Andreas Hadjar

• Dr. phil. habil.
• Professor in Sociology at University of Fribourg

This study investigates researcher variability in computational reproduction, an activity for which it is least expected. Eighty-five independent teams attempted numerical replication of results from an original study of policy preferences and immigration. Reproduction teams were randomly grouped into a ‘transparent group’ receiving original study...

Equity in Education: A Handbook for Participative Approaches in Research and Development to Address School Inequalities t has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 101004653. This handbook stands out for its focus on participatory and co-creative approaches that place marg...

Wegweisende Bildungspraktiken in Luxemburg: O bwohl in den letzten Jahrzehnten europaweit eine Reihe von Maß-nahmen zur Bekämpfung von Bildungsungleichheiten implementiert wurde, gibt es nach wie vor besorgniserregende Bildungsungleichheiten, wenn auch mit unterschiedlichem Schweregrad. Auch in Luxemburg wei-sen die Nationalen Bildungsberichte 2015...

The discourse on school effects on educational inequality has been extensively explored within the field of sociology of education. This systematic review of multilevel modelling studies conducted in primary schools aims to identify main school-level factors explaining achievement differences. A search of the Web of Science and ERIC databases yield...

This Forum contribution, instead of following typical research article format, provides selected insights from the PATH_CH-LUX project on school-to-work transitions of young people with disabilities in Switzerland and Luxembourg, which examines drivers and barriers using a cross-national, mixed-methods approach. The project focuses on three perspec...

This study examines implementation factors of a pioneering plurilingual policy designed to foster language development in early childhood education and care in Luxembourg. Using a mixed-method design, combining qualitative expert interviews and a quantitative survey, it offers insights from both policy- and practice-level perspectives on factors th...

Migration is a core issue of the social sciences, including sociology, social policy and social work, and yet, the impact of social policies on the life chances of migrants has to date not received much attention. In this editorial contribution, we introduce this theme by first outlining migration as an axis of inequality and how welfare states, as...

This is the third and final of multiple themed issues of International Journal of Comparative Sociology ( IJCS) dedicated to the question of how education systems shape educational inequalities in terms of systematic variations access to and uptake of education along certain axes of inequality such as social origin, gender, and immigrant background...

Social origin affects not only access to higher education but also how students proceed through higher education. Based on the argument that an advantageous family background facilitates linear study trajectories through parents’ provision of cultural and economic resources, this article investigates study trajectories in Germany and the United Sta...

Habitus plays a crucial part in Bourdieu's theory of sociocultural reproduction for understanding the persistence of inequalities in the education system. According to Bourdieu, students from homes that are heavily equipped with cultural capital develop a specific kind of habitus, that is, modes of perceiving, thinking, and acting, remarkably well‐...

In recent decades, much sociological inquiry has focused on whether and to what extent education systems are capable of compensating for and equalizing social inequalities. While earlier studies have mainly focused on educational inequalities and their relationship with individual students’ characteristics (e.g., Boudon, 1974; Bourdieu, 1984); or s...

This introductory article to the themed issue on Intersectionality and Social Inequalities Beyond Social Origin highlights some of the debates on social inequality and the historical and theoretical background of intersectionality. It outlines the connections between social inequalites and social policies, e.g., in that social policies aim to reduc...

Higher education is expected to contribute to graduates becoming active citizens of democratic societies. Still, little is known about how heterogeneities within higher education are connected to political participation. This study centres on differences in the type of institution, kind of degree and field of study and their relationship with varia...

Die Bedeutung der Schule als Bildungsinstitution nahm mit der Einführung der Schulpflicht im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert in vielen Regionen Europas zu. Aus der Industrialisierung in den europäischen Ländern ergab sich einerseits die Notwendigkeit der Alphabetisierung der breiten Bevölkerung und andererseits – im Zuge der zunehmenden Arbeitsteilung sowi...

Die 22. Ausgabe der IFS-Jahrbuchreihe befasst sich mit dem Thema »Multiperspektivität von Unterrichtsprozessen«. Die neun Beiträge betrachten die Perspektiven der Lernenden (z. B. Studien zur Entwicklung von Leistungsmotivation, gender-spezifischen Entwicklungsverläufen), der Lehrenden (z. B. Studien zum Training und Entwicklung beruflicher Kompete...

Research question: The current study aimed to investigate the influence of student and school level factors on school tracking in secondary education. We were especially interested in the association between student characteristics and school composition in Grade 3 and school track in Grade 9. Data source: Data were collected as part of the Luxemb...

Background Whilst much interest is focused on gender, and classroom-level influences such as and classroom composition and teaching style on achievement, attitudinal outcomes have not received the same attention. This paper focuses on alienation from learning as one sub-dimension of school alienation. School alienation is a relevant issue for all t...

