Analysis - "Pathways and transitions, and "Boys, Girls, and Achievement: Addressing the Classroom Issues

Extract

[...] The team also interviewed in each of the institutions their cohorts decided for post-16 education. It is through interviews that the project team concluded that the families had a greater impact on career choice on their children (p.15). As a convention, interviews are known to be very effective methods of compiling data for research. The information gathered is first-hand, and hence is not distorted. They are also able to give the interviewer the flexibility and dynamism required when they encounter different people. [...]

[...] The project team in the report on Choice, Pathways, and transitions had a ‘base school' in Northwark Park, which is a post-16 education/training provider. The team visit the school and over the two years of the project, the carried out observation and ethnography on the group. This is ethnography, and behaviour movements of the cohorts could be detected (p.5). The team with these methods had been able to find out the characteristics of the group e.g., they had different ethnic groups, small and diverse ethnic minority, others had dual-heritage and others refugees. [...]

[...] These youths assume their choices, pathways and transitions in a dynamic urban environment full of many opportunities, challenges, oppressions, despairs and excitements. Another argument is that the social, individual and material resources desirable to live a reflexively organised lifestyle are not equally reachable to all. The researchers found out that there are organizational factors like unemployment, poor pay, discrimination (in terms of gender, race, or social class), lack of support, interrupted schooling, lack of formal qualifications, low self-confidence, and poverty as forming track-lines through the lives of some young people. [...]

[...] Status, occupation, and identity are highly interwoven. People are what they do. Work cannot be detached from them. However, this is not always so when it comes to the youth and late adolescents. In fact, there is evidence confirming that they most of the time ‘postpone' or on hold' their work identities (Clarke, 1999). The project report gave constraints which influence choices of the young people as they transition from school to the working environment (transition). The finding here was consistent with other researchers work (Du bois-Reymond, 1998; Bynner, 1997; Furlong, 1992) that young people believe that they have choices but luck, determination and hard work are the main factors which contribute to the success. [...]

[...] The youth of today do not simply forge their identities like it was done in the old times with respect to class or gender. Rather, the identities are on the basis of other key aspects such as social class. Some young people were found to be participating in expressions of consumption of youth more than others. It is well known that clubbing, consumption of recreational drugs, drinking, smoking, fashionable clothing, and other ‘cool' lifestyle accessories are expensive. A few get money from their parents while the majority prefer ‘flexible' part time jobs. [...]