Educational Transitions and Social Justice: Understanding Upper Secondary School Choices in Urban Contexts 9781447363446

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EDUCATIONAL TRANSITIONS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE Understanding Upper Secondary School Choices in Urban Contexts Edited by Aina Tarabini With a foreword by Agnès van Zanten

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​6342-​2 hardcover ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​6343-​9 ePub ISBN 978-​1-​4473-​6344-​6 ePdf The right of Aina Tarabini to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editor and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Robin Hawes Front cover image: Shutterstock/​patat-​1085888951 Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of figure and tables Notes on contributors Acknowledgements

v vi ix

Foreword Agnès van Zanten

x

Introduction 1 Theoretical and methodological approaches to educational choices and transitions Aina Tarabini PART I The framing and enactment of upper secondary educational transitions 2 The political construction of upper secondary transitions: comparing problematisations and solutions in two urban contexts Judith Jacovkis, Miriam Prieto and Javier Rujas 3 Upper secondary transitions and urban educational spaces: public representations of youth, choices and (im)mobilities Aina Tarabini, Judith Jacovkis and Alejandro Montes 4 In the name of vocations: teachers’ discursive legitimations of upper secondary educational choices Aina Tarabini, Javier Rujas and Sara Gil 5 Does school shape upper secondary educational transitions? Exploring the relationship between students’ trajectories and educational choices Alba Castejón, Alejandro Montes and Martí Manzano PART II The experience of upper secondary educational transitions 6 Working-​class fractions and practical rationalities in the choice of upper secondary education Alejandro Montes, Javier Rujas and Judith Jacovkis 7 Understanding migrant students’ transitions to upper secondary education: devalued capitals and nonstandard timeframes Martí Manzano and Aina Tarabini 8 Choosing against gender: making sense of girls’ and boys’ upper secondary vocational education choices Marta Curran and Aina Tarabini

iii

3

25

45

64

85

107

129

147

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9

10

Reconstructing learner identity in upper secondary vocational 167 education: from disaffection to recognition Aina Tarabini, Judith Jacovkis and Marta Curran Hermeneutical injustice in upper secondary educational transitions 185 Alberto Sánchez-​Rojo and Miriam Prieto

Conclusions 11 Towards a comprehensive understanding of educational choices and transitions Aina Tarabini

209

Index224

iv

List of figure and tables Figure 1.1

Structure of the Spanish education system

9

Tables 3.1 5.1

5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1

9.1 10.1 10.2

Distribution of VET supply by ownership and district income per capita, Barcelona, 2018 and 2019 Components of the model and items that comprise them, percentage variance explained by the components and extraction value of each item Typology of school trajectories: main components Typologies of school trajectories according to upper secondary track choice Distribution of structural variables (gender, migratory generation and social class) by typology of school trajectories Distribution of school trajectories by social class and upper secondary track choice Working-​class fractions: description and classification Sample of interviewed students by class fraction and upper secondary track Understanding migrant students’ transitions: themes and codes for qualitative analysis Distribution of grades, grade retention and upper secondary tracks by migrant origin Family social class of the children of parents with university degrees Grades and track of the children of adults with university degrees Percentage of male and female students taking highly masculinised and feminised VET modalities in the interviews sample Conceptual model for the study of identity Trajectories of the students in the academic track Trajectories of VET students

v

50 91

93 94 96 97 113 114 133 134 135 136 152

172 191 193

Notes on contributors Alba Castejón is Associate Teacher in the Department of Educational Theories and Social Pedagogy at Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her main research interests are educational inequalities in relation to educational policies, schools’ and teachers’ practices and students’ experiences. Her latest publication is: M. Curran, J. Rujas and A. Castejon (2022) ‘The silent expansion of internationalisation: exploring the adoption of the International Baccalaureate in Madrid’, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Marta Curran is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Education at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and holds a PhD in sociology (UAB, 2017). Her research has been developed mainly within the research group GEPS (Globalisation, Education and Social Policies) and her research areas include education inequalities, with a special focus on gender and social class, policy analysis, educational transitions and the internationalisation of education. Her latest publication is: M. Curran, J. Rujas and A. Castejon (2022) ‘The silent expansion of internationalisation: exploring the adoption of the International Baccalaureate in Madrid’, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Sara Gil is a predoctoral researcher in sociology at Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Her research focuses on the construction of students’ future imaginaries and learner identities and its influence on the transition to higher education. She has participated in projects related to the construction of the higher education student, youth participation and social inequalities and the digital divide. Her latest publication is: S. Gil (2019) Estrategias de posicionamiento de las universidades en el campo de la captación de estudiantes, Master’s thesis, Autonomous University of Barcelona. Judith Jacovkis is Lecturer in the Department of Teaching and Learning and Educational Organisation at the University of Barcelona (UB). Her research focuses on the analysis of the politics, the policies, the governance and the experience of educational trajectories and transitions. Through several national and international projects she has approached different dimensions of educational inequalities produced both outside and inside schools. Her latest publication is: A. Tarabini and J. Jacovkis (2022) ‘Tracking, knowledge, and the organisation of secondary schooling: teachers’ representations and explanations’, Journal of Vocational Education & Training. Martí Manzano is a predoctoral researcher in sociology at Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). The main subjects of his research are vi

Notes on contributors

interaction of class and migration in educational inequalities, school innovation and dynamics of school markets in urban contexts. Martí has participated in projects related to school failure, new opportunity schools and educational diagnosis of urban regions to inform public politics. His latest publication is: M. Curran, A. Castejón and M. Manzano (2021) ‘Las jornadas de puertas abiertas como dispositivos de segmentación de los mercados educativos locales: el caso de la educación postobligatoria’, Revista Internacional de Sociología, 79(2): 1–13. Alejandro Montes is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). His research focuses on social inequalities and educational transitions, with a specific focus on social class. He has participated in research projects on disengagement and early school leaving, school segregation and educational transitions to upper secondary education. In recent years he has worked on the role of ‘new opportunity schools’ as mechanisms for school reconnection for students in social exclusion situations. His latest publication is: A. Tarabini, J. Jacovkis, and A. Montes (2021) ‘Classed choices: young people’s rationalities for choosing post-​16 educational tracks’, The Lab’s Quarterly, XXIII: 3. Miriam Prieto is Associate Professor (intern) in Theory and History of Education at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). Her research focuses on educational policies, particularly market and privatisation trends and its impacts on schools systems’ aims and governance. Her latest publication is: M. Pagès and M. Prieto (2020) ‘The instrumentation of global education reforms: an analysis of school autonomy with accountability policies in Spanish education’, Educational Review, 72(6): 671–90. Javier Rujas is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). His research interests include sociology of education and culture, school failure, school leaving and return, the public construction of social and educational problems, education policy enactments and institutional devices, qualitative research, and ethnographic and sociohistorical approaches. His latest publication is: M. Curran, J. Rujas and A. Castejon (2022) ‘The silent expansion of internationalisation: exploring the adoption of the International Baccalaureate in Madrid’, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Alberto Sánchez-​Rojo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). His research interests lie in the theory of education and the educational policies and governance. He has participated in different projects and published several papers on these topics in Spanish, Portuguese and English. His latest vii

Educational Transitions and Social Justice

publication is: R. Feito, J. Rujas and A. Sánchez-​Rojo (2021) ‘Jornadas de Puertas Abiertas: La Presentación de los Centros Educativos en Sociedad’, Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas, 29(86): 1–23. Aina Tarabini is Associate Professor in Sociology at Autonomous University of Barcelona and researcher at the research centre GEPS (Globalisation, Education and Social Policy). Her research is concerned with the (re) production of social inequalities in the daily life of education systems, schools and students. She is particularly interested in the analysis of the processes of teaching and learning, the modes of pedagogic and curricular provision and students’ identities, experiences and choices through the education system. Her most recent book is The Conditions for School Success: Examining Educational Exclusion and Dropping Out (Palgrave, 2019).

viii

Acknowledgements The publication of this book is the culmination of five years of intense research carried out by a group of people deeply committed to revealing, deconstructing and combating social inequalities. We understand research as a social practice that needs to be deeply attentive to questions of power. And we do our best to reflect these concerns in our research practices, especially in the relationship we build with our research participants. That is why I want to thank my co-​authors first and foremost for navigating the academic field together as carefully and respectfully as possible. As I always say, doing research with this team of people is a gift. I also want to express my sincere thanks to the young people who shared with us their time, their voices, their fears and their hopes. I hope that we do justice to their stories and that they help illuminate school policies, practices and reforms aimed at achieving social justice for all. Last but not least, this book would not have been possible without the contributions of many individuals and organisations who have provided us with multiple sources of support. The universities where we work, the public organisations that have supported us financially, the colleagues who have advised us, the teachers who have opened the doors of their schools to us and a long etcetera. Research is a collective endeavour and this book clearly owes it. Thank you! Aina Tarabini Barcelona May 2022

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Foreword Agnès van Zanten Paris May 2022 Transitions are crucial periods in contemporary educational systems where students must navigate through vertical educational ‘blocks’ (compulsory/​ non-​compulsory schooling, primary, secondary and higher education) and between a horizontal patchwork of pathways. As several processes concur to limit the vertical mobility of lower-​class and ethnoracial minority groups and to channel them into horizontal tracks offering different material and symbolic rewards, they also play a key role in the reproduction of educational inequalities. For these reasons, transitions have attracted much scholarly attention. There is however still room for ambitious studies that not only document specific aspects but provide a comprehensive perspective on transitions, and propose bridges between different focus of study and research traditions. Aina Tarabini and colleagues’ book on educational transitions from lower to upper secondary in two Spanish urban contexts, Barcelona and Madrid, widely meets these expectations. Based on a detailed ethnographic study of policy decisions and of the transition process in 12 schools, it provides a ‘thick’ interpretation (Geertz, 1973) of how transitions are conceived and lived. Each chapter stands by itself and provides original insights on different dimensions but reading them as part of a monograph brings an added value in terms of understanding the interaction between the spheres of policy elaboration, enactment and reception, between structural and agentic processes and between students’ circulation and socialisation. The book is moreover an outstanding contribution to the analysis of how schools reproduce and legitimate an unequal social order through the organisation of students’ transition to either the academic or the vocational upper-​secondary tracks and students’ integration of the value system behind this division. The unequal status of these two tracks, located at opposite extremes in a historically constructed cultural and social hierarchy, is reproduced and reinforced by various social mechanisms. As shown in Chapter 2, policymakers view moving from lower-​secondary to upper-​secondary academic tracks as ‘unproblematic’, that is as the norm, while the opposite is true of the transition to vocational tracks, which are both ‘loosely coupled’ (Weick, 1976) to the lower and higher educational levels and used to ‘divert’ (Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993) students that do not meet the expected standards. The spatial distribution of the two tracks, examined in Chapter 3, also contributes x

Foreword

to maintaining the hierarchical distinction between them, with academic tracks being located nearby lower-​secondary schools and vocational tracks, scattered in the city and more difficult to access. School mechanisms further reinforce this distinction as transitions to each of the two tracks are conditioned by students’ academic progress and behavioural compliance. As pointed out by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), schools, however, also play a key role in dissimulating, through ideological constructs, their contribution to the reproduction of an unequal society. Meritocracy plays a key role in this respect but Tarabini’s book interestingly points out the complementary role of ‘vocationalism’ for Vocational and Educations Training (VET) students. As highlighted in Chapter 5, these students are at the same time discouraged to choose the academic track through discourses emphasising their lack of merit and encouraged to pursue vocational tracks through positive messages about following their ‘calling’. Aside from some significant exceptions, such as that of boys and girls making atypical gender choices despite ingrained gender segregation in VET tracks (discussed in Chapter 8), students have limited capacity to resist the influence of these powerful mechanisms and discourses. While the main reasons for this are well-​known, several chapters highlight the importance of taking into account timeframes to fully understand disadvantaged students’ difficulties, perceptions and adaptations. Students’ objective timeframes are sometimes badly adjusted to those of schools as in the case of migrant students studied in Chapter 7, who are likely to be channelled into VET tracks due to their late entry into the educational system. Working-​class students are also penalised by exhibiting ‘discontinuous’ rather than ‘smooth’ school trajectories (Chapter 10) and by subjective temporal dispositions leading them to ‘wait and see’ (Chapter 4) rather than to plan ahead. Time however also plays a key role in positive adaptations. After negative experiences in lower-​secondary, many students manage to reconstruct a positive self-​image in VET by progressively espousing the values of applied knowledge and of the specific occupations for which they are being prepared (Chapter 9). Well-​served by an excellent mastery of the relevant international literature and by a clear presentation of findings and interpretations, this compelling analysis should be read by students and scholars in the fields of sociology and education, but also by policymakers, teachers and all those concerned with educational transitions. References Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.C. (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, London: Sage. Geertz, C. (1973) ‘Thick description: towards an interpretive theory of culture’, in C. Geertz (ed) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, New York: Basic Books, pp 3–​30. xi

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Educational Transitions and Social Justice

Shavit, Y. and Blossfeld, H.P. (1993) Persistent Inequality: Changing Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries, Boulder: Westview Press. Weick, K.E. (1976) ‘Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1): 1–​19.

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Introduction

1

Theoretical and methodological approaches to educational choices and transitions Aina Tarabini

The topic: why study educational choices and transitions? Educational choices and transitions are important for understanding social inequalities (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). Transitions to upper secondary education are of special relevance in the (re)production of social inequalities as in most European countries this is when students are separated into different tracks –​academic and vocational –​and so it is the first time they face a ‘real choice’ in relation to their educational trajectory. International research highlights transition points within the education system as key spaces of social selectivity in terms of class, gender and ethnicity (Blossfeld and Shavit, 2011). A broad corpus of sociological research has shown how the segmentation of education systems into different tracks is one of the main factors explaining the processes of social reproduction through educational choices (Seghers et al, 2019) and also one of the most persistent barriers to achieving equality of educational opportunity (Oakes, 1985). Moreover, as Nylund et al (2017) indicate, separating students into different tracks, and particularly the vocational-​academic divide, is one of the most persistent divisions in the history of education, and this is why it is mostly viewed as natural (Polesel, 2008) even if it is by no means universal. Research also suggests the relevance of transition processes for explaining contemporary dynamics of Early School Leaving (ESL) and dropping out (Tarabini, 2019). Transitions are key moments of vulnerability and change where accumulated social and educational inequalities can lead to the breakdown of young people’s career pathways and dreams. At the EU level, the transition and completion of upper secondary education is considered the minimum threshold for educational success (Alexiadou, Helgøy and Homme, 2019). In spite of this, many young people are ‘lost in transition’ as they are not equipped with the experiences, capital or support to successfully navigate the school system (Gale and Parker, 2015). As much classical and contemporary sociological research has demonstrated (Bernstein, 1975, 3

Educational Transitions and Social Justice

1990; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Archer and Francis, 2007; Ingram, 2018; Tarabini, 2019), educational success is mostly about coping with the taken-​for-​g ranted organisation and norms of formal schooling. Schools have been widely documented as institutions for the (re)production of social inequalities that persistently generate unequal opportunities and conditions for pupils to succeed (Francis and Mills, 2012). This is why processes of transition and choice at school, as well as those of success and failure, are inherently classed (Reay, 2018), and also gendered and racialised. In this context, and despite the dominant rhetoric of transitions and choices as rational and free processes based on individual responsibilities and preferences (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992), educational transitions need to be approached as socially embedded processes that reflect young people’s classed, gendered and ethnically informed constrictions and identities (Ball et al, 2000; Reay et al, 2001; Archer and Francis, 2007). Certainly, in the context of late modernity, transitions to adult life have become more complex and de-​standardised than ever. Research confirms that aspects of contingency, choice and lack of predictability are of central to understanding contemporary youth transitions and choices (Biggart and Walther 2005; Walther, 2006). However, the relationships between structure and agency in explaining educational transitions are far from linear. As early as the mid-​1990s, Furlong and Cartmel (1997) coined the term ‘epistemological fallacy of late modernity’ to express one of the most striking contradictions of our times: people’s life chances are still highly conditioned by the objective structures of inequality, especially in terms of class, but the dominant explanations and solutions for increasingly disparate opportunities and trajectories are presented in terms of individual capacities, efforts and will. Thus, this ‘illusion of individuality’ (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997) not only obscures the social divisions and the objective constraints that affect young people’s transitions and choices, but also makes individuals responsible for their own trajectories, and especially for their failures (Atkins, 2017). This book therefore focuses on upper secondary educational choices and transitions as a significant field in the study of educational and social inequalities. This entails approaching them as specific arenas in which social inequalities are not only expressed in the unequal opportunities that young people face, but also in the ways in which educational choices and transitions are imagined, conceived, experienced and institutionally regulated by those occupying dominant positions in the field. Viewed this way, choices and transitions constitute an arena where symbolic struggles emerge and where power relations enable or limit choices, articulating both meanings and opportunities. The book approaches upper secondary educational choices and transitions in terms of a situated or bounded agency (Evans, 2007) or, in other words, as a result of complex processes of negotiation between opportunity structures 4

Educational choices and transitions

and social actors’ frameworks of meaning and interpretation (Cuconato and Walther, 2015). As Reay (2018) states, rather than being made in a vacuum, educational transitions and choices are part of broader processes in which power structures produce and reproduce social inequalities. These structures, in turn, are internalised by individuals, generating dispositions, identities and logics of action that lead to cognitive and subjective frames of choice (Ball et al, 2002). Thus, it is in the interaction between objective opportunity structures and subjective dispositions (or habitus, in Bourdieu’s terms) that different horizons for action are generated as definitions of the limits of what is thinkable and on the basis of which educational choices are made (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997). Previous research has signalled the need to approach educational choices and transitions as the result of a complex articulation of systemic, institutional and subjective factors (Ball et al, 2000; Billett et al, 2012; Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). The structure of different education systems, the provision of Vocational Education and Training (VET), the pedagogic and curricular organisation of secondary schooling, and the specific guidance structures of different countries and schools, are signalled in the literature (Parreira do Amaral et al, 2013; Cuconato and Walther, 2015) as critical factors for explaining different opportunity structures for young people to make their transitions and choices. Young people, however, do not experience these factors in a passive manner. They are active makers of their transitions and there are consequently many ways of doing, living and performing them (Gale and Parker, 2015). Educational transitions are connected to the multiple dimensions of young people’s lives (Cuervo and Wyn, 2011) and, as such, they must be studied in relation to these numerous, diverse and often contradictory life domains. The broader psychological, family, labour and social aspects involved with ‘the way of being young’ in contemporary societies are closely interrelated in the functioning of educational transitions. Based on this premise, the book provides new evidence on how the multiple and conflicting demands on young people are reflected in upper secondary education and, in particular, in their identities as learners, their educational choices, experiences and trajectories. The book emphasises the political, institutional and subjective expressions of social inequalities in the educational field, and specifically in the upper secondary choices and transitions of young people, contributing to a better understanding of the inherently connected contexts in which young people operate. Overall, the book adds to existing research on educational choices and transitions, particularly within secondary education and specifically at the upper secondary level, as it presents a comprehensive approach to the topic, including their political design at the macro level, their school enactments at the meso level, and young people’s experiences and subjectivities at the micro one. 5

Educational Transitions and Social Justice

The setting: where to study educational choices and transitions? The theoretical and empirical analyses developed in this book are the result of five years (2016–​20) of intensive research as part of the EDUPOST16 project1 designed to provide a global thematic analysis of upper secondary educational choices and transitions in urban contexts, and particularly in two European cities: Barcelona and Madrid, both in Spain. The focus on cities is intended to incorporate the role of urban spatial contexts into a comprehensive understanding of educational choices and transitions. If choices and transitions are socially embedded, they are also spatially rooted (Tarabini et al, 2022). Recent research in the field of urban studies clearly demonstrates a substantial rise in socioeconomic inequality and economic segregation in European cities in recent decades (Piketty, 2014; Tammaru et al, 2016). Attention to urban spatial dimensions is thus critical for understanding current patterns of inequality both in education and beyond (Nyjman and Wei, 2020). Furthermore, research in the field of young people and their transitions has observed the need for a better spatial perspective (Farrugia, 2015), recognising the crucial importance of space and place for understanding young people’s experiences and identities (Cuervo and Wyn 2014; Wyn, 2015). The cases analysed in this book, Barcelona and Madrid, are Spain’s two largest metropolitan areas. As Sorando and Leal (2019: 126) explain, they ‘share a privileged position as places where the country’s main universities and largest employment centres are concentrated, along with international investments and government services’. However, several forms of inequality, poverty and exclusion also traverse both urban spaces. They are full of contrasts, where segregation and gentrification coexist as a consequence of capitalist urbanism. As Sorando and Leal (2019) argue, the globalisation of Barcelona and Madrid’s economies has polarised their labour market structures, and there has been a drastic reduction in socially mixed spaces in recent decades. These trends have reinforced the existence of distinct ‘cities within the city’, in Saraví’s (2015) terms, or of urban outcasts, as Wacquant (2008) puts it, with a critical influence on young people’s life opportunities. Barcelona and Madrid are therefore excellent examples of Sassen’s (1991) global cities. As such, they can be regarded as particular case studies reflecting broader global trends and providing key analytical elements to better understand the making of young people’s educational choices and transitions in different urban contexts. Of course, there are aspects that are specific to these particular urban spaces, but these do not lessen their broader relevance. Our intention in this book is to provide analyses that are specific to certain times and spaces, but that are also useful beyond them, hence being suitable for comparative research. 6

Educational choices and transitions

The case of Southern European cities is particularly complex because of the characteristics of their welfare regimes (Sorando and Leal, 2019). Spain, like Italy, Portugal and Greece, pertains to the Mediterranean regime (Esping-​Andersen, 1990), which is characterised by low levels of social spending and a subsidiary role of the state in welfare provision. One of the main features of this model is the highly segmented labour market, as well as high levels of precariousness, informality and unemployment. Families are therefore of critical importance for supporting their members and ensuring their well-​being, which leads to high levels of general socioeconomic inequality. The crisis of the welfare states, the spread of austerity measures and the neoliberal convergence of most European countries since the mid-​1980s were especially harmful in countries like Spain where welfare provision was already scarce. In this context, it is of paramount importance to situate young people’s upper secondary educational choices and transitions within the framework of these regimes and their transformations in recent decades. These transitions are inherently linked –​though not always in a linear or homogeneous way, as the chapters of this book will demonstrate –​to the options provided by different countries in terms of the governments’ overall amount of public expenditure, the provision of public and private forms of education, the role and features of preventive and compensatory policies for students at risk, and the specific nature of their secondary school provision, among other factors. Consideration of these elements is of critical importance for comparative analysis. In times of globalisation, comparative studies clearly need to go beyond ‘methodological nationalism’ (Dale and Robertson, 2009) to include levels of analysis beyond the national. But the structure of different national education systems –​even if globally influenced and locally enacted –​ are very relevant for understanding the regulation and opportunities of educational choices and transitions. In this sense, and adapting the typology of welfare regimes to comparisons of the contexts of youth transitions, Walther (2006) defines four types of transition regimes –​universalistic, employment-​centred, liberal and sub-​p rotective –​ resulting from the combination of socioeconomic structures, institutional arrangements and cultural patterns, and leading to different models through which young people’s lives are regulated. Spain, like Portugal and Italy, represents a sub-​protective transition regime in which young people’s educational transitions feature the following main elements: 1) comprehensive organisation of schooling until the end of compulsory education; 2) scarce development of VET; 3) the structuring of youth transitions into ‘long waiting phases’ where precariousness and informal jobs are extremely present; and 4) a high rate of ESL at the end of compulsory schooling2 (Walther, 2006: 129). 7

Educational Transitions and Social Justice

The Spanish comprehensive school system follows what Nathalie Mons (2007) calls a ‘uniform integration model’ –​France, for example, shares this model even though it has so-​called ‘employment-​centred’ welfare and transition regimes; so welfare and transition regimes do not mechanically correspond to different systems for the organisation of secondary schooling, which reinforces the need for comparative analysis at different levels and scales. This model applies the principle of comprehensive schooling both to primary and lower secondary education, offering a common core curriculum that all students follow at more or less the same pace until they reach the age of 16 (Dupriez et al, 2008). Consequently, stratification of students into different tracks (academic and vocational in the case of Spain) only occurs at the beginning of upper secondary education (see Figure 1.1). In spite of that, the formal comprehensive and non-​differentiated structure of lower-​secondary education runs alongside multiple forms of de facto ability grouping, a lack of individualised teaching mechanisms and high rates of grade retention (Tarabini et al, 2018). These features are of critical importance to understand the institutional shaping of upper secondary educational choices and transitions. As shown in Figure 1.1, the Spanish sub-​protective transition regime is characterised by a three-​level VET system. Basic VET programmes are for students aged 15–​17 who have not achieved the lower secondary certificate. On completion of this level, they can access intermediate VET after passing an entrance exam. Intermediate VET programmes start at the age of 16 (and are hence the focus of this book) and require the lower secondary education certificate (as does the academic track), but they are also accessible after passing a specific entrance exam (an option that is not available for the Baccalaureate). Higher VET programmes can only be taken by students who have completed the academic track or, otherwise, who have an intermediate VET certificate in the same vocational family and pass a specific entrance exam. So, as shown in Figure 1.1, the structure of VET in Spain, as well as its entrance requirements and potential educational pathways, are more complex than in the Baccalaureate. The chapters of this book will further explore the nuances and particularities of the education system in Spain and will look in greater depth at the multiple contradictions that traverse the provision of upper secondary tracks. This initial overview contextualises young people’s choices and transitions in a system where VET has traditionally been underrepresented. Although it is true that in recent years the prestige and supply of VET have increased (Martínez-​Morales and Marhuenda-​Fluixá, 2020), it is still perceived by families, students and teachers as a second-​rate track (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a, 2021b), and as a result less than 45 per cent of students enrol for it.

8

Educational choices and transitions Figure 1.1: Structure of the Spanish education system 18

Higher education (non-compulsory)

University (ISCED 5A and 6)

Higher VET (ISCED 5B)

ISCED 5 and 6

University entrance exam (EBAU)

17

Upper secondary education (non-compulsory) ISCED 3

Entry exam

Academic track

Vocational track (Intermediate VET)

Three modalities: Arts, Science and More than 150 Technologies and Humanities and programmes within 26 professional Social Sciences families (ISCED 3B)

(ISCED 3A)

Entry exam to continue towards intermediate VET

Compulsory secondary education degree

15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

5 4 3 2 1 0

Lower secondary education (compulsory) ISCED 2 Primary education (compulsory) ISCED 1

Childhood education (non-compulsory)

Second cycle

ISCED 0

First cycle

Basic VET. For students without the Lower secondary education certificate. Minimum entry age: 15. Length: two years

Note: ISCED =​International Standard Classification of Education. The numbers on the left of the figure are the ages the child would be at each stage of the education system.

