Transitional education and the vulnerable actors between expulsion risks, promises and chances of salvation

Abstract

Bridge-year courses, motivation semesters (SEMO), case management approaches, and internships are but a few examples of transitional education programs that are gaining ground in Switzerland. At the end of compulsory education, every fourth/fifth student is currently following such a program. Conceived in the late 1990s as a temporary, exceptional measure to mitigate unemployment among young people and/or the lack of vocational training possibilities, these programs seem set to stay, irrespective of any positive changes in the country’s economic circumstances. Some school-leavers apparently figure them in as part of their “career paths”. So far, the scientific community and public authorities have been focusing mainly on explaining the reasons why some students need such measures, whereas others do not (Bayard Walpen, 2013; Landert & Eberli, 2015; Sacchi & Meyer, 2016). However, little is known about the activities deployed by the actors themselves within the framework of transitional education programs (Heinimann, 2006; Scherrer & Künzli, 2013). Based on the grounded theory methods and on an actor-centered-approach and including over 60 interviews with students, teachers, principals, public authorities, employers and other actors, my dissertation addresses the following questions: 1. How do the actors experience and describe these transitional education programs? 2. How do the educational and professional trajectories of students evolve afterwards? 3. How to understand transitional education from a superordinate perspective? First findings suggest that the vulnerable participants in such transitional education programs might have a scapegoat function. As marginalized and marginalizing program, transitional education has to guarantee exclusions as well as to promise salvation through education. Both students, teaching and public authorities have to handle this paradoxical situation of an expected and de facto obligated but no equally guaranteed post-compulsory education in their own ways. Some students engage with the measure while others fail to thrive. All actors, however, need to constantly reassure themselves as to the reasons for their success or failure and thus to exculpate themselves. In this sense chances, promises and risks are close to each other and mutually dependent. We furthermore notice that state-school-based programs are facing increasing pressure to justify their very existence, while lobbying efforts for (semi-)private vocational programs (SEMO, private apprenticeship, internships) intensify. Apparently, transitional education – the weakest and vulnerable link of the Swiss educational system – is overly susceptible to (publicly subsidized) privatization, although there is no certainty as to who will profit from this the most.