Social capital and aspirations for educational attainment: a cross-national comparison of Australia and Germany

Abstract

With the emergence of ‘knowledge economies’ across the industrialised world, transitions from school to work have generally become more complex and uncertain. Nonetheless, such developments vary between countries, as young people form aspirations which align with their individual preferences, academic abilities and the economic, cultural and social capital to which they have access. Previous research emphasises the positive influence social capital received from parents and school networks has on young people's developing aspirations. Meanwhile, the social capital young people generate for themselves through ‘out-of-school’ activities is often construed as either irrelevant or problematic. In this paper, we examine the relationship between this latter dimension of social capital and the educational aspirations of young people in Australia (aged 14/15; n = 3586) and Germany (aged 14/15; n = 2517). Both countries have distinct institutional settings with varied school-to-work transition regimes. Our results show that youth-derived social capital, generated through participation in out-of school extra-curricular activities, mediates the association between parental background and educational aspirations in both countries. We suggest that, by exposing young people to broader sets of values, skills and resources not accessible within the family and the school context, such involvement may be important for promoting educational aspirations and attainment.

Keywords:

• schooling
• labour market
• transition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

German data for this paper are from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort 4 (9th grade), doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC4:1.1.0. The NEPS data collection is part of the Framework Programme for the Promotion of Empirical Educational Research, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and supported by the Federal States. Australian data for this paper are from the Social Futures and Life Pathways (‘Our Lives’) project, Wave 2, http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/ourlives/. The Our Lives data collection is funded by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP0557667], [grant number DP0878781].