On the influence of parents and peers on occupational aspirations in Germany under special regard of secondary school track interactions

Abstract

International research has established that significant others, such as parents and peers, can influence a student’s educational or occupational aspirations. However, this research also reveals that influences differ by educational system, and the effects of peers are strongest in systems with low levels of stratification. For a long time, it was assumed that these effects were weaker in highly stratified systems, such as in Germany. However, our results using large-scale data (N > 11,000) indicate that the situation is more complex and parents and peers have different influences, depending on the secondary school track a student attends. Occupational aspirations are lower, on average, in non-academic tracks yet more diverse than in the academic track. Parents strongly influence students’ occupational aspirations in the academic track, while peers are more relevant in non-academic tracks, where no parental effects are detectable. These results suggest that the influence of significant others is not uniform but rather complex as school track interactions are present. Reporting uniform effects in systems with strong tracking is problematic and needs to be reconsidered.