School Orientation

Recently, the French High Council of School Evaluation noticed that " the orientation school process concentrates criticisms on the education system", for 2 main grounds: for a large number of families and professional actors it is disconnected with the labour market to which the education system should prepare young people ; based on school evaluation, it is synonymous with failure in the general school way, and with d erivation towards the vocational and training track, whose social image is largely negative. A "directed/oriented pupil" failed in the secondary school track driving to the general baccalaureat, the royal pathway to higher studies.

This paper explores how the Italian education system, particularly through school orientation practices at the transition from middle to high school, contributes to the reproduction of social inequalities. Although education is often viewed as a means for upward mobility, empirical evidence shows that guidance advice from teachers tends to be influenced by students' social background, gender, and migrant status. As a result, working-class and migrant students are more frequently directed toward technical and vocational tracks, while middle-and upper-class students are encouraged toward academic paths, reinforcing existing disparities. Drawing on theories of social reproduction, symbolic violence, and habitus, the study highlights the need for teacher training programs to critically address these biases to foster a more equitable educational system.

Keywords: Social inequality, School orientation, Social reproduction, Educational segregation, Habitus, Symbolic violence, Middle vs. working-class, Teacher bias, Meritocracy

Choosing an educational and professional direction is a crucial moment in a student's life, with significant implications for their integration into society. This study was conducted within the CAEJ Project implemented by the COUNTY CENTER FOR RESOURCES AND EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANCE BISTRIȚA-NĂSĂUD, "Zoom into the Future," aiming to assess student satisfaction with the school orientation process in 9th grade, better understand the factors influencing these decisions, and optimize career counseling.

Este artículo examina cómo los modelos de reconocimiento social contribuyen a las prácticas de orientación escolar de jóvenes desmovilizados de las organizaciones implicadas en el conflicto armado en Colombia, que deciden insertarse al sistema educativo. Los resultados de esta reflexión derivada de investigación se presentan en cuatro apartados. 

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The presence of foreign students in the Italian system has increased rapidly in the last few years. Today, they account for 7 per cent of the total student population. The enrollment of foreign students is characterized by a widespread schooling delay that increases for higher educational level. Here, we would like to investigate if this delay for foreign students is influencing the perception of their school performance and the concentration in less demanding educational paths. Data from a national survey (ITAGEN2) involving more than 20,000 lower secondary school students, half of whom foreigner, are used to explore the factor affecting the perception of one’s performance and the level future educational aspirations, evaluating the role of the migratory generation and the educational pathway. In particular, having more than one year’s delay leads to a negative perception of one’s abilities and possibly of schooling’s usefulness itself, and to the choice of low-profile educational ...

The article examines the ability of immigrant families to interact with Italian schools, seeing this as a fundamental process of social class formation. The idea is that there are specificities due to being migrants, even apart from the "cultural" specificities usually assumed. The paper will draw on material from the ongoing research project Second Generations: Migration Processes and Mechanisms of Integration among Foreigners and Italians (1950-2010) which shows that parents and pupils have very incomplete and inadequate information of the Italian school system and of local schools. This makes information and educational advice and orientation crucial questions in the educational trajectories of children of immigrants and in the creation of class inequalities. Interviews gathered during the research also illustrate the micro mechanisms shaping school choices. We believe these micro-mechanisms influencing choices and strategies are as important as structural constraints in reproducing inequalities.

Sorting students into hierarchically ordered tracks or streams on the basis of their academic performance (i.e., tracking) is ubiquitous in educational systems, and oftentimes based on teachers’ track recommendations. International surveys indicate that tracking is associated with educational inequalities. To determine if inequalities in tracking may be due to teacher recommendations being biased against students from disadvantaged socio-economic and/or ethnic backgrounds, we conducted a systematic review of 26 recent articles on tracking recommendations and students’ socio-economic or ethnic background. We find that teacher recommendations are biased against students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, yet evidence with respect to ethnic biases is more mixed. We also conducted an integrative review to examine which factors may account for social and ethnic inequalities in teacher tracking recommendations. We conclude that students’, parents’ and teachers’ attitudes and b...

The social field in the modern globalized world includes groups of people with differentiated national and cultural characteristics. These groups possess their own system of dispositions, which are primarily shaped within the context of the family. The purpose of this study is the investigation and presentation of young people's aspirations and choices concerning their educational future as these are influenced by factors which are related to the phenomenon of migration, through a review of recent scientific literature. From the analysis of the research findings of relevant scientific papers, the influence of socio-economic, cultural and institutional factors on the formation of young people's educational aspirations/expectations and choices emerges. Family habitus, as well as the institutional habitus that exists within the academic institutions, tend to contribute significantly to the decisions and choices young people make which define their educational course. In particu...

