Tracks and subjective feelings of success in secondary education: a qualitative study in Flanders

Track position has an impact on students’ academic self-appraisals in school. Academic self-appraisals matter as they relate to educational and professional aspirations and choices. In this study, based on ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews, we want to increase our understanding of the combination of within- and between track comparisons for students’ self-appraisals of their academic success. The data indicates that the hierarchy between tracks in the Flemish educational system is reflected in the between- and within track comparison groups students use to evaluate their school success. In academic tracks, most students considered their educational career automatically as successful, regardless of their actual grades. Conversely, students in vocational tracks developed more contradictory feelings with respect to their personal school success and felt the need to distinguish themselves from their classmates. Thus, regardless the existence of different school cultures across tracks, students searched for strategies to define themselves as successful in school