This study explores how researchers' analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in...

Subjektives Wohlbefinden und Gesundheit sind grundlegende Voraussetzungen für erfolgreiche Bildungsprozesse in der Schule. Inwieweit gesundheitliche Probleme und mangelndes Wohlbefinden im Zuge der Schullaufbahn bei bestimmten Risikogruppen wie Schülerinnen und Schülern aus benachteiligten Schichten und Einwanderungsgruppen gehäuft auftreten, ist s...

This mixed-method research study aims at an analysis of the role of teaching styles in the development of school alienation and behavioral consequences. Applying an in-depth design, this study combines a quantitative panel study, a student survey (grades 5–6), and qualitative focus groups with Luxembourgish primary school students (grade 6). Method...

This is the second special issue of the International Journal of Comparative Sociology on the role of education systems as institutional settings on the reproduction of inequalities. The first was published in January 2021 and included papers that explored the role of shadow education and country characteristics during early childhood on educationa...

Based on the classic models developed by Spady and Tinto on the link between social and academic integration and dropout, we propose a refined model to explain dropout intentions – relating to dropout from higher education (HE) and dropout from a specific study programme – that more strongly emphasises individual background characteristics (e.g. ge...

This paper focuses on disability, an under-researched area of inequality, and subjective well-being. According to social production function theory, people with a disability do not have the same opportunities as people without disabilities to obtain resources, instrumental goals, and ultimately subjective well-being. Social participation and employ...

Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies

Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies

Luxemburg hat im Mai 2019 erstmals am internationalen Projekt ,Eurostudent‘, das Studien- und Lebensbedingungen der Studierenden in Europa untersucht, teilgenommen. Hierzu wurden flächendeckend Befragungen von Studierenden an luxemburgischen Hochschuleinrichtungen durchgeführt.

The second special issue of International Journal of Comparative Sociology (IJCS) on the role of education systems as institutional settings on the reproduction of inequalities includes three papers that focus on stratification of the education system as key driver of educational inequalities, the role of digital inequalities in the school and beyo...

Prior research has shown that socialization agents such as parents, peers, and teachers can play a significant role in adolescents’ educational outcomes, both through direct support or indirectly via supportive attitudes that foster students’ bonding to school and academic motivation. However, less is known about the effects of parent and peer supp...

A core debate in authoritarianism research relates to the stability of authoritarianism, i.e., whether it is a dispositional phenomenon socialized in early childhood or even genetically predisposed, or whether it is impacted by time-sensitive, exterior conditions. Whereas certain individual authoritarian tendencies emerge as a rather stable persona...

The paper reports findings from a crowdsourced replication. Eighty-four replicator teams attempted to verify results reported in an original study by running the same models with the same data. The replication involved an experimental condition. A “transparent” group received the original study and code, and an “opaque” group received the same unde...

This paper reports findings from a crowdsourced replication. Eighty-five independent teams attempted a computational replication of results reported in an original study of policy preferences and immigration by fitting the same statistical models to the same data. The replication involved an experimental condition. Random assignment put participati...

Findings from 162 researchers in 73 teams testing the same hypothesis with the same data reveal a universe of unique analytical possibilities leading to a broad range of results and conclusions. Surprisingly, the outcome variance mostly cannot be explained by variations in researchers’ modeling decisions or prior beliefs. Each of the 1,261 test mod...

This study explores how researchers’ analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to include conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis and that may lead to diverging results. We coordinated 16...

Existing studies show that there is a positive association between pro-migrant integration policies and the subjective well-being of immigrants. However, there is a lack of research elucidating the relations between migrant integration policies and the subjective well-being of the host (i.e., non-migrant) population. This study is based on European...

Online or internet gaming disorder (IGD) is currently not recognized as a mental disorder in the actual Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), although it is an emerging disease. Non-substance-related addictions often have similarities with substance addictions. It is therefore important to have a good understanding of the c...

This is the introduction into the first of multiple themed issues of International Journal of Comparative Sociology (IJCS) that are dedicated to the role of education systems as institutional settings on the reproduction of inequalities. While Introduction I presents the research program, outlines a conceptual background and discusses methodologica...

This article reports a study that investigated secondary school students’ higher education aspirations (towards university studies, ISCED 6 and above) and how these differ between student groups as well as how these are impacted by values of education. Panel data of more than 300 secondary school students in two countries, Luxembourg and Switzerlan...

What students think about school has a major impact on learning and academic achievement. The multi-domain concept of school alienation distinguishes between alienation from learning, from teachers and from classmates. We aim to study a) alienation patterns among secondary school students, b) how school alienation profiles change from year 7 to yea...

