Systemic obstacles to lifelong learning: the influence of the educational system design on learning attitudes

Comparative research has often emphasized the importance of external barriers (e.g. enrolment costs) to explain inequalities in lifelong learning participation. However, individuals, in particular the low educated, are often not only prevented from participation by external barriers, but also by negative psychological dispositions about learning. In this article, [the authors] study how dispositions about learning as measured in PIAAC (2012) vary between countries. In particular, [the authors] assess how these cross-country differences are related to a number of design characteristics of the initial school system. [The authors] improve the cross-sectional research design by controlling attitudes among adults for attitudes collected among primary school students, making use of diff-in-diff and pseudo-panel-techniques. Overall, [the authors] find that strong external differentiation mechanisms, in particular tracking students at a young age and making extensive use of grade retention, are associated with less positive attitudes towards learning among adults. However, a number of methodological issues, related to small country samples and differences in data definition between surveys, calls for further investigation.

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