‘Lifelong education and lifelong social mobility: research using birth cohorts data spanning 75 years’

Posted on December 1, 2016 by anna pultar

Research group meeting on Wednesday, 7 December, 1-2 pm, Conference Room 2.15 CMB

Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Education, will discuss the design of a new collaborative research project:

 

Lindsay Paterson: ‘Lifelong education and lifelong social mobility: research using birth cohorts data spanning 75 years’

I will describe the design of a project that compares three Scottish birth cohorts – people born in 1936, 1958 and 1970 – looking at their educational opportunities and their social mobility. The research questions are:

(1) Has educational inequality diminished across the three cohorts, and, if so, is that mainly because the overall level of educational participation has risen?

(2) Has social mobility been driven by changes in the occupational structure, rather than by changes in the strength of association of origins and destinations?

(3) Do the answers to questions (1) and (2) vary across the life course?

(4) Has the importance of adult education diminished in importance across these three cohorts, as the formal education system has expanded and become increasingly inclusive of all types of pupil?

However, answering these will be for the future: all that I can describe at this stage is the research design. In particular, I will describe the process of getting access to the data for the 1936 cohort which is complex, and involves working closely with the National Records of Scotland.’

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