Educational Measurement and Evaluation; Academic Achievement

Cumulative evidence has shown that four dimensions can be differentiated in the experience of test anxiety: worry, emotionality, interference, and lack of confidence. To investigate whether these dimensions show specific relationships with ways of coping, a study with 162 students (75 male, 87 female) examined how students cope with anxiety and uncertainty in the run-up to important exams. Coping strategies included task-orientation and preparation, seeking social support, and avoidance. Results showed that overall test anxiety was related to seeking social support. When dimensions of test anxiety were inspected individually while controlling for interdimensional overlap, however, results showed a specific pattern of relationships: (a) worry was related to task-orientation and preparation and inversely related to cognitive avoidance, (b) emotionality was related to task-orientation and preparation and seeking social support, and (c) interference was related to avoidance and inversely related to task-orientation and preparation, whereas (d) lack of confidence was related to avoidance only. Although some gender differences emerged, the findings indicate that the main components of test anxiety display different relationships with coping. Moreover, they confirm that it is important to differentiate between worry and interference because these dimensions, albeit closely related, may show opposite relationships with ways of coping.

ÖZET Dünya da en önemli güç eğitilmiş insan gücüdür. Eğitim bir ülkenin geleceğini planlama anlamı taşımaktadır. Çağlar boyu bütün önemli kişiler eğitim ile ilgili çağlarını aşan ve hala değerini koruyan düşünceler ileri sürmüşlerdir. Bunların bir kısmı kullanılmakla birlikte bir kısmı güncelliğini yitirmiştir. Önerilen Eğitim yöntemi, geleceği kurgulayan, şekillendiren ve planlayan sürdürülebilir değişime açık modüler bir yapıyı ortaya çıkarmak ve gelecek kuşaklar için mutlu bir yaşam alanını ortaya koymak olarak tarif edilebilir. Eğitim bebeklikten başlar, olgunluk süreci ve en üst dereceye kadar ilerler. Eğitim modeli 6 başlık altında ele alınabilir.

Background There is little previous research examining whether measures of working memory are related to educational achievement in children with intellectual disabilities (ID).

Methods A battery of working memory and achievement measures was administered to 11- to 12-year-old children with ID; younger typically developing children of comparable mental age were also assessed.

Results The working memory measures that assessed phonological short-term memory (PSTM) accounted for the most variance in reading and spelling in children with ID, whereas the working memory measures that assessed central executiveloaded working memory (CELWM) accounted for the most variance in number skills.These relationships were broadly similar among typically developing children.

Conclusions Compensatory strategies for weak PSTM may help to improve reading and spelling skills in children with ID, whereas reducing CELWM loads may be more helpful in aiding their number skills.

Keywords working memory, educational achievement, intellectual disabilities, children

The impact of economic recession on the education system of Nigeria at the tertiary level was examined in this study. The study is a descriptive survey research. It was carried out in two universities, two polytechnics and one college of education. Three research questions guided the study. A sample of 304 male and female participants responds to the fifteen item questionnaire which yielded the necessary data. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, percentages and charts while qualitative data were recorded and discussed. The findings of the study show that economic recession have affected the system of education in Nigeria in various forms. Based on the findings, recommendations were made on the need to improve education system in Nigeria.

The present study deals with the unique needs of mathematically gifted students. This topic is important because of the need to understand to depth the unique needs of these students, the learning characteristics tailored to them, as well as their preferences regarding learning and their relationships with other students and with their teachers. The main purpose of this study, as mentioned earlier, is to identify the unique needs of mathematics gifted students, measure their specific preferences in various aspects of learning, as well as about their relationships with their teachers and other students. This, in order to establish a broad and deep background to enable a unique reference to the population of gifted students and allow the construction of appropriate educational programs, care and interventions tailored to their needs, while integrating the educational staff at the school. The present study is a combined one, with a quantitative and qualitative measures, and has two hypotheses: gifted students' perceptions of the teachers will be different from the non-gifted students; differences will be found in the needs of gifted students compared to non-gifted students in unique learning programs at school. To examine the hypotheses 100 students were sampled, 50 gifted and 50 non-gifted students. The instruments included a questionnaire used before in this area of research, as well as an interview built for the purpose of the present study. The results showed that indeed there are differences between gifted students and non-gifted students in many ways and preferences, such as learning pace preference, preference for collaborative learning, curriculum content preference, preference for complexity and preference for type of interaction with the teacher. The findings are compatible with previous studies in the field and emphasize the importance of the reference for gifted students in a unique way.