Die Bedeutung der Schule als Bildungsinstitution nahm mit der Einführung der Schulpflicht im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert in vielen Regionen Europas zu. Aus der Industrialisierung in den europäischen Ländern ergab sich einerseits die Notwendigkeit der Alphabetisierung der breiten Bevölkerung und andererseits – im Zuge der zunehmenden Arbeitsteilung sowi...

This article presents empirical results from a study (2015–2018) on young people leaving care in Luxembourg. A special focus deals with the processes of transitioning from care to work. Education appears to be crucial for a successful transition, as it determines life chances, such as labour market chances, but so far inequality studies have neithe...

Because not much is known about children’s subjective well-being (SWB) in educational spaces, our objective was to analyze children’s drawings of their ideal school environment, emphasizing the importance of obtaining the children’s perspective. To do so, we analyzed Luxembourgish primary school children’s drawings (n = 150; age 10) using visual gr...

Concerted cultivation practices are not only explained by parents’ objective resources, but also by parents’ cultural orientations, which are associated with social class. While cultural orientations of parenting styles in Western societies have been studied, the role of beliefs in social reproduction in other parts of the world is still under-rese...

Concerted cultivation practices are not only explained by parents’ objective resources, but also by parents’ cultural orientations, which are associated with social class. While cultural orientations of parenting styles in Western societies have been studied, the role of beliefs in social reproduction in other parts of the world is still under-rese...

With the increasing availability of high-quality longitudinal data on students in higher education, scholars’ interest in how students proceed through higher education has risen. So far, the research field is diverse in theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Thus, based on 27 studies published in (higher) education research journal...

Early adolescence represents a particularly sensitive period in the life of young learners, which is accompanied by an increase in school alienation. Due to its harmful nature (Hascher and Hadjar in Educ Res 60:171–188, 2018. 10.1080/00131881.2018.1443021), school alienation may lead to unfavorable consequences such as low academic achievement (Joh...

In this article, we discuss the question of why only a few men decide to study social science courses such as social work. While the conceptual base of our analysis includes the theory of planned behaviour and theories centring on gender role orientations, the empirical base is a random cluster sample of high-school graduates in Switzerland. The re...

Many approaches to explaining educational inequalities relate explicitly and implicitly to benefits of education, and rational choice theories in particular consider monetary benefits. We specify a concept of the value of education that allows for an empirical analysis of educational benefits, considering both monetary and non-monetary dimensions (...

What is the role of students’ language background in school success within the multilingual and highly stratified education system in Luxembourg? Considering achievement differences in terms of the primary effects of social and ethnic origin, we assume that students of a disadvantaged social origin (e.g. working class), with an immigrant background...

In an era of mass migration, social scientists, populist parties and social movements raise concerns over the future of immigration-destination societies. What impacts does this have on policy and social solidarity? Comparative cross-national research, relying mostly on secondary data, has findings in different directions. There is a threat of sele...

Focusing on the agency feature of considering the future, we study the role of general future orientations and specific future life goals in educational achievement (Grade Point Average) and related educational inequalities. These factors are more remote from the outcome of educational attainment than are such frequently studied predictors as educa...

Im Rahmen einer theoretisch-fundierten Betrachtung von empirischen Befunden wird der Zusammenhang zwischen Schulmerkmalen, insbesondere der Schul- bzw. Klassenkomposition, individuellen Haltungen der Schüler/innen gegenüber Schule und Lernen, und dem frühen Verlassen des Bildungssystems in den Blick genommen. Ein besonderer Fokus wird dabei auf Sch...

La présente contribution porte sur le passage dans le degré tertiaire en tenant compte de l’intrication des inégalités liées au sexe et au contexte migratoire. L’étude, qui repose sur des concepts de la théorie décisionnelle, s’articule principalement sur une comparaison entre la Suisse (TREE), l’Allemagne (élèves pouvant prétendre aux études supér...

This article investigates the links between religious beliefs and capitalist mentalities—namely devoutness to Islam and hierarchic self‐interest (HSI)—and violence‐accepting attitudes among the young Muslim migrant population in Germany. Following a situational perspective, these links are analyzed under different individual conditions structured b...

This inaugural conference of the Luxembourg Educational Research Association (LuxERA) invites all people active and interested in educational research in and on Luxembourg to join the dialogue and provide their perspective on education (research). We seek to provide an open space for a wide range of disciplinary, theoretical, methodological, and th...

Background Many primary school students encounter the educational system positively from the outset. However, over the school years, students develop negative attitudes towards school, which peaks during secondary education. According to the literature, we conceptualise this process as school alienation: a decreasing sense of belonging in terms of...

Starting out from the frequent empirical finding that immigrants exhibit higher educational aspirations than non-immigrants, we analyse the role of immigrants’ value of education, i.e. the subjective belief that education is beneficial for one’s life, in idealistic and realistic educational aspirations in four distinct institutional settings, compa...

