My research interests include various topics surrounding inequalities that children experience in school. Among others, I am interested in how education system influence educational outcomes between students, particularily when starting positions are unequally distributed between children from different backgrounds. In my PhD thesis, I investigated the role of educational tracking and how it affects differences in educational achievement, expectations and their realization between second-generation immigrant and ethnic majority children. I explored these differences in a cross-national perspective using PISA and CILS4EU data. Moreover, I am keen to learn whether and how students themselves perceive such inequalities in school and what consequences their personal perspective may have on future life outcomes. To analyze these questions, I use novel data on perceptions of inequality among students, parents and teachers in three federal states in Germany. (Learn more about the project here)
Peer-reviewed publications
Diehl, C., Pomianowicz, K., & Hinz, T. (2025). On the Wrong Track? Perceived Track Mismatch Among Ethnic Minority and Majority Students in the German Education System. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 99.
Pomianowicz, K. (2024). Educational Expectation Gaps Between Second-Generation Immigrant and Ethnic Majority Students in a Comparative Perspective: The Moderating Role of Educational Tracking. International Migration Review, 58 (2), 644-679.
Pomianowicz, K. (2023). Educational achievement disparities between second-generation and non-immigrant students: Do school characteristics account for tracking effects? European Educational Research Journal, 22(3), 297–324.
Doctoral Thesis
Pomianowicz, K. (2025). Cross-national perspectives on educational inequalities between second-generation immigrant and ethnic majority students. The influence of educational tracking on three educational outcomes during secondary education in Western countries. Doctoral disseertation, Leibniz University Hannover.
Public outreach
Diehl, C., Pomianowicz, K. & Hinz, T. (2025). Falscher Schulzweig? Wahrgenommene Bildungsungerechtigkeit bei Jugendlichen mit Migrationsgeschichte. Policy Paper Nr. 21, Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”, Universität Konstanz.
Garritzmann, S., Pomianowicz, K. & Wehl, N. (2021). The long road to launch day: How to perform a survey of 3000 adolescents. In: In_equality magazine 02, 30-33.
Pomianowicz, K., Kampermann, A., Kugler T. (2024). “The System Is Stupid.” Arthouse Cinema Meets Social Science. In In_equality magazine 06, 13-19.
Work in progress
I am currently working on several empirical papers in the areas of educational inequality among minorities, students’ perceptions of inequality and fairness, and educational tracking, often using cross-national or longitudinal survey data. Current topics include:
Meritocratic attitudes and their contextual influences
New conceptualizations, measurements, and empirical validations of tracking in cross-national research
The realization of educational aspirations and expectations among minority students in Europe
Synthesizing theoretical approaches to perceptions of inequality among youth
Articles with restricted access are available on request.