Origin and Educational Success

Why are minorities of different origin differently successful in the educational system? The interplay of social and cultural capital in educational investments of Turkish and Vietnamese migrant families

The educational disadvantage of children and adolescents stemming from migrant families has been thoroughly discussed in Germany, however, when taking a closer look one sees that this differs between the minority groups.

In this project on origin and educational success we investigate the reasons for educational disparities among young people from different cultural backgrounds. We investigated the ways in which parents assist and support their children during transition periods in the education system. The project also focuses on language skills and school performance of children, the parental investments, socialization practices and parenting styles.

Data collection took place over the twelve month period autumn 2012 -2013 and followed a 2 x 3 x 4 design: two receiving contexts (the German federal states of Saxony and Hamburg), with mothers from three different nationalities of origin (German, Turkish and Vietnamese) and with four age groups of children (at the time of data collection: the transition to Kindergarten, to elementary school, to the lower level of secondary schooling and to the higher level of secondary schooling or entry into vocational training). In total, data from 1,523 mother-child dyads were collected.

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research under the framework “Equality of Opportunity and Participation – Social Change and Strategies for Advancement”. The principal investigators are Professor Bernhard Nauck from Technische Universität Chemnitz and Professor Ingrid Gogolin from Universität Hamburg. The project assistants are Vivian Lotter, Technische Universität Chemnitz, Trang Schwenke-Lam and Birger Schnoor, Universität Hamburg.

Team