Oterhals Geir, Bachmann Kari Elisabeth, Bjerke Annette Hessen, Pedersen Arve Vorland
Faculty of Business Administration and Social Sciences, Molde University College, Molde, Norway.
Department of Education, Faculty of Humanities and Education, Volda University College, Volda, Norway.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 10;13:1066264. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1066264. eCollection 2022.
In most education systems, the age of a given cohort of students spans up to 12 months, which creates a within-class age difference, or , that tends to disadvantage younger students. Because birth month indeed correlates with academic performance, with poorer outcomes for students born later in the year, the effect can have lifelong consequences for students, whose academic performance justifies their acceptance into different educational tracks. Although past studies have identified the relative age effect in students' choice of educational track in school systems in which students make such choices at the age of 10-14 years, we examined data from the Norwegian school system, in which education tracks are chosen at the age of 15-16 years. The dataset included the variables birth month, track choice, and gender, of all 28,231 pupils at the upper secondary school level in a school county in Norway. Birth month was compared between vocational and academic track choices and the results revealed a significant relative age effect on educational choices between academic and vocational tracks, such that younger students were significantly more likely to apply for vocational tracks. The effect was significantly stronger for boys compared to girls. This indicates that the choice of educational track may reflect students' relative age, especially among boys, and hence, not be based on interests alone. Those findings have implications for actors involved in ensuring equity in education systems in Norway and elsewhere.
在大多数教育体系中，特定一批学生的年龄跨度可达12个月，这就造成了班级内的年龄差异，即年龄差，而这往往会使年龄较小的学生处于不利地位。由于出生月份确实与学业成绩相关，下半年出生的学生成绩较差，这种影响可能会对学生产生终身后果，因为他们的学业成绩决定了他们进入不同教育轨道的机会。尽管过去的研究已经在学生10至14岁时做出此类选择的学校系统中，确定了学生在选择教育轨道时的相对年龄效应，但我们研究了挪威学校系统的数据，在该系统中，教育轨道是在15至16岁时选择的。数据集包括挪威一个学区所有28231名高中生的出生月份、轨道选择和性别变量。对职业轨道和学术轨道选择的出生月份进行了比较，结果显示在学术轨道和职业轨道的教育选择上存在显著的相对年龄效应，即年龄较小的学生申请职业轨道的可能性显著更高。与女孩相比，男孩的这种效应明显更强。这表明教育轨道的选择可能反映了学生的相对年龄，尤其是在男孩中，因此，不仅仅是基于兴趣。这些发现对挪威和其他地方参与确保教育系统公平的相关方具有启示意义。
