Educational careers at the end of secondary school from a sociological and a psychological perspective:Longitudinal analyses of the effects of social origin, interests, personality traits and competencies on educational decisions and educational outcomes

受PISA 2000年关于教育参与和能力发展方面的社会差距的研究结果的启发，德国在过去几年中进行了关于教育决策和成就的重要研究。然而，研究主要集中在早期教育生涯和从小学到第一阶段中等教育结束的过渡。然而，特别是关于德国的教育制度--其特点是在中学教育之后以及在向非高等教育和高等教育的过渡阶段具有高度的层次性--人们认为不同的教育职业和中学毕业后的决定对随后的职业机会具有重要意义。根据米勒和沙维特(1998)的说法，德国是教育/职业资格与劳动力市场地位关系最密切的国家之一。这一研究差距将随着提出的从社会学和心理学角度研究中学结束时教育轨迹的跨学科项目而缩小：核心问题是，社会起源和其他社会特征(作为社会学因素)以及个人兴趣和个性特征(作为心理因素)如何塑造中学结束时的教育轨迹和决定，以及这些影响在整个教育生涯中以何种方式相互作用。因此，生命过程中先前的教育抱负、决定、兴趣、个性特征和能力如何塑造后来的教育结果和轨迹是特别值得关注的。目前在这方面的研究不足在很大程度上是因为缺乏适当的数据，不仅包含关于中学教育结束时的教育过渡的信息，还包含关于先前个人历史的信息。我们的项目旨在将BiKS-8-14小组研究继续进行三年，该小组研究目前包括学生从小学三年级到九年级结束的教育轨迹。有了额外的三年，不同类型中学学生的教育轨迹可以根据丰富的纵向数据进行充分重建和分析，这些数据是在下一次中央教育过渡--决定接受高等教育和非高等教育--之前的教育传记。因此，该项目将为德国的教育研究提供独特的科学潜力。

Triggered by the results of the PISA 2000 study on social disparities in educational participation and the development of competencies, important research on educational decisions and attainment has been conducted in Germany over the last few years. Yet, studies predominantly focus on the early educational career and transitions from primary school up to the end of first stage secondary education. However, particularly with regard to the German educational system - characterized by high stratification after secondary education and at the transition to non-tertiary as well as tertiary education - it is assumed that different educational careers and decisions after secondary school are of major importance for subsequent occupational opportunities. According to Müller and Shavit (1998), Germany is one of the countries with the closest relation of educational/occupational qualification and the positioning on the labor market.This research gap shall be closed with the proposed interdisciplinary project studying educational trajectories at the end of secondary school from a sociological and psychological perspective: The central question is, how educational trajectories and decisions at the end of secondary school are shaped by social origin and other social characteristics (as sociological factors) as well as by individual interests and personality traits (as psychological factors) and, in turn, in what way these effects may be reciprocal across the educational career. Therefore, it is of special interest how preceding educational aspirations, decisions, interests, personality traits and competencies in the life course shape later educational outcomes and trajectories. The present research deficit in this regard is largely due to a lack of appropriate data, not only containing information about the educational transitions at the end of secondary schooling, but also about prior individual histories.Our project aims to continue the BiKS-8-14 panel study, which so far comprises students` educational trajectories from third grade primary school up to the end of ninth grade secondary school, for further three years. With the additional three years, educational trajectories of students in different secondary school types can be adequately reconstructed and analyzed based on rich, longitudinal data on the previous educational biographies up until the next central educational transition - the decision for tertiary and non-tertiary occupational education. Thus, the project will provide a unique scientific potential for German educational research.