ESRI Research Seminar: "The German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) - Main Features and Insights into Child Development in the Early Years"

Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2.

Speaker: Thorsten Schneider

Abstract: A new research infrastructure project has been established in Germany that aims to study the acquisition of education, assess the consequences of education for life courses, and describe central education processes and trajectories across the entire life span. The talk presents the main themes, features and potential of this study, which is known as the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). While NEPS focuses on key educational stages ranging over the entire life span, a longitudinal perspective will be achieved through a theoretical framework for competence development, learning environments, social inequalities and educational decisions, educational processes of migrants, and returns to education. Six cohorts have been issued in NEPS so far: new-borns (about 7 months), Kindergarten children, 5th graders, 9th graders, first-year college students, and adults who – in most cases - have already left the educational system. This talk will focus on the pre-school years in NEPS.

In addition to this overview, results on differences in the receptive vocabulary and grammatical skills of 4 to 5-year-olds are presented. These children were surveyed in the first wave of the Kindergarten cohort. We compare children with parents from Turkey and the former Soviet Union - the two largest immigrant groups in Germany - to children from native families. We consider if these differences might be due to social class and migration specific factors; as well as the timing of entrance into institutional child care and the share of immigrants in that institution.