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Educational Transitions and Social Justice

The methods: how to study educational choices and transitions This book is the result of five years’ research as part of the EDUPOST16 project. Both the project and the book take a qualitative-​driven approach, which means that the main research goal is to discover and understand the complexities, processes and meanings behind upper secondary educational choices and transitions (Hammersley, 2013; Maxwell, 2013), based on a constructivist/​interpretative epistemological approach. The upper secondary transition field is conceived as socially constructed and grounded upon multiple viewpoints and subjective perspectives, experiences and interpretations. With this perspective in mind, the book presents a complex picture of the research problem, accounting for the multiple factors, perspectives, actors and interactions involved in young people’s choices and transitions. Qualitative modes of enquiry usually include multiple sources of data with an aim of providing a holistic account of the phenomena under study (Mason, 2002; Creswell, 2007). Based on this approach, the fieldwork referenced in this book was structured in two phases3: the first sought to explore the political construction of upper secondary choices and transitions, identifying how they are conceptualised by policy actors at a discursive level, and how they are implemented at the institutional level. To achieve this goal, interviews were conducted with policymakers, and documentary and secondary data analysis was undertaken, both in Barcelona and Madrid4. The second phase explored the enactment of upper secondary choices and transitions at the school level and the multiple ways young people experience and embody these transitions in their daily lives and relationships. To do this, we applied a multiple case study design (Yin, 2009) at 12 secondary schools5 (eight in Barcelona and four in Madrid) which were purposely selected (Creswell, 2012) according to the following criteria: 1) as a homogeneous criteria, all schools provided lower secondary schooling and both tracks of upper secondary education (Baccalaureate and VET); 2) as heterogeneous criteria, the selected schools differed in terms of their ownership (including both public and private schools), social composition (including middle-​class and working-​class social intakes), and the specificities of their supply (including ‘typical’ and ‘exceptional’ modalities both in the Baccalaureate and VET from different knowledge areas)6. The techniques used to collect information for these case studies included in-​depth, semi-​structured interviews with principals, pedagogic coordinators and teachers, both in lower and upper secondary education; interviews and questionnaires with students taking both tracks in the first year of upper secondary education; and several informal meetings and observations within the selected case studies that helped to forge a trusting relationship with each school and to progressively negotiate and gain access to its actors7. 10

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The fieldwork design has two main features. Firstly, within the qualitative-​driven approach, it includes a variety of qualitative (mostly interviews) and quantitative (questionnaires) methods (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2017) in order to examine the research problem from different angles and provide a more nuanced picture of young people’s educational choices and transitions (Bryman 2006). As Greene (2007: 478) argues, one of the main values of mixed-​method research is ‘in creating a dialogue between different ways of seeing, interpreting, and knowing, not simply in combining different methods and types of data’. There are many ways to integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). In spite of the dominant tendency for mixed-​method studies to relegate the qualitative component to a secondary status (Howe, 2004; Hesse-​Biber, 2010), as Creswell et al (2006) argue, mixed methods can be applied in a way that does not compromise the interpretative nature of qualitative enquiry. In the case of the EDUPOST16 project, the inclusion of both young people’s interviews and questionnaires was designed to triangulate (Bryman, 2006) and also complement each other: while interviews allow for in-​depth exploration of young people’s lived experiences, questionnaires present a broader picture of upper secondary educational trends. This articulation, in turn, reinforces the validity and reliability of the findings (Hesse-​Biber, 2010). Second, and although EDUPOST16 incorporates a multiplicity of research techniques, interviews have had a prominent role. We believe that the main purpose of doing interviews is a genuine interest in understanding other people’s stories (Seidman, 2006), the meanings of lived experiences and the participants’ perspectives (Lareau and Shultz, 1996). In the case of school actors (principals, pedagogic coordinators and teachers), this entails approaching and treating them as critical allies to understand upper secondary educational choices and transitions, in particular, and educational inequalities in general. We aim to develop a critical research agenda that, as argued by Shain and Ozga (2001), not only seeks to comprehend how social inequalities are generated and enacted in the everyday lives of different agents and school systems, but also to provide the basis for the transformation of such inequalities (Mills and Gale, 2010). As Bourdieu (2003) reminds us, our intellectual efforts cannot remain neutral or indifferent to the struggles of our world. And this inevitably entails a research agenda that is clearly not ‘in the service of power’, or designed to legitimise governmental agendas, but that is highly committed to incorporating and sustaining reflection on practice (Ozga, 2000). We must ask who the audience of our research is, who benefits from it and who it is relevant for. This is critical in order not to blame teachers for their practices but to integrate them in the pursuit of a common goal, namely educational justice for all (Lynch and Baker, 2005). Lather’s (1986) classical notion of research as praxis 11

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is precisely aimed at establishing a reciprocal relationship between theory and practice; between research and action. In the case of students, we believe in the interactive and generative nature of qualitative interviews (Webb and Webb, 1932, cited in Ritchie and Lewis, 2003) in order to create a space for young people to think, talk and make sense of their educational and life experiences. And as a result of us expressing this interest in them, young people are made to feel that we want to listen to them, and want them to describe their trajectories and to express the emotions, fears and hopes involved in their educational journeys. This, in turn, allows them to ‘name their silenced lives’ (Hattam and Smyth, 2003) and attribute credit and value to their stories. As Furlong (1991) argues, it is imperative to develop methodological approaches that allow young people to express the emotional complexities involved in their schooling processes. One valuable contribution of this book is that it offers a platform for the protagonists of educational choices and transitions to be heard. As previous research has shown, institutional structures shape youth transitions in different ways, but it is the actors’ experience, negotiation and (re)signification of these transitions that ultimately explain their impact in terms of social inequality.

The chapters: how did we organise the analysis of educational choices and transitions? This book integrates the political, institutional and subjective dimensions of upper secondary educational choices and transitions in order to provide a holistic account of the subject. Each chapter has a particular thematic focus, which fits with specific conceptual and theoretical approaches and analyses particular strands of the field data. However, they all share ontological, epistemological and methodological concerns and work together to offer a unified, comprehensive picture of the upper secondary transition field. The book is organised into two main parts, plus this introduction and the conclusions. The first part explores the macro and meso dimensions of upper secondary educational choices and transitions and addresses the design of these transitions from a political and systemic perspective and their enactment from an institutional one. It includes four chapters focusing on the governance of these transitions from the policymakers’ points of view (Chapter 2), the relationship between geography and upper secondary educational policies (Chapter 3), the analysis of teachers’ rationales, beliefs and expectations (Chapter 4), and the role of specific school settings and landscapes in framing young people’s educational trajectories (Chapter 5). Chapter 2 analyses more than 40 interviews with policymakers in Barcelona and Madrid to explore how upper secondary educational choices and transitions are problematised, defined and intervened upon in different 12

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urban global spaces. By means of critical policy analysis and sociology of education policy, the chapter explores the processes by which certain political ideas or interests are able to impose their problematisation of particular aspects of social reality and propose specific solutions for them as if they were the only possible and legitimate ones. Critical frictions in terms of the functions, planning and provision of upper secondary education, both in the academic and vocational track, emerge from the analysis, highlighting not only the multiple inequalities that traverse the conception, organisation and provision of both tracks but also the political and institutional mechanisms that legitimise them. Chapter 3 also focuses on the political dimension of educational choices and transitions in the form of an in-​depth analysis of interviews with policymakers and stakeholders in Barcelona. As in Chapter 2, notions of legitimisation, naturalisation and problematisation are highlighted to demonstrate the productive nature of public discourses around the upper secondary field. The specific objective of this chapter is to explore public representations of upper secondary educational transitions with regards to urban space. Combining research traditions on critical geography, school choice and segregation, the chapter inquires into how urban inequalities relate to both the supply and choice of upper secondary education. Overall, the chapter helps to challenge the normative, homogeneous and individualising narratives regarding educational choices and transitions and to reinforce the spatial thinking around young people’s identities, choices and lives. Chapter 4 focuses on the institutional making of educational choices and transitions and particularly on the role of teachers’ discourses and narratives around young people and their upper secondary decision-​making. It specifically analyses how secondary school teachers in Barcelona and Madrid refer to the notion of vocation to account for young people’s upper secondary educational choices. In the same vein as Chapter 3, it also helps to demonstrate the powerful role of discourses in creating and legitimising social realities. In this case, the results of the analysis show how teachers moralise and impose hierarchies on young people’s choices by connecting them with different abilities, personalities and contexts that are mainly naturalised and taken for granted. Overall, different types of choice (good and bad, vocational and instrumental) and different types of vocation (mainly, strong and soft) are discursively articulated in teachers’ minds in order to make sense of the major distinctions between the academic and vocational tracks. Chapter 5 addresses questions that lie between the institutional and subjective dimensions of upper secondary educational choices and transitions, exploring how they are related to young people’s previous school trajectories and experiences in lower secondary education. By analysing the responses to the questionnaire distributed to young people in the first year of upper secondary education in Barcelona, the chapter demonstrates the central 13

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role that schools play in the construction of educational opportunities. It specifically shows how certain institutional devices (repetition, failing grades, ability grouping), and the subjective experience of them, facilitate or inhibit different upper secondary educational trajectories for different youth profiles. One of the most important contributions of this chapter is the construction of a typology of school trajectories that, through the mediation of structural variables and particularly social class, clearly conditions the choice of upper secondary tracks. The second part of the book investigates the micro and subjective dimensions of upper secondary educational choices and transitions, and particularly the many ways that young people experience them. Three of its five chapters deal with the main axes of social inequality (social class, gender and migration background) as lived and expressed in young people’s transitions and choices (Chapters 6, 7 and 8). The other two chapters focus on the emergence of learner identities in vocational settings (Chapter 9) and on the hermeneutical injustices that frame young people’s discourses regarding their choice processes (Chapter 10). Chapter 6 particularly explores how working-​class students make sense of their upper secondary educational transitions. By means of in-​depth qualitative interviews with students in Barcelona and Madrid, the research in this chapter identifies different working-​class fractions (or subgroups) with different amounts of economic, social and cultural capital to support their choices and transitions. In the first part of the analysis, and in line with the previous chapter, it demonstrates how the school trajectories and experiences of working-​class students are of critical importance to understand their upper secondary transitions. Elements such as the sense of (dis)belonging, forms of (dis)engagement and sense of (dis)entitlement experienced during their lower secondary schooling are shown to play a critical role in the way young working-​class students make sense of their upper secondary choices. Likewise, the chapter inquires into the classed nature of educational expectations and aspirations by examining the internal heterogeneity within the cohort of working-class students in terms of how they imagine and enact their future prospects. Chapter 7 focuses on the impact of migration on educational transitions. By combining the results of the questionnaires and interviews with students in Barcelona, the chapter demonstrates, first, how lower secondary education outcomes and patterns in the transition to upper secondary tracks are highly conditioned by migrant origin. By doing so, it provides complementary insights into Chapters 5 and 6 regarding the crucial connections between school trajectories and upper secondary educational choices. It then analyses the discourses of young migrant students to assess the factors they identify as most significant for explaining their transitions. The devaluation of their family capital due to the migration process; the internalisation of the school’s 14

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linguistic capital; and the misalignment between the standard timeframes of schooling and the timeframes of migrant trajectories are identified as the three critical elements to explain the overwhelmingly disadvantaged conditions that migrant students need to deal with in their upper secondary educational transitions and choices. Chapter 8 concentrates on the gender dimension of educational choices and transitions, specifically in VET itineraries. The focus is on counter-​ hegemonic choices in terms of gender and the purpose is to understand how young people make sense of their atypical gender pathways. Using in-​depth analysis of interviews with girls and boys in Barcelona who are studying VET itineraries that are atypical for their gender, the chapter first provides a detailed description of their characteristics in terms of social background, educational trajectories, and attitudes to wards the school system. It then looks in depth at the reasons, meanings, and implications behind the choice of counter-​hegemonic VET tracks. The analysis demonstrates that atypical gender choices have particularly harmful effects on girls, as they suffer most from the impacts of idealised notions of femininity on their attitude to school, their habitus and their relationships with significant people in their life both within (teachers and peers) and outside (families) of schools. Chapter 9 also offers an in-​depth analysis of VET students’ trajectories, experiences and subjectivities. It particularly inquires into the notion of learner identity by exploring how it is shaped and reconstructed within upper secondary vocational settings. The first part of the analysis demonstrates that most VET students have based their decision to take that track on a highly damaged identity as ‘proper’ learners. They had profoundly negative experiences in lower secondary education and feel that school is ‘not for them’, expressing particular rejection of theoretical knowledge. However, the second part of the analysis clearly shows how this identity can be challenged under particular institutional and relational conditions. A student’s learner identity is inherently social and as such can be transformed. VET, in particular, is viewed by these ‘failing students’ as a ‘comfort zone’ where they can be themselves and re-​signify their identities as learners. The learning cultures of VET, and particularly its pedagogical and curricular ethos, are highlighted by young people as critical in their processes of school (re) engagement and identity (re)construction. Finally, Chapter 10 provides rich analyses of young people’s narratives regarding their upper secondary educational transitions with the specific objective of identifying the weight they attribute to structural factors and to their own agency in explaining their trajectories. By applying the notion of hermeneutic injustice to the sample of students interviewed in Madrid, the analysis illustrates a general tendency to explain their choices and transitions as the ultimate result of their own will and/​or individual capability. Broadly speaking, young people’s narratives express a lack of awareness of the 15

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structural and institutional factors that condition their educational trajectories in general and their upper secondary educational transitions in particular. It would therefore seem that the ‘epistemological fallacy of late modernity’ referred to at the beginning of this chapter has also been internalised by young people themselves, thus revealing the reciprocal relationship between the objective and subjective dimensions of inequality. The book’s final chapter (Chapter 11) provides a holistic account of the multiple ways social and educational inequalities traverse educational choices and transitions. By articulating the macro, meso and micro levels of analysis and combining the empirical results of the previous chapters, this concluding chapter critically analyses five main mechanisms of inequality (structural, systemic, institutional, relational and subjective) that in a clearly interrelated manner mediate the making, enactments and experiences of upper secondary choices and transitions. Notes This is a national competitive project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy for the 2016–​20 period and directed by Aina Tarabini (Ref. CSO2016–​80004). Further information is available at: http://​edupos​t16.es/​en/​ 2 Spain is one of the most challenging cases in the whole of the EU since ESL still affects 17.3 per cent of young people, while the EU-​27 average is 10.2 per cent (Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2020). 3 The fieldwork for the EDUPOST16 project was designed, conducted and analysed by a collaborative team of researchers that includes all the authors of this book as well as other scholars involved in different stages of the research. The complete project team can be found here: http://​edupos​t16.es/​en/​. The analysis of the empirical material for this book was exclusively developed by the authors of each chapter. 4 The first stage of the fieldwork was mainly conducted in 2017 and 2018. Details on the samples and features of the research techniques that were used can be found in the individual chapters of the book. 5 The case studies were developed over a period of two years. The first contact with the schools was in February 2018 and the meetings to share the final reports of the project were conducted between February and March 2020, before the COVID-​19 pandemic. In any case, not all schools were involved at the same level with the project, nor did they remain in it for the same time. Likewise, the research techniques were not all applied with the same intensity or as extensively at all schools. Gaining access in qualitative research is always an open and dynamic process based on the continuous (re)negotiation of relationships. 6 We define ‘typical’ modalities of supply as those provided in multiple schools, distributed across different neighbourhoods and provided by multiple suppliers, both public and private. In contrast, ‘exceptional modalities’ are those with scarce provision and which are highly concentrated in specific urban areas and mostly supplied by the private sector. 7 Details on the specific sampling procedures and specificities of the research techniques are provided in each chapter. It is also important to highlight that in parallel to the case studies, the EDUPOST16 project included participant observation at secondary schools’ open day events in different modalities of the Baccalaureate and VET. Results of this analysis can be found in Curran et al (2021). 1

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Creswell, J.W. and Plano Clark, V.L. (2017) Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research, Thousand Oaks: Sage. Creswell, J.W., Shope, R., Clark, V.L.P. and Green, D.O. (2006) ‘How interpretive qualitative research extends mixed methods research’, Research in the Schools, 13(1): 1–​11. Cuconato, M. and Walther, A. (2015) ‘“Doing transitions” in education’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(3): 283–​96. Cuervo, H. and Wyn, J. (2011) Rethinking Youth Transitions in Australia: A Historical and Multidimensional Approach, Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne, Research Report 33. Cuervo, H. and Wyn, J. (2014) ‘Reflections on the use of spatial and relational metaphors in youth studies’, Journal of Youth Studies, 17(7): 901–​15. Curran, M., Castejón, A. and Manzano, M. (2021) ‘Las jornadas de puertas abiertas como dispositivos de segmentación de los mercados educativos locales: el caso de la educación postobligatoria’, Revista Internacional de Sociología, 79(2): 1–13. Dale, R. and Robertson, S. (2009) ‘Beyond methodological “isms” in comparative education in an era of globalisation’, in R. Cowen and A.M. Kazamias (eds), International Handbook of Comparative Education, London; New York: Springer, pp 1113–​27. Dupriez, V., Dumay, X. and Vause, A. (2008) ‘How do school systems manage pupils’ heterogeneity?’, Comparative Education Review, 52(2): 245–​73. Esping-​Andersen, G. (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Evans, K. (2007) ‘Concepts of bounded agency in education, work, and the personal lives of young adults’, International Journal of Psychology, 42(2): 85–​93. Farrugia, D. (2015) ‘Space and place in studies of childhood and youth’, in J. Wyn and H. Cahill (eds), Handbook of Children and Youth Studies, Singapore: Springer, pp 609–24. Francis, B. and Mills, M. (2012) ‘Schools as damaging organisations: instigating a dialogue concerning alternative models of schooling’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 20(2): 251–​71. Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F. (1997) Young People and Social Change: New Perspectives, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Furlong, V.J. (1991) ‘Disaffected pupils: reconstructing the sociological perspective’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 12(3): 293–​307. Gale, T. and Parker, S. (2015) ‘To aspire: a systematic reflection on understanding aspirations in higher education’, Australian Educational Researcher, 42 (2): 139–​53. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-​Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Greene, J. (2007) Mixed Methods in Social Inquiry, San Francisco: Jossey-​Bass. 18

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Hammersley, M. (2013) What is Qualitative Research?, London: Bloomsbury. Hattam, R. and Smyth, J. (2003) ‘Not everyone has a perfect life: becoming somebody without school’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 11(3): 379–​98. Hesse-​Biber, S. (2010) ‘Qualitative approaches to mixed methods practice’, Qualitative Inquiry, 16(6): 455–​86. Hodkinson P. and Sparkes A.C. (1997) ‘Careership: a sociological theory of career decision making’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(1): 29–​44. Howe, K.R. (2004) ‘A critique of experimentalism’, Qualitative Inquiry, 10: 42–​61. Ingram, N. (2018) Working-​Class Boys and Educational Success Teenage Identities, Masculinities and Urban Schooling, London: Palgrave. Lather, P. (1986) ‘Research as praxis’, Harvard Educational Review, 56(3): 257–​77. Laureau, A. and Shultz, J. (1996) Journeys through Ethnography: Realistic Accounts of Fieldwork, Boulder: Westview Press. Lincoln, Y.S. and Guba, E.G. (1985) Naturalistic Inquiry, Newbury Park: Sage. Lynch, K. and Baker, J. (2005) ‘Equality in education: an equality of condition perspective’, Theory and Research in Education, 3(2): 131–​64. Martínez-​Morales, I. and Marhuenda-​Fluixá, F. (2020) ‘Vocational education and training in Spain: steady improvement and increasing value’, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 72(2): 209–​27. Mason, J. (2002) Qualitative Researching, London: Sage. Maxwell, J.A. (2013) Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach, London: Sage. Mills, C. and Gale, T. (2010) Schooling in Disadvantaged Communities: Playing the Game from the Back of the Field, Brisbane: Springer. Mons, N. (2007) Les nouvelles politiques éducatives: la France fait-​elle les bons choix?, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Nylund, M., Rosvall, P.Å. and Ledman, K. (2017) ‘The vocational–​academic divide in neoliberal upper secondary curricula: the Swedish case’, Journal of Education Policy, 32(6): 788–​808. Nyjman, J. and Wei, D. (2020) ‘Urban inequalities in the 21st century economy’, Applied Geography, 117: 102–88. Oakes, J. (1985) Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality, New Haven: Yale University Press. Ozga, J. (2000) Policy Research in Educational Settings: Contested Terrain, Buckingham: Open University Press. Parreira do Amaral, M., Walther, A. and Litau, J. (2013) Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe: Access, Coping and Relevance of Education for Young People in European Knowledge Societies in Comparative Perspective, Final Report, University of Frankfurt. Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-​First Century, Cambridge: Belknap Press. 19

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Polesel, J. (2008) ‘Democratising the curriculum or training the children of the poor: school-​based vocational training in Australia’, Journal of Education Policy, 23(6): 615–​32. Reay, D. (2018) Misseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes, Bristol: Policy Press. Reay, D., Davies, J., David, M. and Ball, S.J. (2001) ‘Choices of degree or degrees of choice? Class, “race” and the higher education choice process’, Sociology, 35(4): 855–​74. Ritchie, J. and Lewis, J. (eds) (2003) Qualitative Research Practice: A Guide for Social Science Students and Researchers, London: SAGE. Saraví, G. (2015) ‘Youth experience of urban inequality: space, class, and gender in Mexico’, in J. Wyn and H. Cahill (eds), Handbook of Children and Youth Studies, Singapore: Springer, pp 503–15. Sassen, S. (1991) The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Seghers, M., Boone S. and Van Avermaet, P. (2019) ‘Social class and educational decision-​making in a choice-​driven education system: a mixed-​ methods study’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 40(5): 696–​714. Seidman, I.E. (2006) Interviewing as Qualitative Research, London: Teachers College Press. Shain; F. and Ozga, J. (2001) ‘Identity crisis? Problems and issues in the sociology of education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 22(1): 109–​20. Sorando, D. and Leal, J. (2019) ‘Distant and unequal: the decline of social mixing in Barcelona and Madrid’, Revista Espanola de Investigaciones Sociologicas, 167: 125–​48. Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (2020) Sistema estatal de indicadores de la educación 2020, Madrid: MEFP. Tammaru, T., Marciczak, S. and Ham, M. (eds) (2016) Socio-​Economic Segregation in European Capital Cities: East Meets West, London: Routledge. Tarabini, A. (2019) The Conditions for School Success Examining Educational Exclusion and Dropping Out, London: Palgrave. Tarabini, A. and Ingram, N. (2018) Educational Choices, Aspirations and Transitions in Europe: Systemic, Institutional and Subjective Challenges, London: Routledge. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021a) ‘The politics of educational transitions: evidence from Catalonia’, European Educational Research Journal, 20(2): 212–​27. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021b) ‘Tracking, knowledge, and the organisation of secondary schooling: teachers’ representations and explanations’, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 74(1): 89–​106.

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Tarabini, A., Jacovkis, J. and Montes, A. (2022) ‘Peripheries within the city: the role of place/​space in shaping youth educational choices and transitions’, in D. Farrugia and S. Ravn (eds), Youth Beyond the City: Thinking from the Margins, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 21–39. Wacquant, L. (2008) Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Cambridge: Polity. Walther, A. (2006) ‘Regimes of youth transitions: choice, flexibility and security in young people’s experiences across different European contexts’, Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 14(2): 119–​39. Wyn, J. (2015) ‘Thinking about childhood and youth’, in J. Wyn, and H. Cahill (eds), Handbook of Children and Youth Studies, Singapore: Springer, pp 3–20. Yin, R.K. (2009) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 4th edn, London: Sage.

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PART I

The framing and enactment of upper secondary educational transitions

2

The political construction of upper secondary transitions: comparing problematisations and solutions in two urban contexts Judith Jacovkis, Miriam Prieto and Javier Rujas

Upper secondary educational transitions take place in contexts that are characterised by specific institutional, socioeconomic and cultural settings. The articulation and transformation of these dimensions have produced an increase in the complexity of educational trajectories in terms of alternatives, choices and labour market outcomes for young people (Cuconato et al, 2016). Transitions from lower to upper secondary education are thus shaped in a space of dialogue –​and confrontation –​between structural and systemic factors, and choices and decisions in which the former condition the latter (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). However, as the transformation of the structural and systemic factors shows, these are not immovable but are changing, although they do so slowly. Political approaches to educational transitions are not homogeneous across Europe. The literature has identified a wide range of orientations, objectives and target groups that shape everything from the very definition of the transition process to the promotion of measures to cope with it (Parreira do Amaral and Zelinka, 2019; Rambla et al, 2020), which are embedded in different youth regimes (Walther, 2006; 2017). The national and local articulation of such orientations, objectives and definitions of target groups delimits the structure of opportunity within which young people develop their educational and post-​educational transitions (Parreira do Amaral and Zelinka, 2019). These structures are therefore both local and at the same time embedded in broader contexts of governance and global spaces where ideas flow across national, regional and local borders. How and why some elements –​ideas, arguments, proposals and policies –​contribute more than others to the definition of such structures of opportunity is neither mechanical nor neutral. Rather, it is a reflection of the uneven positions from which different political actors are able to ensure that their interests and perspective on the world prevail (Dale, 1999), to impose definitions of

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what the political problems are and to determine which solutions need to be applied to solve them. This chapter analyses the role of the local scale in framing upper secondary educational transitions, and establishes the most relevant political aspects that affect young people’s transitions from lower to upper secondary. It is important to note that the analysis is not focused on the adoption or discussion of any particular policy, or on the role of different aspects of governance in the regulation of a particular programme. Instead, the chapter analyses the way the process of transition is problematised (Bacchi, 2012), defined and then intervened on by public administration in the view of policymakers and educational stakeholders in two ‘global cities’, namely Barcelona and Madrid. The structure of the chapter is as follows: in the first section we present the conceptual and methodological approach to the analysis, drawing on the sociology of education policy and on critical policy analysis. The second section briefly introduces the context by highlighting some of the most relevant institutional features and indicators. In the third section, we present the results of the analysis in two different blocks that respond to the problematisation of the upper secondary educational transitions as developed by policymakers and educational stakeholders, on the one hand, and with regard to the solutions proposed, on the other. Each of these blocks addresses three broad topics, namely: the attributed functions of the two upper secondary education tracks; their institutional organisation; and the relationship between public and private provision at this stage of education. Finally, the conclusions section reflects on the results and emerging debates around the upper secondary educational transition.

Conceptual and methodological approach Previous research on upper secondary educational transitions has highlighted the relevance of this stage for explaining the role of education in the reproduction of social inequalities. The literature on the topic has addressed different aspects of this process. Within schools, research on the biases in the guidance received by students of different socioeconomic profiles (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a), genders (Lappalainen et al, 2013), and migratory backgrounds (Bonizzoni et al, 2014) has been used to explain the prevalence of classed, gendered or racialised choices in the transition to upper secondary education. The structure of the system has been one of the central topics of research on the mechanisms for social reproduction through education, focusing on school and classroom elements such as ability grouping (Dupriez, 2010; Castejón, 2017), or on the differentiation of educational pathways (Maaz et al, 2008; Dupriez, 2010). These discussions are closely tied to the analysis of the relationship between the academic and the vocational tracks, 26

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and the functions attributed to each of them (Nylund et al, 2017), and on the type of knowledge that each pathway provides access to (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021b). All these elements clearly help to highlight the crucial contribution of this stage to the degree of selectivity of different education systems (Blossfeld and Shavit, 2011). These examples suggest many ways to address and analyse the topic of transitions. The aim of this chapter is to compare the problematisation of transitions from lower to upper secondary education in the cities of Madrid and Barcelona. This objective is rooted in both the contributions of the sociological analysis of education policy and in those of critical policy analysis. Sociological analysis of education policy is concerned with the role of education within the state and in contexts of political and societal transformation; with the changes in education and its connections with changes in other spheres of society; with the balances in the responsibilities attributed to different dimensions of the social structure –​individuals, families and market –​and of the state, its policies and politics, to compensate for social inequalities (Whitty, 1997). In this context, different authors have highlighted the need to examine the explanations and justifications that are generated in relation to different education policies and reforms in such a way that an image of coherence and unity is presented (Ball, 1997); and to explore the interests and the –​usually conflicted, usually hidden –​political ideas that lie behind education policies (Dale, 1999). From this point of view, and following analyses in previous studies (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a), transitions from lower to upper secondary education can be viewed as a facet of the field of education policy, to use Bourdieu’s concept –​as Lingard et al (2005) did. The very meaning of the concept of field creates a lens through which to examine the rationalities, motivations and interests of the relevant actors in setting the formal and informal rules for this transition. The cross-​field analysis then articulates elements related both to education policy scales and to the connections between it and other areas, such as economic policy (Rawolle and Lingard, 2008). Hence, the analysis questions how the field of transitions is constructed by political actors, but not by focusing on specific policies or interventions but on the ways they are problematised in each context. Political processes of problematisation and agenda-​setting, of generation of consensus and of omission of political issues from public debates, have been addressed from the point of view of critical policy analysis. Cultural Political Economy (CPE), as a ‘grand-​theoretical’ project within critical policy approaches (Sum and Jessop, 2015), has contributed significantly to placing the sense-​and meaning-​making processes at the centre of the understanding of policies and politics (Jessop, 2010). In this regard, discourses are considered to be produced in particular contexts, and thus shaped by their characteristics; at the same time, discourses have the ability to modify 27

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such contexts insofar as they produce shared imaginaries, such as frameworks of reference that are relevant in the shaping of social structures (Fairclough, 2003). The anchoring of discourses to particular contexts, both as results and as generators, highlights the crucial relevance of local knowledge –​and meaning-​making –​to the analysis of political processes (Yanow, 2000). From this point of view, the scope of inquiry can go beyond the analysis of particular policies to also encompass the process whereby the semiotic and material conditions for the adoption of political measures are generated. The object of inquiry here is the process by which certain political ideas or interests are able to impose their problematisation of particular aspects of social reality –​and to omit others –​and propose specific solutions for them. As pointed out by Noël (2006), setting the agenda for social or political issues, and defining which of them are ‘thinkable’, is the first step towards implementing solutions to deal with them. Moreover, these solutions are usually presented as being as inevitable as the very issues they aim to address. In these contexts, they may become ‘programmatic ideas’ that frame not only what is considered to cause a problem but also what their political solutions should be (Verger, 2012). In order to structure ‘the analysis of the articulation between the economic and the political and their embedding in broader sets of social relations’ (Jessop, 2010: 336), the CPE identifies three evolutionary mechanisms –​variation, selection and retention –​in which ideational and material drivers interplay. This chapter focuses on the first two, considering them to be analogous to the problem definition and agenda-​ setting moments, as defined in Barbehön et al (2015). If attention is paid to variation (or problematisation), semiotic and material drivers have to be considered to trigger the emergence of certain ‘problems’ in the political agenda. Some drivers can then be identified that leverage the selection of particular responses to the problems some actors have been able to define. The distinction between these evolutionary mechanisms or moments is analytical and their relationship is that of co-​evolution and dialectic path-​ dependency rather than sequential or chronologic (Jessop, 2010: 340; Barbehön et al, 2015: 243). To identify and compare the characteristics of the problematisation and governance of the field of upper secondary educational transitions in Barcelona and Madrid, this chapter analyses the discourses of policy actors in the two cities. These discourses were produced through in-​depth interviews in which we posed questions about the characteristics of upper secondary education in these cities, about the most salient elements in terms of the planning of this stage of education, and about the interviewees’ opinions about the criteria that should govern this planning. Policymakers and stakeholders were selected based on their participation in and/​or their knowledge of the policies and actions taken in the governance 28

