Invited Commentary: Societal Constraints and Individual Agency: Navigating Educational Transitions for Upward Mobility
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EDITORIAL
Invited Commentary: Societal Constraints and Individual Agency: Navigating Educational Transitions for Upward Mobility 1
Jutta Heckhausen
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Received: 20 August 2020 / Accepted: 22 August 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This article discusses three empirical studies of the role of individual agency in educational transitions in the conceptual framework of the motivational theory of lifespan development that integrates life-course sociological and life-span psychological perspectives. The educational systems in the U.K., the US, and Switzerland set up specific opportunities and constraints in their primary to secondary and secondary to tertiary educational tracks. Individual agency plays out in different ways in these country- and transition-specific fields of action and accordingly enables or hinders individual youths’ upward mobility. Early transitions into segregated secondary school systems are dominated by the influence of teachers and parents and tend to maintain social inequality. Later transitions into tertiary education are more open to individual agency that can substantially contribute to overcoming social inequalities in college admission. Finally, once enrolled in university, students have comparatively better opportunities to overcome disadvantages of their parents’ socio-economic status and educational background. Keywords
Agency Motivation Educational transitions Comparisons between US, UK and Switzerland ●
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Introduction The three articles in this special issue address the potential influence of individuals on their own upward mobility, specifically how individuals can use their own agency to do better than expected given their socioeconomic background. How can individuals achieve a life-course trajectory that is better than would be expected based on their socioeconomic origins? The intriguing focus of these articles is on agency in the face of two impactful educational transitions, from primary (elementary school) to secondary (lower vs. upper-tier of high school), and from secondary to tertiary (vocational training vs. 2-year or 4-year college) education. The three countries (Switzerland, UK, and USA) addressed in this set of articles may be somewhat similar in the big scheme of global comparisons, but their educational systems set up unique conditions at these two critical transitions, and as a result the control of these transition outcomes shifts to different people (e.g., teachers or parents
* Jutta Heckhausen [email protected] 1
University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
or student), and to different agency resources of the individual student. Before getting into these specific societal conditions, the dynamic between individual agency and social structure is discussed in a more general conceptual way. Numerous factors play into this, only some of which can be investigated in a limited set of studies as included in this special section. Hence, it is important to delineate the lay of the land conce
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