Buku ini disusun untuk menghantar para pebelajar dan
pembelajar dalam proses pembelajaran untuk melakukan evaluasi.
Buku ini membahas macam-macam, jenis-jenis, dan bentuk evaluasi
dalam proses pembelajaran. Dalam bahasan disajikan bagaimana
merancang dan membuat instrument penilaian berdasarkan era
industry 4.0 seperti tuntutan kurikulum 13 juga kurikulum KKNI.
Penilaian autentik disajikan dalam buku ini, dari pengertian,
jenis, bentuk, dan macam-macam penilaian autentik. Pembahasan
dilengkapi dengan contoh-contoh bagaimana membuat rubric
penilaian dalam evaluasi autentik atau disebut juga assessment
authentic. Macam penilaian autentik dan bentuk penilaian autentik
disajikan juga dalam bahasan buku ini.
Semoga buku ini bermanfaat bagi pebelajar dan pembelajar
dalam merancang atau menyusun penilaian autentik beserta
rubriknya. Sumbang saran sangat diharapkan dalam penyempurnaan
buku ini. Ide atau masukan saudara dapat di kirim melalui e-mail
penulis: [email protected] dan [email protected].
Akhirnya selamat mempelajari buku ini, semoga bermanfaat
bagi kemajuan proses pembelajaran di Indonesia abad 21 di era
industry 4.0

This paper aims to report on the implementation of internal evaluation in the departments of the college of human sciences (theology, Persian language and literature, and accounting and economics) in Ilam University, Iran, in order to improve educational quality. This paper points out the findings obtained from a case study of implementing internal evaluation, encompassing 12 steps, in the departments of a university in Iran. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used to collect data from the heads, faculty members, students, alumni, and library staff of the departments, as well as the immediate managers of the alumni. The methods of data collection included interviews, group discussions, questionnaires, and checklists. The results of the study show that two departments, Theology and Persian Language and Literature, were desirable in terms of the quality of the seven criteria under evaluation (department management and structure, faculty members, students, alumni, teaching and learning processes, implemented courses, equipment and resources of libraries), and the Department of Accounting and Economics was quite desirable in this respect. The study also indicated that there were differences among the departments in terms of the quality of the factors under evaluation.

A person's predisposition towards critical or creative thinking style has been shown to influence performance in specific academic disciplines. The objective of this study was to determine the relationship between creative and critical thinking styles of post-secondary vocational students and their academic achievements. The Malay translation of the Yan Piaw Creative -Critical Thinking Styles Test (Test-retest reliability = 0.89) was used to gather data on thinking styles. One hundred and nine community college students from four Community Colleges under the Ministry of Higher Education who were undergoing work-based diploma programmes in Hotel and Catering (n=25), Electrical Technology (n=34), Computer Technology (n=30) and Automotive Technology were the subjects in the study. The results of the data analysis show that the majority of vocational students have stronger predisposition towards creative thinking (59%). There is no association found between thinking styles and gender. However, thinking style is found to be associated with academic achievements. The study concludes that both male and female students have similar predisposition in their critical and creative thinking styles and that thinking style is associated with academic achievements among post-secondary vocational students.

Perfectionism has been shown to predict individual differences in achievement goal orientations in university students, but research on perfectionism and goal orientations in school students is still very limited. Investigating 584 adolescent school students in a cross-sectional correlational design, the present study examined how self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism predicted students’ goal orientations. Multiple regression analyses showed that, when the overlap between the different goal orientations was controlled for, self-oriented perfectionism positively predicted mastery-approach and mastery-avoidance goal orientations whereas socially prescribed perfectionism positively predicted performance-approach orientation. The present findings indicate that perfectionism predicts individual differences in adolescent school students’ achievement goal orientations, but different forms of perfectionism are associated with different patterns of goal orientations.