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of upper secondary educational transitions. In particular, we identified two groups of interviewees according to their positions in relation to the institutional problematisation of the field. The first group, policymakers, includes institutional and governmental actors (politicians and specialists from the local and regional educational administrations). The second group were stakeholders, which gathers together other educational actors such as teachers’ unions, family associations, social movements, experts and corporate associations. The final sample included 42 in-​depth interviews (28 in Barcelona and 14 in Madrid) conducted mainly in 2017 and 2018. We analysed the discourses1 of these actors as follows. To avoid the difficulties derived from comparing facts or actions performed in different places, the first step was to identify the emerging issues or frictions that structure the interviewees’ discourses. Frictions can be understood as spaces of potentially conflictive conversation among diverse actors, issues through which different rationalities, motivations and interests are activated and eventually articulated to produce new forms of interaction (Dale et al, 2012). In the field of transitions to upper secondary education in Madrid and Barcelona, we identified three frictions: the objectives and functions attributed to upper secondary education depending on whether the track is academic or vocational; the planning criteria of upper secondary education; and the relationship between public and private provision. In accordance with these frictions, the second step of the analysis was to codify the interviews to enable identification of differences and commonalities emerging from each urban context and each group of actors regarding their problematisation and the solutions proposed. As highlighted in Parreira do Amaral and Zelinka’s (2019) comparative analysis on lifelong learning policies, this approach helps to interpret the connections between the dynamics of problematisation –​the theory of the problem –​and the solutions proposed and eventually enacted. It is also possible to detect how and through which mechanisms these solutions are considered to generate the expected outcomes (Dale et al, 2012: 36). The results section of this chapter presents the outputs of such analysis and highlights how the actors mobilise different concepts to problematise upper secondary transitions. It also stresses the way these problematisations contribute to the setting of a political agenda aimed at guiding interventions in this field. Although meanings are situated and thus refer to specific contexts, the comparative focus enables identification of common aspects that can also be detected in other contexts. These aspects refer to the construction of target groups through political strategies (Ingram and Schneider, 2015), to the governance of educational transitions (Walther, 2006; Dale and Parrerira do Amaral, 2015), and to the role of private provision in the planning of education supply (Verger et al, 2017). 29

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Comparing two urban contexts: context and data Although the analysis focuses on two cities, the national and regional scales must also be considered, as well as their interactions with the local level (Maroy, 2020; Verger et al, 2020). We need, therefore, a multiscalar approach to achieve a more complex and complete understanding of the processes studied, given the characteristics of the Spanish administration and education system. In Spain, the structure and the general institutional framework for the education system is designed by the national government. As detailed in the introduction (Chapter 1), Spanish education is formally comprehensive and compulsory at the primary and lower secondary stages, from ages 6 to 16. Upper secondary education is divided into an academic (Baccalaureate) and a vocational track, intermediate Vocational Education and Training (VET). As in other Western countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Poland (Blossfeld and Shavit, 2011), this institutional divide is associated with social class differences in educational trajectories: middle-​and upper-​class students are over-​represented in the academic track, while working-​class students are in the vocational one (Bernardi and Requena, 2010). Nonetheless, Spanish administration is highly decentralised. Within this general framework, the 17 regions are responsible for planning education supply and for designing access and admissions criteria and procedures in the different stages of education provided by publicly funded schools. Education policies therefore take different forms in the different regions. Regional governments are the main actors in the governance of upper secondary transitions at the local level, while local governments hold variable powers over education in their municipalities depending on the regional regulations. In Madrid, for instance, the local authorities have no power to plan and design educational provision and access –​except for early childhood education for children under three –​whereas in Barcelona the governance of education is shared by the Catalan government and the local authorities through the Consortium of Education of Barcelona (CEB). To develop a comparative approach, we need to look at the relevant characteristics of both cities. Barcelona and Madrid are often referred to as ‘global cities’2. They are among the richest municipalities in the country and their economies mainly rely on the service sector, which concentrates 90 per cent of their employment3. They are home to a high proportion of middle and upper classes and have experienced growth in the number of professionals. They have also seen an increase in residential segregation and inequality since the beginning of the 21st century (Sorando and Leal, 2019). The cities differ, however, in the percentage of non-​national residents and students, which is higher in Barcelona. Whereas the Spanish training structure overall is shaped like an hourglass –​high percentages of population 30

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with lower and higher education levels, and only a small proportion with upper secondary levels –​its shape in Madrid and Barcelona resembles a T, with higher levels of tertiary education (over 50 per cent of the population) and lower levels of lower secondary education (25 per cent in Madrid and 22 per cent in Barcelona) than the rest of the country4. However, Early School Leaving (ESL) is higher in Catalonia (19 per cent, compared to 12 per cent in the region of Madrid). Finally, both regions feature high levels of school segregation by socioeconomic level, especially the region of Madrid (Murillo and Martínez-​Garrido, 2018). Looking at upper secondary educational transitions these two cities feature an uneven distribution of students, with higher numbers enrolled for the academic track compared to the vocational one. This preference for the Baccalaureate in upper secondary transitions is stronger in Madrid (72.4 per cent, compared to 63.2 per cent in Barcelona), while the preference for intermediate vocational training is higher in Barcelona (36.8 per cent, as opposed to 27.6 per cent in Madrid)5. In both, there is a strong presence of the private sector, and public supply is below the national average, especially in Barcelona. Enrolment for the Baccalaureate at private schools is higher in private independent schools than in state-​funded schools in both cities6, especially in Madrid. However, enrolment rates for intermediate VET are higher at state-​funded private schools than at private independent schools. Finally, upper secondary education provision is unequally distributed in the urban space, constraining young people’s educational choices and transitions in both cities (Rujas et al, 2020; Tarabini et al, 2022)7.

Results Upper secondary education in Spain is aimed at providing students with the skills to develop in all areas of society and is also focused on preparing students to access the labour market with the required professional and technical skills. This dual educational and vocational nature, as in other Western countries (Wheelahan, 2007; Nylund et al, 2017), is developed through two tracks. Baccalaureate is designed from an academic perspective to provide ‘training, intellectual and human maturity, knowledge, abilities and attitudes that allow students to develop social functions and enter the workforce with responsibility and competence’ (LOMCE 8, 2013, art. 32), as well as the skills required to access higher education; and VET is addressed at preparing students to ‘perform diverse professions in a qualified way, access work and participate actively in social, cultural and economic life’ (LOMCE, 2013, art. 39.1). Different approaches are employed in the design of the two upper secondary tracks, which translate into different institutional settings in Barcelona and Madrid, thereby shaping young people’s educational transitions. 31

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Following the framework presented above, the results are structured in two main sections dealing with the ‘problematisation’ and ‘solutions’ dimensions. We identified three frictions (Dale et al, 2012) in each dimension: the functions attributed to the academic and vocational tracks; their institutional settings; and the relationship between public and private supply. Problematisation of transitions to upper secondary education in Barcelona and Madrid If we focus on the attributed functions of upper secondary education, access to higher education is assumed to be the central aim of Baccalaureate. However, difficulties with combining the vocational and educational aims of intermediate VET emerged in the interviews, and in particular the problems derived from guiding students with performance difficulties in lower secondary education towards VET9. In line with previous research in the field (Bernardi and Requena, 2010; Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021b), most respondents claimed that the education system uses this track to divert students with academic, economic, cultural or social disadvantages. In this context, according to the interviewees, teachers and principals of VET schools struggle to respond simultaneously to students’ needs and maintain the vocational level of intermediate VET. Therefore, in addition to the official division between the academic aim of Baccalaureate and the vocational purpose of VET, respondents attach a social purpose to the latter. The discourses on this issue are similar in the two cities. The academic purpose of Baccalaureate is clearly identified, while the function attributed to VET is framed under the tension between vocational and social aims: ‘Everything is still designed in such a way that Baccalaureate is clearly the path to enter university. Anyone who is thinking of going to university must do so through Baccalaureate.’ (Stakeholder, INT12, Madrid) ‘Almost all students who fail in lower secondary education take advantage of VET as a safety net … [but this way] VET cannot achieve its objective, which is to qualify some of the people in this country, or it does it poorly because, like any other stage of education, it needs students with all kinds of potentialities.’ (Stakeholder, INT12, Barcelona) The role of students’ demands and interests and that of labour market needs in shaping the provision of VET also relates to the dual purpose attributed to this educational track (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a). In both cities, policymakers tend to claim that provision should be guided by labour market needs, thus showing greater alignment with the attribution of a vocational aim to this track, which is at the same time limited to the acquisition of mainly technical 32

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skills (Wheelahan, 2007). In contrast, non-​governmental educational actors emphasise the importance of combining market orientation with students’ interests and motivations when designing the supply. This group considers VET also to be aimed at keeping students in the education system and so needing to adapt to their interests. The first of the following quotations, from Madrid, shows how the link between labour market leadership and professionalisation functions. The second, from Barcelona, describes the purpose of VET as a means to prevent early dropout from school. ‘The gap [between supply and demand] is wide … demand is higher in some productive sectors and lower in others. Our education system seeks to provide Madrilenian companies with well-​trained workers. What happens? Our education supply, which is highly diverse, doesn’t match the less diverse demands of young people.’ (Policymaker, INT9, Madrid) ‘Intermediate VET students have a different profile, with different connotations. They are the ones we encourage to stay in the education system and make every possible effort to ensure they don’t disengage, don’t get lost, so they can receive minimal training in a trade.’ (Stakeholder, INT19, Barcelona) The second friction the analysis addresses is to do with the institutional organisation of the transition from lower to upper secondary education. Three elements can be stressed at this point: the supply of upper secondary education and its geographical distribution; the institutional relationship between lower secondary education and the two tracks of upper secondary education; and the guidance practices employed in lower secondary education. Public supply and its geographical distribution are discussed differently depending on whether discourses refer to the academic or vocational educational tracks (see Chapter 3 for further analysis of the spatial dimension of upper secondary transition). Baccalaureate is only problematised by the local educational authority in Barcelona, but it barely appears in the discourses of the rest of the actors. By contrast, the public provision, planning and distribution of VET are highly criticised in both locations and by all actors. Regardless of the city, the interviewees stressed that the detailed planning needed for VET is missing and that its territorial distribution is not equitable in terms of specialities. VET supply, they claim, is organised around criteria of economic savings and effective use of available resources. The consequence of such an approach is short-​term planning that mainly depends on schools’ traditional specialisations and resources rather than global long-​term planning, as this quotation shows: “The criterion, I think, is tradition. Schools are going to do what they have always been doing, so 33

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they are going to offer what they can offer depending on their resources” (Stakeholder, INT4, Madrid). Second, the different nature of the relationship between lower secondary education and the academic and vocational tracks of upper secondary education appears to be critical for shaping the transition process. Interviewees generally describe the curricular, spatial and administrative continuities, as well as entrance requirements, to depict how a ‘natural’ or ‘easy’ transition (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a) is built in relation to Baccalaureate but not to VET. Baccalaureate is generally taught at the same schools as lower secondary education, subjects share the same academic approach and teachers belong to the same staff. In contrast, VET is designed to emphasise a vocational approach and is therefore disconnected from the structure and design of lower and upper secondary education: “There are also organisational issues here. Most lower secondary schools also have Baccalaureate, but the same is not the case for VET. Some schools might have some VET provision but no school will ever have the full supply because it includes 26 professional families” (Policymaker, INT3, Barcelona). In addition, when demand exceeds supply, access to Baccalaureate is regulated through family and social criteria (for example, proximity to the family home, annual family income), as well as academic criteria (the average grade in the final year of lower secondary education). However, for accessing VET, which is the track most affected by the shortage of public places, only academic criteria are considered. That means that the most in-​demand VET specialities apply high cut-​off grades, what contrasts with the idea of VET as the second-​rate track for students of low economic, cultural or social status. Finally, these organisational features that make transitions to Baccalaureate easier than to VET in terms of information and educational guidance, and student profiles and aims, are also relevant in the problematisation of upper secondary transitions. While lower secondary teachers can provide first-​hand information about Baccalaureate, in many cases they lack not only direct experience, but also information about VET. In the words of a policymaker from the Department of Education (Catalonia), “only having Baccalaureate at the school makes them unaware about the world of VET” (Policymaker, INT1, Barcelona). Only when students have performance difficulties are they explicitly informed about –​and diverted to –​the vocational track. In contrast, it is assumed that students with middle and high academic performance are going to continue to Baccalaureate. The impact of guidance practices is highlighted by most of the interviewees when explaining how students choose upper secondary education. However, this emphasis is placed mostly on vocational trajectories and so reflections regarding guidance processes tend to focus on the need to reduce dropout rates in this track, which are higher than they are in the academic one, and to improve the fit between students’ VET choices and the needs of the labour market. 34

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The final element regarding the problematisation of transitions to upper secondary education refers to the relationship between public and private supply. As noted in the previous section, the private sector is important for both educational tracks in the two cities (Rujas et al, 2020). This, and the shortage of public places, causes people who cannot afford private education to drop out of the education system. Key informants state that the public Baccalaureate is overcrowded in Madrid, while the private variant is shaped by a dual network: one branch offered by prestigious private schools, and another, smaller, branch offered by ‘social’ and generally religious schools that have traditionally worked with socially disadvantaged young people. In the case of Barcelona, although the data show how important the private sector is, interviewees do not problematise the private provision of the Baccalaureate at all. The public-​private distribution of VET supply, in contrast, is highly problematised by the educational actors in both cities. In particular, and consistent with other research in the field (Hoeckel, 2008), participants mentioned that while specialities requiring high investments (for example, laboratories or specific facilities, specialised technology) are mainly offered by the public sector (except for the socially oriented private schools that traditionally engage with VET), the private sector focuses on high-​demand or low-​cost ones. The following quotation from a stakeholder in Barcelona describes the dynamics of the relationship between public and private supply in VET: ‘What do you need to offer administration and management? A classroom with computers. Many schools offer this vocational programme, not just public ones but also private and publicly funded private schools. Chemistry, which is expensive, three schools in the whole city, two public and one publicly funded. Why? Because it is expensive. For health studies, it’s the same.’ (Stakeholder, INT16, Barcelona) The lack of regulation on the availability of private courses leads to a wide range of lower-​cost specialities together with a small number of specific and expensive specialities (such as industrial sector ones). The private sector is also considered to be more adaptable to the labour market as it can update and expand its offer to new needs and demands faster than the public sector, which is conditioned by administrative proceedings (Prieto and Rujas, 2020). Solutions for the problems with transitions to upper secondary education Even though respondents’ discourses about the problems faced by upper secondary education are quite rich and free flowing –​especially regarding 35

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VET –​proposed solutions are scarce. In terms of the purposes of the tracks, as described above and in previous research (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021b), Baccalaureate remains almost unquestioned, so no solutions are perceived to be required. In contrast, the interviewees identify tension between the different programmes addressed at raising the prestige of VET and fostering the social use of VET to keep students in the education system. In this vein, the institutional use of VET as a second-​rate track for students with low academic performance is identified as an obstacle to the raising of its social and academic prestige: “I see a risk in what is happening, namely that we are again discrediting VET. So, those who don’t want to study go to VET and that is a mistake” (Stakeholder, INT1, Madrid). In both cities, solutions for the differing prestige associated with the two tracks come mainly from the world of VET and concern two features of its institutional organisation: provision and information. The unresolved debate on the functions attributed to VET and the difficulties in maintaining or increasing its prestige while pursuing its use as a safety net, materialises in the tension between a centralised and a distributed model of provision. Most of the interviewees in Barcelona defend the increase in and centralisation of the provision of VET at large, specialised schools, together with improvements in transport and in the relationship with the local business and economic community. A minority of respondents, in line with the idea defended by some stakeholders in Madrid, advocate for a more equitable geographical distribution of VET. These two positions are exemplified by the following quotations from the two cities: ‘[In Barcelona] we have three VET schools with more than 1,000 students. … This is what, in my opinion, makes sense and makes these institutions the referents for people and companies. … What makes no sense is not to have connections with companies. This size allows you to be ambitious.’ (Stakeholder, INT9, Barcelona) ‘We defend the provision of every programme in every territory. That means, for instance, having a minimum supply of cooking VET at least in each of the territorial directions10, especially in intermediate VET, because someone from one side of the city will not move to the other to take the programme.’ (Stakeholder, INT3, Madrid) In terms of the governance of upper secondary education, in Barcelona some respondents highlight the importance of developing a common design for post-​compulsory education to reduce the social inequalities between the two tracks, and create a closer connection between Baccalaureate and VET. These interviewees from Barcelona also mention the need to disconnect lower secondary education and Baccalaureate. Finally, the institutional separation 36

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of Baccalaureate and VET within the educational administration is viewed as an effective action to promote the visibility of VET in both cities: ‘The VET sub-​directorate was created in 2015; until then, we belonged to Secondary Education and I think it was a qualitative improvement because at high schools we are just a grain. Now I think the General Directorate of VET gives us more visibility, it is an important step too.’ (Policymaker, INT9, Madrid) No matter how they problematise the planning process, most of the solutions proposed by educational stakeholders and policymakers in both cities focus on the need to provide students with more information, especially about VET: entrance criteria, career prospects, employment opportunities, and so on. Educational guidance is also emphasised as a key resource for helping students to identify their training and vocational interests and the educational track that best suits them. However, not many of the respondents reflect on the biases of these practices (Romito, 2019) and they tend to focus more on information than on guidance practices. In Madrid, interviewees have differing views of the role they would assign to educational guidance. Policymakers emphasise the importance of providing students with information so they can adapt to the educational provision and the needs of the labour market: “Now we have to work on how to inform families about what’s going on, so they dismantle taboos about VET and the idea that it is useless. It does work. It gives people jobs and trains students for the future” (Policymaker, INT9, Madrid). Other stakeholders do highlight the role guidance could play in adapting the supply of education to students’ interests and motivations. Some respondents in Barcelona stress the need to adapt the institutional organisation of the educational tracks to the students and not limit interventions to improving information and guidance. As demonstrated by the following quotation from a policymaker, some suggest that the different levels of VET should be easier to access and the curriculum should be adaptable in order to connect intermediate and high VET levels, or high VET levels with higher education: ‘I don’t think everything can be solved through guidance. For example, a boy goes there and says “yes, this is what I wanted but the level is too high”. What do we do? We need to be able to make the VET curriculum more flexible, allow it to be done in more time, develop modules, etc.’ (Policymaker, INT6, Barcelona) Finally, regarding the relationship between public and private supply, critical Madrilenian stakeholders describe the need to increase the educational 37

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administration’s control over the private sector. Meanwhile, participants belonging to the private sector defend the need to forge closer relationships with the business sector to ensure quality internships and the future employment of students. Despite the differences between the interests defended by each group of actors, it is important to stress that, in the two cities, solutions related to public–​private supply are exclusively focused on VET. Regardless of the high rate of private Baccalaureate in both places, solutions to address this unbalance are omitted.

Conclusions The aim of this chapter has been to understand how transitions from lower to upper secondary education are problematised in two ‘global cities’ by political actors with different roles, responsibilities and advocacy capacity. In particular, the analysis has addressed the construction of upper secondary educational transitions by focusing, first, on the way they are problematised by political actors in the cities of Barcelona and Madrid and, second, on the solutions these actors suggest to what they consider to be its most relevant problems. Through the lens of the sociology of education policy, we have highlighted the dynamic and conflicting nature of transitions from lower to upper secondary education and the tensions and contradictions that arise from the different positions and interests of different actors. The critical policy analysis approach has provided the systematic tools to identify the issues that the stakeholders deem most relevant when it comes to characterising upper secondary transitions, together with the proposals they attach to such characterisations. We have identified and conceptualised as frictions (Dale et al, 2012) three main elements of the interviewees’ discourses that result from different rationalities, motivations and interests among policymakers and educational stakeholders. These frictions relate to the functions attributed to upper secondary education, to its institutional organisation, and to the relationships between public and private provision at this stage of education. The most salient conclusions of the analysis are summarised below. First, the prominence of discourses on the labour market and skills described by other research (Wheelahan, 2007; Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021b) resonates with the results presented for both cities when the functions of upper secondary education are problematised. The field of upper secondary transitions is therefore evidently connected with that of economic policy (Rawolle and Lingard, 2008) with regards to VET. However, the analysed discourses tend not to mention this link in relation to Baccalaureate, as if to suggest that there is no connection. However, far from being nonexistent, and as long demonstrated by Marxist literature (Bowles and Gintis, 1976), this relationship between the structure of education systems and outcomes 38

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in the labour market is of crucial importance when it comes to analysing the role of education in the reproduction of social inequalities. Second, the absence of this connection in the interviewees’ discourses suggests that the vocational track is still subordinate to the academic one. Transitions to upper secondary education are generally problematised ‘naturally’ when referring to VET, but only in relation to Baccalaureate when the interviewers ask directly about it. The triggers for the solutions proposed for the three frictions –​functions, institutional organisation and public-​ private provision –​are mostly identified as ‘problems’ in VET: disparity between students’ demands and the supply of training; low-​performing students opting for VET; and an imbalanced supply of VET both territorially and in terms of ownership. Although the situation of Baccalaureate in relation to some of these problems could also be considered problematic according to the presented data (ownership and territoriality of the supply), they are barely mentioned by the interviewees, who thus transmit an unproblematic view of the academic track in comparison to the vocational one. No matter what the situation is in terms of disparate entrance criteria, public provision or biases in student profiles, the resonating idea in the interviews suggests the need to intervene more with regard to VET than to Baccalaureate because it is the track ‘with problems’. The higher prestige of the academic track may be reinforced when the vocational one is described as the one that presents the most difficulties and shortcomings. Third, in spite of the decentralised planning that characterises the Spanish education system, we have detected few differences in the way policymakers and stakeholders problematise the transition from lower to upper secondary education in the two locations of analysis and regarding the three identified frictions. In fact, although the sources of the discourses belong to local contexts, the analysis unveils common patterns in the elements that feed the political agenda, in the tensions that characterise the process, and in the tentative solutions that are proposed. In this regard, the results suggest the existence of shared views that go beyond the limits of the particular institutional settings and localities and that link transitions to other political fields. Notwithstanding these common views, we can intuit some divergent positions. In general terms, those actors belonging to the local and regional education administration seem to be more categorical when defining the functions of upper secondary education and more critical when addressing the alleged mismatch between students’ choices and the needs of the labour market mediated by the provision of VET. In contrast, educational stakeholders often reflect on certain tensions or contradictions they detect in different elements. These include the attribution of different functions to different upper secondary education tracks –​the social or vocational aims of VET mostly –​the incoherence regarding the supposed intention of raising VET’s prestige while maintaining guidance practices that divert those who 39

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are considered to be ‘bad students’ towards this track (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a); or by pointing out the need to increase the public provision of VET and improve the regulation of the private sector. In short, our analysis contributes to understanding the dynamics of political problem definition by elucidating the elements that leading actors in the field consider relevant and how they define them. At the same time, the study highlights some of the issues that could set the agenda for political intervention on upper secondary educational transitions in the coming years. Notes All interviews were fully transcribed and analysed using ATLAS.ti software. The qualitative strategy was combined with analysis of secondary quantitative data and relevant policy documents. We conducted the interviews in Spanish and Catalan and translated the selected quotations into English. 2 See Chapter 1 for further details of the two cities under study and their comparative relevance. See also this chapter for full information on the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the chapters of this book are produced. 3 Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), Urban Audit. Urban indicators. https://​ www.ine.es/​jax​iT3/​Tabla.htm?t=​30140&L=​1 4 Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), Urban Audit. Urban indicators. https://​ www.ine.es/​jax​iT3/​Tabla.htm?t=​30140&L=​1 5 Source: own calculations based on the Department of Education of Madrid and Catalonia Statistics on Education. 6 State-​funded schools include public and publicly funded private schools. The latter enrol around 10% of the students of Baccalaureate and 15% of  those in VET. These percentages, however, vary depending on the region (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional, 2021). 7 See Chapter 3 for a detailed analysis of the public representations of upper secondary educational transitions with regards to the urban space. 8 LOMCE was the existing education act when the interviews were conducted. A new education act was approved in 2020, but has yet to be developed and implemented for lower and upper secondary education. 9 Different chapters of this book provide evidence of the biased nature of guidance practices towards upper secondary education. Chapters 5 and 9 for example demonstrate that those students identified as ‘bad students’ are systematically oriented towards VET. Chapters 6 and 7 show how students from the lowest fractions of the working class as well as from migrant backgrounds are overwhelmingly directed towards this track, irrespective of their academic results. 10 The Department of Education divides the region of Madrid into five ‘territorial directions’: the capital (city of Madrid), east, west, north and south. 1

References Bacchi, C. (2012) ‘Why study problematizations? Making politics visible’, Open Journal of Political Science, 02(01): 1–​8. Ball, S.J. (1997) ‘Policy sociology and critical social research: a personal review of recent education policy and policy research’, British Educational Research Journal, 23: 257–​74. 40

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Barbehön, M., Münch, S. and Lamping, W. (2015) ‘Problem definition and agenda-​setting in critical perspective’, in F. Fischer, D. Torgerson, A. Durnová and M. Orsini (eds), Handbook of Critical Policy Studies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp 241–​58. Bernardi, F. and Requena, M. (2010) ‘Inequality in educational transitions: the case of post-​compulsory education in Spain’, Revista de Educación, 93–​118. Blossfeld, H.P. and Shavit, Y. (2011) ‘Persisting barriers: changes in educational opportunities in thirteen countries’, in R. Arum, I. Beattie and K. Ford (eds), The Structure of Schooling: Readings in Sociology of Education, London: Sage, pp 217–​27. Bonizzoni, P., Romito, M. and Cavallo, C. (2014) ‘Teachers’ guidance, family participation and track choice: the educational disadvantage of immigrant students in Italy’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(5): 702–​20. Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (1976) Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Castejón, A. (2017) ‘Expectativas docentes, agrupamiento del alumnado y segregación escolar’, Doctoral dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, Available from: https://d​ dd.uab.cat/r​ eco ​ rd/1​ 869​ 99?ln=c​ a Cuconato, M., Dale, R., Amaral, M. and Walther, A. (2016) ‘Introduction: the reshaping of educational trajectories in European knowledge Societies’, in A. Walther, M. Parrerira do Amaral, M. Cuconato and R. Dale (eds), Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe, London: Bloomsbury, pp 1–​14. Dale, R. (1999) ‘Specifying globalization effects on national policy: a focus on the mechanisms’, Journal of Education Policy, 14(1): 1–​17. Dale, R., Parreira do Amaral, M., Amos, K., Treptow, R., Barberis, E. and Kazepov, Y. (2012) ‘Governance of educational trajectories in Europe: comparative report high-level governance’, GOETE Working Paper. Dale, R. and Parrerira do Amaral, M. (2015) ‘Discursive and institutional opportunity structures in the governance of educational trajectories’, in Shaping the Futures of Young Europeans: Education Governance in Eight European Countries, Oxford: Symposium Books, pp 23–​41. Dupriez, V. (2010) Methods of Grouping Learners at School, Paris: UNESCO, Available from: https://​unes​doc.une​sco.org/​ark:/​48223/​pf000​0187​616/​ PDF/​187616​eng.pdf.multi Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, London: Routledge. Hoeckel, K. (2008) Costs and Benefits in Vocational Education and Training, OECD. Ingram, H. and Schneider, A.L. (2015) ‘Making distinctions: the social construction of target populations’, in Handbook of Critical Policy Studies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp 259–​73. 41

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Jessop, B. (2010) ‘Cultural political economy and critical policy studies’, Critical Policy Studies, 3(3–​4): 336–​56. Lappalainen, S., Mietola, R. and Lahelma, E. (2013) ‘Gendered divisions on classed routes to vocational education’, Gender and Education, 25(2): 189–​205. Lingard, B., Rawolle, S. and Taylor, S. (2005) ‘Globalizing policy sociology in education: working with Bourdieu’, Journal of Education Policy, 20(6): 759–​77. LOMCE (2013) ‘Ley Orgánica 8/​2013, de 9 de diciembre, para la mejora de la calidad educativa’, Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE) núm. 295, de 10 de diciembre. Maaz, K., Trautwein, U., Lüdtke, O. and Baumert, J. (2008) ‘Educational transitions and differential learning environments: how explicit between-​ school tracking contributes to social inequality in educational outcomes’, Child Development Perspectives, 2(2): 99–​106. Maroy, C. (2020) ‘Multiscalar comparison and education policy trajectories’, in X. Bonal, E. Coxon, M. Novelli and A. Verger (eds), Education, Globalisation and the State. Essays in Honour of Roger Dale, New York: Peter Lang, pp 201–​11. Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional (2021) Datos y Cifras: Curso Escolar 2020/​2021, Madrid. Murillo, F.J. and Martínez-​Garrido, C. (2018) ‘Magnitud de la Segregación escolar por nivel socioeconómico en España y sus Comunidades Autónomas y comparación con los países de la Unión Europea’, RASE: Revista de La Asociación de Sociología de La Educación, 11(1): 37. Noël, A. (2006) ‘The new global politics of poverty’, Global Social Policy, 6(3): 304–​33. Nylund, M., Rosvall, P.Å. and Ledman, K. (2017) ‘The vocational–​academic divide in neoliberal upper secondary curricula: the Swedish case’, Journal of Education Policy, 32(6): 788–​808. Parreira do Amaral, M. and Zelinka, J. (2019) ‘Lifelong learning policies shaping the life courses of young adults: an interpretative analysis of orientations, objectives and solutions’, Comparative Education, 55(3): 404–​21. Prieto, M. and Rujas, J. (2020) ‘Transiciones a la educación posobligatoria en Madrid: el peso de los factores políticos e institucionales’, Papers: Revista de Sociologia, 105(2): 183–​209. Rambla, X., Kazepov, Y., Jacovkis, J., Alexander, L. and Parreira do Amaral, M. (2020) ‘Regional lifelong learning policies and the social vulnerability of young adults in Girona and Vienna’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 39(1): 48–60. Rawolle, S. and Lingard, B. (2008) ‘The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and researching education policy’, Journal of Education Policy, 23(6): 729–​41.

