Former Scientific Staff:
PhD researcher from 2021 to 2024
PhD project:
The Smartest Ones? An Ethnographic Perspective on Students’ Experiences at the Transition to Gymnasium in Zurich.
Project summary:
This dissertation examines students' experiences during their transition to public Gymnasia in Zurich, Switzerland. The Gymnasium is the only path to unrestricted university access in the Swiss state-funded school system, and only about 20% of students can attend after passing a central entrance exam. While research on students’ experiences in selective schools is limited, it is crucial to understand how this transition shapes their perceptions of educational paths and societal positioning. Most existing Swiss research on Gymnasia is quantitative and overlooks students' perspectives. This dissertation thus contributes to the study of educational inequalities and the reproduction of privilege within state-funded education. The dissertation addresses two main research questions: How do students experience the transition to Gymnasium, and how do educational policies, as well as the practices of parents and school staff, influence this process? Theoretically, it draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital to analyze how social class differences manifest at the transition, and Lefebvre's theory of social space to examine how the production of educational spaces is interconnected. Methodologically, the dissertation employs an ethnographic approach, based on 62 participant observations and 41 interviews with seven students from diverse socioeconomic and migration backgrounds, their parents, teachers, and principals of Zurich's Gymnasia. The findings reveal that class-based inequalities are concealed for students during the transition. Parental involvement is heavily emphasized, which creates a normailzation of intense parental support, which is not equally accessible to all families. Teachers and parents stress the meritocratic nature of the transition, obscuring the impact of their involvement. Furthermore, Gymnasium staff use information events to present these schools as exclusive, superior educational spaces, reinforcing a hierarchized landscape of secondary schooling in Zurich. Students largely internalize this messaging, co-producing and legitimizing the perceived superiority of the Gymnasium and its students. Overall, the dissertation highlights the role of students in the reproduction of educational inequalities, particularly in normalizing parental responsibilization and legitimizing the privileged status of the Gymnasium. It also underscores how policies like school choice and the separation of secondary school tracks perpetuate socioeconomic disparities and the hierarchization of the educational system. By adding a perspective from Switzerland, where public schools contribute to the reproduction of the upper middle class, this research broadens the understanding of public elite schools.
Publications:
Bauer, I., Landolt, L., Reh, C., Landolt, S. (2025). Chancengerechtigkeit im Schatten des Marktes: Vermarktung, Verantwortungszuschreibung und soziale Ungleichheit beim Übertritt ans Gymnasium in der SchweizZürich). GW-Unterricht, 1:47-60.
https://doi.org/10.1553/gw-unterricht178s47
Bauer, I., Landolt, L., Reh, C., Landolt, S. (2025). Übertritt ans Gymnasium. Einblick in Ergebnisse eines SNF-Forschungsprojekts. Gymnasium Helveticum, 5, 6–8.
https://mein.fairgate.ch/vsg/files/filemanager/download/attachment/c91e123ef9cc5a3c4c434cffefa06096
Landolt, L. & Reh, C. (2025). Privilege forged in space: Student experiences in transitioning to Zurich’s highly selective public secondary schools. Geoforum, 159.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104219
Reh, C. & Landolt, S. (2024). “We learn Latin, they learn to cook”: students', principals', and teachers' coproductions of exclusive public secondary schools. Geographica Helvetica, 79(4):343-356.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-343-2024
Reh, C. & Landolt, S. (2024). Parental responsibilisation and camouflaging class-based inequalities: an ethnography of a highly selective educational transition. Educational Review, https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2024.2342729
Autor*innenkollektiv Geography Teacher Training (2024). Geographie, ein trauriges Fach! Wie unterrichtet man globale Herausforderungen? GeoAgenda, 1(2024), 32-34.