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Italian School System The Italian school system  The Italian school system is offered free to all children in Italy regardless of nationality.  All children are required to attend school from age six through sixteen with the compulsory age limit being raised over the next couple years.  Even the public nursery schools are free with reasonable sized classes and motivated teachers.

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The social field in the modern globalized world includes groups of people with differentiated national and cultural characteristics. These groups possess their own system of dispositions, which are primarily shaped within the context of the family. The purpose of this study is the investigation and presentation of young people’s aspirations and choices concerning their educational future as these are influenced by factors which are related to the phenomenon of migration, through a review of recent scientific literature. From the analysis of the research findings of relevant scientific papers, the influence of socio-economic, cultural and institutional factors on the formation of young people’s educational aspirations/expectations and choices emerges. Family habitus, as well as the institutional habitus that exists within the academic institutions, tend to contribute significantly to the decisions and choices young people make which define their educational course. In particular, most research findings converge on the fact that education constitutes a means of social mobility offering the opportunity to young people from underprivileged family environments to ‘transform’ and/or improve their position in the field of social stratification. As a result, young people aspire to pursue higher education studies though the mobilization of a ‘transformative’ habitus, anticipating that it will improve the terms, conditions and prospects of their life in the future.

The ellocation of young sesbere to adult positions in society iE generolly recnuized as ono of the leajor functions of pul:lic educntion. Ar neu rembers are tauht the knreeledge, s!dlls end values which eneble them to participete in society, they ere sorted and selected into different career rutce. Pupils are differentinted into categories by curriculuu placement, by academic achievement, and by persistence in school, and each of these categories has attached to it a higher or lower probability of later material and socialrewards.

First and second generation Caribbean students are affected by their social and cultural environment.This article explores the involvement of parents of title one middle schoolers, most of whom are minority economically disadvantaged and different from the dominant culture.In the process of assimilating into the American mainstream many Caribbean parents have deprived their children of the richness of their cultural identity,sacrificing their history and traditions on the altar of American popular culture.

In this paper, we study similarities between children of foreign parents and those of Italian parents using data from the Itagen2, a survey of a large sample of students aged 11-13 (10 thousand Italians and 10 thousand foreigners) enrolled in Italian junior high schools in 2006. We measure three different aspects of similarity (linguistic abilities, friendship with peers, and sense of belonging in Italy) and investigate the determinants of similarity using multivariate techniques. Results underline the significant relation between, one the one hand, similarity, and, on the other hand, age at immigration and the family’s socio-economic condition. We also observe considerable differences by country of origin. Generally speaking, our results suggest that the Italian social context is favourable to a rapid assimilation on the part of children of foreign origin to the tastes and ideals of young Italians, although there remain important differences linked above all to family conditions, country of origin, and scholastic performance.

In Italy, as in other European countries, students of foreign origin are over-represented in the vocational school tracks, with relevant consequences on their limited chances of attaining a university degree. While research has long underlined the weight that a family’s social, cultural and economic capital has on a child’s school performance, educational expectations and choices, the role that school and teachers themselves play in the transition from lower to upper secondary school has been rarely explored in Italian sociological research. The present study aims to bridge this gap in the literature, showing how teachers’ orienting practices, interacting with highly differentiated patterns of family participation in the school guidance process, can play a relevant role in reproducing foreign-origin students’ segregation into the lower tracks of the school system.

Aim of the contribution is to explore the empiric material gathered in some months of participant observation carried out in two classes of lower secondary school in Milan (IT) during school orientation activities 1 . I will use a Foucauldian conceptual toolbox to show how the orientation practices observed can be read as dispositif of bio-political power: a technology of government of the self that is capable to produce subjects «autonomously» adapting their aspirations and ambitions to the forces structuring the scholastic and economic field. The empiric study allow as well to illustrate how the subject-object of these orientation practices, in some cases, resist and oppose their will to the functioning of this dispositive. I will thus show that subjectivities are the product of processes not necessarily coherent and I will discuss the intrinsic ambivalence of the technology of government of the self. Public debate on Italian school system is increasingly stressing the relevance of orientation and school guidance as a means to provide the labor market with subjects capable of adapting to its needs (crf. Laval, Clement and Dreux, 2012). European Commission directives and Italian Ministerial documents stress the importance to support individuals during their overall life cycle with services and technologies aimed at guiding them in their school and professional decisions . Orientation, from this point of view, should address a twofold function: to guarantee and adequate allocation of individuals within the contemporary system of labor division and of making possible that the trajectories undertaken and the positions individuals occupy within that system are the outcomes of «free choices».