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Romito, M. (2019) ‘Governing through guidance: an analysis of educational guidance practices in an Italian lower secondary school’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(6): 773–​88. Rujas, J., Prieto, M. and Rogero-​G arcía, J. (2020) ‘Desigualdades socioespaciales en la educación secundaria Postobligatoria: El Caso de Madrid’, REICE. Revista Iberoamericana Sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio En Educacion, 18(4): 241–​67. Sorando, D. and Leal, J. (2019) ‘Distant and unequal: the decline of social mixing in Barcelona and Madrid’, Revista Espanola de Investigaciones Sociologicas, 167: 125–​48. Sum, N.-​L. and Jessop, B. (2015) ‘Cultural political economy and critical policy studies: developing a critique of domination’, in Handbook of Critical Policy Studies, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp 128–​50. Tarabini, A. and Ingram, N. (2018) Educational Choices, Aspirations and Transitions in Europe: Systemic, Institutional and Subjective Challenges, London: Routledge. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021a) ‘The politics of educational transitions: evidence from Catalonia’, European Educational Research Journal, 20(2): 212–​27. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021b) ‘Tracking, knowledge, and the organisation of secondary schooling: teachers’ representations and explanations’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 74(1): 89–​106. Tarabini, A., Jacovkis, J. and Montes, A. (2022) ‘Peripheries within the city: the role of place/​space in shaping youth educational choices and transitions’, in D. Farrugia and S. Ravn (eds), Youth Beyond the City: Thinking from the Margins, Bristol: Policy Press. Verger, A. (2012) ‘Framing and selling global education policy: the promotion of public–​private partnerships for education in low-​income contexts’, Journal of Education Policy, 27(1): 109–​30. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C. and Zancajo, A. (2017) ‘Multiple paths towards education privatization in a globalizing world: a cultural political economy review’, Journal of Education Policy, 32(6), 757–​87. Verger, A., Prieto, M., Pagès, M. and Villamor, P. (2020) ‘Common standards, different stakes: a comparative and multi-​scalar analysis of accountability reforms in the Spanish education context’, European Educational Research Journal, 19(2):142–​64. Walther, A. (2006) ‘Regimes of youth transitions: choice, flexibility and security in young people’s experiences across different European contexts’, Young, 14(2): 119–​39. Walther, A. (2017) ‘Support across life course regimes: a comparative model of social work as construction of social problems, needs, and rights’, Journal of Social Work, 17(3): 277–​301.

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Wheelahan, L. (2007) ‘How competency-​based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge: a modified Bernsteinian analysis’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(5): 637–​51. Whitty, G. (1997) ‘Education policy and the sociology of education’, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 7(2): 121–​35. Yanow, D. (2000) ‘Underlying assumptions of an interpretive approach: the importance of local knowledge’, in Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis, Thousand Oaks: Sage.

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3

Upper secondary transitions and urban educational spaces: public representations of youth, choices and (im)mobilities Aina Tarabini, Judith Jacovkis and Alejandro Montes

Research has shown how young people tend to be stereotypically and normatively conceived as a highly homogeneous, rationalistic and  individualistic group in terms of their educational choices, dispositions and transitions (Furlong, 1991; Wyn, 2009). Public discourses often represent young people as a homogeneous ‘other’, and fail to acknowledge their individual selves and lives (Hattam and Smyth, 2003). This conception of young people is also impinged by a ‘deficit model’ that holds them personally accountable for their failure and labels them as morally inferior (Atkins, 2017). In spite of the dominant rhetoric of choice as a rational and free process based on consumers’ individual responsibility, there is extensive sociological literature on the topic that demonstrates that this ‘illusion of individuality’ (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997) obscures the social divisions and objective constraints that affect school choices. Choice is always a socially embedded process, explained by a situated or bounded agency (Evans, 2007). It is always informed by class, gender and ethical identities and possibilities (Ball et al, 2000; Archer et al, 2007) and entails subjectivities, experiences and feelings that go far beyond purely rationalistic or instrumental processes (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997; Hollingworth and Archer, 2010). The production of young people’s choices and transitions is also a spatialised process, wherein their subjectivities and identities have been extensively signalled by the literature (Hall et al, 2009). Research has also shown that spatiality is critical for the production of difference and inequality between differently positioned young people (Farrugia and Wood, 2017; Tarabini et al, 2022). However, a more spatially nuanced understanding of young people’s transitions and choices is still needed (Donnelly and Gamscu, 2018). As Raffo (2011) argues, although this dimension is increasingly acknowledged by the literature, there is still a clear need for further elaboration of the key ideas 45

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associated with the ‘spatial turn’ in education. Specialists in the field of youth studies (Farrugia, 2015; Cuzzocrea, 2019) argue that, even though spatial and mobility perspectives have been progressively incorporated into research on young people in the contemporary era, reinforcing ‘spatial reflexivity’ (Cairns, 2014) can help to systematically integrate these perspectives into the study of young people’s transitions and lives. The objective of this chapter is to explore public representations of young people, mobility and spatiality in the making of upper secondary educational transitions. Specifically, we aim to unravel the role that policy actors attribute to the urban space in the explanation, legitimation and/​or problematisation of both upper secondary educational supply and upper secondary educational choices in Barcelona. The chapter looks at how policy discourses conceptualise the relationship between educational transitions and the specificities of the spaces and places where these transitions take place. The research questions are as follows: are policy actors’ discourses able to capture the spatial dimension of upper secondary educational transitions? How do policy actors conceptualise spatiality and mobility when reasoning about upper secondary educational transitions? What is the ideal image of young people that emerges from policy discourses on the contexts in which upper secondary educational transitions occur? What critical statements, if any, are raised by policy actors regarding the relationship between urban spaces, young people, educational transitions and social inequalities? The chapter is organised as follows. The first section presents the theoretical background. Here, the literature on young people’s choices and transitions is connected with both research on critical geography and on the dynamics of school choice and segregation. The second section contextualises the territorial distribution of upper secondary education in Barcelona, showing the constitutive role of space in the provision of the supply. This section also explains the research methodology and the way discourses and representations are approached in analytical terms. The third section presents the results of the analysis, exploring public representations of both upper secondary urban spaces and upper secondary educational choices. The final section reflects on the homogenising and individualising narratives regarding youth educational transitions, and defends the need to incorporate young people’s spatial dimensions in the sociological study of educational choices and transitions.

Youth transitions, public narratives and spatiality Young people do not form a single group (Wyn and White, 1997: 1). Instead, a heterogeneous process is constructed thorough complex and often contradictory relationships with others and that is profoundly structured by social inequalities (Farrugia and Wood, 2017). However, research has 46

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extensively demonstrated how growing up and the accepted pathways to adulthood are predominantly viewed as homogeneous, static experiences (Furlong et al, 2011). Young people’s lives are expected to follow the standard trajectories and transitions, which are assumed to be planned, linear and mostly ‘ladder-​like’ (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997). They are also expected to be individually realised through the rhetoric of meritocracy (Reay, 2020) and the discourse of rising aspirations (Gale and Parker, 2015), while ignoring any social constraints. Well-​established research in the field of young people’s educational choices and transitions has provided critical insights into the very meaning of concepts such as ‘choice’ and ‘aspiration’, which are mostly taken for granted in the politics and policies of educational transitions (Reay et al, 2001). The neoliberal rhetoric of individualism, individualisation and choice has produced a highly homogeneous conception of young people as rational and instrumental choosers, equipped to effectively navigate their transitions through the education system and into the labour market (Wyn, 2005). ‘Bad choices’ are therefore viewed as a matter of individual responsibility, and ‘good choices’ as solely the result of personal merit and effort (Ball et al, 2000)1. As Diane Reay (2020) states, ‘a meritocratic system is a competition in which there are clear winners and losers, but in which the resulting inequalities are justified on the basis that participants have an equal opportunity to prove themselves’ (Reay, 2020: 1). This narrative not only assumes a restricted notion of equality, but also neglects the multiple expressions of inequality that traverse the education system (Lynch and Baker, 2005; Tarabini, 2019). Plenty of sociological research has documented the role of schools as institutions for the (re)production of social inequalities that persistently generate unequal opportunities and conditions for success (Francis and Mills, 2012). The dominant ideology of meritocracy also involves a restricted notion of merit as the natural articulation of ability plus effort (Young, 1958), which are assumed to be randomly distributed and objectively measured. Under this logic, the diverse sets of abilities and efforts that result in different trajectories and choices for young people are supposed to be inherently fair and not affected by the institutional characteristics of the school system2. Research has also documented the influence of deficit thinking (Valencia, 2010) on the dominant narratives regarding young people, whereby individuals are made responsible for their own educational pathways, turning social inequalities into individual deficiencies (Atkins, 2017). If young people are not successful at school, and if they are unable to the fulfil normative, linear, continuous trajectories (Du Bois-​Reymond, 1998; Furlong, 2009) within the education system, then this is because they are not smart or hard-​working enough. And this clearly obscures the opportunity structures 47

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(Parreira do Amaral et al, 2013) that shape life choices and decisions and which are crossed by gender, class and ethnic/​migrant inequalities3. Research has also stressed that typical notions of young people have failed to acknowledge how their engagement with education, work and life transitions is intrinsically connected to places and spaces. But spatiality is a critical dimension of these processes (Farrugia, 2014; Woodman and Leccardi 2015; Areschoug, 2019), which is why youth studies, inspired by critical geography, have progressively incorporated spatial perspectives in their understanding of young people’s transitions and lives. As renowned spatial theorists argue (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1994), geography configures people’s lives not only through the objective constrictions and opportunities that it generates but also the subjective images and representations that it provides. Spaces are not fixed or absolute entities, nor are they purely physical; they are socially produced and, as such, do not exist independently of human activities and relations, or of the meanings, statuses, norms and values that are attached to them. Moreover, experiences of places and spaces are constructed in interaction with age, class, gender, ethnicity and other categories of social inequality (Saraví, 2015). The spatial dimension of inequality is also critical when analysing the dynamics of school choice, segregation and competition in different urban settings (Bonal and Bellei, 2020). On the one hand, sociological research demonstrates that residential segregation only partially influences socioeconomic segregation in education, since the capacity for mobility breaks the association between the two phenomena (Córdoba et al, 2017). This capacity is mediated by the economic, social and cultural capital of different social classes (Seghers et al, 2019), which shape the patterns, substance, and reasons for these (im)mobilities (Finn and Holton, 2019). Indeed, the possibilities and the ‘choice’ to be mobile are not only related to the available material resources but also to the symbolic hierarchies attached to different places and to the affective (dis)engagements of young people to particular locations (Farrugia, 2016). Hence, the choice-​sets (Bell, 2007) available for different families and young people are socially and spatially mediated4. On the other hand, research shows that the characteristics of the areas where schools are located and, above all their social composition, mediate their specific supply of education (Tarabini et al, 2022). As Oberti and Jacobs (2007) prove, the distribution of school provision, including the availability of certain courses and study programmes, is strongly correlated with the social profiles of different places. Schools’ pedagogic practices are also tied to the different spaces of the city and to their social composition (Thrupp, 1999). Within highly segmented local education markets, schools deploy differentiation strategies to attract students through their ‘distinct’ education projects (Zancajo and Bonal, 2020). As research shows, the higher a family’s 48

Urban educational spaces

social profile, the lower the relevance of proximity for choosing the school and the greater the importance attributed to the school’s social composition and education project (Alegre and Benito, 2012). As a whole, this research demonstrates the intrinsic spatial dimensions of young people’s, choices, and patterns of school distribution and provision. It also highlights the need to develop an integrated analysis that can show how these elements relate with each other and thereby contribute to unequal upper secondary educational transitions for young people from different social backgrounds.

Contextualisation and methodological approach The distribution of upper secondary education in Barcelona, as in many other European cities, is profoundly unbalanced in terms of ownership, territorial distribution, and access and coverage, and which affects the provision of both Baccalaureate and Vocational Education and Training (VET). Across the region of Catalonia, over 65% of upper secondary schools are publicly owned, irrespective of the education tracks that they offer. However, the public sector appears to be struggling in some municipalities. In the case of Barcelona, only 39.5 per cent of schools had a public supply of Baccalaureate and 31.5 per cent of VET in the 2017–​18 academic year (Catalan Ministry of Education, 2018). The territorial distribution of upper secondary education is highly unbalanced when it comes to the vocational track. While Baccalaureate is available throughout the entire city and, with the exception of the arts, it is possible to enrol for any of its modalities5 relatively close to home, the distribution of VET is much more irregular, and for some of its modalities in particular. More than 95 per cent of the city’s population has a public Baccalaureate on offer less than 1km away from the home, but this percentage drops to 73 per cent in the case of VET (Institut Infància i Adolescència de Barcelona, 2019). In addition, some VET modalities are only provided by one or two public schools in the entire city, meaning that only students who are able to move around the city and have good previous academic records will be able to access them, as the access criteria for VET do not include any aspect apart from lower secondary education grades6. In contrast, all students in the city must be guaranteed a free Baccalaureate place, which most of them take (64.5 per cent) at the same schools where they took lower secondary. If demand for places in this track is higher than supply, students’ requests are ranked in consideration of family and social criteria, such as proximity to the place of residence and family income, in combination with the student’s academic record. Table 3.1 exemplifies the unequal distribution of VET in the different districts of the city. 49

Educational Transitions and Social Justice Table 3.1: Distribution of VET supply by ownership and district income per capita, Barcelona, 2018 and 2019  

Public

Subsidised

Private

Low income districts

41%

34%

25%

Average income districts

47%

32%

21%

High income districts

11%

31%

58%

Source: Authors’ own elaboration based on Institut Infància i Adolescència de Barcelona (2019) and Consorci d’Educació de Barcelona (2018).

In this context, the aim of the analysis is to understand and problematise (Bacchi, 2012) how policy actors represent the spatialised nature of upper secondary educational supply and the choices young people make within it. The analysis is based on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach (Fairclough, 2003), and aims to capture the actors’ narratives, and the absences and assumed truths therein. As Mullet (2018) states, CDA is a qualitative analytical approach for critically describing, interpreting, and explaining the ways in which discourses construct, maintain, and legitimise social inequalities. Furthermore, discourses are always produced within the framework of specific social, political and historical contexts. Our methodological proposal, accordingly, analyses these discourses in a context of highly unequal territorial distribution of upper secondary supply and aims to explore how the discourses themselves contribute to the legitimisation, naturalisation and/​or problematisation of the spatial dimension of upper secondary education. To do so, 28 semi-​structured interviews were conducted with relevant actors in the planning, organisation and execution of upper secondary education in the city of Barcelona7. Specifically, two main groups of policy actors were selected. The first were policymakers with public responsibility and authority in the planning and provision of upper secondary educational supply, that is, politicians and specialists from the local and the regional educational administrations (n =​14). The second group were stakeholders with expertise in the area of upper secondary education –​mainly from teachers unions and corporate associations or experts or representatives of private foundations –​ without public responsibilities for its implementation (n =​14). All the interviews were conducted in 2017 and 2018 and were recorded in audio format for subsequent transcription. For the aims of this chapter, the analysis was structured around two main themes: 1) the supply of upper secondary education and particularly the attributed features of Baccalaureate and VET, and the schools that offer them; and 2) the choice of upper secondary education, and specifically the reasons and conditions attributed to transitions from lower to upper secondary education. The discourses on these two themes were coded and analysed in relation to the characteristics 50

Urban educational spaces

attributed to the urban space, in terms of its conception and impacts, thus enabling analysis of the discursive production of spatialised educational transitions and choices.

Public representations of upper secondary educational transitions This section presents the results of the analysis, which are organised into two main topics. The first focuses on public representations of the upper secondary urban space, specifically by exploring the role that policy actors attribute to the territory when explaining the distribution of the supply and features of upper secondary education in the city. The second topic is public representations of upper secondary educational choices, particularly by exploring how the territorialisation of the supply is considered to be a condition for young people’s educational choices and, if so, how these conditions are valued, expressed and/​or problematised. Public representations of the upper secondary urban space The way the interviewees represent the city and, specifically, the distribution of upper secondary education, is not neutral in terms of the policies developed to increase the equity of the education system at this stage. Whether they perceive all schools to be accessible to all students or not, their understanding of the connections between different parts of the city and the way they incorporate a vision of the territory to explain the features of upper secondary education supply all condition the kind of measures they design to enhance the participation of different kinds of students in the two upper secondary tracks. All the interviewees in the sample share a common view when depicting the spatial distribution of upper secondary education in Barcelona. No matter what their professional affiliation, and as occurs with other aspects of their discourses on upper secondary education8 (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021), their reflections tend to focus on the vocational rather than the academic track. The conception of Baccalaureate as the ‘normal’ track means it is highly unproblematised in public discourses. As the following quotes show, when the interviewees are asked about the distribution of upper secondary supply, they tend to exclusively focus on VET: Q: How would you describe the distribution of upper secondary education in Barcelona? A: Extremely messy. There are no common criteria when it comes to the distribution of VET. You have public schools with 300 students, and other public schools with more than 3,000. If you 51

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look at the map, you’ll see that some districts of the city have no VET while others have plenty. Some students have several options in their districts, while others have nothing. Some schools ave impressive VET facilities, while others have none. … Basically a mess. (Stakeholder 4) ‘The distribution of the supply in the city is very unequal. We have districts where there is practically no VET, especially at public schools. And then some districts concentrate most of the supply and its varieties.’ (Policymaker 7) These quotes not only demonstrate the dominant focus on VET in views on the supply of upper secondary education, but also highlight its unequal territorial distribution throughout the city. Identification of the unbalanced distribution of VET within the urban space does not, however, always imply criticism of this. In fact, two poles of discourse are identified when it comes to problematising the spatial distribution of the supply. On the one hand, there are ‘compliant voices’ –​mostly, but not exclusively, among policymakers –​that interpret this situation as natural, inevitable, and even positive. On the other, there are ‘critical voices’ –​mostly but not solely among stakeholders –​who represent these unbalances in terms of social and urban injustices. The following quotes illustrate these contrasting views: ‘VET supply clearly incorporates a vision of the city. In lower secondary the district and proximity are much more relevant. But in upper secondary education the supply doesn’t need to be planned in terms of proximity. … What we want is to have strong schools, talented schools where people over 16 in a city such as Barcelona can move to. It is positive that young people can move around the city.’ (Policymaker 5) ‘There is a clear dimension of social justice, here. I mean, there are structural barriers in the distribution of the supply that clearly condition young people’s choices.’ (Stakeholder 7) The same poles are found when the mobility of students around the city is represented in public discourses. As identified above, in general terms policymakers are not only less critical than stakeholders of the urban distribution of the supply but also of its implications in terms of students’ mobility patterns. Most of the interviewed actors with public responsibility in the field of upper secondary education feel that moving from one side of the city to another to study VET “shouldn’t be a problem, students can move by metro across the whole city” (Policymaker 8). Regardless of their location, it is claimed that students can reach any school in the city on public 52

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transport. Most stakeholders, however, do not believe that the metro is a good enough solution to the mobility issue and as the following quote illustrates, they tend to articulate complex discourses around the distribution of the supply, the students’ social conditions and the mobility imperative (Farrugia, 2016) that upper secondary education often requires. ‘I think the upper secondary supply should be more accessible to the most vulnerable young people so they don’t base decisions about their futures on schools being near to their homes, which is what usually happens, or because their family says: “no, no, you have to be closer”. … Accessibility in physical terms is also important. They are obliged to choose a school on the other side of the city, but they don’t have the money to move there, or to enrol there, or to pay for everything implied in being there.’ (Stakeholder 5) What is common in the discourses of all interviewees is their conception of the barriers for young people to be mobile in material terms. That is, the direct, indirect and opportunity costs related to mobility are easily identified, as well as the potential policy responses to be applied, whereby “with a good and free transport system and a good system of grants, moving to another neighbourhood shouldn’t be a matter of major importance” (Policymaker 7). However, research demonstrates that urban spaces not only generate material constraints for student mobility and choices but also emotional and symbolic ones (Farrugia, 2016; Finn and Holton, 2019; Tarabini et al, 2022). This point will be analysed in greater depth in the next section. Having discussed how the interviewees represent the supply of upper secondary education in the city and interpret the possibilities to move across it, the schools themselves are the third element that captures the way the space of the upper secondary educational transitions is viewed. As shown in the first quote, the variation in VET offered in the city is huge in terms of both the size of schools and also of their degree of specialisation and their connections with the social and economic activities of the local urban environments. Regarding the combination of these elements –​size, specialisation and connections –​two sets of discourses can be identified. On the one hand, there are those adopting a non-​problematic, even triumphalist, approach to the possibility of expanding a model of large, specialised schools. On the other, there are those who highlight the contradictions in terms of equity that this model could imply. As seen in some of the quotes included in this section, the former group mention strong, talented schools (Policymaker 5), while the latter share a concern about the different possibilities for accessing these schools (Stakeholder 5). The most critical voices question the different potentialities of these specialised schools depending on where 53

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they are. The peripheral location of some VET upper secondary schools is noted as a relevant factor that explains their uneven ability to attract students, both owing to the associated transport costs and the image that young people might have of the neighbourhoods where they are located. As research on school segregation has widely demonstrated (Bonal and Bellei, 2020), the social composition of schools and their neighbourhoods is one of the most important factors for explaining the processes of school choice. The following quote shows the differences between two specialised schools, one in the centre of the city and another in a deprived area on the periphery: ‘This [peripheral] school might have a similar supply to this other [central] one, but the second is better communicated and therefore has more inflows, because the other is hard to reach. The second school will probably have a better reputation because of its location and its local intake. And that shows how in-​demand these schools will be. The latter may have two, three, four applicants per place while at the former some courses will be held in extremis and will eventually be cancelled.’ (Stakeholder 1) The previous quote also highlights the relationship between the urban location of the schools and other elements that affect the planning of upper secondary supply and, in particular, the need for schools to attract students. Different interviewees suggest that schools compete with each other to keep their courses running, and their staff in jobs. Location affects outcomes of this competition: more socially advantaged schools can employ strong marketing and networking strategies, while others need to concentrate on attending to more urgent issues related with student well-​being; some schools are more reachable, while others find it harder to forge relationships with local companies from which their students can benefit; and so on. The following quotes exemplify such disparity: ‘Not all schools are equal, we know that too well. Why not? Because they do not all have access to the same companies for doing internships. Depending on a school’s neighbourhood, the profiles of these companies will be different: they might be smaller or bigger, multinationals, companies looking for cheap manpower and so on.’ (Stakeholder 7) ‘There is a vicious circle. The schools in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods cannot sell themselves in the local education market. They have many students with different kinds of difficulties … teachers have no time to create a fancy website. They need to concentrate on 54

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attending to their students’ needs, on surviving. This generates a lot of inequality.’ (Stakeholder 1) This competition between schools is also reflected in their guidance practices, where a clear territorial dimension comes into play. As the following quotes reflect, the most vulnerable schools, both in terms of social composition and urban location, are the ones whose guidance strategies are more oriented towards ensuring their own ‘institutional survival’: ‘The guidance provided by the schools is not always fair or objective and it is not always to the benefit of the students. … In our system, schools compete with each other for enrolment. Some schools in the most deprived areas are seriously struggling because of this. And of course, this conditions their guidance practices. They [schools] tend to guide students according to their own supply, to ensure that they stay at the school.’ (Stakeholder 5) ‘Many schools want to keep their Baccalaureate, don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming them, it is the system that generates these inertias, but this has key effects on guidance strategies … we want to retain our students at any price … and obviously not all the schools face the same situation. Which schools in the city are struggling to keep their enrolment figures high? Where are they located? What is their social composition? You need to be clear on that.’ (Policymaker 8) Public representations of upper secondary educational choices Public discourses on upper secondary educational transitions are not only connected with the public space in terms of supply, mobility requirements and schools, but also to the way upper secondary educational choices are represented. This section focuses on the image of young people that emerges from policy actors’ narratives when reflecting on the process of upper secondary choice and the role that the urban space plays in it. In the same vein as the previous section, two competing discourses are found when it comes to discussing young people and their choice processes. There is a critical pole that views upper secondary educational choices as the result of complex interactions between systemic, institutional and subjective elements (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). This pole clearly problematises the impact of the unequal territorial distribution of upper secondary education in this process. However, there is also a ‘compliant’ or ‘naturalistic’ pole that has a normative view of young people and their upper secondary educational choices, which is neutral with regard to the effects of urban inequality on youth identities and choices and, instead of focusing 55

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on how they effectively chose, concentrates on how they should choose. The following quotes express this opposition: ‘There are many reasons why young people choose one or another track. We cannot avoid thinking about the way the system is structured. The available supply in different neighbourhoods, the prestige of different tracks, the percentage of public and private supply in different areas … all these affect young people’s choices.’ (Stakeholder 3) ‘The choice of upper secondary education is not always connected to your interests, abilities or life goals. In most cases, it is influenced by what your friends do, by the inertia of what you have done so far, by laziness when it comes to changing school or looking for something new. … It should be a slower, more reflexive process that is strongly connected with your strengths and weaknesses, but that is not always the case.’ (Policymaker 1) The discourses within the first, critical pole highlight the impact of the uneven distribution of upper secondary supply on upper secondary educational choices. This distribution, as they argue, is especially harmful for the most disadvantaged students who do not have the economic, social or cultural capitals (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) to sustain or even imagine this mobility. As the following quote illustrates, this generates a trade-​off between proximity and taste that does not affect all students in the same way. This is also one of the residual discourses in our sample that recognises the relational, emotional and subjective dimensions associated with the possibilities of mobility: ‘Some students won’t move to another part of city because transport is expensive, or because they don’t have any references, positive images, or examples of other people doing so. Or maybe they lack detailed information about what is being done in other neighbourhoods, so they choose proximity. They choose courses because they are close to home and not necessarily because they like them.’ (Stakeholder 1) This quote exceptionally identifies the unequal possibilities for students to align their interests with a feasible choice that fits both their material and symbolic resources. Such discourses heavily problematise how the imperative of mobility (Farrugia, 2016) associated with the transition from lower to upper secondary education does not equally affect students of Baccalaureate and VET, as the following quote expresses: ‘The system does not make it easy to take the vocational track. … It is the pupils studying VET, not the others, who have to go to another 56

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school, apply for admission, etc. This means that, at the age of 16, at the height of adolescence, the system ends up discouraging young people from taking VET, because they have to leave their school, their friends, everything.’ (Policymaker 3) In contrast, the moralising vision of young people’s upper secondary educational choices is strongly anchored in an unproblematic conception of the urban space and its mobility constraints. According to this view, if young people choose not to change school or neighbourhood for upper secondary education, this is because they do not want to do so, regardless of the unbalanced distribution of upper secondary supply between neighbourhoods, schools and tracks. Furthermore, those who are blamed for not being mobile in their upper secondary choices are precisely those who take VET. The following quote highlights the double standard used when explaining the decisions to be (or not be) mobile for Baccalaureate and VET students: ‘In Baccalaureate it’s easier for the students to stay where they are because they find what they are looking for at the same school. With VET studies, it is different. Since there is less supply in the city, you will most likely have to go to another school or neighbourhood to continue your studies. The problem is when students stay at a given school because they are comfortable there and not because they are offered the specific modality that they want.’ (Policymaker 7) Whether referring to VET or Baccalaureate students, and based on individualistic meritocratic assumptions (Reay, 2020), within this ‘naturalistic’ discursive framework the lack of mobility in upper secondary educational choices is perceived in terms of lack of interest and effort. As the following quote shows, if young people can move around the city and its surroundings for leisure, fun and other social reasons, they are assumed to be able to do the same to study if they were interested: ‘Some young people are very dependent and therefore don’t want to leave their neighbourhood, they don’t want to go far. I always tell families: “listen, on Friday they go out to party and might travel a long way to do so, so they can also travel to study”. The fact is that they are capable of travelling a thousand kilometres to do some things, while for others we are told that they are too isolated, that they are too helpless.’ (Policymaker 6) From this perspective, lack of effort not only affects the decisions around the (im)mobilities of upper secondary educational choices, but is also extended to an assumed lack of will to search for resources that could compensate 57

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for the material constraints of being mobile. In general, this narrative makes individuals responsible for their own educational itineraries and ‘bad choices’ (Ball at al, 2000; Atkins, 2017) and ultimately blames those in a more disadvantaged situation for the constraints they face when making their upper secondary choices: ‘If you have financial problems, the guidance office might be able to find out what scholarships there are, what your local council or government is offering you. … Find out what possibilities there are of getting a scholarship. If you don’t get involved, it’s because you don’t want to.’ (Policymaker 13)

