SegrEd · Stratification and the Segregation of Teachers in Education Markets

There is concern on the European level about the diminishing attractiveness of teaching as a profession, as well as about the shortage of qualified staff in schools and the increasing turnover of teachers in segregated education markets. However, analyses of both teacher segregation, i.e., the regionally uneven distribution of qualified staff in affluent, mixed and disadvantaged schools, and the stratification of the teaching profession, i.e., teachers with different social-class backgrounds, have attracted relatively little attention. Many countries are struggling to provide equal access to quality education for all children. The academic community is currently engaged in four parallel debates on inequalities: 1) the stratification of education markets, 2) the socio-spatial (regional) segregation of schools, 3) the socio-economic segregation of schools and 4) the segregation of teachers. There appears to be no shared conceptual framework for empirical analysis, thus there are gaps in the current understanding of how educational inequalities arise.In addressing these gaps, the SegrEd project is developing a comprehensive research approach to scrutinising conceptual and empirical debates on stratification and the segregation of teachers. On the empirical level it explores how, why and with what societal consequences stratification and segregation among teachers emerge in education markets in Finland, France and Sweden. How does this segregation reproduce, reinforce or reduce existing inequalities between social groups? SegrEd renews the academic debate and proposes a novel conceptual tool, namely the social space of educational choice, which facilitates the simultaneous conceptual and empirical exploration of stratification and segregation. A multilevel, comparative methodological strategy combining quantitative and qualitative methods advances this approach. The aim is to arrive at an in-depth understanding of educational inequalities and their construction.