The odyssey: school to work transitions,serendipity and position in the field

Little work on the significance and implications of decision-making has been undertaken since that led by Hodkinson in the 1990s, and the experiences of young people on vocational programmes and their reasons for undertaking them remain under-theorised and poorly understood. Drawing on two narratives from a study exploring young people’s motivations for undertaking vocational programmes, this article explores the relationship between their positioning in fields and career decision-making. The article argues that social positioning is significant in its relationship to decision-making, to the way in which young people perceive and construct their careers and to the influence of serendipity on their transitions. Drawing on a range of international studies, the article explores the implications of these findings in terms of young people’s future engagement with the global labour market, giving consideration to (dissonant) perceptions of vocational education and training as contributing to economic growth whilst addressing issues of social exclusion and promoting social justice.     

Context-based assessment: creating opportunities for resonance between classroom fields and societal fields

There is on-going international interest in the relationships between assessment instruments, students’ understanding of science concepts and context-based curriculum approaches. This study extends earlier research showing that students can develop connections between contexts and concepts – called fluid transitions – when studying context-based courses. We provide an in-depth investigation of one student’s experiences with multiple contextual assessment instruments that were associated with a context-based course. We analyzed the student’s responses to context-based assessment instruments to determine the extent to which contextual tests, reports of field investigations, and extended experimental investigations afforded her opportunities to make connections between contexts and concepts. A system of categorizing student responses was developed that can inform other educators when analyzing student responses to contextual assessment. We also refine the theoretical construct of fluid transitions that informed the study initially. Implications for curriculum and assessment design are provided in light of the findings.     

Exploring Latino/a college students’ transition experiences: An ethnography of social preparedness and familial support

This ethnographic case study examined first-year, first-generation, low-income Latino/a college students’ social experiences and familial support during their transition from a charter high school to four-year universities. Through interviews and observations, we found that maintaining communication and building relationships among high school and college peers, high school faculty and staff, and college professors were essential to navigating the educational system; also, having a family that supported their academic work to allow students to only focus on their coursework was important.     

杨朱的“为我”思想与社会转型期信仰危机

先秦时期,杨朱提出了“为我”的思想,对此,历史上的评价大相径庭,但对杨朱及其思想的否定是社会的主流。实际上,“为我”思想的提出,是社会转型期信仰危机环境的必然,它也曾具有其一定的社会价值。“利天下”作为一个长远目标,必须和人们的眼前利益紧密结合在一起才有实际的意义。而历史上这往往成为统治者为了满足自我私利的一块遮羞布,严重脱离了社会实际,成为一句空泛的口号,因而失去了其应有的号召力。因此,对“为我”和“利天下”应一分为二地分析,应把“为我”作为前车之鉴。     

Pure ethnic gaps in educational attainment and school to work transitions: When do they arise?

This article decomposes the observed gaps in educational attainment and school-to-work transitions in Belgium between grandchildren of natives and of women of “non-Western” nationality into (i) differences in observed family endowments and (ii) a residual “pure ethnic gap”. It innovates by explicitly taking delays in educational attainment into account, by identifying the moments at which the pure ethnic gaps arise, by disentangling the decision to continue schooling at the end of a school year from the achievement within a particular grade, and by integrating the language spoken at home among observed family endowments. The pure ethnic gap in educational attainment is found to be small if delays are neglected, but substantial if not and for school-to-work transitions. It is shown that more than 20% of the pure ethnic gap in graduating from secondary school without delay originates in tenth grade. Language usage explains only part of the gap in school-to-work transitions for low educated.     

‘Go with the flow’ for gamification and sustainability marketing

This paper explores the potential of gamification for sustainability marketing efforts, examining users’ experiences with a gamified app designed to encourage the sustainable energy behavior of turning off electricity switches. Using data collected from 387 participants who partook in a week-long field study using a gamified app, we analyze the interrelationships between flow, customer engagement, value-in behavior, and intentions to perform sustainable behavior and continue use of a gamified app. We show how consumers’ gameful experiences via flow enhance engagement with a gamified app, and how this results in enhancing the perceptions of value in performing a sustainable energy behavior. Further, we evidence how the value-in-behavior created by a gamified app not only influence behavioral intentions to perform a sustainable energy behavior, but also intentions to continue using the gamified app. These results provide important theoretical and practical insights as to the potential for gamification to be used for sustainability marketing and how gameful experiences (flow and customer engagement) can transfer to positive perceptions of sustainable behavior (value-in-behavior).     

高校开放教育资源(OER)项目的可持续发展——基于投资与盈利模式的分析与研究

通过综述有关开放教育资源(OER)项目可持续发展模式的讨论热点,分析了OER项目的成本结构;对Stephen Downes和Paul M.Dholakai总结的13种投资与盈利模式进行了分析和扩充,并将这些模式归纳为三个类别,即捐赠与资助类型、购买服务类型及合作与交换类型;并分析指出以办学机构(如高校)为主体纳入日常工作的OER建设项目,才是全球开放教育资源项目最可持续的发展模式。     

Female paths to adulthood in a country of ‘genderless gender’

In this article the life history of a young Finnish woman, Salla, is explored along with reflections of her best friend and other peers. The analysis is conducted from the perspective of Finland as a country of ‘genderless gender’, where mute or hidden gendering and sexualisation converge with the gender-neutral rhetoric about the individual self. Structural and individual understandings of ambivalence are used to analyse Salla's tensions when she tries to realise her own expectations and those of the Finnish context. Ambivalence appears in relation to education, in relation to heterosexual partnerships, career and family as well as in relation to Finland as a country of genderless gender with a myth of gender equality. The article draws from an ethnographically grounded longitudinal life historical study on young people's paths to adulthood.     

A question of agency: applying Sen's theory of human capability to the concept of secondary school student career ‘choice’

In this paper, we seek to operationalize Amartya Sen's concept of human capability to guide a scholarly investigation of student career choice capability. We begin by outlining factors affecting youth labour markets in Australia; a prosperous country that is affected by a ‘two-speed’ national economy. We then examine recent government initiatives that have been designed to combat youth unemployment and cyclical disadvantage by enhancing the aspirations and career knowledge of secondary school students. We argue that these policy measures are based on four assumptions: first, that career choice capability is a problem of individual agency; second, that the dissemination of career information can empower students to act as ‘consumers’ in an unequal job market; third, that agency is simply a question of will; and finally, that school education and career advice – as a means to freedom in the space of career development – is of equal quality, distribution and value to an increasingly diverse range of upper secondary school students. The paper concludes by outlining a conceptual framework capable of informing an empirical research project that aims to test these assumptions by measuring and comparing differences between groups in the range of freedom to achieve and, therefore, to choose.