Authoritarianism refers to a general orientation of individuals toward being antidemocratic, prejudiced, and fascist. The concept originating from psychological thought has an impact on other disciplines like sociology and political sciences. At the core of authoritarianism are two ambivalent tendencies: the desire of people to, on the one hand, su...

The link between stratification and educational inequality in empirical research is well documented. Some countries – particularly those that do not follow the model of comprehensive schools – discuss the possibility of increasing permeability between school tracks to reduce inequalities. This paper focuses on the occurrence of permeability in the...

Der Terminus „Bildungsexpansion“ bezieht sich zunächst auf den Ausbau des Bildungssystems, die Ausweitung von Bildungsgelegenheiten und eine erhöhte Nachfrage nach Bildung. Im deutschsprachigen sozialwissenschaftlichen und historischen Diskurs bezieht sich der Begriff der Bildungsexpansion vornehmlich auf die „gestiegene Bildungsbeteiligung, länger...

In modernen Gesellschaften mit einer marktwirtschaftlichen Ordnung erfolgt die Verteilung von Lebenschancen (Einkommen, wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Anrechten etc.) vornehmlich über den Arbeitsmarkt und die berufsmäßige Erwerbstätigkeit im Lebenslauf. Der Erwerb von Bildung und Qualifikationen ist eine essenzielle Voraussetzung für den Zugang zum Arbeitsm...

Early identification of school alienation is of great importance for students' educational outcomes and successful participation in society. This study examined the psychometric characteristics of a newly developed assessment instrument, the School Alienation Scale (SALS), to measure school alienation among primary and secondary school students. Th...

Welfare-state regimes achieve different outcomes in dealing with social inequalities. For example, the social democratic or Scandinavian welfare-state regime is often considered as the most egalitarian with a high social transfer rate and a comparably low level of income inequality. While most research on welfare-state regimes focuses on objective...

How do education systems shape educational inequalities and differences in educational outcomes? And how do advantages and disadvantages in educational attainment translate into privileges and shortcomings in labour market and general life chances? Education systems and inequalities compares different education systems and their impact on creating...

The main objective of this chapter is to theorise how education systems shape inequalities. In the first part of the chapter, we outline an institutionalist theoretical approach and offer an illustrative case comparison regarding the institutionalisation of educational inequalities in Germany and the United States. Although the principle of equal e...

The conclusion presents an overview of the text, summarising the contents of each section. It then goes on to state that, through the findings of the previous chapters, the authors have come to the conclusion that producing equal opportunities for students should be one of the main functions of any education system. However, it is not simple to exp...

Gender inequalities in education changed profoundly in the course of contemporary educational expansion. While public and scientific discourses have long focused on the disadvantages of girls and women in education, in recent decades the ‘failing boys’ debate and, thus the disadvantaged situation of boys and men, has become an issue of concern. Thi...

According to the meritocratic principle, the ideological legitimation of social inequalities, educational and status attainment should only depend on achievement and ability rather than on ascriptive factors such as social origin. There is a long-standing tradition of educational policies and reforms which attempted to weaken the influence of socia...

Recent research has shown profound impacts of institutional settings of education systems on educational inequalities, i.e. systematic disadvantages and advantages in education being structured by characteristics like class, gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability and their intersections. The main education system characteristics which have been identified...

Horizontal gender inequalities appear to be rather stable, with girls more often choosing ‘female’ service professions, and boys choosing career paths related to STEM fields. Gender stereotypes, namely non-egalitarian patriarchal gender-role orientations and gender associations of the school subjects German and mathematics, will be theorised and em...

Background Education systems have become one of the most debated subjects of political intervention. At the end of the 19th century, national or federal education systems were institutionalised, and in the 20th century they received even more attention. Sharp increases in awareness followed by political debates, and finally more or less efficient p...

Meritocracy, educational and status attainment In modern societies, education is one of the main mechanisms in the reproduction of inequalities in terms of an existing link between social origin and destination class across the life course (see, for example, DiPrete and Eirich, 2006; Müller and Jacob, 2008; Müller and Kogan, 2010). Education is str...

Gender inequalities in educational attainment are of central concern today, in both public and scientific discourses. Prior to the rapid expansion of the educational systems of most industrialised societies in the 1960s, male educational attainment was higher than that of females nearly everywhere in the world. As the educational systems of industr...

Introduction Recent research has shown the strong impact that the institutional settings of educational systems have on educational inequalities and, via education, on inequalities in manifold life chances (labour market chances, income, health, political participation and so on). The main characteristics that have been determined as driving forces...

The most challenging work for editors is to summarise the main findings of the contributions. We start with the lessons learnt from each chapter in the main sections of the volume: theory and methods, education systems and educational inequalities, and education systems and inequalities in status attainment and life chances. From this we derive our...