The study investigated learning styles and academic learning time as predictors of secondary students' achievement in chemistry. Using an expost facto research type, four research hypotheses were tested. Two instruments-Learning styles (r=0.76) and academic learning time (r= 0.78) questionnaire (LSALTQ) and Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT) (r= 0.81) were used to gather data. Two hundred and forty chemistry students were randomly selected from four Local Government Areas of Oyo State, Nigeria. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyse the data. The results showed that there was a significant composite contribution of learning styles (lesson structure, sociological, auditory and tactile) and chemistry academic learning time available (allocated, instructional, engaged) to students' achievement in chemistry. Lesson structure had relative significant contribution to determine the achievement of students in chemistry. Teacher instructional time had highest contribution followed by students' engaged time. Chemistry teachers need to adapt their instructional delivery to the different learning styles of the students. Sufficient instructional and students' engaged times should be available for teaching, learning and laboratory practical activities. More time is to be devoted to students' learning while non-academic-related activity times that consume the learning time should be drastically reduced.

Explain what is meant by 'the gender gap' in school level academic attainment and evaluate different explanations for the existence of such a gender gap. Word count 2,153 words Disabled students with additional support needs agreed by Disability Services should tick the appropriate box I have been assessed as having: Dyslexia Dyspraxia Other (please specify)

Research has shown that evaluation can have negative effects when it is perceived as controlling rather than informational. We hypothesized that Personal Need for Structure (PNS) would moderate the effects of (perceptions of) evaluative situations. Specifically, we expected that informational evaluative situations would be associated with higher motivation and higher creative performance than controlling evaluative situations, but only when PNS is low. In a field study (N ¼ 53) and an experiment (N ¼ 72), we showed consistently across samples, methods, and outcomes that the positive effects of informational evaluation only existed for individuals who were low in PNS. These findings support the reasoning that high PNS individuals tend to welcome any type of feedback because of its disambiguating potential.

This study included an examination of the differences between the religiosity of students representing both public and private schools that qualified at the state and national levels in the United States Academic Decathlon, a national, interdisciplinary academic competition. The statistical significance of religiosity in relation to achievement scores in the Academic Decathlon was examined. The literature reviewed suggested a positive correlation between religiosity and academic achievement. The Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) instrument was administered to students on both teams to determine religiosity levels. Statistical analysis was applied to the data to test for significant difference. No significant difference between overall competition scores was found in relation to reported student religiosity; neither the public nor private school scored significantly higher or lower in the competition. Significant difference in scores was found for specific subject areas. Further, no significant difference was found between student religiosity in relation to grade point average. The conclusion that student religiosity was not found to have a significant influence on competition scores in the Academic Decathlon suggests that religiosity and academic achievement may not always positively correlate. The implications for Christian education suggest that faith-learning integration should be critically examined across disciplines in Christian school settings, particularly in the subjects of mathematics and science.

One of the main goals of the education system modernization is to introduce as many activities as possible aimed at developing the necessary skills to meet the challenges and needs of a modern society. In addition to basic literacy skills, young people need to learn how to apply acquired knowledge in the real world situations. By examining literacy and evaluating students' achievements, they want to identify competencies (skills) for performing the educational process, understanding concepts and the ability to apply them in problem solving.

What causes poverty and how does an individual escape it? Factors such as intelligence and social class background are thought to be important. However, a number of economists have argued that an individual's profile of achievement-related attitudes (ARAs) like work-orientation and conscientiousness might play a role in social success and failure. Part of their attraction is that these attitudes are regarded as responsive to nurturing and may be especially significant for those individuals with few formal skills to offer the labour market. The NCDS longitudinal dataset was interrogated to assess whether ARAs predicted an individual's earnings measured almost two decades later. Results indicated that ARAs explain a good deal of variance in earnings, particularly for ''at-risk" males. Social policy implications are discussed.

In 2010, a small, liberal arts college overhauled its course-based general education (gened) curriculum to an experienced-based curriculum. Initial focus groups identified student concerns in areas related to degree requirements, internal process, and course quality. A survey was developed to further investigate these issues and explore the issues of course difficulty, academic challenge, and academic entitlement within courses satisfying gened and preparatory major requirements.

