1. Socioeconomic status and school type as predictors of academic achievementH. Eren Suna, Hande Tanberkan, Bekir S. Gür, Matjaž Perc, Mahmut Özer, 2020, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: We evaluated the effects of socioeconomic status and school type on academic achievement based on data from two million students over a 10 year period through three national transition systems in Turkey. Each of the three transition systems has its own national examination, and the data includes only students who took these exams. We used covariance analysis to compare the mean scores of public schools and private schools after controlling the effect of students' socioeconomic levels. We found that students in private schools, who were socioeconomically stronger, had significantly higher academic achievement levels in language, mathematics, and science tests, and this finding was valid across all three transition systems. These effects were further exuberated when all the students were tracked by means of a national exam and placed into different high schools. It was found that the negative impact of one's socioeconomic level on students' scores reached its maximum value when all students were placed into high schools by means of a national exam. In all systems, the mean scores of private school students decreased significantly when the socioeconomic level was controlled. Our research has important implications for school tracking policies, specifically indicating that it would be better to omit or at least delay their deployment to post high-school education.
Ključne besede: school tracking, socioeconomic status, academic achievement, school type, transition systems
Objavljeno v DKUM: 23.12.2024; Ogledov: 0; Prenosov: 4
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2. Impact of social networks on the labor market inequalities and school-to-work transitionsMahmut Özer, Matjaž Perc, 2021, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Countries invest in education systems in order to increase the quality of their human capital. In this context, it is seen that especially after the expansion of the higher education systems, countries try to increase higher education graduation rates in order to improve the quality of human resources in the labor market. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to facilitate the transitions from school-to-work, and to increase social welfare by meeting the human resources needs of the labor market. The facilitation of school-to-work transitions has a direct impact on youth unemployment. School-to-work transitions are influenced not only by the quality of education from primary to higher education but also by the dynamics of the labor market. Social network analysis can provide important insights into this dynamics, and in doing so reveal that there are indeed many factors that play a key role in determining who gets a job and why, including, first and foremost, social contacts. An analysis of job search channels reveals that partners, friends, and relatives are those social contacts that are most decisive for employment outcomes. Research reveals that employers use social-contact-based reference channels much more frequently than formal channels for recruitment. Thus, employers frequently use such reference channels in recruitment. It has also been shown that the use of social-contact channels reduces employers' costs of finding suitable employees and increases productivity since employees hired through these channels also stay longer in their firms. We here explore the full potential of social network analysis to better our understanding of school-to-work transitions, to reveal in no uncertain terms the importance of social contacts, and to show how these insights can be leveraged to level the labor market for all involved. An important take-home message is that the labor market dynamics is strongly affected by the Matthew effect, such that the inequalities and the gaps between opportunities only grow and widen as the underlying social networks evolve. It is therefore important to mitigate these effects well before school-to-work transitions come into play, namely during the education. In particular, we assert that minimizing the inequalities during education should effectively mitigate the uneven impact of social networks on school-to-work transitions.
Ključne besede: employment, higher education, inequality, labor market, Matthew effect, social network
Objavljeno v DKUM: 04.10.2024; Ogledov: 0; Prenosov: 7
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3. Dreams and realities of school tracking and vocational educationMahmut Özer, Matjaž Perc, 2020, pregledni znanstveni članek Opis: 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.
Ključne besede: vocational education, network, preferential attachment, educational system
Objavljeno v DKUM: 17.09.2024; Ogledov: 0; Prenosov: 5
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4. Turkey’s transition to face-to-face schooling during the COVID-19 pandemicMahmut Özer, H. Eren Suna, Matjaž Perc, Sadri Şensoy, Sevil Uygun İli̇khan, 2022, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Background/aim: The COVID-19 pandemic majorly disrupted conventional schooling and many countries maintained educational services through distance education. The duration of school closures in Turkey was longer than most OECD countries, thus Turkey prioritized school reopenings in the 2021-2022 academic year to mitigate possible negative outcomes of closures. Here we study the compatibility of implications for school reopenings in Turkey with these practices and assess the first semester of face-to-face schooling.
Materials and methods: We have used document analysis to present and compare the practices in Turkey with international practices. We also used a comparative approach to assess the coherence between policies in Turkey and international suggestions.
Results: We find that vaccination rates of teachers and education staff are quite high in Turkey. Other practices, mandatory face masks, class-based closures and quarantine policies, are also in agreement with international practices. These steps are supported with frequent cleaning and ventilation of school environments, as well as with social distancing measures in schools.
Conclusion: Consequently, the rate of daily closed classrooms has been kept below 1%, and the patterns of closures and openings are in general agreement with the changes of positive cases in the Turkish society. The net rate of closed classrooms decreased with the decline of quarantine days in Turkey. We hope that these insights will inform about school openings and contribute to best practices for faceto-face schooling.
Ključne besede: school system, school reopening, face-to-face education, COVID-19, educational equality, vaccination
Objavljeno v DKUM: 11.07.2024; Ogledov: 100; Prenosov: 5
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5. Improving equality in the education system of TurkiyeMahmut Özer, Matjaž Perc, 2022, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: 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.
Ključne besede: educational equality, Matthew effect, cumulative advantage, preferential attachment, education policy, preschool education, educational systems, cooperation, social physics, government
Objavljeno v DKUM: 27.05.2024; Ogledov: 226; Prenosov: 20
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6. Autapse-induced multiple coherence resonance in single neurons and neuronal networksErgin Yilmaz, Mahmut Özer, Veli Baysal, Matjaž Perc, 2016, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: We study the effects of electrical and chemical autapse on the temporal coherence or firing regularity of single stochastic Hodgkin-Huxley neurons and scale-free neuronal networks. Also, we study the effects of chemical autapse on the occurrence of spatial synchronization in scale-free neuronal networks. Irrespective of the type of autapse, we observe autaptic time delay induced multiple coherence resonance for appropriately tuned autaptic conductance levels in single neurons. More precisely, we show that in the presence of an electrical autapse, there is an optimal intensity of channel noise inducing the multiple coherence resonance, whereas in the presence of chemical autapse the occurrence of multiple coherence resonance is less sensitive to the channel noise intensity. At the network level, we find autaptic time delay induced multiple coherence resonance and synchronization transitions, occurring at approximately the same delay lengths. We show that these two phenomena can arise only at a specific range of the coupling strength, and that they can be observed independently of the average degree of the network.
Ključne besede: neuronal dynamics, autapse, coherence resonance, scale-free network
Objavljeno v DKUM: 23.06.2017; Ogledov: 1163; Prenosov: 447
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