Quentin Maire

University of Melbourne | MSD · Melbourne Graduate School for Education

In this brief concluding chapter, I articulate some transversal points of emphasis that these chapters bring to light when they are considered as different ways of tackling common issues. The contributors’ reflections coalesce as connected considerations of the significance and conduct of longitudinal research in and beyond the field of youth studi...

Youth and young adulthood, as life stages, have an affinity with longitudinal research methods. The idea of these stages of life is often captured through metaphors of transition, and related to dynamic processes of change more broadly (see Cuervo and Wyn in J Youth Stud 17(7):901–915, 2014; Cuzzocrea in J Youth Stud 23(1):61–75, 2020). A growing b...

In youth studies, particular attention is paid to how youth transitions unfold and vary across space and time. Longitudinal methods are a valuable resource for the examination of key issues in the field, including access to education, work, housing, relationships and family formation. This chapter reflects on the insights gained from Life Patterns,...

Geographical mobility has become an integral element of the biographical trajectories of young people from rural areas. In this paper, we contend that theories of rural-urban inequality tend to unduly homogenise rural social groups and are insufficient to understand rural youth out-migration as a selective rather than universal practice. We draw on...

This is the first international reference work to map out how Pierre Bourdieu has been used in educational research. Written by scholars based in Australia, Canada, China, Croatia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the UK, and the USA, the handbook provides a unique and cutting-edge picture of how Bourdieu has been both used and adapted in educati...

Parents are increasingly providing financial support to their adult children. At the same time, it is often taking young people into their 30s to convert educational credentials into career outcomes, establish independent households, and marry or form partnerships. While the role of the so-called ‘bank of mum and dad’ in assisting with entry into h...

The COVID‐19 crisis has brought into sharp relief the precarious employment situation of young people, precipitating a raft of academic and public claims of an unprecedented crisis that has disrupted young lives. Our study contributes to research on youth labour and transitions with new longitudinal empirical analysis. Our analysis challenges the “...

The internationalisation of educational trajectories has emerged as a new form of cultural capital in education systems. Research suggests that the ‘international capital’ offered by language enrichment programs has become appropriated primarily by middle- and upper-class families investing in new forms of educational distinction. However, little i...

The relationship between global citizenship identity and actions remains an unsettled issue. In this article we use the PISA 2018 survey to explore whether global citizenship identity is associated with a greater likelihood of engaging in ‘globally minded’ practices among young Australians. Descriptive analysis reveals that self-reported global cit...

After critically reviewing established theories used to explain the emergence and expansion of the IB Diploma internationally, this chapter proposes an alternative theory promising to be more successful at accounting for the observable pattern of worldwide IB Diploma diffusion. The main contention of this interpretive model is that the IB Diploma n...

The social worth of credentials typically arises from the opportunities they generate for their possessors in various markets or fields. In the case of high school certificates, these opportunities have primarily come to be associated with higher education and, more specifically, scarce places in sought-after courses and/or institutions. In this ch...

This final chapter seeks to advance credential theory using the book’s analysis of the emergence of private high school credentialing in state-dominated credential markets. The insights gained in the study of the reconfiguration of credential markets induced by the diffusion of the IB Diploma are used to revisit the theoretical question of the gene...

In the Australian context, a further layer of socio-academic selection into the IB Diploma adds to the stratification of the credential market produced by the narrow range of schools in which the IB Diploma is made available. Relative to their peers, IB Diploma students are disproportionately recruited among students with high levels of recognised...

The arrival of a new certificate in an established credential market offers a unique opportunity to grasp the fundamental social logics governing the dynamics of credential markets in general. The International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma, a private high school certificate that has found a place in most affluent countries’ education systems since th...

Just as the transformation of high school credential markets since the postwar years offers a powerful explanation for the international trajectory of the IB Diploma since the 1970s, so is the shift from elite to mass high school certification decisive to make sense of the use of the IB Diploma as an instrument of academic distinction in twenty-fir...

To understand the socio-academic stratification of high school credentialing, the analysis of the profile of schools retailing private certificates must be supplemented with an analysis of the mechanisms by which families come to invest in different segments of the credential market. As applied throughout the book, the comparative method is used to...

Educational credentials are certificates of academic competence issued to students who demonstrate mastery of a specific body of knowledge under regulated assessment conditions. The definition of recognised academic competence in a given credential determines students’ opportunities for acquiring it. As a result, where several credentials coexist,...

The distribution of credential study opportunities across schools is a decisive aspect of the structure of high school credential markets. For credentials not universally available, the profile of schools in which they can be studied contributes to determining the social categories of students having access to them. The analysis presented in this c...

In education systems where between-school segregation along social and academic lines is pronounced, as is the case in Australia, the socio-academic recruitment of schools retailing private certificates largely defines the academic resources these students bring into the credential market and, hence, ultimately, the value of different certificates....

The preceding chapters have revealed and emphasised the role of academic power in determining the worth of credentials for their holders. However, the social alchemy through which academic proficiency is converted into credential value, with its associated capital of recognition, has been left unaddressed. This is the issue I tackle in the present...

A decisive sociological contribution to the analysis of credential markets is their conceptualisation as historically constituted structures. This chapter traces the international history of the IB Diploma to explain its contemporary position in high school credentialing systems across countries. The historical reconstruction of the IB Diploma’s in...

As official titles of educational competence, credentials have a central status in education systems. They are ostensibly used to certify the knowledge and skills that students are thought to have acquired. They are often considered to be one of the main factors that drive students to engage in formal learning and are commonly used in research as i...

The analysis of the international position of the IB Diploma presented in the previous chapter invites more detailed, country-specific analyses. This chapter uses existing research to review the diffusion of the IB Diploma across high school credential markets internationally, focussing on its school and student recruitment, academic profile and as...

The advent of global citizenship agendas marks a transformation in citizenship education policy and practice internationally. However, research has revealed a highly diverse collection of visions and models for global citizenship. This article seeks to make two main contributions to the study of global citizenship in education. Empirically, it aims...

International education options have expanded in most school systems around the world with promises of curricular innovation. However, there has been limited attention given to the consequences of this shift for social inequalities embedded in pre-existing institutional hierarchies. The International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma, a two-year high scho...

This book makes an original contribution to credential sociology by analysing how high school certificates become and remain valuable in a context of mass high school participation (i.e. credentialism). Building on a detailed analysis of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma, a senior secondary school certificate offered in over 150 countrie...

Global citizenship education has gained prominence in educational research in recent years, mirroring a comparable trend of expansion in education systems internationally. The vitality of the field of global citizenship education research has been marked by the use of a wide range of approaches in a variety of contexts. However, this expansion has...

Why do some regions perform better with disadvantaged learners than others? Identified through the analysis of a number of data sources, this research explores the strategies and practices in place at TAFE, private and community education providers who achieve high participation and completion rates with disadvantaged learners. A survey of register...

The global middle class (GMC) is a theoretical construct that seeks to globalise a set of attributes identified in studies of school choice in the global north, and to a lesser extent in developing nations in Asia. As theorised by Ball a mobile middle class with cosmopolitan sensibilities drives international education options in global cities. Thi...

While the universalisation of educational provision in a given country generally leads to an internal diversification of its educational system, the neoliberal policies that have spread across Australia since the 1980s have resulted in the concentration of particular social groups at specific educational sites. Moreover, by encouraging a freer inte...