated with less positive attitudes towards learning among adults. However, a number of methodological issues, related to small country samples and differences in data definition between surveys, calls for further investigation.

KEYWORDS:

• Learning attitudes
• initial education
• system characteristics
• external differentiation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Jeroen Lavrijsen is a senior research associate at HIVA – KU Leuven (Research Institute for Work and Society). He investigates the effect of educational system design in the medium-long term (acquisition of qualifications, transition to the labor market) with special attention to patterns of social inequality in these processes.

Prof. Dr. Ides Nicaise works as a research manager at HIVA – KU Leuven (Research Institute for Work and Society). His research focuses on the economics of education as well as on poverty and social exclusion.

Notes

1. It is interesting to compare the results from PIAAC with those from the Adult Education Survey (2011) (cf. Boeren 2014). In contrast to PIAAC, where not wanting to participate was accepted as a sufficient explanation for not participating, in the AES respondents in this case were asked again if any external barrier (such as costs or family responsibilities) then made them not wanting to participate. Indeed, a majority among those not wanting to participate reported such an underlying barrier Unfortunately, the AES is of relatively little further use here due to severe differences between countries in the way the relevant variables were collected (Lavrijsen and Nicaise 2015).

2. In early tracking countries grade retention is often massively used as well. The ‘uniform integration’ category only contains countries that combine a massive reliance on grade retention with a formally undifferentiated lower cycle.

3. See Hanushek and Woessmann (2006) for an application of this technique to investigate the effect of secondary educational system design on skill gaps between weak and strong students.

4. Since the readiness to learn index only can have a limited number of levels, these will be estimated with an ordered logit model. The probability of expressing aversion towards learning will be estimated with a logistic model.

5. When more than one respondent occupies a cell, we average out their aggregate attitudes.

6. As we have only one ability grouping country left in this sample, we cannot investigate its effect.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Flemish Government (Policy Research Centre ‘Educational and School Careers’).