The primary education stage is considered an important stage, which has a major impact on the formation of the individual psychologically and socially as well as the development of his personality, and the more clear lye educational objectives are sound at this stage, the more effective the effects that make up children, he goes through moments of disorder, in which case he is forced to adjust the course of his behavior to make it proportional to this new circumstance, adaptation is the set of reactions, thanks to which the individual adjusts his psychological or behavioral structure to respond to conditions or a new situation and appears This is evident by the child's entry into school so that it moves from the family community to the school community, which is considered for many social interactions between students, teachers, management and school staff, school consensus contributes to building in the community.

I describe a simple modification which can be applied to any citation count-based index (e.g. Hirsch's h-index) quantifying a researcher's publication output. The key idea behind the proposed approach is that the merit for the citations of a paper should be distributed amongst its authors according to their relative contributions. In addition to producing inherently fairer metrics I show that the proposed modification has the potential to partially normalize for the unfair effects of honorary authorship and thus discourage this practice.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the lecturers’ self-perceived competencies and practices in assessing students.
Design/methodology/approach – An Assessment Practices Inventory Modified was administered to a sample of 329 randomly selected lecturers from six universities in Uganda. Factor analysis and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were used to address the research questions.
Findings – The results of factor analysis yielded a factor structure of four variables; design, administration, interpretation, and application. The MANOVA multivariate test results highlighted differences in assessment competencies and practices among lecturers in the different academic levels (Wilks’ l¼0.732, F(16, 313)¼5.624, po0.05, Z2¼0.075), and in the interaction between type of university, specialisations, and academic levels (Roy’s largest root¼0.073, F(8, 313)¼2.543, po0.05, Z2¼0.068). The Tukey HSD post hoc test results revealed that lecturers in the specialisation of education were different from their counterparts in other specialisations, in interpreting assessment results. Academic levels differences existed in all the dependent variables (design, administration, interpretation, and application). No differences existed in assessment competencies and practices between lecturers in the different types of universities. Originality/value – Lecturers have been found to differ in their assessment competencies and practices, according to their specialisations and academic levels. It has been recommended in this study, that, assessment training programmes be made mandatory to all lecturers in universities, in order to bridge the gap their competencies and practices in assessing students.

Unifiant Bartolus et Erasmus. Pour une philosophie du droit privé européen sur des bases comparatives en matière didactique et pédagogique. Évaluation de la recherche en droit : l'impossibilité de quantifier le qualitatif Motto : Scientia nihil dignus est in humanis 1 Valérius M. CIUCĂ Marc RICHEVAUX Bruno ROUSSEL Jeanne-Marie WAILLY PLAN

The hermeneutic view, as a constructive approach in social sciences, is revived in last decades; Principles of this view are applied to educational studies as well. In this essay, the application of these principles to the area of research on evaluation of academic achievement is discussed, In this discussion the main point of the hermeneutic view, namely the Hermeneutic circle, is highlighted within the framework of Heidegger's and Gadamer’s views, Accordingly, four steps are suggested for doing research on the evaluation of academic achievement. In the first step, the researcher traces to determine whether the teacher is aware of her pre-understandings in the process of evaluation, This is because evaluation, like any other cognitive activity, is not advanced with an empty mind, In the second step, the researcher deals with the question whether the teacher tries to enter into the intellectual horizon of the pupil In effect, in the third step, the researcher deals with the question whether the teacher confirms or changes the pre-understandings identified in the first step, Finally, in the fourth step, the researcher looks 10 see whether the teacher provides a 'fusion of horizons’; a fusion between the intellectual horizon of hers and that of the pupil's, This is to say that from the hermeneutic view, proper evaluation is far from being a one-directional activity of the teacher

This article investigates the relationship between the belief in a just world (BJW) and distress at school. On the basis of just world theory, the authors argue that strong student BJW should be associated with low school distress. Two questionnaire studies with German secondary school students attending grades 7-13 are reported. Both studies found strong BJW to be associated with less distress at school, better grades, and the evaluation of grades and teachers as more just. Moreover, the relationship between strong BJW and low school distress persisted when controlled for grades, justice of grades, and teacher justice. This relationship held for all students, independently of their school track, grade level, or gender. Overall, the pattern of results reveals school distress to have a unique association with BJW and school-specific justice cognitions.

