This project had interrelated substantive and methodological foci. The substantive aim was to investigate the link between social background and educational experience, using a variety of methods and comparing England and Germany. This link is well established, and there are various theories to explain it, including rational choice theory, i.e. the notion that people undertake an analysis of perceived costs and benefits of courses of action, and habitus theory, which regards educational pathways and outcomes as shaped by behaviours and dispositions reflecting familial class origin. Methodologically, since the balance of rational and habitual behaviour may vary in complex ways by social origin, I used an analytic method orientated to such causal complexity, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), to analyse large datasets in combination with in-depth interviews. I studied various outcomes, including GCSE results, A-level subject choice, the differences between comprehensive and selective Local Education Authorities in England and Wales, which type of school someone attends at age 17 in Germany, moving up and down in the German secondary school system, and entry to Higher Education in Germany. Analysing large datasets with QCA, I found evidence of complex interactions of social background factors with other factors such as ability in producing social inequalities in education. In process-tracing interviews conducted with 15 to 18 year olds in both countries, I found evidence of behaviour in line both with rational action theory and with habitus theory, but also of how differing habituses across social classes shape the boundaries within which rational decisions are taken.An individual's adult economic and social status is influenced by the pathway he or she follows through the educational system. It is therefore important to understand the factors and processes acting on the individual, social and systemic levels to produce the distribution of students across these pathways. Employing existing datasets and new interview data, the research focuses on these substantive issues. The other, equally important focus of the research is methodological, exploring the use of case-based approaches with large n datasets. Ragin's Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) attempts to bridge the supposed divide between quantitative and qualitative research methods. Based on Boolean algebra, QCA identifies necessary and sufficient conditions for some outcome, providing a configurational account of potentially causal conditions. In this work, QCA, in its crisp and fuzzy forms, is combined with process-tracing interviews. This approach with its capacity to explore the ways in which conjunctions of factors explain educational success and failure may offer insights over and above those available from either conventional quantitative methods or from small scale qualitative work. Studies in England and Germany, two countries whose educational systems differ widely in many ways, will aim to produce configurational accounts of transitions during students' educational careers.

Semi-structured interviews with 43 German and 36 English young people between 15 and 18. Face-to-face interviews. Purposive selection/case studies