| Abstract: | With rising rates of unemployment amongst young people in Australia as in other industrialised countries, considerable research has been undertaken on the transition from school: nearly 500 studies have been done in the past five years. This paper reviews them.The assumption of most researchers is that the major transition from school is to work. Other transitions, such as from adolescence to adulthood, are relatively neglected. Although the issue is approached from four main disciplinary standpoints — educational, psychological, social and economic — the theoretical assumptions and practical conclusions can be put in the two categories of supply and demand. Supply is preparing young people for roles, on the assumption that better preparation will not only raise employability, but might also call jobs into being. Demand can mean creating new jobs in the private and public sectors, developing new forms of cooperative employment, or reallocating the jobs which already exist through work-sharing, more part-time work, early retirement for older people or rewarding some groups to refrain from wage employment.The impression is that policy is not led by research, but that research is stimulated by policy and action. The roles of research indeed are mainly design, monitoring and evaluation. Four gaps in research in Australia are identified: better social book-keeping, longitudinal studies, rigorous case-studies and policy analysis. |