This paper focuses on the design and implementation of a new academic program for food, human nutrition and dietetics in higher education of the Republic of Macedonia, in 2010. A National healthcare reform planning process and identifying priority concerns, needs and areas for strategic action have been included designing and delivery of the academic education study program, registration and quality of practice in the field of human nutrition and dietetics in the Republic of Macedonia. The idea of the government and the University St. "Kliment Ohridski" in Bitola has been started as governmental project with aim to introduce a new profession of Nutrition and Dietetics in the Republic of Macedonia at 1 st and 2-nd cycle qualifications.

Through a critical examination of the relationship between ethnicity and learning dispositions, Watkins and Noble’s Disposed to Learn: Schooling, Ethnicity and the Scholarly Habitus provides insightful accounts on factors that affect educational achievement. The book sheds light on the complex social practices that produce differences in dispositions to learning, and challenges the simplistic assumption underpinning popular myths, statistical correlations and learning style research regarding the relationship between ethnic background and educational performance. The central argument of the book is that educational performance is influenced not by innate qualities associated with specific ethnic backgrounds but capacities developed through social practices enacted both at home and school.

In Iran, high school graduates enter university after taking a very difficult entrance exam called the Konkoor. Therefore, only the top-performing students are admitted by universities to continue their bachelor's education in statistics. Surprisingly, statistically, most of such students fall into the following categories: (1) do not succeed in their education despite their excellent performance on the Konkoor and in high school; (2) graduate with a grade point average (GPA) that is considerably lower than their high school GPA; (3) continue their master's education in majors other than statistics and (4) try to find jobs unrelated to statistics. This article employs the well-known and powerful statistical technique, the Bayesian structural equation modelling (SEM), to study the academic success of recent graduates who have studied statistics at Shahid Beheshti University in Iran. This research: (i) considered academic success as a latent variable, which was measured by GPA and other academic success (see below) of students in the target population; (ii) employed the Bayesian SEM, which works properly for small sample sizes and ordinal variables; (iii), which is taken from the literature, developed five main factors that affected academic success and (iv) considered several standard psychological tests and measured characteristics such as ‘self-esteem’ and ‘anxiety’. We then study the impact of such factors on the academic success of the target population. Six factors that positively impact student academic success were identified in the following order of relative impact (from greatest to least): ‘Teaching–Evaluation’, ‘Learner’, ‘Environment’, ‘Family’, ‘Curriculum’ and ‘Teaching Knowledge’. Particularly, influential variables within each factor have also been noted.

The aim of the paper is to show the scale of preparing habilitation reviews ending with untypical conclusions and the impact of such reviews on the outcome of habilitation proceedings in one discipline – sociology. The general analysis of the outcome of the review comes down to the final conclusion; the detailed analysis proposed by the author also takes into account the degree of strengthening or weakening of this conclusion. In particular, the weakening of a positive conclusion may indicate that the actual evaluation of the work is rather negative and differs from the nominal evaluation. The article begins with a theoretical introduction in which the author analyzes the legal aspects of reviewing the achievements to the habilitation degree, the imperfections of this process indicated in the literature, and briefly refers to American and Polish research in the field of pragmatics of RPT reviews, which provide tools to interpret the mechanism of formulating unobvious conclusions. A study conducted on a sample of 130 habilitation cases in sociology from 2012–2019 showed that the results of the proceedings were rather consistent with the results of the reviews. Nevertheless, a set of “border proceedings” have been identified that have received reviews with a low degree of certainty (weakened) or some, but divergent, degree of certainty. In their case, the outcome of the proceedings was unpredictable, i.e. proceedings with the same review configuration ended in different ways.
Celem artykułu jest ukazanie skali sporządzania recenzji habilitacyjnych zakończonych nietypowymi konkluzjami oraz wpływu takich recenzji na wynik postępowania habilitacyjnego w jednej dyscyplinie – socjologii. Ogólna analiza wyniku recenzji sprowadza się do uwzględnienia końcowego wniosku, analiza szczegółowa, którą proponuje autor, bierze także uwagę stopień wzmocnienia lub osłabienia tej konkluzji. W szczególności osłabianie pozytywnej konkluzji może świadczyć o tym, że rzeczywista ocena pracy jest raczej negatywna i różni się od oceny nominalnej.
Artykuł rozpoczyna się wstępem teoretycznym, w którym Autor analizuje prawne aspekty recenzowania dorobku na stopień doktora habilitowanego, niedoskonałości tego procesu wskazywane w literaturze, oraz krótko odnosi się do amerykańskich i polskich badań z zakresu pragmatyki recenzji awansowych, które dają narzędzia by zinterpretować mechanizm formułowania nieoczywistych konkluzji.
Badanie przeprowadzone na próbie 130 postępowań habilitacyjnych z socjologii z lat 2012-2019 wykazało, że wyniki postępowań były zgodne z wynikami recenzji. Tym niemniej udało się dostrzec zbiór „postępowań granicznych”, które otrzymały recenzje o niskim stopniu pewności (osłabione) lub pewne, ale rozbieżne. W ich przypadku wynik postępowania był nieprzewidywalny, tj. postępowania o takiej samej konfiguracji recenzji kończyły się w różny sposób.

