Young people, learning and lifepatterns

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Young people, learning and life-patterns

• Johanna Wyn
• Australian Youth Research Centre
• The University of Melbourne

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Life-Patterns project
Longitudinal, participatory study of Victorian
school leavers from 1991 - 2004 Mapping progress
from final year of school to their late
twenties Identify both objective progress and
subjective assessments
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Reporting

• Annual reports to participants
• Youth Research Centre Research Reports
• Research Reports 14, 17, 19, 23, 27
• Working Paper 19
• Journal articles and books
• Youth, Education and Risk (2001)
• Youth and Society the social dynamics of youth
  (2004)

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Participatory Research

• Blend of set and open-ended questions
• Interviews (feedback on questions)
• Participant meanings can challenge researchers
  assumptions
• e.g. career, family

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Benefits of longitudinal research

• Identify the process of transition for
  individuals and for the cohort
• Link individual transitions with processes of
  change at the societal level
• Identify identities, subjectivities, attitudes
  that are associated with success

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Research issues

• Loss of sample over time
• representative? success sample?
• Interpretation of the data
• Describe change without over-stating the case
• traditional structures and identities remain
  significant

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Complexity

• Multiple commitments and choice
• 56 balancing study and work
• 51 changed track in the first two years

• Ideal Reality Gap
• By 1996, 60 had completed their studies and 49
  had a full-time job but only 34 were in their
  preferred job

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The new adulthood

• valuing flexibility and mobility
• personal autonomy, responsiveness
• a balance of life commitments
• new meanings of career
• the self as a project
• Readily misunderstood as faulty transitions
• The new, classed learner in a post-Fordist
  economy?

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Faulty transitions to adulthood?

• Extended transitions (Australia and UK)
• Post-adolescence (UK)
• Arrested Adulthood (Canada)
• Generation on hold (Canada)
• Over-age young adults (Netherlands)
• Developmentally underdone (Australia)
• These all assume that there is something wrong
  with young peoples transition processes

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What is a career?

• 80 or more said
• A job that offers scope for advancement
• To be a career the job must offer commitment
• Any ongoing role that offers personal fulfilment
• A single career for life is a thing of the past

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A career is

• Not necessarily a permanent full-time job
• Not necessarily your job
• Not necessarily your source of income

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Employment and Change 2002

• 75 in full time employment
• Only 18 have held only 1 job since 1996
• 61 have held between 2 and 4 jobs
• 20 have held 5 or more jobs since 1996
• Overall, 82 have changed jobs in the last 5
  years
• 55 changed for better opportunities

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Social and economic change

• Has presented both young and old with new
  challenges
• Flexibility is seen as more important than
  predictability as a basis for future security in
  a post-industrial world
• e.g. valuing horizontal mobility over vertical
  mobility
• Work is not rewarding enough

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How well do education policies and programs fit
with the realities of young peoples lives?
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Educational approaches
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Conclusion

• Approaches to education need to take greater
  account of
• The emergence of a new adulthood involving
  shifts in approach to education and work
• The significance of learner identities
• Life-long learning
• New Pedagogies?