Conclusions Our objective in this chapter has been to analyse how policy actors conceptualise the role of the urban space in explaining both upper secondary education supply and choices in Barcelona. Departing from a theoretical approach that combines the literature on young people’s choices and transitions (Reay et al, 2001; Wyn, 2005) with research on critical geography (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1994) and on the dynamics of school choice and school segregation (Bonal and Bellei, 2020), we have argued that it is crucial to incorporate the spatial dimension in order to comprehend the making of upper secondary education choices and transitions in global cities. By means of a CDA (Fairclough, 2003; Mullet, 2018), our aim was to understand how political discourses contribute to the legitimisation, naturalisation and/​or problematisation (Bacchi, 2012) of the spatial dimension of upper secondary education. The results of the analysis suggest two main discursive poles: a critical one that recognises the patterns of urban inequality in the supply and choice of upper secondary education and involves complex understandings of what it means to be mobile (Farrugia, 2016; Finn and Holton, 2019; Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021) in a substantially unequal upper secondary space; and a compliant one that naturalises the impacts of urban inequality both in the configuration of the upper secondary urban space and in young people’s subsequent choices. The critical pole, which is mostly –​but not solely –​represented by stakeholders, argues that the territorial distribution of upper secondary education throughout the city involves clear social and urban injustices that crucially affect the supply of different tracks, the features of school provision, and the conditions for making upper secondary educational choices. It argues that the spatialised nature of both tracks has critical implications in terms of student mobility patterns, and particularly with regard to VET students, who are the ones who are obliged to be mobile (Farrugia, 2016). It also claims that the urban location of schools has implications for the kind 58

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of supply that is provided –​above all regarding VET –​as well as on their competition and guidance strategies. Schools in the most disadvantaged areas and with the most underprivileged students are the ones that provide the least varied education, that struggle the most to keep enrolment figures high and that, consequently, are under most pressure to retain their students in the transition from lower to upper secondary education. Finally, the discourses within this pole maintain that the uneven nature of the upper secondary educational space is critical for understanding how young people make their choices. The most disadvantaged students do not have the economic, social or cultural capitals to sustain or imagine mobility as an option in their transition to upper secondary education. Furthermore, even though most of our interviewees prioritise the material dimension of the territory when they reflect on the barriers to young people being mobile, there are also some voices within the critical pole who recognise the relational, emotional and subjective dimensions of the urban space (Woodman and Leccardi, 2015; Areschoug, 2019). The compliant pole, which is mostly but not exclusively represented by policymakers, clearly recognises the uneven territorial distribution of upper secondary education. However, these unbalances are not described within a social justice framework, but instead are mostly interpreted as a natural, inevitable and even positive situation. Moreover, most of the interviewed actors with public responsibility in the field of upper secondary education consider that, in a city like Barcelona with such excellent transport and communication facilities, being mobile at the age of 16 should not pose a problem. Furthermore, mobility is viewed in terms of an effort to ensure ‘good’ upper secondary choices, while staying local is mainly viewed in terms of laziness that consequently leads to ‘bad choices’ (Ball et al, 2000). Therefore, the compliant pole’s moralising vision of young people is strongly anchored in an unproblematic conception of the urban space and its associated mobility constraints. From this perspective, 16-​year-​olds are mostly considered to be free and rational choosers who, according to their interests, capacities and abilities, will decide which track suits them best. The inequality that traverses the city, the provision of different tracks, and young people’s lives are mostly omitted from this discourse, thus contributing to its own naturalisation and legitimation. Overall, the chapter helps to both identify and challenge the dominant normative and individualising narratives regarding young people’s educational choices. It also helps to demonstrate the need to incorporate the spatial dimension in sociological analysis of schooling, youth and transitions. Finally, it provides evidence for the role of discourses not only in naming the reality but also and above all in producing this reality. The spatialised nature of educational transitions is not only produced by the articulation of different social dynamics and public policies, but also by a discourse that takes this 59

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situation for granted, assuming it to be a fact, a truth, and an objective and immutable reality. Notes See Chapter 4 for a detailed explanation of how teachers define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ post-​16 choices according to their attributed vocational nature. 2 Chapter 5 demonstrates the impact of institutional practices and devices, such as streaming and grade retention, on young people’s educational trajectories not only in material terms, for example in the degree of skill acquisition, but also in symbolic terms through the construction of the students’ self-​conception. 3 Chapters 6, 7 and 8 provide detailed analysis of how social class, migration and gender respectively condition young people’s upper secondary transitions and choices. 4 Chapter 2 provides plenty of evidence of the mechanisms of segmentation of the Spanish upper secondary education system and of how this results in multiple hierarchies both between and within academic and vocational tracks. 5 As indicated in Chapter 1, there are three modalities of Baccalaureate in Spain: Arts, Science and Technology and Humanities and Social Sciences. 6 See Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 for further details of the organisation of the Spanish education system and the provision of upper secondary education in the two cities. 7 See Chapter 1 for full information of the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the other chapters are produced. 8 Chapter 2 also looks into policy representations of upper secondary educational transitions by focusing on the functions attributed to both upper secondary tracks, the politics of the planning of the supply and the rationales around public and private provision in Barcelona and Madrid. 1

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Furlong, A. (2009) ‘Revisiting transitional metaphors: reproducing social inequalities under the conditions of late modernity’, Journal of Education and Work, 22 (5): 343–​53. Furlong, A. and Cartmel, F. (1997) Young People and Social Change: New Perspectives, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Furlong, A., Woodman, D. and Wyn, J. (2011) ‘Changing times, changing perspectives: reconciling “transition” and “cultural” perspectives on youth and young adulthood’, Journal of Sociology, 47(4): 355–​70. Furlong, V.J. (1991) ‘Disaffected pupils: reconstructing the sociological perspective’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 12(3): 293–​307. Gale, T. and Parker, S. (2015) ‘To aspire: a systematic reflection on understanding aspirations in higher education’, Australian Educational Researcher, 42(2): 139–​53. Hall, T., Coffey, A. and Lashua, B. (2009) ‘Steps and stages: rethinking transitions in youth and place’, Journal of Youth Studies, 12(5): 547–​61. Hattam, R. and Smyth, J. (2003) ‘“Not everyone has a perfect life”: becoming somebody without school’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 11(3): 379–​98. Hodkinson P. and Sparkes, A.C. (1997) ‘Careership: a sociological theory of career decision making’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(1): 29–​44. Hollingworth, S. and Archer, L. (2010) ‘Urban schools as urban places: school reputation, children’s identities and engagement with education in London’, Urban Studies, 47(3): 584–​603. Institut d’Infància i Adolescència de Barcelona (2019) ‘Oportunitats educatives de la infància i l’adolescència a Barcelona 2018-​2019’, IIAB-​ IERMB; Barcelona. Lefebvre, H.D. (1991) The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell. Lynch, K. and Baker, J. (2005) ‘Equality in education: an equality of condition perspective’, Theory and Research in Education, 3(2): 131–​64. Massey D. (1994) Space, Place, and Gender, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mullet, D.R. (2018) ‘A general critical discourse analysis framework for educational research’, Journal of Advanced Academics, 29(2): 116–​42. Oberti, M. and Jacobs A. (2007) ‘Social and school differentiation in urban space: inequalities and local configurations’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 39(1): 208–​27. Parreira do Amaral, M., Walther, A. and Litau, J. (2013) Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe Access, Coping and Relevance of Education for Young People in European Knowledge Societies in Comparative Perspective, Final Report, University of Frankfurt. Raffo, C. (2011) ‘Educational equity in poor urban contexts: exploring issues of place/​space and young people’s identity and agency’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 59(1): 1–​19.

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Reay. R. (2020) ‘The perils and penalties of meritocracy: sanctioning inequalities and legitimating prejudice’, The Political Quarterly, 91(2): 405–​12. Reay, D., Davies, J., David, M. and Ball, S.J. (2001) ‘Choices of degree or degrees of choice? Class, “race” and the higher education choice process’, Sociology, 35(4): 855–​74. Saraví, G. (2015) ‘Youth experience of urban inequality: space, class, and gender in Mexico’, in J. Wyn and H. Cahill (eds), Handbook of Children and Youth Studies, Singapore: Springer, pp 503–15. Seghers, M., Boone, S. and Van Avermaet, P. (2019) ‘Social class and educational decision-​making in a choice-​driven education system: a mixed-​ methods study’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 40(5): 696–​714. Tarabini, A. (2019) The Conditions for School Success Examining Educational Exclusion and Dropping Out, London: Palgrave. Tarabini, A. and Ingram, N. (eds) (2018) Educational Choices, Transitions and Aspirations in Europe Systemic, Institutional and Subjective Challenges, London: Routledge. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021) ‘The politics of educational transitions: evidence from Catalonia’, European Journal of Educational Research, 20(2): 212–​27. Tarabini, A., Jacovkis, J. and Montes, A. (2022) ‘Peripheries within the city: the role of place/​space in shaping youth educational choices and transitions’, in D. Farrugia and S. Rawn (eds), Youth Beyond the City, Bristol: Policy Press. Thrupp, M. (1999) Schools Making a Difference: Let’s be Realistic!, London: Open University Press. Valencia, R. (2010) Dismantling Contemporary Deficit Thinking: Educational Thought and Practice, New York: Routledge. Woodman, D. and Leccardi, C. (2015)‘Generations, transitions, and culture as practice: a temporal approach to youth studies’, in D. Woodman and A. Bennett (eds), Youth Cultures, Transitions, and Generations: Bridging the Gap in Youth Research, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 56–​68. Wyn, J. (2005) ‘Youth transitions to work and further education in Australia’, in J. Chapman, P. Cartwright and E.J. McGilp (eds), Lifelong Learning, Participation and Equity, Dordrecht: Springer. pp 217–​42. Wyn, J. (2009) ‘Educating for Late Modernity’, in A. Furlong (ed), Handbook of Youth and Young Adulthood: New Perspectives and Agendas, New York: Routledge. Wyn, J. and White, R. (1997) Rethinking Youth, Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Young, M. (1958) The Rise of Meritocracy, London: Routledge. Zancajo, A. and Bonal, X. (2020) ‘Education markets and school segregation: a mechanism-​based explanation’, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2020.1858272.

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In the name of vocations: teachers’ discursive legitimations of upper secondary educational choices Aina Tarabini, Javier Rujas and Sara Gil

In late modernity, the discourse of individualisation (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992) is of paramount importance for understanding upper secondary educational choices. In a context of increasing flexibility, young people are permanently exposed to uncertainty, risk and precariousness as part of an endless learning process that Basil Bernstein (2001) describes as a ‘totally pedagogised society’. Within the dominant paradigm of lifelong learning (Dale and Parreira do Amaral, 2015), individuals are rendered personally responsible for making themselves employable (Michelsen and Stenström, 2018). They become entrepreneurs of themselves and their choices are viewed as the result of a reflexive process based on their individual capacities, needs and desires (Fejes and Dahlstedt, 2013)1. Moreover, as indicated by Araujo and Martuccelli (2010), in contemporary societies, the individual is one of the bases of the production of social life. Indeed, the main institutions of society (work, school and family) are increasingly oriented towards individuals, forcing each person to develop and assume their own biographical trajectory (Martucelli, 2007: 33). Additionally, research demonstrates that in the neoliberal order, the ideal self is responsible for their own choices, enterprising, flexible and self-​centred (Rose, 1998; Brunila, 2012; Saraví, 2015). Young people’s choices are thus conceived as an expression of their personality. In fact, in post-​industrial societies, choices occur in a context that stresses the need to work on identity and authenticity in the pursuit of a good life (Vieira et al, 2013; James et al, 2020). Moreover, the dominant neoliberal rhetoric emphasises happiness and self-​realisation as the moral imperative of any authentic life project (Cabanas and Illouz, 2019). In this context, the secular notion of vocation ‒ understood as those activities linked to the sense of self, of personal identity and personal fulfilment (Hansen, 1995) ‒ acquires a critical role in explaining young people’s life trajectories and choices. However, there is a scarcity of sociological research on the notion and production of vocations and their impact on explanations of young people’s 64

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educational choices. In fact, most academic study of vocations is conducted within the field of psychology and follows a practice-​oriented approach2. Moreover, much of the existing sociological research using the notion of vocation attaches the concept to the idea of occupation or profession and thus focuses on the economic nuance of the term (Dubois, 2019). However, the less numerous sociological studies that have addressed the concept –​and its related choices –​as a ‘sense of calling’ (Hansen, 1995) clearly demonstrate the need to further explore its meaning and implications beyond its religious and economic dimensions (Sapiro, 2007; Lahire, 2018; Dubois, 2019). The objective of this chapter, then, is to reinforce the sociological understanding of the concept of vocation by exploring its association with the notion of choice. Specifically, it aims to explore how the language of vocation –​whether explicit or not –​appears in teachers’ explanations of young people’s upper secondary educational choices. The research questions framing the analysis are the following: how do teachers understand and use vocation to account for young people’s upper secondary educational choices? How do they describe these vocations and the processes by which they are built? What factors drive the awakening of vocations and the development of subsequent educational and occupational choices? And, finally, what role is attributed to teachers and schools in the development of these ‘vocational choices’3? The chapter is structured as follows. The first section introduces the theoretical framework around the notion of vocation and defends its relevance in the study of educational choices from a sociological perspective. The second section describes the methodology and explains the procedures for data collection and analysis. This is followed by the presentation of the results, exploring both the concept of vocation and the making of such vocations as represented by teachers. The last section concludes with a summary of the main results of the analysis and defends the need for greater sociological analysis around the notion of vocation as an approach to educational transitions and choices.

A sociological understanding of vocation Etymologically, the concept of vocation comes from the Latin vocare, which means ‘to call’. Before the industrial revolution, vocation was understood to describe a life of religious service and devotion (Hansen, 1995). The modern conception of vocation, however, denotes a secular sense of calling. As Schlanger (2020) argues, the non-​religious meaning of the concept denotes the realisation of an activity, whether or not professional, addressed at personal fulfilment and self-​realisation. The sense of vocation takes shape through involvement in activities that have both personal and social meaning and value. 65

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The first sociological approach to this secular notion of vocation can be found in Max Weber’s famous lectures ‘Science as a Vocation’ (1917) and ‘Politics as a Vocation’ (1919) (Weber, 2004), in which he not only explained the meaning of vocation ‒ what it means to ‘live for’ as well as to ‘live off’ science and politics ‒ but also situated its pursuit within historical and national contexts (Burawoy, 2016: 379). As he argued, vocations are developed within particular conditions of possibility and, specifically, by the development of science and politics as professional fields. In his lectures, Weber also demonstrated that different vocations not only have different conditions of possibility but also different expressions and forms. For example, the scientific vocation is based on reflection and seeks to understand the laws of nature and society, while the political vocation is based on action and seeks to solve society’s problems. So, Weber was the first author to produce ‘a sociology of vocation’ that explicitly rejected the reduction of human action to its ‘utility’ in terms of economic rationality. In his essays, he explored the possibilities of developing and sustaining an ‘inner devotion’ to science and politics that is expressed as an end in itself. Moreover, in German, the concept beruf is used for both ‘profession’ and ‘vocation’ and this explains why, according to Weber’s thesis, the feeling of vocation in the quasi-​religious sense of the word could have inspired the economic behaviour of the first capitalists (Sapiro, 2007). After Weber, the sociology of vocations was barely developed apart from some exceptions in the French context (Suaud, 2018). Culture as a Vocation, by Vincent Dubois (2019) is one of the most prominent examples of this. The objective of Dubois’ research is to develop a sociology of career choices in the field of cultural management, an occupation sector that is attractive not so much for its material rewards as for the prestige and self-​fulfilment it confers. To do so, he uses a ‘sociological reformulation of the common-​ sense notion of vocation’ which he understands ‘as an ideal type to account for the specificity of these career choices’ (Dubois, 2019: xxi). In fact, Dubois defines vocations as a combination of three main features: 1) individuals’ relationships with their own social determinations; 2) a distinctive relationship to work; and 3) a reference to a political, aesthetic or moral horizon. The first feature, as explained by the author, cannot be interpreted either in terms of individual rational choice, or of subjective individual motivations. As noted by Bernard Lahire (2018)4 vocations are always the result of complex articulations between mental and objective structures that go beyond the biographical illusion (Bourdieu, 1987) of deliberate choices. Any sociological approach to vocations, then, must explore the genesis of this ‘inner call’. In order to have the feeling of ‘being made for something’ one must ‘have been made for it’ and this involves diffuse, implicit and often unconscious processes of socialisation and cultural transmission (Lahire, 2018: 146). That means that vocations have social rather than purely 66

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psychological origins and they grow and take shape over time, through interactions with people within particular social and educational contexts. As explained by Hansen (1995), a person cannot develop the desire to personally ‘engage the world … without having been exposed, for a substantial period of time, to that world itself ’ (Hansen, 1995: 12). Second, the definition of vocations in terms of a distinctive relationship to work refers to the search for a professional activity whose value is not attributed to material wealth in itself, but to self-​fulfilment, and an occupation where people can express themselves. The choice of a career in the field of the arts or culture is a prime example of this. The arts are intrinsically related to freedom and creativity as opposed to the commercial component that implies working or creating for others. But who can choose a professional sector without worrying about the material prospects it will provide? As identified in Vieira et al’s (2013) research, in an increasingly precarious and uncertain job market, the idea of self-​realisation that traverses young people’s narratives about their educational choices is fraught with tensions to ensure their material security. The social characteristics of people who aspire to such creative occupations are therefore not neutral. As explained by Dubois (2019), people who want to become cultural managers are mainly female, mostly from families with high cultural capital, with a comparatively secure social background and with plenty of opportunities to socialise in a ‘cultural way’ by taking music lessons, going to the theatre and so on and so forth. Moreover, in order to develop a vocation for a particular activity or profession, this sector needs to be valued and recognised, at least in symbolic terms. The division of labour itself is the product of powerful symbolic and cultural forces (Sayer, 2005). But in highly stratified labour markets, only some activities, and specifically not all jobs, are collectively constructed as desirable. Low-​status jobs, with little or no security, low salaries and scarce social prestige are hard to conceive in terms of an inner call or personal fulfilment. Furthermore, there are no intrinsically vocational professions, as all professional sectors could be potentially vocational. Vocation, as Lahire (2018) explains, is not an objective property of certain activities, but is a relationship that certain people establish with this activity for a period of time. That also entails the idea that the feeling of vocation is not permanent or immovable but subject to chances and, particularly, to the potential mismatches between the internal dispositions and the objective situations that individuals face. Third, Dubois (2019) argues that vocations are connected with individuals’ political, aesthetic and moral horizons in life. As defined by Hansen (1995), the sense of vocation finds its expression at the crossroads of public obligation and personal fulfilment. It takes shape through involvement in work that has social meaning and value. So, vocations are developed within a discursive register of the common good or mission aimed at helping those who suffer, 67

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to work for social justice or to serve the cause of science or art (Dubois, 2019: 2). They are mostly framed within the language of sacrifice. As a consequence, moral boundaries (Sayer, 2005) are established between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ choices (Ball at al, 2000). ‘Good vocational choices’ are not only about listening to one’s inner call, nor about choosing a professional sector for the purposes of personal fulfilment, but also about being able to devote oneself to others or to sacrifice material wealth or social success for a superior goal. There is no single, more authentic or supreme self to become than the one who sacrifices for a supreme goal in life (Illouz, 2008). This clearly resonates with the dominant neoliberal discourse that only conceives upward mobility in terms of personal merit and effort in the form of willingness to sacrifice. But the possibility of making sacrifices is not neutral in terms of gender, ethnicity/​migration and social class5, nor are all sacrifices publicly acknowledged in that way. Moreover, at a time when career pathways are more turbulent and less predictable than ever, these moral prescriptions are especially harmful for the most disadvantaged social groups, making them individually responsible for their own trajectories and specifically for their own failures (Atkins, 2017).

Data and methods The analysis in this chapter is drawn from qualitative data consisting of 40 semi-​structured interviews with tutors from the final academic year of lower secondary education (n =​13) and the first year of upper secondary education, in both the academic Baccalaureate (n =​11) and Vocational Education and Training (VET) (n =​16) tracks. School tutors were selected from a sample of 12 secondary schools in Barcelona and Madrid of differing social composition, urban location and types of upper secondary tracks offered6. The interviews lasted approximately 60 minutes and were carried out in school over the 2018–​19 and 2019–​20 academic years and recorded in audio format for subsequent transcription. We organised the interview scripts flexibly around four main topics: 1) descriptions of the students in terms of their social composition, educational profile and attributed features regarding both their abilities and behaviour; 2) the teachers’ accounts of the students’ upper secondary educational choices; 3) the representation of the academic and vocational tracks, in terms of functions, social composition and curricular provision; and 4) the strategies of both the tutors and the schools to guide the students through their upper secondary transitions. For the purposes of this chapter, we analysed the transcripts to explore three main themes: 1) the language of vocation; 2) the concept of vocation; and 3) the making of vocation. Within the language of vocation our analysis explored whether the notion of vocation was explicitly used in teachers’ narratives to explain upper secondary educational transitions and choices; within the concept of 68

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vocation our aim was to identify how teachers conceive the notion, and what they understand it to mean; and within the making of vocations our intention was to identify the main factors that teachers consider to drive the awakening of vocations and upper secondary educational choices. The analysis of the language of vocation within the sample reveals differences in the use of this concept both between and within levels and tracks. It appears in a much more explicit and recurrent manner in the narratives of upper secondary school tutors than among those working at the lower secondary level. The concept was also much more present in VET tutors’ discourses, probably because of the specialist nature of this upper secondary education track, which is mainly oriented towards ensuring insertion in the labour market7. Finally, the health and arts sectors, which are traditionally associated with public service and personal expression and self-​fulfilment respectively, were the areas where teachers were most explicit in connecting the language of vocations with narratives about upper secondary educational transitions and choices, both in the VET and Baccalaureate tracks8. The following sections will systematically explore the teachers’ discourses around both the language and concept of vocations, and the making of vocations.

The language and concept of vocation Vocation is at the centre of discourses on young people’s educational and professional choices. It is viewed as a kind of perfect fit between the individual and the activity or function, arising from an internal need or desire (Lahire, 2018) and in keeping with one’s abilities and personality. Hence, vocational choices appear in teachers’ discourses as the most legitimate kind of choice concerning young people’s upper secondary education and future professions. However, although the notion of vocation is taken for granted in teachers’ discourses, its meaning is often diffuse and varies for different actors in different contexts. This section explores the following questions: what is (and what is not) a vocation according to teachers’ rationales? How do they define vocational choices? What elements do they identify as signs or expressions of vocation? As seen in previous sections, vocation is conceived as a kind of individual predestination that is ‘already there’, somewhere inside the subject. It is either already known, as when agents feel they have ‘always’ wanted to be something, or is yet to be discovered by the individual, but can be with help from educators or significant others. In this sense, the analysis of the teachers’ interviews reveals that vocation is mainly associated with choosing what individuals are ‘good at’ or what they are ‘made for’, and the term is connected with both their ability and their personality. When 69

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this meaning is used, discourses tend to avoid asking why young people are good at something or not, or how abilities and skills are developed. Instead, ability is almost taken for granted (Tarabini, Castejón and Curran, 2020). In fact, even though most of the interviewees believe that vocations can be discovered or built over time, most of them assume that they are related to clear distinctions in terms of individuals’ abilities. As the following quote illustrates, abilities are interpreted from the perspective of natural talents or gifts (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) that individuals either have or lack, and they are assumed to directly lead to different vocations that, in this case, are also assumed to be natural. ‘I think the health sector is completely vocational. Those who are good for it are good for it. Everyone has one [vocation], but why? I don’t know. Because we do. … Some people are good at it. Isn’t that so? They have an ability/​aptitude for it. And you can also see that they have initiative, they’re quick.’ (VET Health Emergencies Tutor, School 2) This quote also shows that, paradoxically, while vocation is viewed as an internal disposition, the signs of vocation ‒ the indicators used by teachers to judge which students are ‘truly’ vocational and which are not ‒ are usually external: young people are considered to be ‘made for’ a profession when they are perceived to be highly ‘motivated’ because they engage in classroom interactions, ask questions, show ‘interest’ and display personal initiative. The idea of vocation underlying teachers’ discourses also relates to the match between the activity and students’ personality: it is not only related to what they can do, like or want, or what makes them happy, but also to who they are. Interestingly, the definition of the personality traits required to be considered ‘vocational’ vary according to the different educational tracks and the activities students are training for. For instance, as the following quote reveals, vocation in the arts Baccalaureate is associated with being ‘improvising’, ‘lively’, ‘emotional’ and showing ‘sensitivity’ and ‘curiosity’, but, in contrast to the scientific Baccalaureate, its students are not considered ‘organised people’. Moreover, they are expected to have ‘manual skills’, but in this case creative manual skills, unlike those required for manual labour and expected of VET students:9 “They tend to be very tactful, with a lot of manual skill, great sensitivity, and with a real interest in creative things, in photography, video. … They tend to be very curious” (Baccalaureate Tutor in Arts, School 2). What are considered the most suitable personal traits can take different forms/​contents depending on the profession or activity, as suggested in Weber’s (2004) seminal work. For instance, VET students on the health emergencies programme are associated with ‘a profile of drive, confidence 70

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and acting quickly’ to ‘save lives’ but also with a penchant for ‘dealing with people’ (VET Chemistry Tutor, School 6). Those on the dependent adult care VET programme are expected to show ‘maturity’, ‘realism’ and ‘staying power’ when dealing with the people they take care of. The following quote is highly revealing in describing these expected personal traits: “They [the students] sometimes think they will save someone from Alzheimer’s and prevent them from deteriorating more, and of course, this has a strong effect on them. … This is a very tough professional sector. It’s very hard to deal with pain. … Not everybody is made for it” (VET Dependent Adult Care Tutor, School 4). This understanding of vocation as a choice that fits with one’s abilities and personality is sometimes linked to a psychological discourse stating that to make ‘good’ choices, young people need to increase their self-​knowledge to assess and recognise their personal abilities and limitations: ‘I think first you need to discover what you’re good at, and we’re not good at everything, and then recognise what you’re not good at, and it’s not a big deal, is it? … So, getting to know yourself is really important, I think, so as not to end up doing things we don’t like.’ (Baccalaureate Tutor in Arts, School 2) Accordingly, teachers’ discourses undermine what they perceive as ‘unrealistic’ choices (and vocations) regardless of one’s possibilities, that is, those which do not fit teachers’ expectations and judgements on students’ possibilities and limitations. Nonetheless, although it is often assumed that ‘vocational’ students are bound to become good professionals, some interviewees acknowledge that some students might achieve the same through practice even when they are not driven by vocation: ‘Sometimes you can practice, be competent and be a good professional without vocation. If you have other motivations and are determined and have the right concept of service and quality of service, it might not be your vocation, and your vocation might be your hobby, but you’re responsible and you are empathetic, and that makes you a very competent health worker. I don’t think vocation is essential.’ (Assistant Nursing VET Tutor, School 1) A non-​vocational choice can then also become a ‘good’ choice if it fits one’s abilities and personality, and if one is devoted to the task, even if it is not the result of an ‘inner calling’. Even if this discourse does not necessarily idealise ‘vocation’ as the legitimate model for all good choices, it clearly stresses attributes such as ‘service’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘empathy’ as defining this professional sector. Discourses on choices are, thus, bound up with moral standards emphasising certain attitudes and personality traits. 71

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Teachers’ discourses also define vocation as doing what one ‘really’ likes or wants, that is, choosing an activity that suits one’s personal interests and tastes and thus causes pleasure or satisfaction to the individual. Some even refer to the idea of ‘passion’. This meaning of vocation is often mixed with the previous one (vocation as doing what you are ‘good at’ or ‘made for’) in teachers’ narratives. In this sense, vocation means: (1) knowing what one wants and being sure about it ‒ only those who are positive about their educational and career choices are considered ‘vocational’; and (2) choosing the activity or profession to which we are attracted in the first place, not as a result of discarding other options. In this view, those who ‘really’ like or want to study something or become a certain kind of professional are those who get good results and will succeed: “those who get there with vocation are those who do best” (VET Dependent Adult Care Tutor, School 4). Accordingly, choices resulting from social pressure and the direct influence of others, made to satisfy someone else’s expectations (usually the family) or to imitate one’s models, are seen as ‘bad’ choices: ‘vocational’ choice is believed to arise from an inner need or ‘calling’ (Hansen, 1995), not from external constraint (Lahire, 2018). This idea of choosing out of personal interest, taste, or passion connects with the idea that one should choose what makes one ‘feel good’ or ‘happy’ (Cabanas and Illouz, 2019). Choosing the right degree or future profession is thus viewed as a pathway to future happiness, connecting with the ideal of self-​realisation through work: “For me, making a good choice is, as I tell them, waking up in the morning and wanting to go to work. That is happiness. … If you’re going to be bitter because you aren’t achieving what you want, you’re going to be bitter all your life” (Year 4 Lower Secondary School Tutor, School 9). In this sense, the idea of vocation also involves distancing oneself from material self-​interest or social success and instead being devoted to an activity or profession in a ‘disinterested’ manner (Bourdieu, 1994; Sapiro, 2007). ‘Vocational’ choices are not driven by external motivations, but by an inner desire or need and an ideal of self-​realisation; they are the opposite of strategic and instrumental choices. Following a vocation may involve leaving behind ‘better’ options in terms of prestige, recognition, career opportunities and salary, for more personally or symbolically rewarding options. The choice of the arts Baccalaureate, as well as all the specialities within the humanities, is a clear example of this: ‘The arts Baccalaureate is of a vocational or motivational nature compared to the other Baccalaureates. It relates to domains that don’t usually have the same prestige or salary as engineers, doctors or lawyers. … But it pays off when you see highly motivated and vocational students, and I like seeing them overcoming their fear of … if there are no jobs, I’ll do all I can to find one.’ (Baccalaureate Tutor in Arts, School 1) 72

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Finally, the notion of vocation in teachers’ discourses also evokes an idea of personal sacrifice: following one’s vocation usually means taking a hard path or coping with the unpleasant part of the activity or profession –​what Hughes (1971) calls the ‘dirty’ work –​or with its physical, psychological or personal costs (Suaud, 2018). In this sense, some educational or career choices are discredited and stigmatised because they are perceived as ‘easy’ or ‘comfortable’ choices. For instance, choosing the humanities and social science Baccalaureate ahead of the scientific one, or choosing VET to avoid a Baccalaureate that is perceived as too academically demanding, are interpreted as an absence of effort and willingness to sacrifice to discover and pursue a vocation: ‘The humanities and social sciences Baccalaureate receives lots of people with no humanistic or social vocation. But they think it will be an easier, quicker, and less hard way to do the Baccalaureate. So, the common belief has always been that those who take the scientific Baccalaureate are really interested in science.’ (Baccalaureate Tutor in Sciences, School 2). In fact, scientific Baccalaureate students appear in several interviews to be more ‘vocational’ as they are willing to make sacrifices and strive to get high enough grades to get onto more demanding college degrees, such as medicine or engineering. These discourses reveal a meritocratic interpretation of vocation where sacrifice and personal effort are conceived as the condition for mobility and success, relegating the quest for happiness into second place. This logic of vocational sacrifice is also present in VET, but with a different meaning. Among care-​related VET programmes, some interviewees point out the psychological costs of taking care of terminally ill patients with little hope of improving. This can be hard and they can end up questioning their professional self-​esteem and idealism. As one teacher points out: “It is very difficult to deal with a person who is getting worse and worse” (VET Dependent Adult Care Tutor, School 4). In this sense, choices perceived as too ‘idealistic’ where there is a lack of awareness of how tough the job can really be, especially in healthcare work and other VET activities, are seen as ‘bad’ choices. For some interviewees, it is in the real practice of the job where one’s vocation is truly put to the test.

