Ward Nouwen

The Role of Teacher–Pupil Relations in Stereotype Threat Effects in Flemish Secondary Education

This study aims to test stereotype threat theory hypotheses using a pupil survey database from Flemish urban secondary education characterized by a stratified tracking system. We relate these systemic features to stereotype threat effects by adding teacher–pupil relations to our analyses. Our results show that stigmatized groups—ethnic minority pupils in vocational education—experience the most negative teacher–pupil relations. To protect their academic self-concept from stereotype threat, they are also most vulnerable to psychological disengagement, discounting negative teacher feedback, and to disidentification from education. Moreover, teacher–pupil relations play an important role in explaining stereotype threat effects.

Switching practices in vocational education: A comparative case study in Flanders (Belgium) and the Netherlands

Various studies have shown how institutional arrangements in education determine further education and occupational opportunities. By combining the wider literature on the effects of institutional arrangements with the studies on pupils’ aspirations, this chapter aims to explore how institutional arrangements in education may influence pupils’ aspirations. For this, we contrast the stories of two 15-year-old ethnic white working-class girls with a similar aspiration, but attending two internationally very different schools, namely a Dutch lower vocational secondary school, and an English state-funded comprehensive secondary school. Their stories were recorded over a two-year period as part of a larger ethnographic study on the aspiration of ethnic white working-class girls in secondary schools. Through the concepts, reasons and resources of pupils’ aspirations these stories will be analysed to unravel how specific features in the Dutch and English education systems influence the distinctive ways of shaping their aspirations.Ethnic and social inequalities in education are persistent in Flanders (Belgium) and the Netherlands, and these inequalities can be strengthened or weakened through particular features of educational systems. In this chapter, we focus on one particular aspect that shapes the educational routes of young people to acquire an educational qualification, namely switching practices. We aim to shed light on and compare the switching practices between fields of study/tracks during one’s educational trajectory, in and outside mainstream vocational secondary education. Our findings indicate that in both systems, youngsters had distinct institutionalized opportunities to change track/field of study during their educational career. In the Dutch educational system, youngsters are more institutionally supported when changing from more vocational to more academic tracks or fields of study. In Flanders, youngsters could more easily change between fields of study within the vocational track during the academic year, which could help them to more efficiently discover a field of study that matches their interests and abilities, but also lead to more confusion, random changes and a lack of direction. In both systems, policy makers should pay more attention to the guidance of students when making choices, across educational programmes, institutions and schools.The concluding chapter presents policy advice synthesised from the five-year findings and publications of the Reducing Early School Leaving in Europe (RESL.eu) project. The first section offers insights gleaned from extensive qualitative research on mainstream secondary education and alternative learning pathways in the project’s data collection countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. We present an evaluation of intervention, prevention and compensatory measures for all seven countries, pinpointing effective measures as well as challenges in implementing them. Drawing on RESL.eu survey data and qualitative fieldwork, the second section discusses the significant protective factors for school engagement. We provide an overview of patterns in early school leaving (ESL) and main protective factors identified per country. The chapter closes with national comparisons and recommendations, relevant for school stakeholders, school-level policy makers and other interested parties.

How to support and engage students in alternative forms of education and training? A qualitative study of school staff members in Flanders

Abstract This study focuses on how students, who for a variety of reasons struggle in mainstream secondary schools, can be supported and engaged by alternative forms of education and training to attain a (formal) qualification. Interviews and focus groups are carried out with school staff members of distinct types of alternative learning arenas in Flanders (northern part of Belgium): second chance secondary education, part-time apprenticeship track and part-time work-based vocational education. Our analyses reveal that, due to the selectiveness of mainstream secondary education, staff members in alternative learning arenas mainly struggle with the ways to develop inclusive curricula/practices and with the actual content of the curricula of their educational training or programme they are supposed to teach. Staff members struggle with putting into practice the fundamental aim to prepare socially vulnerable students for their future lives. Debates within the school team focus upon the relative importance of transferrable, specialist and social skills and competences. Results of this study are discussed to further enhance the professionalisation of school teams, and can be seen as the starting point to specify and develop the curriculum taught in both alternative learning arenas and mainstream secondary education.

Meritocracy, deficit thinking and the invisibility of the system

Socio-ethnic stratification and segregation processes present in Flemish society are reflected in the everyday school environment. Pupils with a different socio-ethnic background than the dominant majority and middle class seem to be confronted with a lot of difficulties in this school system. The dominant meritocratic discourse frequently applies a deficit thinking perspective to frame educational success and failure, focusing on deficiencies originating outside of the school. In this paper we analyse newly collected survey data (N = 11,015 pupils) and a large amount of qualitative data (from pupils, parents, teachers, principals) to answer our two main research questions: (i) how is educational success/failure defined, and (ii) how is educational success/failure explained? The factor analyses as well as the qualitative analyses illustrate how the idea of meritocracy relates to individualistic features such as effort, merit and competence. However, the findings also reveal that this individualistic approach goes hand-in-hand with a focus on the family environment and ‘culture’ which seems to limit individual agency to a large extent. In these discourses, pupils, parents and even teachers are presented as being largely determined by their direct social environment with almost no regard for social inequalities within the educational system. The paper ends with a discussion on how processes of victimization and the denial of systemic bias, influence educational trajectories and proposes a different approach to multiculturalism and the appreciation of cultural background and specific family resources as positive elements in these trajectories.