This study presents Quantitative Field Observations (QFOs) of educationally relevant affect and behavior among students at three schools using Reasoning Mind, a game-based software system designed to teach elementary-level mathematics. High levels of engagement are observed. Possible causes for these high levels of engagement are considered, including the interactive pedagogical agent and other design elements.

Education is as a double-edged sword in the stratification process. On the one hand, it is an instrument of social mobility, since through competence development individuals can enhance their social position. On the other hand, it contributes to the reproduction of social inequalities; in particular, through the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and skills, individuals of privileged background can maintain their dominant position in the class structure. Comparative studies have shown that whether one aspect prevails over the other depends to a large extent on the organizational structure of educational systems.
Given the nearly universal nature of primary and secondary schooling in industrialized societies – accompanied by a process of expansion and differentiation of higher education – the effect of parental class on post-compulsory educational outcomes is a relevant aspect of social stratification. However, due to a lack of reliable comparable data on adults’ competences, several questions have long remained unaddressed. To what extent does family background affect the development of key competences for young adults? Do these effects vary across educational systems? Are countries with fairly egalitarian primary and lower-secondary school systems likewise egalitarian when it comes to post-compulsory education?
In this work, I address these questions by exploiting large scale assessments of cognitive skills. In particular, by comparing the standardized scores of the same birth cohort in PISA 2000 and PIAAC 2012, I assess the degree to which, in each of the 21 European and OECD countries under scrutiny, social inequalities in competence development widen or narrow after the end of compulsory schooling. By means of multilevel regressions and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), I then investigate whether and how cross-country differences in the magnitude of these effects can be explained by institutional configurations, in terms of access and differentiation of the upper-secondary and tertiary levels of educational systems.

The present scientific monograph, based on research conducted under the supervision of the Educational Research Institute in Ljubljana (ERI), and with financial support from the European Social Fund, aims to identify and explain some of the determinants of school performance in Slovenian schools. In the scientific and journalistic literature, school performance is nowadays linked to the future career success and socioeconomic status of individuals, to the absence and presence of deviance, and even to the likelihood of marital stability. It is also known that the national income and competitiveness of an economy and society on an international scale also depends on its educational performance. When dealing with school performance, it is not only an intra-school issues which are relevant. Education performance has far-reaching consequences and is associated not merely with the future of children and adults, but also with the future of a society as a whole, particularly in terms of its social and economic configuration. Consequently, the study of school success determinants is a key task, especially for a modern society, since its functioning is particularly strongly linked to its ability to produce new knowledge and skills. The present contribution gives an insight into the differences and similarities of the analysed populations (the sample for empirical analysis included students of all types of secondary schools in Slovenia (n = 1317) in school year 2007/2008 and was formed based on secondary school structure in Slovenia according to the official data of the Statistical office of the Republic of Slovenia). The impact of a multitude of psychological and sociological measures of determinants of school performance was analysed (e.g., adolescent self-esteem, locus of control, social anxiety, etc.), the relationship between parents and children were studies (relations between children and parents, parental socioeconomic status) and relations between teachers and students were also a focal point (including school delinquency and a sense of school attachment). In addition, the monograph also analyses the impact of broader social environment, including cultural capital and the use of time among adolescents, especially youth leisure activities. It is also worth noting that the impact of intellectual ability on academic performance is also studied, particularly in relation to the aforementioned psychological and sociological concepts. The authors of the present text firmly believe that the monograph is undoubtedly an important contribution to the field of sociology of education and is at the same time a firm basis for the formation of social and educational policies.