The making of vocations This section examines the elements that are, according to teachers’ narratives, involved in the making of vocations. Particularly, we explore the factors they consider to awaken vocations and upper secondary educational choices. 73

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Most of the interviewed teachers view vocation as a process that is developed over time and through interactions with others; it is a process of discovering what suits one best, often expressed in teachers’ words as “a maturing process” (Year 4 Lower Secondary Tutor, School 10). In this view, “real vocation” is assumed to be experiential: “I think the real vocation comes out of experience … what I have experienced in my family, with my friends, with my hobbies … all these experiences tell me whether it’s something I would like to work in” (VET Assistant Nursing Tutor, School 2). This process of discovery is conditioned and limited by several factors, among which the role of family stands out. In fact, teachers’ discourses identify families as a key source for the production of vocations, attributing students’ tastes and choices to their parents and relatives’ occupations and cultural capital. Relatives’ occupations are an important source of knowledge about available options for students. Furthermore, when students do not know what to study, their families can push them into areas where they have first-​hand knowledge that there are job opportunities. The following quote clearly indicates that one needs to be close to a profession in order to feel attracted to it: “It is very typical to find a doctor whose parents are doctors. I don’t know if that’s because they talk about it at home and then their children become attracted to it. … It’s a vocation that emerges within the family” (Baccalaureate Tutor in Sciences School 3). Parents transmit their cultural capital to their children, who then embody that capital in their own habitus (Bourdieu, 1986), thus generating possible inclinations towards specific vocations and related educational and professional choices. According to teachers’ narratives, this cultural influence is not only related to parents’ own occupations but also to hobbies and cultural practices that can go on to become vocations. As the following quotation expresses, this is particularly relevant in the field of the arts: ‘Most of our students’ parents work in the arts. I have many students whose father is a designer, their mother is an illustrator. … Many come from the music sector, they come from this world … within the arts sector this is very important. A lot of parents tell me that their kid has always liked to draw, that their family frequently visit museums, exhibitions, comic book fairs … this kind of stuff. … Unconsciously, parents have been cultivating this artistic part for many years.’ (Baccalaureate Tutor in Arts, School 1) In this sense, even if teachers do not explicitly talk about social class or social reproduction in the making of vocations, their narratives on the influence of cultural capital clearly indicate that vocations are not created within a social vacuum (Dubois, 2019), but are subject to the economic, 74

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social and cultural conditions of young people’s life contexts. Despite recognising the cultural making of vocations, most of the interviewed teachers do not articulate a critical discourse around social inequalities but instead express a kind of ‘social deterministic’ discourse that appreciates the influence of the context but mainly takes it for granted, assuming it to be an immovable fact. Moreover, as this quote demonstrates, vocations that are not rooted within a long process of cultivation are not considered legitimate enough: “If you have liked drawing since you were a kid, then study fine arts, this is your degree, well done! But if you got the fine arts idea at the end of the Baccalaureate, well, then …” (Year 4 Lower Secondary School Tutor, School 12). This reflects how not all sources are seen as legitimate to inspire/​build vocations. ‘Strong’ vocations are supposed to be those rooted in long-​ term experiences and based on profound knowledge of a particular area. A paradigmatic example of this is the role that teachers attribute to social media in mediating young people’s desires and choices. In fact, social media are identified as a source of biased information, which contributes to the creation of ‘soft’ vocations based on vague or idealised professions and selves. Vocation should then be an informed choice, and not just an irrational impulse based on restricted information –​that is, the idealised image of a profession, as expressed by one tutor: “American movies have been very harmful. [Students say] ‘I want to do law because I’ve seen so many lawyer films’ and you say: ‘films are OK, but real life is something else’ ” (Baccalaureate Tutor in Social Science, School 1). Schools are also identified as pivotal in the making of vocations, whether by action or omission. Three main elements are identified in teachers’ narratives when reflecting on the institutional shaping of vocations10: 1) the school experience; 2) the emotional bond with teachers; 3) and guidance practices. Most of the interviewed teachers view vocations as a process conditioned by life experiences. In this sense, some teachers state that the current structure of the education system, above all in lower secondary education, leaves no room for experiential learning, thus limiting the role of schools in the making and training of vocations. As one tutor says: “What I want is the student to touch” (Year 4 Lower Secondary School Tutor, School 8); and another discusses further: “Our education system does not include much experimentation. We try to motivate, to generate, vocations by showing other people’s experiences but not through direct lived experience” (VET Assistant Nursing Tutor, School 1). This alludes to the grammar of lower secondary schooling (Tyack and Tobin, 1994) and particularly to the provision of theoretical and practical knowledge within it. As previous research has indicated (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021), the dominant model of secondary education in Spain11 is based on a strong 75

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curricular classification and a high degree of pedagogical homogeneity, with a pronounced academic orientation. This model offers few possibilities for students to experience and develop competences other than academic ones, inhibiting the potential development of vocations in more practical fields. Moreover, the centrality of theoretical knowledge in the curriculum of both lower secondary education and the Baccalaureate reinforces the ‘otherness’ of the vocational track ‒ more connected to practical knowledge ‒ and its dominant image as a ‘second-​class’ option12. The following quote is very clear in pointing out the importance of practical knowledge for framing students’ vocations and tastes: ‘At this school we are very lucky to have manual workshops to teach mechanics, welding and so on. … If the student handles and touches things, you can see how they become more and more interested, more motivated … they find out whether they like it, enjoy it and are good at it, by doing it.’ (Year 4 Lower Secondary School Tutor, School 8) In accordance with this logic, students that do not fit the ideal of an academically oriented, ‘naturally talented’, engaged and disciplined student in keeping with the school’s standards (Archer and Francis, 2005; Archer, 2008) are more unlikely to be described by their teachers as ‘vocational’ students. In fact, a students’ learner identity (their self-​perception of being good or bad learners or good or bad in specific areas, in terms of Coll and Falsafi, 2009) also limits their vocational outlook, as it conditions how students position themselves as active agents in the classroom and, consequently, their ability to search or be attracted by particular areas of activity. The following quote expresses this situation in terms of hidden and invisible students, indicating the need for more diversity in the school’s activities to make all students feel capable. ‘There are many students, especially the ones who don’t excel academically, that stay hidden, invisible. … It needs to be a place where they can express themselves, where they can train. … If we diversify the types of activities, if they don’t all consist of listening, writing and reading … then, obviously, we’ll broaden their possibilities.’ (Baccalaureate Tutor in Arts, School 2) Along with the curricular and pedagogic models, the interviewees also highlight the role of teachers as ‘significant others’, as critical factors in the development of vocations. As the following quotes indicate, teachers as role models, and the affective bonds created among teachers and students, are identified as relevant in the transmission of tastes and dispositions. 76

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‘Having a teacher who motivates you, who inspires you, who transmits their passion for this area is very important.’ (Baccalaureate Tutor in Sciences, School 3) ‘Having a role model at school has a critical influence. … In my own case I had a teacher who awakened my desire to want to be like this, to want to do this, to want to be like that man.’ (Baccalaureate Tutor in Arts, School 1) Plenty of research has indicated the critical role that teachers play in promoting school success (Archer, 2008; Maguire, 2009; Van Houtte, 2011). As the teachers’ discourses point out, the transmission of culture, interests and tastes that can awaken a vocation depends on the conveyance of knowledge and on students experiencing particular activities, but also upon the affective bond developed by individuals ‒ students and teachers acting as significant others ‒ in the socialisation process. This bond ensures the learning process and the development of dispositions and vocations (Lahire, 2018). Finally, the interviewed teachers highlight the critical role that guidance should play in identifying students’ vocations and orienting them towards their upper secondary educational choices. As one teacher states, “it is very important for students to discover their vocations with someone’s help … to have a school figure that can properly guide them” (Assistant Nursing VET Tutor, School 1). However, it is not uncommon for teachers to also feel that their influence in the process is limited in comparison to that of other actors, such as peers and families. Another problem with guidance, which teachers often pointed out, is that in VET there are a huge number of programmes to choose from, many of which are unknown even to the people whose job it is to introduce them to the students: “Sure, we are talking about young pupils, with a certain immaturity, certain ignorance of some social realities, some professions. … Well, maybe the person who’s guiding them doesn’t know a lot about it either. … They’ll ultimately choose “what I like the most” within the bounds of what is available” (VET Pharmacy Tutor, school 6). Finding a vocation, as another teacher signals, “requires, as a condition, for one to know about the existing options” (Year 4 Lower Secondary School Tutor, School 10). But this knowledge process is not merely technical. As previous research indicates, guidance practices are not applied in a neutral manner. Instead, they are power devices (Romito, 2019) with critical impacts on the reproduction of social inequalities. Teachers’ biased beliefs both about students and about upper secondary tracks (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021) explain why it is so common for guidance to reinforce rather than challenge the social segmentation between the academic and the vocational tracks (Bonizzoni et al, 2014). Ultimately, this also explains the power of guidance not only for discovering or channelling vocations but also for stratifying, legitimising or neglecting them. 77

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Conclusions The objective of this chapter has been to provide a sociological approach to vocations as a critical concept to address educational choices beyond economistic understandings of decision-​making. There is scarce sociological literature (Lahire, 2018; Dubois, 2019) addressing vocations as a ‘sense of calling’ (Hansen, 1995), that is, denoting the realisation of an activity with the aim of personal fulfilment and self-​realisation. This approach to vocations is especially important in a context of rampant individualism (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992) that stresses the responsibility of individuals (Brunila, 2012) for making themselves employable (Michelsen and Stenström, 2018) and achieving a good life (Vieira et al, 2013; James et al, 2020), and where happiness and self-​realisation become moral imperatives of authentic life projects (Cabanas and Illouz, 2019). Specifically, we have explored how secondary school teachers perceive and conceive vocations in their narratives about upper secondary educational choices. Drawing on an analysis of 40 semi-​structured interviews conducted with tutors of lower and upper secondary education (academic and vocational), three main dimensions have been explored: the language of vocation, the concept of vocation and the making of vocations. The main results of the analysis are the following: First, the language of vocation is not equally applied by teachers when explaining upper secondary educational choices. This is because not all the professional sectors are viewed as vocational in terms of self-​realisation and public service (Hansen, 1995). Teachers from artistic or health-​related programmes in VET and Baccalaureate make the most explicit use of the concept. According to teachers’ narratives only some educational choices and activities, such as these, are conceived as intrinsically vocational, while others are not, or some are considered more ‘vocational’ than others. Furthermore, educational or professional choices that are viewed as ‘vocational’ are presented as the most legitimate choices in teachers’ narratives. This reveals an omission of the conditions under which different professional sectors are materially and symbolically constructed as valuable and desirable (Lahire, 2018; Dubois, 2019) and transmits the false idea that being vocational is a matter of personal effort and choice. Second, even though the meaning of vocation is often diffuse and taken for granted within teachers’ discourses, our analysis of their narratives reveals three main interrelated conceptions of the term: first, vocation is associated with both students’ abilities (what they are ‘good at’) and personality (what they are ‘made for’); second, vocation is linked to young people’s tastes, whereby their choices are driven by pleasure, satisfaction or happiness; third, vocation connects with the notions of sacrifice, tenacity or perseverance in both present and future choices. Moreover, our analysis of teachers’ discourses 78

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reveals a moralistic and normative view of vocations, which connects these conceptions and draws a distinction between what can be termed strong and soft vocations. Strong vocations are represented as a perfect balance between individuals, their desires and ‘nature’, and their chosen activity, which is long-​lasting, based on an intense personal identification, and embodied in the image of young people who ‘really know what they want’ and go for it. In contrast, soft vocations are assumed to be discovered or built by chance, as a result of trial and error, usually late in one’s trajectory and often not on the basis of a sense of ‘predetermination’, embodied in the image of young people who ‘find their way’ or ‘their place’ through trying or practising an activity or profession. As a result, a symbolic hierarchy of reasons or motives for choosing upper secondary education tracks and degrees emerges from teachers’ discourses, where the closer they are to vocation, the more legitimate they are and the more they are seen as ‘good’ choices (if they fit students’ abilities, interests, tastes and personality, but also teachers’ perceptions of them and of what is best for their students). The more distant they are from the idea of ‘vocational’ choice, the more they appear to be illegitimate or ‘bad’ choices: influenced by their families, friends, social prejudices or ‘wrong’ ideas about professions and their ‘real’ activities. Third, when it comes to the making of vocations, most of the interviewed teachers agree with the idea that they are developed over time, through interactions with others, and they attribute importance to the process of discovering vocations through experience. The role of the family, and particularly of the parents’ occupations and cultural capital, is signalled as one of the most important factors in explaining the production of vocations among young people. In spite of that, this discourse is not articulated with a critical rationale around the impact of social inequalities, particularly social class, on the production of considerably disparate life experiences and consequently different tastes and dispositions among young people. On the contrary, there is a kind of ‘social deterministic’ discourse that, despite recognising the role of young people’s life contexts in the making of their vocations, mainly takes it for granted as a ‘natural fact’ that is not subject to the massive inequalities that traverse contemporary societies. Furthermore, not all contexts are viewed as legitimate for building vocations. Social media have been particularly strongly criticised as a biased source through which young people create false ideas about their future professions and their future selves. Finally, teachers also recognise the institutional role in the making of vocations and highlight the ways that schools can shape upper secondary educational choices. In particular, the stratified nature of the curriculum between lower secondary education and Baccalaureate on the one hand, 79

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and the vocational track on the other, is signalled as one of the main shortcomings in ensuring the experiential-​based learning that should be the basis for discovering what students like and are ‘good’ at. The lack of presence and legitimacy of practical knowledge in secondary schooling (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021) is highlighted as a critical element for explaining the role of schools in the making and training of vocations. As a consequence, emotional bonds with teachers and guidance practices –​when they exist –​are the only in-​school resources that students can use to navigate and make sense of their transitions and choices. In any case, teachers are also critical of the biases involved in guidance practices that result from a lack of in-​depth information about upper secondary educational tracks, especially VET courses, and the lack of space within lower secondary schooling for students to experience different competences, particularly in practical fields. Overall, the chapter helps to open the black box of the meaning of vocation at schools and to provide critical insights into the analysis of contemporary forms of reproduction through educational choices. As we have demonstrated, the language of vocation in teachers’ narratives works as a powerful tool to create a hierarchy of students’ capacities, identities and choices. This demonstrates the need to increase the sociological understanding of vocations in the context of upper secondary educational transitions and choices, and their possible effects on the reproduction of social inequalities. The chapter also opens up new lines of inquiry: first, the role of guidance not only in discovering or channelling vocations but also in stratifying, legitimising or neglecting them; second, how teachers influence the production of students’ vocations and the mechanisms through which this influence operates; and third, students’ application (or not) of the notion of vocation to explain and legitimise their upper secondary educational choices. Overall, the study of vocations has proved fruitful for understanding educational transitions and choices, and has raised new questions that are relevant to future sociological research in this field. Notes Chapter 10 demonstrates that one of the most salient consequences of this is the hermeneutical injustice that leads young people to a strikingly individualistic narrative of their upper secondary transitions and choices. 2 The research conducted by Holland (1997) on vocational personalities is one of the most paradigmatic examples of the psychological approach to vocations. 3 The use of the notion of vocation in this chapter does not refer –​unless explicitly stated otherwise –​to work or occupations but to those activities oriented by taste and personal development. 4 Lahire is, together with Dubois, one of the most prominent sociologists of vocations in the French context. 5 Chapters 6, 7 and 8 provide detailed analysis of how social class, migration and gender, respectively, influence young people’s upper secondary transitions and choices, critically 1

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Vocations: teachers’ discursive legitimations conditioning the opportunities of young people to navigate the upper secondary field. Chapter 3 also provides evidence on how ‘being mobile’ through the upper secondary urban space is often conceived in terms of personal effort and sacrifice regardless of the material, relational and emotional possibilities that make this mobility possible and even thinkable. 6 See Chapter 1 for full information of the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the other chapters are produced. 7 See Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 for further details of the organisation of the Spanish education system and the provision and functions of upper secondary education in the two global cities under study. 8 As indicated in Chapter 1, in Spain, the Baccalaureate is divided into three branches preparing for different areas of knowledge: the scientific Baccalaureate, the humanities and social sciences Baccalaureate, and the arts Baccalaureate. The latter prepares students for degrees related to artistic activities (theatre, cinema, painting, sculpture). 9 This resonates with Lahelma’s (2009) distinction between the ‘strong, technically competent and possibly dirty hands’ and the ‘gentle, caring and artistic’ ones. Chapter 8 provides plenty of evidence of how these hands and their associated upper secondary tracks are intrinsically gendered. 10 See Chapter 5 for a detailed analysis of the role of the school in shaping the educational trajectories and experiences of young people. 11 Chapter 1 provides further evidence of this model that according to Nathalie Mons corresponds to the (2007) ‘uniform integration model’. 12 By means of powerful qualitative evidence, Chapter 9 demonstrates how most VET students have a negative self-​image as ‘proper learners’. Moreover, one of the main reasons to select VET is precisely the rejection of theoretical knowledge.

References Araujo, K. and Martuccelli, D. (2010) ‘Individuation and the work of individuals’, Educação E Pesquisa, 36(spe): 77–​91. Archer, L. (2008) ‘The impossibility of minority ethnic educational “success”? An examination of the discourses of teachers and pupils in British secondary schools’, European Educational Research Journal, 7(1): 89–​107. Archer, L. and Francis, B. (2005) ‘“They never go off the rails like other ethnic groups”: teachers’ constructions of British Chinese pupils’ gender identities and approaches to learning’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 26(2): 165–​82. Atkins, L. (2017) ‘The odyssey: school to work transitions, serendipity and position in the field’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(5): 641–​55. Ball, S., Maguire, M. and Macrae, S. (2000) Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-​16: New Youth, New Economies in the Global City, London: Routledge. Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage. Bernstein, B. (2001) ‘From pedagogies to knowledges’, in A. Morais, I. Neves, B. Davies and H. Daniels (eds), Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: The Contribution of Basil Bernstein to Research, New York: Peter Lang, pp 363–​68.

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Bourdieu, P. (1986) ‘The forms of capital’, in J. Richardson (ed), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, Westport: Greenwood, pp 241–​58. Bourdieu, P. (1987) ‘The biographical illusion’, Working Papers and Proceedings of the Centre for Psychosocial Studies, 14: 1–​7. Bourdieu, P. (1994) ‘L’économie des biens symboliques’, in Raisons Pratiques, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, pp 175–​211. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.C. (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, London: Sage. Bonizzoni, P., Romito, M. and Cavallo, C. (2014) ‘Teachers’ guidance, family participation and track choice: the educational disadvantage of immigrant students in Italy’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(5): 702–​20. Burawoy, M. (2016) ‘Sociology as vocation’, Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 45(4): 379–​93. Brunila, K. (2012) ‘A diminished self: entrepreneurial and therapeutic ethos operating with a common aim’, European Educational Research Journal, 11(4): 477–​86. Cabanas, E. and Illouz, E. (2019) Manufacturing Happy Citizens: How the Science and Industry of Happiness Control our Lives, Cambridge; Medford: Polity Press. Coll, C. and Falsafi, L. (2009) ‘Learner identity: an educational and analytical tool’, Revista de Educación, 353: 211–​33. Colley, H., Hodkinson, P. and Malcolm, J. (2003) Informality and Formality in Learning, Learning and Skills Research Centre, London: Lifelong Learning Institute, University of Leeds. Dale, R. and Parreira do Amaral, M. (2015)‘Discursive and institutional opportunity structures in the governance of educational trajectories’, in M. Parreira do Amaral, R. Dale and P. Loncle (eds), Shaping the Futures of Young Europeans: Education Governance in Eight European Countries, Oxford: Symposium Books, pp 23–​41. Dubois, V. (2019) Culture as a Vocation: Sociology of Career Choices in Cultural Management, Abingdon; New York: Routledge. Fejes, A. and Dahlstedt, M. (2013) The Confessing Society: Foucault, Confession and Practices of Lifelong Learning, London; New York: Routledge. Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-​Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hansen, D.T. (1995) The Call to Teach, New York; London: Teachers College Press. Holland, J.L. (1997) Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments, 3rd edn, Odessa: Psychological Assessment Resources. Hughes, E.C. (1971) The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers, New York: Transaction Publishers.

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Illouz, E (2008) Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-​Help, Oakland: University of California Press. James, S., Mallman, M. and Midford, S. (2020) ‘University students, career uncertainty, and the culture of authenticity’, Journal of Youth Studies, 24(4): 466–​80. Lahelma, E. (2009) ‘Dichotomized metaphors and young people’s educational routes’, European Educational Research Journal, 8(4): 497–​507. Lahire, B. (2018) ‘Avoir la vocation’, Sciences sociales et sport, 12: 143–​50. Maguire, M. (2009) Towards a Sociology of the Global Teacher, London: Routledge. Martuccelli, D. (2007) Cambio de rumbo: La sociedad a escala del individuo, Santiago de Chile: LOM. Michelsen, S. and Stenström, M-​L. (2018) Vocational Education in the Nordic Countries:​The Historical Evolution, London: Routledge. Mons, N. (2007) Les nouvelles politiques éducatives: La France fait-​elle les bons choix? Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Romito, M. (2019) ‘Governing through guidance: an analysis of educational guidance practices in an Italian lower secondary school’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(6): 773–​88. Rose, N. (1998) Inventing our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sapiro, G. (2007) ‘La vocation artistique entre don et don de soi’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 168: 4–​11. Saraví, G.A. (2015) Juventudes fragmentadas: socialización, clase y cultura en la construcción de la desigualdad, Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y FLACSO. Sayer, A. (2005) The Moral Significance of Class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schlanger, J. (2020) La vocation, Paris: Pocket. Suaud, C. (2018) ‘La vocation, force et ambivalence d’un concept “nomade”: pour un usage idéal-​typique’, Sciences sociales et sport, 12: 19–​44. Tarabini, A., Castejón, A. and Curran, M. (2020) ‘Capacidades, hábitos y carácter: atribuciones docentes sobre el alumnado de bachillerato y Formación Profesional’, Papers, 105(2): 211–​34. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021) ‘Tracking, knowledge, and the organisation of secondary schooling: teachers’ representations and explanations’, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 74(1): 89–​106. Tyack, D. and Tobin, W. (1994) ‘The “grammar” of schooling: why has it been so hard to change?’, American Educational Research Journal, 31(3): 453–​79. Van Houtte, M. (2011) ‘So where’s the teacher in school effects research? The impact of teachers’ beliefs, culture, and behavior on equity and excellence in education’, in K. Van den Branden, P. Van Avermaet and M. Van Houtte (eds), Equity and Excellence in Education: Towards Maximal Learning Opportunities for All Students, New York: Routledge, pp 75–95. 83

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Vieira, M.M., Pappámikail, L. and Resende, J. (2013) ‘Forced to deal with the future: uncertainty and risk in vocational choices among Portuguese secondary school students’, The Sociological Review, 61(4): 745–​68. Weber, M. (2004 [1917, 1919]) The Vocation Lectures: ‘Science as a Vocation’; ‘Politics as a Vocation’, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.

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Does school shape upper secondary educational transitions? Exploring the relationship between students’ trajectories and educational choices Alba Castejón, Alejandro Montes and Martí Manzano

In recent decades, educational trajectories and transitions have attracted significant attention in the study of the sociology of education (Pallas, 2003; Cuconato et al, 2015; Walther et al, 2015). Their relevance lies in the role that education as a social institution has in stratification and social reproduction processes, and in the socialisation processes of young people. School trajectories have been shown to play a central role in explaining individuals’ social destinies, while these trajectories have also been marked by students’ social origins (Pallas, 2003). Transitions to upper secondary education are therefore a key element for understanding educational and social inequalities, and are also conditioned by an unequal opportunity structure. Consequently, in this analysis of transitions to upper secondary education, it is considered that young people’s agency is delimited both by structural conditions, such as social class, gender and being of migrant origin, and institutional conditions, such as school (Pallas, 2003; Furlong, 2009; Cuconato and Walther, 2015; Elias and Daza, 2017; Jacovkis et al, 2020). The school institution is, therefore, a central element in the construction of school trajectories and the choices made by young people (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). Starting from this framework, the chapter specifically analyses the transition to upper secondary education and its relationship with the trajectories of young people in their passage through lower secondary education, and the way in which this relationship is mediated by structural variables such as class, gender and migrant origin. Although there has been previous research on the factors that explain differences in this transition (Bernardi and Requena, 2010), this chapter contributes to the literature by specifically analysing the role of the school institution in a context in which lower secondary education is marked by patterns of inequality and in which upper secondary education is highly segmented1 (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2020). In many countries, such as Denmark, Sweden and Portugal, this transition is the first time when young people effectively choose between different 85

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tracks. As explained in Chapter 1, this is also the case in the Spanish education system, which is characterised by having a comprehensive structure during lower secondary education (up to 16 years), but that introduces two tracks for upper secondary education: academic and vocational. In this chapter, previous school trajectories, namely the passage through lower secondary education, are defined both in objective and subjective terms. By objective we mean those specific events or situations that occur, such as grade retention, academic performance or episodes of school dropout; subjective terms refers to the way young people experience those events or situations, that is, how they live and relate to school as an institution. It also intends to identify how structural conditions (social class, gender and migrant origin) mediate between previous school trajectories and transitions to upper secondary education. To do so, data were analysed from a questionnaire distributed to 1,318 young people in the first year of upper secondary education in Barcelona. The chapter is organised as follows. The next section provides a brief theoretical review of the concept of educational trajectory, focusing especially on contributions that place the school institution and young people’s experiences at the centre of the analysis and link these to the transition to upper secondary education. Second, we detail the methodological approach used in this chapter, describing the sample and instruments, as well as the data analysis strategy. Third, we present the results of the study, which include a typology of school trajectories and their relationship with variables describing the students in the sample’s social background. The chapter ends by presenting the main conclusions that highlight the role of school trajectories in the construction of transitions to upper secondary education and the importance of structural conditions here.

