标题：Differences in Educational Attainment of Third and Seventh Grade Pupils in Croatia with Respect to Gender and Parents’ Educational Level: A Population Perspective
出版社：Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Studijski centar socijalnog rada
摘要：Numerous international scientific research endeavours have demonstrated differences in educational attainment with respect to the gender of pupils and their parents' educational level. The magnitudes of these differences are indicative of the degree to which educational opportunities within a specific educational system are equal and should serve as a foundation for both the exploration of the causes and effects of these differences and the development of policies aimed at their reduction. Recently, several research efforts have been conducted in Croatia in which external assessment outcomes were related to pupils’ gender and the socio-economic status of their families. However, to date there is no research analysing the relationship between these variables and educational attainment, as it is expressed through school grades. The aim of this paper is to determine the magnitude of the effect of pupils’ gender and parents’ educational level on the educational attainment, expressed through the overall final grade and the final grade in the Croatian language. In this paper, population data on the educational attainment of 43,008 4th grade pupils and 40,843 8th grade pupils was used. Results of two-way (2x5) analyses of variance indicate moderate effects of pupils’ gender, large effects of parents’ educational level and small effects of the interaction on both measures of educational attainment and in both cohorts of pupils. These effect sizes are stable in both cohorts with the exception of the effect of gender, which is higher in the older cohort. Analyses of the simple effects for the interaction of pupils’ gender and parental educational level indicate stability of the effect of gender within different educational levels, except in the case of the highest educational level where these differences are smaller. Because the research design did not allow for further investigation into the causes and effects of these group differences, its results should serve primarily as a foundation for future research endeavours.
关键词：educational attainment; internal school assessment; gender differences; parental education level
