Countering educational poverty by raising learning outcomes of young people

Zelinka; Jozef; Jablonczay, Nikoletta; Zarifis, Gerorgios K.; Järvinen, Tero

Zusammenfassung

European countries are concerned with wide educational disparities among their populations. The core issues are the rising educational inequality und underachievement, which have spurred small and large-scale surveys on educational quality that provide data for evidence-based policymaking. As a consequence, the quality of education has been narrowed down to statistically measurable learning outcomes. In the chapter, we argue that such perspective misses the wider context and relations, in which the process of learning unfolds. We start the chapter by presenting the research and policy discourse on learning outcomes in order to carve out its underlying assumptions, argumentations and logics. After that, we present the socio-economic and educational differences between young Europeans to single out groups most threatened by underachievement and most likely to be targeted by policy measures. Finally, we offer concluding remarks hinting at the need to reframe the dominant concept of learning outcomes and the expectations it raises.