It is well known that the differentiation into school types in secondary education leads to differential environments for students’ learning and development. Central research showed that this is not only due to differences in the social composition of the student body, but also due to institutional characteristics of the different school types themselves. In recent years, however, empirical educational research has not devoted much attention to institutional differences between school types. By using the example of school type-specific teaching cultures, the present contribution demonstrates that institutional effects on students’ development of competencies remain significant and argues for a renewed theoretical and empirical focus on them. Not only can institutional effects amplify secondary effects of social origin. In contrast to compositional effects, their underlying school type-specific characteristics are changeable and thus provide a starting point for school reforms.

Keywords
school types, institutional effects, teaching culture, social inequality