Educational trajectories as an object of study Life, education and other trajectories can be defined as the sequence of events and stages that an individual goes through in the course of their lifecycle (Pallas, 2003). In the case of education, trajectories refer to events and transitions between different stages of the education process and as far as employment (Pallas, 2003; Cuconato and Walther, 2015). The research interest lies both in their explanatory capacity as determinants of the events that occur throughout the lifecycle (in terms of social stratification, for example), and as a phenomenon to be explained in itself (in relation to the possible determinants of different educational trajectories, for example). In the work of authors such as Cuconato and Walther (2015), Furlong (2009) and Pallas (2003), educational trajectories are relational and contextualised, insofar as they are explained by complex interactions between different actors and factors, which occur in specific contexts. There is therefore 86

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a structure of opportunities that reflects the structural inequalities and positions in young people’s biographies, experiences and choices, and in the possibilities or obstacles they encounter in the course of their educational and life trajectories. On an empirical level, young people’s educational choices are clearly marked, as numerous studies have shown, by social stratification factors (Archer and Yamashita, 2003; Bernardi and Cebolla-​Boado, 2014; Walther et al, 2015; Hoskins, 2017). These studies suggest that the distribution of young people into different academic or vocational tracks, as well as participation rates in upper secondary education, are unequal depending on social class, gender or migrant origin. They further identify various dimensions that might explain these inequalities, which include academic performance, educational aspirations and expectations, and the meanings and prestige attached to each educational track. The role of the education system and school institution in shaping educational trajectories The school institution is a highly relevant factor in educational transitions, as it plays a mediating role between young people’s social origin and their choices (Cuconato et al, 2015; Tikkanen et al, 2015; Walther et al, 2015). Indeed, both the school in particular and the education system in general are a central part of the opportunity structure in which young people move and, therefore, of the way their educational trajectories are shaped. This opportunity structure refers both to more systemic elements (for example, possible pathways or tracks) and to institutional elements, namely specific school devices and practices. Pathways can be defined as a sequence of stages and transitions, although unlike trajectories, they are attributes of the social system, while trajectories are individual attributes (Pallas, 2003). From this point of view, pathways put the focus on analysis of those structures, that is, on the limitations, incentives and opportunities in terms of the choices that the system offers to young people. Certain characteristics of education systems, such as the degree of internal stratification, student selection, the possibilities for accessing different educational tracks and the possibilities for further academic training, are therefore key factors for explaining inequalities in their educational trajectories (Oakes, 1985; Gamoran, 1992; Grytnes, 2011; Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2019). These are elements that, according to Pallas (2003), can close some doors and open others. It has also been repeatedly shown that certain school devices and practices, such as streaming and grade retention, have an impact on young people’s later educational trajectories, not only in material terms, for example in the degree of skill acquisition (Slavin, 1990; Parsons and Hallam, 2014), but 87

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also in symbolic terms through the construction of self-​concept and the shaping of expectations and future mindsets (Oakes, 1985; Pàmies, 2013; Castejón, 2017). School guidance devices and practices, as well as teachers’ expectations, are also factors that influence an unequal construction of trajectories (Grytnes, 2011; Bonizzoni et al, 2014; Van Houtte and Demanet, 2016). In short, the micro individual level of educational experiences, decisions and trajectories is embedded in macro –​systemic and political constraints at the global and national level –​and meso (school characteristics) factors (Cuconato and Walther, 2015). The school experience as a central element of educational trajectories The school experience, understood as the ways in which young people live and relate to the school institution, find meanings for education and forge relationships within it, is a key variable for defining school trajectories. To analyse the ways in which young people interact with their schooling processes, we consider the concept of school engagement and its dimensions. According to the theoretical reviews of this concept (Fredricks et al, 2004; Appleton et al, 2008), a first dimension of school engagement is the behavioural one, which refers to the degree of adherence to a school’s rules of conduct, and the degree of involvement and active participation in academic tasks. Secondly, cognitive engagement refers to the abilities that young people mobilise in the act of learning, as well as their self-​perceptions and self-​identities as learners. Both dimensions are highly related to the distinction between the instrumental and the expressive orders that, according to Bernstein, are constitutive of any school culture. As he explains, ‘I propose to call that complex of behaviour and activities in the school which is to do with conduct, character and manner the expressive order of the school, and that complex of behaviour, and the activities which generate it, which is to do with the acquisition of specific skills the instrumental order.’ (Bernstein, 1975: 34). Furthermore, as feminist scholars highlight, educational trajectories are also affective trajectories (Reay, 2015). In this sense, a third dimension of engagement, the emotional one, is central for understanding the ways young people are and feel at school. This refers to both the value and usefulness students attribute to education, and the emotions they experience along the way (interest, boredom, happiness, sadness, anxiety and so on). Emotional engagement also refers to the students’ sense of belonging and the affective relationships they forge with their school, teachers and peers. Various studies have focused on analysing how the school experience has an impact on or can help to explain different trajectories, although many of these have focused on studying the relationship between this experience 88

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and school dropout, rather than transition within it (Smyth, 2005; Curran, 2017; Tarabini, 2019). These studies are based on the assumption that the complexity and diversity of processes that lead to school dropout can be explained by the ways in which young people are linked to their education processes, and identifying different profiles and types of young people based on such experiences and their attitudes to school. One of the most popular classifications of different types of learners is Bernstein’s typology of student attitudes (1975), which identifies five potential student roles with regard to successful (or unsuccessful) involvement in the instrumental and expressive orders of a school. The first type of involvement is commitment, which arises when students have strong affinities with the school’s expectations in both orders. Detachment appears when students understand and engage with the instrumental order but reject the expressive one. Deferment is when student involvement is suspended, and implies an attitude of ‘watching the state of play’. The fourth role is estrangement, which occurs when students understand and accept the expressive order, and try to get involved in the instrumental order by accepting its ends but fail to understand the means; finally, alienation appears when students fail to understand or resist both the instrumental and expressive orders. Moreover, as Bernstein and other authors highlight (Power et al, 1998), the ways students are involved in the school are not irrespective of their social origins. Therefore, connections between the objective conditions and subjective dimensions in which schooling occurs are a central element in the analysis of school trajectories (Bonal et al, 2003; Grytnes, 2011; Walther et al, 2015). In other words, educational trajectory is a construct that is based on the lived school experience, which incorporates both structural aspects and what these mean to the subject. Indeed, beyond the events that occur during schooling (such as grade retention, transitions between stages, changes of school and academic grades themselves), the subjective dimension has been shown to be a key factor not only for understanding young people’s attitudes and school trajectories, but also for understanding and defining their educational opportunities (Dubet and Martucelli, 1998).

Methodological approach The aim of the analysis proposed in this chapter is to identify how the transition to upper secondary education is related to young people’s trajectories through lower secondary education, and how this relationship is mediated by such structural variables as class, gender and migrant origin. This chapter is based on the information collected from a questionnaire that was distributed between October and December 2018 to first year upper secondary students at seven of the eight schools in the study sample2. The questionnaire collected information on some students’ choices of upper 89

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secondary studies, but also on their experiences during lower secondary education and other aspects such as their social origin. A total of 1,318 responses were obtained. The analysis excludes people who completed lower secondary education more than 10 years ago or who took it in a country other than Spain, because their trajectories are not comparable with the other students, and cases with missing statistical values for the main variables of analysis. The total number of cases in the sample used in this chapter is therefore 915 students, of which 550 had taken the academic track (60.1 per cent) and 365 had taken the vocational track (39.9 per cent). Variables and analytical strategy Analytically, the chapter has the following objectives: first, to establish a typology of previous school trajectories, taking into account both objective (academic performance, grade retention) and subjective variables (such as feelings about the usefulness of school and well-​being); second, to establish how these identified trajectories correspond to upper secondary education tracks; and third, to identify whether there are any differences between previous trajectories and upper secondary education tracks based on variables such as social class, gender or being of migrant origin, on the premise that these play a mediating role between previous school trajectories and the distribution of young people into different tracks3. To address these objectives, the analysis is based on a dependent variable (upper secondary track) and various independent variables (educational trajectory and social profile). The dependent variable, ‘upper secondary education track’, groups young people according to whether they are taking a vocational (Vocational Education and Training, or VET) or academic (Baccalaureate) track at the time of the questionnaire. The variable ‘previous educational trajectory’ was constructed from 14 questions related to the subjects’ passage through lower secondary education. These included both objective aspects, such as grades and grade retention, and subjective or experiential aspects. To reduce these variables into clusters that group similar types of trajectories, a factor analysis was calculated that used the Varimax method for the extraction of principal components4 to reduce the 14 questions in the questionnaire to four components. These components theoretically correspond to the dimensions the previous literature has identified as central to the school experience (Bernstein, 1975; Fredricks et al, 2004; Appleton et al, 2008): the sense of usefulness that the young person attributes to school, grades and perceived ease of academic requirements; the behavioural dimension and acceptance or rejection of school standards; and an emotional dimension or the feelings of well-​being or discomfort at school. 90

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As shown in Table 5.1, this four-​component model explains 60.12 per cent of the variance in the variables of which it is comprised. Likewise, the KMO5 sampling adequacy measure is 0.807 and the significance of Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity is less than 0.05, which indicates that the model is statistically relevant. Based on the students’ scores for these dimensions, clusters could be formed to establish a typology of school trajectories. This typology, which is presented in the first part of the results section, constitutes the ‘previous educational trajectory’ variable and each student is placed in one of these groups depending on their type of trajectory through lower secondary education: the ‘good students’, the ‘hard workers’, the ‘troublemakers’, and the ‘misfits’. Table 5.1: Components of the model and items that comprise them, percentage variance explained by the components and extraction value of each item Components

% of explained variance

Item

Extraction

Sense of utility

21.23%

‘I was bored at school’

0.464

‘I felt I was wasting my time at school’

0.609

‘Subjects generally seemed useless to me’

0.577

‘It felt it was worthwhile’

0.574

‘Subjects generally seemed interesting to me’

0.679

‘Average lower secondary education grades’

0.643

‘In general, my exams didn’t go too well’

0.601

‘I found it easy to understand the content of most subjects’

0.603

‘Grade retention’

0.417

‘I was often told off by my teachers’

0.686

‘I put a lot of effort into my schoolwork’

0.488

‘I always or nearly always behaved well in class’

0.72

‘I felt lonely at school’

0.733

‘I had fun at school’

0.622

Academic results

Behaviour

Well-​being Total

15.70%

13.21%

9.98% 60.12%

Note: The extraction value of each item refers to the proportion of item variance that can be explained by the factorial model.

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Meanwhile, the social profile variables place students in specific positions in consideration of social class, gender and migratory generation: • Social class: This is obtained from the highest values to the answers about the professional category and education level of the student’s parents. Professional category is obtained from the classification of parental jobs in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-​08) and educational level from the International Standard Classification of  Education (ISCED). Four groups were constructed for the social class variable: upper middle classes (6.6 per cent), middle classes (49.8 per cent), working classes (34.5 percent) and risk of social exclusion (9.1 per cent)6. • Gender: Although the questionnaire admitted other answers to the question asking respondents to ‘state your gender’, the valid answers to this question could be used to construct a dichotomous variable: girls (57.2 per cent) and boys (42.8 per cent). • Migratory generation: This is conceptualised from the migratory trajectories of young people and their parents. The native7 (73.8 per cent) category refers to students born and schooled in Spain whose parents were also born in Spain; second generation (17.7 per cent) are the descendants of people born in another country but who attended school in Spain from the beginning of lower secondary education; and first generation (8.5 per cent) included youngsters born outside of Spain and who entered school in the country after the beginning of lower secondary education. The analytical strategy was as follows: first, we analysed how the variables that make up the factors and clusters are distributed in each of the obtained types of trajectory, comparing average scores in the four dimensions. Second, the types of trajectory were crossed with the track variable in order to observe how the different types are unequally distributed between the academic and vocational tracks. Third, the social profile variables are introduced to the analysis to explain the class, gender and migratory characteristics of the identified types of trajectory. Finally, the focus is on the analysis of social class as a central element that exerts a mediating effect in the relationship between educational trajectories and tracks.

Results Exploring a typology of school trajectories The first result obtained from the cluster analysis is a typology of school trajectories made up of four groups that we name as follows: the ‘good students’, the ‘hard-​working’, the ‘troublemakers’ and the ‘misfits’. The 92

Students’ trajectories and educational choices Table 5.2: Typology of school trajectories: main components  

Component 1: ‘Sense of utility’

Component 2: ‘Academic results’

Component 3: ‘Behaviour’

Component 4: ‘Well-​being’

Good students

Average score (positive)

Very high score

Average score (positive)

Very high score

Hard-​working

High score

Very low score Very high score

Average score (positive)

Troublemakers

Average score (negative)

Very low score Very low score

High score

Misfits

Low score

High score

Very low score

High score

Notes: An ‘average score’ is considered to be when the values obtained for a component are between -​0.2 and 0.2, a ‘high score’ when the values are between 0.2 and 0.4, a ‘low score’ when the values are between -​0.2 and -​0.4 and a ‘very high score’ or ‘very low score’ when the values are greater than 0.4 or -​0.4 respectively.

main characteristics of each of these groups are presented below, and they are also summarised in Table 5.2. The first group, the ‘good students’, brings together those students whose trajectory is considered to be ‘educationally’ successful both objectively and subjectively. This cluster groups 332 individuals (31.7 per cent of the sample) and its main characteristic is the highest score for academic results. These are the students who got the best grades during lower secondary education, and who also found school assignments easiest, felt that their exams went well and practically never had to repeat an academic year. They also have strong positive feelings about the usefulness of school and have slightly above-​average scores for behaviour. In terms of well-​being, their answers are again above average: they have fun at school and do not feel alone or neglected in the school context. The second group is the one made up of what we call ‘hard-​working’ students. This category groups young people who do comply with school requirements but find it extremely hard to meet the different educational requirements successfully during the lower secondary stage. The cluster groups 217 individuals (20.7 per cent of the sample) whose main characteristic is very poor grades but high compliance with school regulations and a positive view of the usefulness of the institution and its practices. These young people can therefore be defined as those who, despite making an effort and complying with what is required of them, and presenting average levels of well-​being, do not go on to achieve positive results. The third group is made up of young people labelled ‘troublemakers’, whose school trajectories feature clear symptoms of failure. This cluster groups 202 individuals (19.3 per cent of the sample) and their main 93

Educational Transitions and Social Justice

characteristic is very low scores for the behaviour component. Members of this group behave worse at school than the other groups, make less effort, do not do their schoolwork on time, are most frequently reprimanded and receive grades that are significantly below average. In fact, this is the group with the highest number of failures, the lowest grades and the highest percentage of grade retention. They also have a clearly below average opinion of the usefulness of school and learning. The fourth and final group is what we call the ‘misfits’. This cluster groups 164 individuals (15.7 per cent of the sample), so is the least numerous of the four, and the only group with markedly below-​average well-​being levels. Even the ‘troublemakers’ group presents higher indicators of well-​being at school. As for the main characteristics of this group, despite getting slightly above-​average grades and behaviour scores, these students are unhappy at school and do not view school as useful. In other words, they meet the academic standards, but do not feel attached to the institution. Indicators of loneliness are especially high in this group. The educational trajectory: a key element in the transition to upper secondary education The main objective of this section is to identify the role played by students’ previous educational trajectories when they choose between one upper secondary education track or another. It does this by seeking to relate the typology of trajectories presented in the previous section with the choice of a specific educational option. Table 5.3 shows the main results obtained. The first element that can be extracted from the analysis is the predominance of the academic track as the majority choice among ‘good students’. Almost 85 per cent of the students that did best at lower secondary schooling take this option, with those taking the VET in the clear minority (15 per cent). This highlights something that has been widely observed in the literature (Nylud et al, 2018): the existence of

Table 5.3: Typologies of school trajectories according to upper secondary track choice  

Academic*

Cluster 1: Good students

Cluster 2: Hard-​ working

84.6%

37.8%

Cluster 3: Troublemakers 36.1%

Cluster 4: Misfits

Total

69.5%

60.1%

VET*

15.4%

62.2%

63.9%

30.5%

39.9%

Total

100.0%

100.0%

100.0%

100.0%

100.0%

Notes: * p ≤ 0.01. Value of Cramer’s V for the ‘track’ variable =​0.45.

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an intensely different concept of the two tracks, with the academic one viewed as the ‘ideal’ option for good students. Meanwhile, both ‘hard-​working’ and ‘troublemaking’ students follow the almost totally opposite pattern to ‘good students’ by having a greater presence of VET (62 per cent and 64 per cent respectively), although the survey responses seem to suggest that the reasons why these groups make these decisions are substantially different. Based on the answers obtained, ‘hard-​working’ students opt for the vocational track because of an internalised feeling that they do not have the skills to successfully meet the requirements of the academic track. Although they meet the basic requirements (fundamentally, the lower secondary school certificate), they feel that their poor academic performance is an insurmountable obstacle. It would appear that institutional and relational elements are factors here, such as teachers’ expectations (Gillborn et al, 2012; Tarabini at al, 2020) and biased guidance mechanisms, which encourage the process whereby students’ self-​concept and expectations are lowered (Jacovkis et al, 2020). Meanwhile, the ‘troublemakers’ not only get negative academic grades, but are also clearly opposed to the school culture, which would explain why they do not continue down the academic track. Finally, most ‘misfits’, despite their very low sense of well-​being, tend to decide to continue with the academic track (69.5 per cent). Despite feeling uncomfortable at school, they decide to remain in it. This could be explained by the same reasons that lead ‘hard-​working’ students to choose the vocational track: first, the school architecture and culture involves teachers, in their daily interactions, guiding their best performing students towards the academic track, regardless of the subjective elements associated with well-​being that such a track supposes. Second, there is considerable educational stratification whereby VET is viewed by the students as a second-​rate option. In short, the analysis shows that there is a clear correlation between the identified trajectory groups and the probability of taking one upper secondary track or the other. The data are clear on this: ‘good students’ are more than twice as likely to enrol for the academic track as their ‘hard-​working’ or ‘troublemaking’ peers. In other words, these groups are almost four times more likely to end up doing vocational training than the former. This highlights the importance of a school trajectory and provides new evidence to demystify the existing rhetoric about ‘free choice’ in the transition to upper secondary education (Furlong, 2009). School trajectories, structural variables and upper secondary tracks: the mediating effect of social class Having identified the relationship between school trajectories and the choice of upper secondary education track, it is also interesting to observe how 95

Educational Transitions and Social Justice Table 5.4: Distribution of structural variables (gender, migratory generation and social class) by typology of school trajectories  

Gender*

Cluster 1: Cluster 2: Cluster 3: Cluster 4: Total Good Hard-​ Troublemakers Misfits students working Boy

39.1%

39.6%

59.7%

32.9%

42.8%

Girl

60.9%

60.4%

40.3%

67.1%

57.2%

Native

87.3%

55.8%

71.8%

72.6%

73.8%

2nd generation

10.2%

27.6%

16.3%

21.3%

17.7%

1st generation

2.4%

16.6%

11.9%

6.1%

8.5%

Social class* Upper middle classes

10.7%

4.4%

2.1%

6.5%

6.6%

Middle classes

58.4%

34.8%

46.1%

56.1%

49.8%

Working classes

26.6%

46.6%

35.8%

33.5%

34.5%

4.3%

14.2%

16.1%

3.9%

9.1%

Migratory generation*

Rick of social exclusion

Notes: * p ≤ 0.01. Cramer’s V for the ‘gender’ variable =​0.19. Cramer’s V for the ‘migratory generation’ variable =​0.20. Cramer’s V for the ‘social class’ variable =​0.17.

the structural variables affect and mediate the composition of these groups and their choice of track. First, we analyse the relation between school trajectories and social composition of each type. Table 5.4 summarises the main results observed. The first observation is how the majority of ‘good students’ are native (87 per cent), are girls (61 per cent) and from middle-​class backgrounds (58 per cent). This group also has the highest percentage of students from the upper middle classes (10.7 per cent). This group is clearly parallel to the classical image of the ‘ideal pupil’ (Becker, 1952), which tend to have much closer relationships to the school (positive expectations among teachers, attitudes that are rewarded by the institution, and so on). They share very similar characteristics with the ‘misfits’ group in that they both have good scores for the ‘academic results’ component, although where these groups most differ is that the ‘misfits’ have slightly more girls (67 per cent), a greater presence of the working classes (33.5 per cent) and a lower presence of native students and a higher number of second-​generation migrants (21.3 per cent). Meanwhile, the profiles of ‘hard-​working’ and ‘troublemaking’ students are very different to those of the other two groups. ‘Hard-​working’ students include a higher proportion of young people of migrant origin, both first generation (17 per cent) and second generation (28 per cent). This group also has the most working-​class students (47 per cent). This reaffirms the predominant idea of ‘unrewarded effort’ among the ‘hard-​working 96

Students’ trajectories and educational choices

students’ group, as they are the most socially distant from the hegemonic school culture. The ‘troublemakers’ are the only group in the sample with a male majority (60 per cent). Most of these students are native (72 per cent) and there is evidence of a highly heterogeneous social profile. The middle class is most dominant (46 per cent) but this group also has the highest percentage of students from social environments at risk of exclusion (16 per cent). This highlights the diverse nature of such trajectories. Finally, we analyse how the different groups of trajectories are distributed across the two tracks for each of the identified social classes. The fragmentation of the sample that this exercise implies invalidates the statistical significance for the upper middle classes and for the group at risk of social exclusion but does not invalidate the conclusions for the middle and working classes. For this reason, this analysis only works with a subsample of the middle and working classes. The main interpretations are summarised in the following Table 5.5, in which it is observed how both young people’s trajectories and social class influence the educational track that they end up taking. The analysis highlights how social class continues to be a relevant mediating factor in the analysis of educational trajectories and transitions. Regardless of their trajectory group, students who come from more privileged social backgrounds are more likely to opt for the academic track, while those who come from working-​class backgrounds are more likely to end up choosing vocational studies. The data show that if a mediating factor is introduced to the analysis, there is a threefold relationship between school trajectory, chosen upper secondary track and the structural variables, specifically the students’ social

Table 5.5: Distribution of school trajectories by social class and upper secondary track choice  

Middle classes*

Academic VET Total

Working classes*

Cluster 1: Good students

Cluster 2: Hard-​ working

90.1%

56.3%

47.2%

80.5%

9.9%

43.7%

52.8%

19.6%

100%

100%

Cluster 3: Troublemakers

100%

Cluster 4: Misfits

100%

Academic

71.6%

26.3%

23.2%

53.8%

VET

26.4%

73.7%

76.8%

46.2%

Total

100%

100%

100%

100%

Notes: * p ≤ 0.01. Cramer’s V for the ‘middle classes’ variable =​0.406. Cramer’s V for the ‘working classes’ variable =​0.434.

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profile. It is observed how both social profile and school trajectory operate simultaneously to thereby increase the inequality at the time of transition. A higher proportion of students from well-​to-​do backgrounds continue in the academic track, 30 percentage points more than students who despite having followed the same trajectory come from less privileged working-​class backgrounds. This is especially relevant among the ‘hard-​working’ group, a phenomenon that highlights, first, the role of their own expectations (Jacovkis et al, 2020) and, second, the role played by capital as a safety net against adverse situations (Ball, 2003).

Conclusions Analysis of educational transitions has been gaining ground in the field of sociological research in recent years (Pallas, 2003; Walther et al, 2015). Educational choices and the resulting transitions are socially integrated processes, where young people’s agency is informed and limited by the social dimensions of inequality (Archer et al, 2007; Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). In other words, there is an opportunity structure that reflects unequal positions in the biographies, experiences and choices of young people, affecting their possibilities, but also the barriers that they will encounter throughout their educational trajectories. In addressing the configuration of educational pathways, we must therefore prioritise understanding unequal school experiences as the cornerstone of the opportunity structure. Previous research (Dubet, 2010; Cuconato et al, 2015) has shown that experiences within the educational institution have a differential impact, which is mediated by the students’ social origin. It is essential to understand the assumptions that young people make when configuring their school trajectories in order to address issues that relate to their distribution into academic or vocational tracks in upper secondary education. In this context, the aim of this chapter has been to understand how young people’s school trajectories are constituted, highlighting the key role played by the school institution in creating unequal experiences that led to uneven opportunities for transition to upper secondary education. For this purpose, a factor analysis and a cluster analysis were developed to produce a typology of school trajectories made up of four groups: the ‘good students’, the ‘hard-​working’, the ‘troublemakers’ and the ‘misfits’. These groups, formed on the basis of four large dimensions of the school trajectory (usefulness of school, educational results, behaviour and well-​ being at school) show how young people view their passage through school in very different ways, and how these experiences impact their future transitions. Meanwhile, the social composition of these groups (in terms of social profile, gender and migratory generation) highlights the 98

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mediating effect that structural variables continue to exert on the existence of one kind of trajectory or another. ‘Good students’ are characterised by close bonds to the school and good academic performance, and is the group with the biggest presence of wealthier classes and native students. The other groups present different positions on the scale of the school experience. The ‘troublemakers’ are characterised by having little behavioural engagement and ‘hard-​ working’ students by their limited cognitive engagement (Fredricks et al, 2004). However, their social profiles are very different: while the ‘troublemakers’ are from heterogeneous but socially well-​off backgrounds, with a particularly prominent presence of males in the group, ‘hard-​ working’ students are the most socially and culturally distant from the school institution. Finally, the ‘misfits’, despite having similar educational and social indicators to good students, are characterised by the way they struggle to find their place in the school system. Indeed, it is interesting to observe how, despite being a group that has a hard time at school, most of them advance to the more prestigious academic track, which seems to highlight the important role played by the mechanisms of path-​dependence8. As well as building this typology, the analysis also provides two other relevant results. First, that the ‘chosen’ track in the transition to upper secondary education is clearly correlated with previous school trajectories, and that these may limit or increase the chances of ending up on a vocational or academic track. Having a ‘positive’ experience at school –​ both in instrumental and expressive terms –​tends to imply a transition to the academic track, while having a negative experience (grade retention, poor relationship with teachers) is more related to transitions to VET. Second, that social origin is a variable that has a clear mediating effect on the previous school trajectory and the choice of upper secondary education track: of young people who have followed the same type of trajectory, those who come from more affluent backgrounds are more likely to opt for the academic track, while young people from working-​class environments, even when their trajectories are considered ‘successful’, have a greater tendency to advance towards the vocational track. Ultimately, in relation to previous typologies of student attitudes (such as the one presented by Bernstein, 1975) the conclusions of this chapter confirm that school trajectories (which incorporate both objective events and a subjective dimension regarding the school experience) play a relevant role in the transition to upper secondary education. In this sense, our analysis provides evidence about the prominence of social inequalities in school trajectories and upper secondary track choices. The chapter also demonstrates the importance of taking into account past school trajectories, as well as social background, when analysing the patterns of different track choices. 99

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The results are important for highlighting the need for more comprehensive interventions, which not only consider the factors that intercede at moment of transitions, but also the factors at work during previous school years, that could attenuate the effect of social background on young people’s upper secondary transitions and choices. Acknowledgements This chapter was previously published in the journal Revista de Sociología de la Educación (RASE). The original version can be found here: https://​ojs. uv.es/​index.php/​RASE/​arti​cle/​view/​18030 Notes See Chapter 2 for details of the many mechanisms of segmentation of the Spanish upper secondary education system. 2 See Chapter 1 for full information about the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the other chapters are produced. 3 Chapters 6, 7 and 8 provide detailed analysis of how social class, migration and gender respectively condition young people’s upper secondary transitions and choices in a variety of ways. 4 This rotation method optimises the saturation of the different questions included in the model into a single component. 5 Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin coefficient proves the adequacy and significance of the model generated with factor analysis. KMO has values from 0 to 1, the model is considered adequate at 0.8 and above. 6 The upper middle classes correspond mainly to group 1 (managers) of the ISCO-​ 08, the middle classes to groups 2 and 3 (professionals and technicians and associate professionals), the working classes to groups 5, 7, 8 and 9 (service and sales workers, craft and related trades workers, plant and machine operators and assemblers, and elementary occupations) and the group at risk of social exclusion are those that are inactive, unemployed, in informal work or whose parents are infirm. Families in groups 4, 6 and 0 of ISCO-​08 are rejected due to their presence in the sample. Finally, the correspondence between the four social classes and the ISCO-​08 classification may vary in some individuals since the level of studies of the parents was taken into account case by case for their classification. 7 Native students: students born and schooled in Spain and who are the children of parents born in the same country. Second generation: students who are born in Spain and/ or are schooled in the Spanish education system from the age of compulsory schooling (six years) and are the children of parents born in another country. Please note that these students are native, by definition, but for the purposes of comparison in the research they are referred to as ‘second generation’ throughout. First generation: students who are born in a country other than Spain and join the Spanish education system after the compulsory age for starting school (over six years old). 8 Path-​dependence is a widely explored phenomenon in the social and economic sciences that states that certain results are the product of choices, decisions and situations that happened in the past and not only of the conditions of the moment. In other words, and applied to the field that concerns us here, educational transitions, it identifies and explains the ‘no choice’ processes, or institutional inertia, through which some young people frame their passage between educational stages. 1

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References Appleton, J.J., Christenson, S.L. and Furlong, M. (2008) ‘Student engagement with school: critical conceptual and methodological issues of the construct’, Psychology in the Schools, 45(5): 369–​86. Archer, L. and Yamashita, H. (2003) ‘“Knowing their limits”? Identities, inequalities and inner city school leavers’ post-​16 aspirations’, Journal of Education Policy, 18 (1), 53–​69. Archer, L., Hollingworth, S. and Halsall, A. (2007) ‘“University’s not for me –​I’m a Nike person”: urban, working-​class young people’s negotiations of “style”, identity and educational engagement’, Sociology, 41(2): 219–​37. Ball, S. (2003) Class Strategies and the Education Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage, London: Routledge. Becker, H.S. (1952) ‘Social-​class variations in the teacher-​pupil relationship’, Journal of Educational Sociology, 25(8): 451–​65. Bernardi, F. and Requena, M. (2010) ‘Desigualdad y puntos de inflexión educativos: el caso de la educación post-​obligatoria en España’, Revista de Educación, Número Ext, 93–​118. Bernardi, F. and Cebolla-​Boado, H. (2014) ‘Previous school results and social background: compensation and imperfect information in educational transitions’, European Sociological Review, 30(2): 207–​17. Bernstein, B. (1975) Class, Codes and Control: Vol III: Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions, New York: Routledge. Bonal, X., Alegre, M.À., González, I., Herrera, D., Rovira, M. and Saurí, E. (2003) Apropiacions escolars: usos i sentits de l’educació obligatòria en l’adolescència, Barcelona: Editorial Octaedro. Bonizzoni, P., Romito, M. and Cavallo, C. (2014) ‘Teachers’ guidance, family participation and track choice: the educational disadvantage of immigrant students in Italy’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(5): 702–​20. Castejón, A. (2017) ‘Expectativas docentes, agrupamiento del alumnado y segregación escolar: una etnografía en entornos de alta complejidad social en Cataluña’, Doctoral thesis, Departament de Pedagogia Sistemàtica i Social, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Cuconato, M. and Walther, A. (2015) ‘“Doing transitions” in education’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(3): 283–​96. Cuconato, M., du Bois-​Reymond, M. and Lunabba, H. (2015) ‘Between gate-​keeping and support: teachers’ perception of their role in transition’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(3): 311–​28. Curran, M. (2017) ‘¿Qué lleva a los jóvenes a dejar los estudios? Explorando los procesos de (des)vinculación escolar desde una perspectiva de clase y gender’, Doctoral thesis, Department of Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Dubet, F. (2010) Sociología de la experiencia, Madr id: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. 101

