Further training in Germany. Continuous participation and the impact of attitudes and personality.

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Autor/in	Offerhaus, Judith Kristina
Titel	Further training in Germany. Continuous participation and the impact of attitudes and personality. Gefälligkeitsübersetzung: Weiterbildung in Deutschland. Kontinuierliche Beteiligung und der Einfluss von Einstellungen und Persönlichkeit.
Quelle	Bremen: Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (2014), VIII, 257 S. PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit Bremen, Univ., Diss., 2014.
Beigaben	Illustrationen
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; Monographie
URN	urn:nbn:de:gbv:46-00103740-10
Schlagwörter	Soziale Ungleichheit; Soziale Schicht; Dissertation; Weiterbildung; Biografie; Deutschland
Abstract	Further training, labor market, stratification, social inequality, life course. - Further training is understood as any professionally-oriented course or formalized work-related learning activity; it takes place after leaving formal education and entering the labor market. A large body of literature mainly based on cross-sectional research shows that access to and participation in further training is predominantly determined by two factors, individual level of education and occupational status. This research departs from previous work and its cross-sectional focus on socio-economic stratifiers by adopting a longitudinal modelling strategy and incorporating psychological and social psychological factors into sociological research. I focus on the case of Germany and employ data drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel study. There are two main theoretical and empirical contributions of this dissertation. (1) Further training is viewed from the perspective of life course sociology; recurrent engagement across adulthood is phrased as prolonged educational careers which extend beyond formal schooling. Sequence and cluster analyses show that participation in training varies by educational background and previous training experience, underlining a two-fold path-dependency. Additionally, results align with the life course concept of cumulative advantage/disadvantage. Frequent and continuous participation in training is associated with higher occupational status and more favorable labor market positioning in terms of stable full-time employment; whereas training abstainers and irregular participants are over-represented among marginally and unemployed. (2) Further training is conceptualized as a function of demographics, socio-economic and work-related factors. However, this is extended by incorporating two more subjective mechanisms which subtly are at play in determining participation in training: attitudes and personality. (a) Framed in terms of rational choice theory, training attitudes represent subjective evaluations of the perceived training utility (qualification or adaptation); a general career orientation and different forms of perceived training constraints are also taken into account. Findings from random-effects panel regressions reveal that adaptation utility and career orientation facilitate training, while perceived constraints reduce the training likelihood, everything else equal. For low educated individuals, positive evaluations of the adaptive capacities of training and strong career orientation can be interpreted as an equalizer in access to training; their training propensity is no longer significantly different from similar highly qualified individuals. (b) Personality traits are understood as a productive set of non-cognitive skills which drive behaviors and determine socio-economic life outcomes like educational performance, labor market participation and status attainment. In the context of further training, specifically two traits matter in increasing training participation: openness to new experiences and internal control beliefs. In light of these findings this dissertation concludes that further training is an extension of previous educational and occupational stratification. However, there are exceptions; low educated individuals with positive assessments of the utility of training seem to overcome the educational barrier in access to further training. Also, attitudes and personality should be systematically considered in training research as this research shows that these softer qualities may prove more effective in reducing unequal training chances over the life course.
Erfasst von	ZBW - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, Kiel
Update	2015/4