Employability pathways for young adults: lived experiences of learners and practitioners in Youth Guarantee programmes

ABSTRACT

Until today, thousands of young adults still dropout of school with no or low qualifications and experience difficulties in entering the labour market. The European Commission offers funding and opportunities for young adults to enter employability enhancing training, often organised under its flagship initiative ‘The Youth Guarantee’. The aim of these programmes is to make young adults a work, training or educational offer within four months of their start into this initiative.

In this paper, we critically explore the concept of employability and focus on the roles of both the young adults undergoing training interventions, but also of practitioners whose work is ideally embedded within the local context of the labour market and the economy. We were interested in the participation experiences by both groups to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of these programmes. Evidence from interviews demonstrated that learners and practitioners were generally satisfied with the interventions, although individualised support was preferred over group-based activities. Working with stakeholders was strongly recommended for this target group who tends to experience cumulative disadvantages. Long-term follow-up of participants’ destinations will provide better evidence on the effectiveness of these programmes.     

Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) as a Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) in Qatar: a Perspective from Grade 10 Chemistry Classes

Research in Science Education - Educational reforms in Qatar have seen the implementation of inquiry-based learning and other student-centred pedagogies. However, there have been few efforts to...     

The fog of online learning

The authors recognized a close similarity between practices used in online genealogy research and those common in online education. Uses of a popular online database service were examined within a peer instruction community dedicated to researching a family history topic. Three community subgroups were divided into leaders, who base their work on external sources, and followers who copy the leaders’ conclusions. The accuracy and error levels of the 21 family trees produced by these researchers were calculated in relation to data obtained from offline archives. The trees created in the online process all contained flawed details and invalid conclusions due to practices similar to those of massive open online courses. The inconsistent reliability of the online approaches is discussed in terms of the ‘fog’ that descends upon knowledge when facts are distorted by academic jargon, disciplinary trends, and institutional priorities, and which increases with its transmission to others by non-experts.     

Inquiry in Higher Education: Reflections and Directions on Course Design and Teaching Methods

Our 5-year experiment with teaching and evaluating an inquiry course has led us to conclude that inquiry is a potent pedagogical tool in higher education, encouraging students to become self-directed and engaged learners. This article offers key ingredients and procedures for designing an inquiry-based course. It provides a pragmatic model of inquiry that describes the structure and function of such a course and the goals and learning objectives for students. This model of inquiry is widely applicable and will help faculty members from a variety of disciplines develop an innovative way of engaging and teaching students. Christopher Justice, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and health social scientist, and is an associate of the Centre for Leadership in Learning.e-mail: justice@mcmaster.ca James Rice, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Work.e-mail: ricejame@mcmaster.ca Wayne Warry, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology. His interests include aboriginal issues, aboriginal health and health systems evaluation, and educational research.e-mail: warrywa@mcmaster.ca Sue Inglis, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Kinesiology. Her interests include organizational behaviour and student inquiry.e-mail: ingliss@mcmaster.ca Stefania Miller, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science. Her interests include international human rights and democratization in post-communist systems.e-mail: millers@mcmaster.ca Sheila Sammon, M.A., is Associate Professor, School of Social Work. Her interests include social work education and the integration of theory and practice.e-mail: sammon@mcmaster.ca     

Spinsters,Schoolmarms, and Queers: Female teacher gender and sexuality in medicine and psychoanalytic theory and history

This paper examines the social construction of white, female, spinster teacher personality profiles in the first half of the 20th century. Focusing on the psychological, medical, and psychoanalytic literature, I provide an overview of how white unmarried female teacher personalities were understood in order to provide a historical context for present day queer and transgender identities in North American schools. I identify four main personality profiles of the female teacher in educational historiography which were informed by Freudian psychoanalysis: the masculinity complex; moral masochism; altruistic surrender; and the tyrannical disciplinarian. I conclude that spinster teacher personality profiles can be read as queer and gender-variant and that such readings shed light on gender and sexual regulation in education historiography.     

System constraints on efficacious teacher behaviours in school-based suicide prevention initiatives; a qualitative study of teacher views and experiences

International concern about youth suicide has led to a growing consensus that schools are a potentially important location for suicide prevention efforts. The present study investigated the experiences and perceptions of teachers regarding a role in youth suicide prevention through semi-structured interviews which were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Three themes are reported which contribute to an understanding of the construction of teacher efficacy in relation to a role in suicide prevention: baseline mastery, threats to efficacy and tension between personal and professional identities. The results indicate a mix of positive and negative experiences relating to personal, process and systemic factors. Positive elements were associated with the pastoral role. Negative experiences related to referral pathways and broader systems of care. Implications for the development of school-based suicide prevention programmes and for conceptualising processes of change in school systems are discussed.     

Meaningful actions and motivated projects in the transition to adulthood: two case illustrations

A framework for understanding career transitions based on the joint processes and goals of those engaged in the transition and significant others in the person’s social network was used to study the transition to adulthood of youth aged 17–19 years and their families. Twenty parent-youth dyads participated in this study in which a transition project was identified and monitored for 6 months. Two cases are used to illustrate the characteristics of the motivated transition project at the levels of meaning, functional processes, and conscious and unconscious behaviour and structural support and resources.