Motivation literally. Construction and expression of educational aspirations on Parcoursup

TL;DR

This study examines how French high school students' aspirations are shaped and expressed, revealing inequalities in guidance and internalization of school expectations across different tracks and social backgrounds.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how guidance strategies differ between academic and vocational tracks and their impact on students' aspiration expression and internalization.

Findings

Teachers focus support on 'good students' in vocational tracks.

Academic track students' aspirations are influenced by family background.

Guidance strategies affect students' internalization of school expectations.

Abstract

This paper analyses the framing and expression of French high school students' aspirations. It sheds new light on the inequalities in tracking between academic versus technological and vocational track. Through the analysis of a national survey and a corpus of cover letters written by applicants for a sociology degree, it shows that, due to the lack of means, teachers mainly have two types of guidance support strategies.Teachers use to target and concentrate their supporting on ``good students'' in vocational tracks, while, in academic tracks, they delegate some steps of the tracking procedures to families. These different strategies have effects on the way high school students internalise school prescriptions and restitute them in cover letters. Through the close support they benefit from teachers, ``good students'' in vocational tracks strongly internalise the instructions and their place in the school hierarchy. In academic tracks, students' expression of the aspirations is much more dependent of their familial capital.