1. Dreams and realities of school tracking and vocational educationMahmut Özer, Matjaž Perc, 2020, review article Abstract: School tracking has been introduced as a means to provide skills the labor market demands, and as such has been in place for several decades in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The time is thus ripe for a critical review of the effects this has had on the equalities in education and opportunities later in life, and on the quality of vocational education in general. A synthesis of the existing literature reveals gaping holes between the dreams of superior vocational education and training that educational tracking ought to deliver, and the realities of lost opportunities and facilitated inequalities, especially in students with poor socioeconomic background, weak social capital, and sparse social networks. This is all the more true the sooner educational tracking comes into effect. While most OECD countries will start tracking students aged 15 or 16, some countries, such as Germany, will start doing this as early as age 10. Our review shows that this can have catastrophic consequences for students that for various reasons perform poorly early on, as they are indeed unable to recover due to the Matthew effect and preferential attachment in social networks, both of which punish false starts in life and reward first movers. To remedy the situation, we propose educational tracking be held off until later in life, and even then be undertaken with flexibility and late bloomers in mind. We also propose to restructure vocational education by decreasing the degree of curriculum differentiation, by allowing broader vocational education curricula, and by decreasing the number of training occupations in order to account for the changing labor market dynamics.
Keywords: vocational education, network, preferential attachment, educational system
Published in DKUM: 17.09.2024; Views: 0; Downloads: 5
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2. Improving equality in the education system of TurkiyeMahmut Özer, Matjaž Perc, 2022, original scientific article Abstract: Success breeds more success, the rich get richer, and the powerful get even more powerful. These are often true in human societies and describe the situation where whatever advantages one has in life frequently beget further advantages over time. The social sciences often describe this phenomenon as the Matthew effect of accumulated advantage, and it is known as preferential attachment in network science. The starting point of the process is often due to the first-mover advantage, under which the first person that achieves something will receive recognition and praise at a rate significantly higher than a person who achieves the same at a later point in time. All this boils down to the fact that unequal opportunities early on in education can translate into greater inequalities later in life. A major goal in the Turkish education system is therefore to ensure equal opportunities as well as equal quality of educational processes starting in preschool and beyond. This study explores the thought processed that have led to the implementation of procedures toward this goal, compares the current state in Turkiye with other OECD countries, and outlines future steps that are in the making for reaching targets throughout the educational system.
Keywords: educational equality, Matthew effect, cumulative advantage, preferential attachment, education policy, preschool education, educational systems, cooperation, social physics, government
Published in DKUM: 27.05.2024; Views: 226; Downloads: 20
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3. Self-organization of progress across the century of physicsMatjaž Perc, 2013, original scientific article Abstract: We make use of information provided in the titles and abstracts of over half a million publications that were published by the American Physical Society during the past 119 years. By identifying all unique words and phrases and determining their monthly usage patterns, we obtain quantifiable insights into the trends of physics discovery from the end of the 19th century to today. We show that the magnitudes of upward and downward trends yield heavy-tailed distributions, and that their emergence is due to the Matthew effect. This indicates that both the rise and fall of scientific paradigms is driven by robust principles of self-organization. Data also confirm that periods of war decelerate scientific progress, and that the later is very much subject to globalisation.
Keywords: self-organization, preferential attachment, evolution of progress, history of physics, statistical physics of social systems
Published in DKUM: 23.06.2017; Views: 1163; Downloads: 359
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