Marina Tavčar Krajnc

Cultural Capital and Intellectual Ability as Predictors of Scholastic Achievement: A Study of Slovenian Secondary School Students.

Cultural capital, originally a general sociological concept, has been transformed into a construct that is often applied in predicting scholastic attainment. Intellectual ability (IQ) has also been proven to be a strong, although basically psychological, predictor of educational attainment. However, these strands of research have hardly been contrasted in terms of their predictive power and in terms of their potential interaction. In the current study of Slovenian secondary school students, the results indicated that both constructs had statistically significant predictive power, both as to attainment and as to transition into type of secondary education. Results also indicated that: both constructs were fairly robust, as their predictive power remained statistically significant even after control variables were entered into the model; and they operated independently as results indicated no interaction between these constructs. The ‘return’ on cultural capital was greater for students whose parents had lower educational status.

External and internal assessment in the final examination in secondary schools in Slovenia

This article examines the introduction of the final examination as an external national system of assessment of students in the transition from secondary school to university education. Since 1991 Slovenia has followed foreign models, the British one in particular; however, it has also considered its own traditional system of education. Students take the final examination (the matura) in three compulsory and two elective subjects; of which sociology can be one. A case study considering this subject demonstrates how external assessment can be fine tuned using internally supervised and assessed project work, in which seminar essays are produced. This article conducts a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the essays and structured questions forming the written examination; the same procedure is applied in the case of seminar essays. Also included are the opinions and experiences of students regarding their preparations for the final examination and their work in the seminars; the students’ feedback is decidedly positive. So far, the external and the internal results have shown little correlation, a fact that points to certain problems in the final examination assessment system. The positive results in sociology, considered in this contribution, suggest that it would be worthwhile applying similar assessment strategies in other subjects. It is, however, impossible to provide a straightforward answer to the question of a positive impact of the final examination on the desired improvement in the quality of the education process.

Predictors of Conventional, Protest, and Civic Participation among Slovenian Youth: A Test of the Civic Voluntarism Model

The purpose of the study was to compare the predictive power of three sets of determinants in Civic Voluntarism Model (CVM) on three dimensions of citizen participation. We analysed a representative sample of Slovenian Youth 2010 study (N = 1,257, Mage = 22.5 years, 48.8 % female). Results indicated that 1) CVM explained the largest amount of variance in protest participation (25 %), followed by conventional participation (17 %), and civic participation (8 %); 2) political culture and social networks models were separately the strongest explanatory models, while resources model was the weakest; 3) political interest, female gender, postmaterialist values, more frequent church attendance and discussions of politics with parents all had a significant positive impact on two out of three citizen participation dimensions of Slovenian youth. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of the democratic theory and the future of democratic consolidation processes in post-communist countries.