The Conference on the Inequality of Educational Opportunity
(Persistent) Inequalities Reconsidered is a conference on the inequality of educational opportunities, which took place in Ascona (Switzerland) from July 26th-31st, 2015. Daniel Alexandrov and Ksenia Tenisheva attended the conference from SESL.
This conference is very different from the two other conferences which we usually attend: ESA (European Sociological Association) and ECER (European Conference on Education Research). This event is irregular and aimed at gathering experts in a narrow field; the study of educational inequality and mobility. The organizers and key speakers were also the founders of the research area itself: H.-P. Blossfeld, J. Goldthorpe, and R. Erikson. Their works on contemporary stratification, educational expansion, and, of course, inequality, are being studied by all students of social studies around the world. This has set a very high bar for all participants.
The conference was quite small, with just about 100 participants, but its schedule was packed. It brought together experts in this research area and created a perfect environment for the exchange of ideas and discussion of results. Most of the participants were from Germany (Universities of Bamberg and Mannheim) and Italy (The European University of Florence), since currently the main research centres on social stratification and mobility are located there. For example, at the European University H.-P. Blossfeld is coordinating two projects, EduLife and NEPS.
Due to the small number of participants, there were no parallel sessions, and we didn’t have to choose between various presentations. This was perfect because all of the presentations were equally important and interesting. Each day started with a keynote presentation, a one-hour report on the latest developments in the research of education and mobility. After that, there were shorter presentations (about 30 min each) from other conference participants, which included well known specialists, post-graduates and post-docs alike. After each presentation, there was a lively discussion, which was mainly provoked by the field founders: Goldthorpe, Blossfeld, and Erikson. Not only did they discuss the strong and weak sides of the presented studies, but they also suggested ways of incorporating these studies into the existing context. Some presentations sparked interesting theoretical discussions. It may safely be said that every speaker received excellent advice on the development and improvement of their studies.
One of the conference features deserves a separate note. Most presentations concerned the testing and interpretation of the same model of social mobility, OED. This model differentiates the impact of the parent class (Origins) and obtained education (Education) on the individuals' own class position (Destination). The higher the effect of the education and the lower the effect of the origins are, the lower is the level of inequality in the country. Speakers presented their results from testing this model on various sets of data from different countries, and discussed even small differences between the levels of the observed effects. That is exactly the way sociology studies should be done, using reproducible, standardized studies for comparing results and drawing conclusions based on the observed differences (which psychologists don’t achieve very well).
In addition to the oral presentations during the day sessions, there were also poster sessions and round tables. We presented our report,' Safe Path to Higher Education: Risk Aversion in Choosing Educational Pathways,' at the round table on inequality in access to education. The presentation was very successful, and we not only received comments from colleagues working in similar fields, but also met a researcher who studies the same problem on HSE data. As it turned out, Julia Kosyakova (from the European University in Florence) together with Dmitry Kurakin and Gordey Yastrebov also work on the problem of choosing an educational path after college. This meeting was very productive: we found many similarities in our results, and discussed the possible future development of our studies.
Thanks to this conference trip, I think we now understand better what we should be aiming for. We have listened to many important and impressive presentations, which have already helped us in writing our research papers and in stating problems for our future studies. We aim to become a part of the close-knit academic community which we met at the conference, and to carry out high quality, verifiable international studies.
By Ksenia Tenisheva