Institutional Habitus and Educational Achievement: A Comparative Case Study in Germany and Turkey

Executive Summary

The educational achievement of students from working-class ethnic minority or immigrant backgrounds is vitally important for their integration into the labor market and society. We know from research that their disadvantaged family background, such as low parental education and income, significantly influences these students’ academic achievement. However, as students increasingly spend most of their time in school contexts, school has also become one of the key factors for understanding educational performance. In this context, interactions of specific school regulations, practices, and structures with the skills, values, and cultures of students can greatly contribute to the development of educational policies for reforming schools in a way that would increase the educational achievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

This study conceptualizes school-related factors as institutional habitus and seeks to understand how schools’ institutional habitus accommodate students from different ethnic and minority backgrounds for making empirical contributions to the development of inclusive and intercultural school structures.

This report is based on a comparative study that investigates the components of the institutional habitus of two different schools, one in Turkey and one in Germany, and how they influence the educational performance of children from working-class Kurdish ethnic minority backgrounds in Turkey and working-class Turkish immigrant backgrounds in Germany. This exploratory, qualitative study included interviews with teachers, students, school principals, and experts in the field of education, as well as participatory observations in the classroom and beyond. The key findings, which will be further discussed within the report, are summarized below.