Tracking pupils based on their abilities or other aptitudes is a common practice in many countries. In Finland, selective classes with a special emphasis have become popular. The societal and individual effects of tracking are a topic of ongoing educational discussion. Tracking has been seen to increase educational inequality, but still it has…

The paper explores factors of importance for young people's choice of upper secondary education and for their future life, from a student perspective. The paper builds on data from a questionnaire study, answered by 1,414 students in grade 9 (age 15-16) in Sweden, prior to their choice of upper secondary school. In addition, data from earlier…

Expectancy-value theory (EVT) proposes that students' appraisals of success expectancy and task value are the main drivers of their study and career choices. Dimensional comparison theory proposes that these beliefs are themselves affected by students comparing their ability across different domains. However, only a few studies have aimed to…

While a negative effect of ability grouping on the achievement of students assigned to lower ability groups has been noted frequently, no empirical research has looked at the effects on academic achievement of moving a student from one ability group level to a higher or lower group. In this paper, I report results of an empirical study that…

Mexican American educational aspirations and achievements were studied to determine why they tended to be considerably lower than those of Anglos and also to account for the sources of variation within each group, thus attempting to explain the particular contribution of school contexts of varying socioeconomic level and ethnic composition. A…