Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MapIE (Mapping of Longitudinal data of Inequalities in Education)
Berichtszeitraum: 2024-03-01 bis 2025-02-28
The MapIE project aims at identifying and analysing longitudinal data both to understand how inequalities develop in different educational contexts and particularly to identify effective mechanisms and interventions to close achievement and well-being gaps. In the first stage of the project, we did a systematic review of how educational inequalities have been studied longitudinally in Europe and other developed countries. We are currently mapping and collecting existing data from Northern and Central Europe that we analyse to identify effective system-, regional- or school-level policies and practices. We carefully describe and analytically capture how the context influences the definitions of educational equity and equality. This will be achieved through a framework regulating how data from widely differing longitudinal studies can be restructured and merged into a joint analytical design. Finally, we aim at creating a public framework for studying educational inequalities longitudinally in future studies, acknowledging the role of local contexts but aiming for comparability at the European level. This way, the project will considerably strengthen the knowledge base of what shapes the educational outcomes over time, how to best support the learning of all students and how to reduce education inequalities in the short, medium and long term.
The MapIE project consists of content-related work packages WP2-WP66, the project management WP1, and the Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication WP7. During the first reporting period, we almost completed WP2 2 and 3, made some progress in WP4 4, and started WP5 ahead of schedule. To address the first Specific Objective, we conducted a systematic literature review in WP2 and submitted the technical report about it as a deliverable. Our third Specific Objective was to identify and describe the most important factors contributing to the development of educational inequalities over time and the compensation of them in different contexts, creating a framework for addressing them in research. We systematically reviewed all the data already accessible to the consortium to identify factors that have been considered in studying educational inequalities in a longitudinal design, and complemented this list based on the results of the systematic literature review. We defined the inclusion/exclusion criteria for the data mapping stage and created the framework for data mapping, and submitted the framework for data mapping as a deliverable. In WP4, we started the work towards reaching the second Specific Objective about getting a systematic overview of longitudinal studies and datasets in Northern and Central Europe about factors influencing learning outcomes and trends in educational inequalities by reviewing the data already accessible to the consortium against the criteria specified in the data mapping framework. We also started to contact other important data owners outside the consortium to ensure smooth collaboration in the next stage of data mapping. We created an online form for data mapping/description and are currently testing it by describing the data already accessible to the consortium. We have also begun to design and technically implement the metadata database called MapIE Data Catalog that will be publicly available in month 24. In WP5, we started to address our fourth Specific Objective related to analysing the identified longitudinal datasets ahead of the original schedule. We began to prepare for this work in advance by preparing a book proposal, selecting the first datasets to be analysed in the book, and writing the abstracts of the book chapters describing the design of all the substudies included in the book.
In the literature review completed in WP2, we have systematically described how educational inequalities have been conceptualised and how they have been studied longitudinally in Europe, producing already new scientific knowledge about educational inequalities and the contextual and other factores influencing them. Further scientific analyses of the literature database and the empirical longitudinal datasets identified in the data mapping will happen during the next reporting period.