Simulation of educational trajectories under consideration of latent decision-making processes

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In this subproject, a simulation-based methodical process is to be developed, which allows hypothetical educational progression and latent decision-making processes to be mapped in school transitions. It is known that the path to a certain educational qualification in Germany is largely determined at an early age by the type of secondary school to which a child transfers (and others Baumert et al., 2010). Therefore, the project focuses on the transition from elementary school to secondary school. At this transition, the persistence of social and ethnic origin effects has been observed for decades. Studies have shown that migration related differences predominate in the fundamental transition from primary school to secondary school (and others Dollmann, 2016). An attempt to reduce social disparities in relation to the educational qualifications achieved has recently been initiated in various federal states in Germany through numerous school reforms. In order to find out whether the changes in structural conditions brought about by these reforms have a noticeable influence on the transition decision, they must be examined in detail. The basic idea of the subproject is to not only describe these structurally interesting transitions in the education system empirically, but to include a behavioral model (here the Theory of Planned Behavior Fishbein und Ajzen, 2010) in the analysis. To this end, the relevant educational decisions will be transferred to a formal mathematical model, or operationalized, whilst taking the theoretical model into account. To enable an accurate approximation of the underlying real phenomenon, transition probabilities should be estimated from empirical data. Where this is not possible, because the mechanisms of interest are either not observable or are in the future, the transition probabilities concerned are derived based on hypotheses. Specifically, the decision-making processes are to be examined whilst accounting for the changing contexts that affect the transition to a secondary school. This analysis will be supported using what-if scenarios. The project will therefore not only study the effect of reforms on the school transition decisions of existing pupils, but also with anticipating the effect of reforms on the decisions of future pupils along social and ethnic groups.