JustEdu team members Associate Professor Petya Ilieva-Trichkova and PhD candidate Asen Dimitrov took part in the International Conference Mixed Methods Research in Education: Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Research of Kindergarten, Schools, Higher and Further Education at the Leibniz University Hannover. The conference took place on November 16 and 17, 2023, in Hannover, Germany. It was organised by the German Sociological Association (DGS) Section Education, DGS Working Group Mixed Methods, which is part of the DGS Sections Methods of Empirical Social Research and Qualitative Social Research, and DGS Working Group Science and Higher Education Research.
They presented a co-authored work by Assoc. Prof. Petya Ilieva-Trichkova, Prof. DSc Pepka Boyadjieva, and Asen Dimitrov titled Inequalities in Access to Higher Education from a Comparative Social Justice Perspective: A Mixed-methods Study. This work was undertaken within the JustEdu project. The conference paper combined quantitative analysis of secondary data with original empirical data from student interviews in Bulgaria in order to outline some of the complexity of issues of justice when it comes to access and student experience in higher education. The panel was moderated by Dr. Christian Schnejderberg, INCHER, Kassel, Germany.
The presentation raised great interest and a lively discussion regarding the measurement of inequalities through a social justice perspective and the theoretical perspectives through which they can be understood.
More information about the conference is available here