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Dubet, F. and Martucelli, D. (1998) En la escuela: sociología de la experiencia escolar, Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada. Elias, M. and Daza, L. (2017) ‘¿Cómo deciden les jóvenes la transición a la educación postobligatoria? Diferencias entre centros públicos y privados-​ concertados’, RASE: Revista de la Asociación de Sociología de la Educación, 10(1): 5–​22. Fredricks, J., Blumenfeld, P. and Paris, A. (2004) ‘School engagement: potential of the concept, state of the evidence’, Review of Educational Research, 74(1): 59–​109. Furlong, A. (2009) ‘Revisiting transitional metaphors: reproducing social inequalities under the conditions of late modernity’, Journal of Education and Work, 22(5): 343–​53. Gamoran, A. (1992) ‘Synthesis of research: is ability grouping equitable?’, Educational Leadership, 50(2): 11–​17. Garcia Gràcia, M. and Sánchez-​Gelabert, A. (2020) ‘La heterogeneidad del abandono educativo en las transiciones posobligatorias: itinerarios y subjetividad de la experiencia escolar’, Papers: Revista de Sociologia, 105(2): 235. Gillborn, D., Rollock, N., Vincent, C. and Ball, S.J. (2012) ‘“You got a pass, so what more do you want?”: race, class and gender intersections in the educational experiences of the Black middle class’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(1): 121–​39. Grytnes, R. (2011) ‘Making the right choice! Inquiries into the reasoning behind young people’s decisions about education’, Young, 19(3): 333–​51. Jacovkis, J., Montes, A. and Manzano, M. (2020) ‘Imaginando futuros distintos: los efectos de la desigualdad sobre las transiciones hacia la educación secundaria posobligatoria en la ciudad de Barcelona’, Papers: Revista de Sociologia, 105(2): 279. Nylund, M., Rosvall, P.Å., Eiríksdóttir, E., Holm, A.S., Isopahkala-​Bouret, U., Niemi, A.M. and Ragnarsdóttir, G. (2018) ‘The academic–​vocational divide in three Nordic countries: implications for social class and gender’, Education Inquiry, 9(1): 97–​121. Oakes, J. (1985) Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality, New Haven: Yale University Press. Pallas, A.M. (2003) ‘Educational transitions, trajectories, and pathways’, in J.T. Mortimer and M.J. Shanahan (eds), Handbook of the Life Course, Boston: Springer, pp 165–​84. Pàmies, J. (2013) ‘El impacto de los agrupamientos escolares: los espacios de aprendizaje y sociabilidad de los jóvenes de origen marroquí en Barcelona’, Revista de Educación, 362 (Sept–​Dec): 133–​58. Parsons, S. and Hallam, S. (2014) ‘The impact of streaming on attainment at age seven: evidence from the Millennium Cohort Study’, Oxford Review of Education, 40(5): 567–​89. 102

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Reay, D. (2015) ‘Habitus and the psychosocial: Bourdieu with feelings’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 45(1): 9–​23. Slavin, R.E. (1990) ‘Achievement effects of ability grouping in secondary schools: a best-​evidence synthesis’, Review of Educational Research, 60(3): 471–​99. Smyth, J. (2005) ‘An argument for new understandings and explanations of early school leaving that go beyond the conventional’, London Review of Education 3(2): 117–​30. Tarabini, A. (2019) The Conditions for School Success: Examining Educational Exclusion and Dropping Out, London: Palgrave. Tarabini, A, and Ingram, N. (eds) (2018) Educational Choices, Transitions and Aspirations in Europe: Systemic, Institutional and Subjective Challenges, London: Routledge. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2019) ‘Transicions a l’educació secundària postobligatòria a Catalunya’, in J. Riera (ed), Reptes de l’educació a Catalunya: Anuari 2018, Barcelona: Fundació Jaume Bofill Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2020) ‘Transitions to upper secondary education in Catalonia: a sociological analysis of education policy’, Education Policy Analysis Archives, 28: 102. Tarabini, A., Castejón, A. and Curran, M. (2020) ‘Capacidades, hábitos y carácter: atribuciones docentes sobre el alumnado de Bachillerato y Formación Profesional’, Papers: Revista de Sociologia, 105(2): 211. Tikkanen, J., Bledowski, P. and Felczak, J. (2015) ‘Education systems as transition spaces’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(3): 297–​310. Van Houtte, M. and Demanet, J. (2016) ‘Teachers’ beliefs about students, and the intention of students to drop out of secondary education in Flanders’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 54: 117–​27. Walther, A. Warth, A., Ule, M. and du Bois-​Reymond, M. (2015) ‘“Me, my education and I”: constellations of decision-​making in young people’s educational trajectories’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(3): 349–​71.

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PART II

The experience of upper secondary educational transitions

6

Working-​class fractions and practical rationalities in the choice of upper secondary education Alejandro Montes, Javier Rujas and Judith Jacovkis

For a large part of society, to speak of social class is to speak of an archaic, outdated concept. In part, this perception may be due to a widespread, non-​realistic representation of the different social classes as homogeneous groups, without recognising their numerous particularities and nuances. This somewhat monolithic conception has been transferred to the analysis of the educational inequalities between social classes. Hence, the working classes are often depicted in a linear and simplistic manner, leading to perspectives that have held working-​class young people and their families responsible for their school failure (Atkins, 2017). However, research has paid increasingly greater attention to the particularities of the different working-​class fractions (Ball and Vincent, 2007; Savage et al, 2013), permitting a deeper understanding of young people’s unequal experiences in specific fields, such as education, and of the rationalities guiding their decision-​making processes (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997; Ball and Vincent, 2007) in the transition from lower to upper secondary education. The experiences, trajectories, and educational transitions of young people have been analysed not only considering their social class but also the specificities of their class fraction (Reay, 2002; Ball and Vincent, 2007) and have thus been conceptualised as the result of a complex combination of systemic, institutional, and subjective factors (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). Aspects such as the unequal school engagement of young people, their greater or lesser distance from the school culture, the gap between aspirations and expectations and the way in which these are experienced can be observed in the educational transitions of young people from different social backgrounds and from different fractions within each social class (Ball, Maguire and Macrae, 2000; Ball et al, 2002). The objective of this chapter is to explore how different working-​class fractions deal with the processes of making their choices and transitions to upper secondary education. More specifically, it asks how working-​class 107

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young people use the resources of their different class fractions and cope with the tensions between their classed experiences, practices and expectations and the hegemonic school culture. It also identifies the practical rationalities underlying the choices made in upper secondary educational transitions and the way they contribute to the reproduction of social positions. The following questions frame this analysis: what differences can we find between working-​ class students’ experiences? How is working-​class heterogeneity reflected in the students’ educational trajectories? How are their choices and rationalities mediated by the objective and subjective dimensions of their class fraction? The chapter is organised as follows. The first section presents the theoretical background by exploring the literature on social classes, emphasising the importance of considering class fractions and their relevance for the study of inequalities in educational transitions. The second section describes the context and method by detailing the qualitative approach developed to analyse working-​class students’ rationalities and class identities, as well as the conceptualisation of working-​class fractions employed in this chapter. The next sections present the results of the analysis, exploring the unequal experiences of young people from different working-​class fractions, observing how aspects such as school engagement vary substantially between them. The second and the third part of the results dissect young people’s discourses about their aspirations and expectations and their choice processes regarding upper secondary education, highlighting the crucial role played by class in the construction of their mindsets and horizons of action. The final section of the chapter concludes by stressing the importance of conducting analyses that incorporate the growing variety of ways in which social class is expressed as a structuring variable of educational opportunities and decisions.

Working class fractions and educational transitions: sub-​classed choices In recent decades, there has been a substantial increase in the number of studies exploring the characteristics of the different fractions of the workingclass (Savage et al, 2013), although many of the currently dominant public and political discourses are still based on a homogenising vision embedded in deficit theories (Valencia, 1997). The historical development of the concept of social class, especially in recent decades, has gradually broadened the ways in which it is understood. As Szreter (1984) highlighted1, from a generally accepted scheme that structured society into six social classes, with professionals at the top and unskilled manual workers at the bottom, social sciences have gradually progressed to more complex and ‘sociologically informed’ categorisations exemplified by Goldthorpe et al’s (1980) and Wright’s (1985) models. 108

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However, new multidimensional methods for classifying social class have been developed in the last decade. Authors such as Savage et al (2013) and Atkinson (2010) have made an effort to conceptualise ‘new working-​class models’ that are better adapted to the economic, social and cultural characteristics of the 21st century. Based on conceptual work by Pierre Bourdieu (1987), these authors have developed a multidimensional model for the analysis of class stratification linked not only to inequalities in the labour market, but also to the interplay between the economic, social and cultural dimensions. These new models overcome the classical dichotomy between possession and non-​possession of production assets, incorporating cultural (educational credentials, activities and taste) and social (number and status of social contacts) aspects of social class. These contributions highlight the importance of analysing differences between class fractions. By conceptualising different class fractions, it is possible to grasp different identities that go beyond the conception of the working and middle classes as two large homogeneous blocks. Studies such as the one by Savage et al (2013) reveal the differences in the way these sub-​g roups (elite, established middle class, technical middle class, new affluent workers, traditional working‒class, emergent service workers and precariat) use the local space, forging links between meanings, contexts and relationships, as well as participating in different types of social relationships. However, in contemporary educational research, society is more commonly viewed as a pluralistic, multicultural or risk society, rather than as a classed one, even though research shows how difficult it is to view the effects of, for instance, ethnicity, culture and gender, as independent of social class (Nylund, 2012). Therefore, numerous authors have approached the relationship between class fractions and education (Reay, 2002; Ball and Vincent, 2007; Van Zanten, 2009), though the study of the middle-​and upper-​class fractions are much more common than ones addressing fractions or sub-​groups of the working classes. In this chapter, a Bourdieusian approach is adopted, using the concepts of capital and habitus to understand young people’s educational experiences, trajectories, and transitions, as well as their emerging rationalities in educational decision-​making (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997). This approach connects the analysis of educational trajectories and rationalities with the structural and institutional factors in which they are developed. Addressing the embeddedness of these processes and their different characteristics in terms of the way they are experienced by different fractions of the workingclass provides a nuanced understanding of social inequalities in upper secondary transitions (Dupriez et al, 2008). The literature has identified similarities and differences in the ways in which students from different fractions of the working-class experience their 109

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schooling (Van Zanten, 2009; Tarabini and Ingram, 2018) and forge different ‒ more familiar or distant ‒ relationships with school culture (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970). The many ways in which school is experienced reflect different power relations, as well as the role played by available economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital in the configuration of unequal sets of educational opportunities. In this sense, indicators of behavioural, cognitive or emotional (dis)engagement at school (Fredricks et al, 2004) strongly correlate with students’ social profiles and are predictive of phenomena such as disaffection and early leaving. Likewise, logics and horizons of action are also strongly influenced by the specific characteristics of social class, which reflect the privileges and disadvantages around which transitions to upper secondary education are constituted (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). As Atkins (2010) suggests, the rhetoric of ‘opportunity’ is merely ‘smoke and mirrors’ hiding the systematic bias whereby working-​class young people are channelled into Vocational Education and Training (VET) studies that end up leading to low-​paid and low-​skilled employment. Young people’s educational trajectories are the result of a complex combination of systemic, institutional, and subjective factors (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). Accordingly, aspects such as the cultural distance from the contents and structure of educational systems need to be considered when analysing the uneven opportunities of young people in education and, subsequently, in the labour market. The impact of unequal school experiences resulting from an unequal relationship with the school system is visible in the different educational transitions of young people of different social origins (Gillborn et al, 2012), and also among those from different class fractions within each social class. Likewise, not only does belonging to a class fraction affect school experiences, but it also permeates other symbolic spaces such as the construction of ‘normalised’ horizons of action that articulate the rationalities behind the transit between educational stages (Tarabini et al, 2021). This all suggests we need to consider the role of class identities and their projections on educational transition processes (Cuconato and Walther, 2015) in terms of self-​adaptation or self-​exclusion (Romito, 2018). Existing social inequalities can help to explain the gap between planned educational pathways (expectations) and desired career options (aspirations). In general terms, the more precarious the student’s situation, the greater the gap between them (Ball et al, 2002; Romito, 2018). One of the mechanisms identified as explaining this phenomenon is the aspiration reduction process: schools play a role in downgrading the aspirations of disadvantaged young people (Dupriez et al, 2012), who embrace this logic on the basis of their decreasing perception of the available opportunities (Ball et al, 2002). Therefore, the decision frameworks in which transitions to upper secondary education occur go beyond the limits of the strictly ‘rational’. In fact, these 110

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frameworks are also influenced by subjective, socially constructed aspects such as tastes, interests and horizons of action; these aspects are closely linked to the class ‘habitus’ of each fraction, which is inevitably crossed by the main axes of social inequality.

Context and method The analysis developed in this chapter considers transitions to upper secondary education and the interplay between structural factors (social class position and conditions) and the school experiences of working-​class youngsters in their first year of upper secondary education in two Spanish cities – Madrid and Barcelona. The divide between the two tracks (academic and vocational) of upper secondary education in Spain has traditionally been a classed one (Calero, 2008). Despite recent reforms to the education system and increase in the number of VET courses, the distribution of students across the two tracks is still heavily conditioned by their social background (Bernardi and Requena, 2010), which also affects their experiences in lower secondary education. Despite regional and local variations2, the organisation of the lower and upper secondary education system is governed by national acts and is thus similar in both cities. As explained in the introduction of this book (Chapter 1), after four years of formal comprehensive lower secondary education (12–​16 years), students can move to upper secondary education, which is the first non-​compulsory stage. The aim of this chapter is to understand how educational trajectories and choices vary according to the class fraction of working-​class students. Students’ narratives regarding their experiences in lower secondary education, their rationalities when choosing the upper secondary option for which they are enrolled and how they see themselves in the future are crucial to capture the interaction between personal trajectories and institutional and structural factors (Smyth and Hattam, 2001). Their discourses both express their experiences and produce frameworks of meaning that reflect the institutional and structural contexts in which they are embedded as well as the power relationships that characterise them (Hollingworth and Archer, 2010). The analysis draws on 68 interviews with working-​class students in the first year of upper secondary education in Barcelona (n =​49) and Madrid (n =​19)3. The interviews were carried out in 2019 and 2020 at seven schools in Barcelona and three in Madrid. All were transcribed verbatim and, for the purposes of this analysis, coded to collect information about the students’ social profiles, educational trajectories and experiences, and their discourses about their educational choice(s). Regarding their upper secondary choices, we focused on aspirations and expectations, the decision-​making process and the rationalities underlying them. 111

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In a first step, the sample was categorised according to the students’ class fractions. Interviews were classified into four groups, namely the ‘new affluent working-​class’ or NAWC (Savage et al, 2013), the ‘traditional working-​class’ (TWC), the ‘precarious working-​class’ (PWC), and the ‘at-​r isk of exclusion working-​class’ (AREWC). The characteristics of each group are specified in Table 6.1. The distribution of the sample in relation to the class fractions and to the upper secondary track in which the students were enrolled is specified in Table 6.2.

School experiences and educational trajectories School experiences and educational trajectories during lower secondary education are crucial for understanding students’ upper secondary choices and transitions4. This section examines these in the context of working-​class students, paying particular attention to different fractions. School experiences can be characterised in relation to the types of engagement with the school (Fredricks et al, 2004). Behavioural engagement can be understood as a student’s connection to the behaviour that is accepted and promoted by the school. Emotional engagement relates to the feelings students experience in relation to their schools, teachers, and peers. Cognitive engagement refers to the interest and motivation that learning activities arouse in students. School experiences are closely tied to students’ educational trajectories, understood as the characteristics of their passage through school in terms of school practices (grade retention, curricular adaptations, and ability grouping) and educational outcomes. According to the analysis of the interviews, working-​class students’ school experiences share some characteristics, while some differences can also be identified depending on the working-​class fraction they belong to. First, in general terms, most of the interviewees consider themselves ‘regular’ rather than ‘outstanding’ students. Second, most of them were enrolled for VET at the time of the interview, some as their first choice, and others after a year in Baccalaureate. Third, their school attitudes, with some exceptions, are of evasion and invisibility rather than of active resistance when they feel they do not belong to the school. Most of these students do not publicly challenge the school’s standards as transmitted through the regulative dimension of pedagogical discourse (Bernstein, 1990), but they do express their disengagement by trying to go unnoticed and being evasive in the classroom. As will be detailed below, many of them felt discomfort during lower secondary education. However, their willingness to stay at school rather than drop out may be one reason why they remain silent rather than express resistance. Finally, those from a migrant background, especially those who joined the education system in lower secondary, face additional difficulties 112

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Table 6.1: Working-​class fractions: description and classification Class fraction

Labour market position and economic capital

Social capital

New affluent Semiskilled and relatively working-class (NAWC) stable occupations. Moderate economic capital.

Intermediate levels of education (lower and upper secondary education) and ‘emerging cultural capital’*.

Moderately Small distance from school specialised contacts. culture. Education as a social elevator (engagement).

Traditional working-class (TWC)

Semiskilled and low-​skilled occupations, quite stable. Moderate-​low economic capital.

Low levels of education (secondary education) and low cultural capital.

Non-​specialised social contacts.

Moderate distance from school Factory workers, culture. warehouse assistants, administrative assistants, sales reps.

Precarious working-class (PWC)

Low-​skilled or unskilled occupations. Job instability. Low economic capital.

Low levels of education (secondary education or basic education) and very low cultural capital.

Non-​specialised social contacts.

Moderate–​high distance from school culture: delegation.

Cleaners, caregivers, hauliers, builders, waiters.

Very low education (basic or incomplete basic education) and very low cultural capital.

Non-​specialised social contacts.

High distance/​disconnection from school culture.

Unemployed, cleaners, caregivers (non-​ contract), street traders.

At-​risk of exclusion Unskilled or informal working-class (AREWC) occupations. Long periods of unemployment. Need for social care or benefits. Very low economic capital.

Distance from school culture**

Examples Kitchen assistants, nursing assistants, and other emergent jobs in the service sector.

Notes: *Based on the concept developed by Savage et al (2013). **As Martín Criado et al (2014) argue, drawing on Bourdieu and Passeron (1970), a key element in working-​class educational experiences is distance towards school culture, which is particularly high in its more precarious and low-​educated fractions.

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Education level and cultural capital

Educational Transitions and Social Justice Table 6.2: Sample of interviewed students by class fraction and upper secondary track  

Baccalaureate

VET

Total

NAWC

5

9

14

TWC

5

10

15

PWC

8

20

28

AREWC Total

3

8

11

21

47

68

adapting to social and curricular changes, linguistic challenges and problems related to recognition of their previous certificates.5 Looking at the specificities identified for each fraction, students from NAWC families tend to demonstrate positive bonding with the school, sharing the values, practices and norms of the hegemonic school culture. Their relationships with peers and teachers are good and they highlight the relevance of the latter in their motivations regarding learning activities, thus showing the connection between emotional and cognitive engagement. In fact, these students have fond memories of their previous school experiences. Their educational trajectories until the upper secondary transition were fairly straightforward: most of them succeeded in lower secondary education without grade retentions or major difficulties. Only a few attended lower secondary schools that group students by ability in some subjects, and consider this practice allowed them to access their upper secondary track more easily6. The following quotes show how their attitude is one of respect for school standards: “[In lower secondary education] I never had bad marks. … If the subject interested me I was always attentive, I joined in, asked questions … and when I didn’t like it much, I got distracted … but I always tried to pay attention in the classroom” (Pere, NAWC, VET). The interviews with TWC students make it evident that their school engagement is lower than with the NAWC group, mainly regarding cognitive aspects. While they are not characterised by disruptive behaviour in the classroom, their attachment to learning activities is more instrumental than expressive. Specifically, most of these students share the perception of the uselessness of what they studied during lower secondary education and transfer this perception to the Baccalaureate. The futility of what they are studying is related to their view of ‘academic’ education as too general for their interests, which they say are more specialised. Regarding their trajectory in lower secondary education, only a few are outstanding students, but most of them achieved the lower secondary certificate, albeit with some difficulties. In comparison to the NAWC fraction, these students tend to alternate acceptable results in some subjects with failures in others that they eventually pass. In some cases, they also had a full year of grade 114

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retention, while some dropped out of the education system for some time and accessed VET by taking an entrance exam7. In short, TWC students are aware of the importance of studying (identification with goals) but reflect a certain distance from the school culture in regard to both its contents and its discipline. This is shown in the following quote, which exemplifies the nuances of such detachment (Bernstein, 1990), which is not expressed the same way in all subjects. “In lower secondary I was neither popular nor unpopular, I was known. … And in the classroom … it depended on the subjects. In Catalan, Spanish and English I did nothing because I didn’t like them at all, in maths I didn’t care less, but in other subjects that I liked I used to pay attention” (Sonia, TWC, VET). The sense of belonging to school among students from PWC families seems weaker than that of the working-​class fractions described previously. Those who are taking the academic track, or started it on their teachers’ recommendations but have since moved to VET because it is what they wanted to do from the beginning, are an exception. While their behaviour is not disruptive in general, they generally have a low opinion of their schools, peers and teachers, and have little interest in learning activities. Many of them refer to the low expectations of their teachers regarding their abilities and their chances of success in the education system, and especially in the Baccalaureate. In contrast, those satisfied with their educational trajectories explain such feelings by highlighting the relevance of certain teachers. However, their discourses transmit their lack of motivation for learning activities, connected to their lack of interest in the contents. In terms of their educational trajectories, many of them had to repeat a full grade of lower secondary education and were grouped by ability, reducing their educational opportunities. Despite that, most of them obtained the lower secondary education degree. The ones who did not, took entrance exams to access VET. None of them considered dropping out of school after lower secondary. In fact, most of them entered upper secondary ‒ which they chose through guidance or their families’ insistence ‒ despite it not necessarily being what they wanted. This quote illustrates this conviction that they should continue studying regardless of the difficulties: “I was in [lower secondary] school because my parents obliged me to go. Basically, I was waiting to pass the [VET] entrance exam … but I never thought of dropping out” (Mariana, PWC, VET). The students from AREWC families share with the other fractions the self-​perception of not being good or disciplined enough as students. They tend to see themselves as restless and better at practical rather than theoretical study8 although, like their peers, they do not adopt, in general, attitudes of active resistance but of evasion or withdrawal. Their bonding to learning activities is not very strong, and they tend to admit that they did not study very hard in lower secondary education, and only did the bare minimum to pass the courses. Many of them share a good image of their teachers 115

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while some describe difficult experiences with their peers. There is not much grade repetition during lower secondary education within this group, though many acknowledge difficulties getting the certificate. Most of them were assigned to the lowest ability groups and, in line with what is shown by previous research in the field (Castejón, 2017), those who were not were the only ones to enter the Baccalaureate, thus indicating the impact of ability grouping in educational opportunities. The students’ resignation about the need to study despite their unwillingness to do so is reflected in the quote below, which also reflects both these students’ attitudes of evasion in the classroom and the difficulties related to their personal situations: ‘I used to talk with my friends, laugh when we were not supposed to, but I didn’t insult or bully the teachers. … I wasn’t expecting to repeat the full year, but I had problems at home, and I got distracted … and theory bores me. … And it’s not that I like studying that much, but I don’t dislike it either. I know it’s something I have to do.’ (Dildar, REWC, VET) This analysis of the school experiences and educational trajectories of working-​class students reinforces the conclusions of previous research (Reay, 1998; Ball, 2002) regarding their proximity to the school culture and norms and the classed nature of the school grammar (Tyack and Tobin, 1994). The analysis indicates nuances in the kind of bonding that students of different working-​class fractions construct with the school, and which somehow reproduce –​within the working-class –​the correlation between economic status and school engagement (Butler and Muir, 2017). The results suggest we need to take the analysis of experiences and trajectories beyond the classic classed approach and highlight the prevalence of stratified trajectories and experiences that lead, in turn, to stratified educational opportunities.

Working-class fractions and upper secondary aspirations and expectations Not only do students from different working-​class fractions experience different trajectories in upper secondary transitions, but their educational aspirations and expectations also suggest certain commonalities and differences. The differences between fractions are sometimes fuzzy or subtle, and sometimes emerge more clearly in the ‘extreme’ fractions (NAWC and AREWC). Furthermore, as the chosen upper secondary track has a specific impact on aspirations and expectations, differences between class fractions vary within each track. First, regarding educational aspirations and expectations, the aspiration to obtain a university degree or a higher VET level is shared by most 116

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working-​class students, against the common (mis)perception that working-​ class students share low aspirations (Harrison and Waller, 2018). However, the degree of stability and certainty of this aspiration and its distance from expectations depends on the fraction. For NAWC students, this aspiration is clearer and closer to their actual expectations. In the TWC and especially in the lower fractions, this aspiration is vaguer, and students subordinate their expected educational routes to university or upper VET to their results in upper secondary education and, for those in VET, also to the possibility of getting a job before. More specifically, all the interviewed working-​class students taking the Baccalaureate view upper VET as a second option should they fail make it to university. However, the lower the fraction (and so the lower their economic and cultural capital and stability), the less confident students feel about getting into university and the more they see higher VET as a probable option (or the first option), even when their results could be seen as good enough to try for university: “Depending on how the second year goes for me, I might take the university entrance exam9 and go to university, but … I’ll most probably take a VET programme. … If I do, I’m sure I won’t be going to university” (Dildar, AREWC, Baccalaureate). The working-​class intermediate VET students in our sample mostly aspire to taking an upper VET. Although some had aspirations of going to university in the past and have not completely lost hope, in the lower fractions they view university as highly improbable and uncertain ‒ especially in the AREWC group. In fact, most of their expectations have dropped. Most NAWC students, for instance, wanted to take the Baccalaureate and go to university, but in lower secondary education they opted for the vocational track and now aspire to longer VET studies to compensate for that. In contrast, it is more common among lower fractions to find VET students for whom the Baccalaureate or university are regarded as ‘unthinkable’ options (Archer et al, 2007). In fact, the role of university in working-​class students’ aspirations and expectations, irrespective of their fraction, is a key issue for understanding their ‘horizons of action’ (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997). While most of our interviewees consider university a possibility, only a minority express clear expectations of actually going. For some, this is related to academic difficulties in lower secondary education, which lowered their expectations. But most of them aspire to enter the labour market soon in order to acquire economic and personal independence. In five years from now, TWC, PWC and AREWC students in particular see themselves working while they finish their studies, or only working. In fact, some are aware that once they enter the labour market there is a risk they will abandon their studies, as the following quote illustrates: “Well, [in five years] I hope I’ll be studying for a university degree, hopefully, or starting one, because I have to pay for it myself and all … I hope I won’t lose the appetite for studying, which is what 117

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I fear most … if I start working and say: ‘Whoa, studying and working at the same time’ ” (Laura, TWC, VET). Here, a classed construction of time and ages is at play that sets the moment for acquiring independence, entering the labour market and providing for oneself in the 20s or even earlier (from 18) in the most precarious fractions. These time constraints on horizons of action are also related to the family’s economic capital: most young people aspire to pay for their further education as they perceive that their parents are short on money, especially in the lowest fractions, and they want or will need to provide for themselves: “As long as it is to study something useful, and something you like, then I don’t think paying matters, but it bites. That’s why, if I go to university, I’d rather get a job and pay for it myself than be a hanger-​on” (Rubén, TWC, VET). Moreover, most of our interviewees conceive upper secondary education as a bridge or passage towards the next educational stage, and only some VET students in the lower fractions believe an intermediate VET degree is enough to enter the labour market. In general, upper secondary choices are strategic: the upper fractions seek future opportunities or prestige in the mid-​term, and for the lower ones they are about mid-​term and short-​ term job opportunities. However, irrespective of the class fraction, more expressive justifications and ‘vocational’ accounts of choice10 can also be found concerning future professions and VET degrees. Baccalaureate students mostly want to go to university and enter liberal professions, especially in the NAWC group, but some have lowered their aspiration from university to upper VET. Others, such as the AREWC, have replaced their ideas of possible future careers in medicine, veterinary science or law with more modest ones (the police force, IT, tourism, and so on) after reassessing their possibilities in their first year in the Baccalaureate, as the following quote shows: ‘I’d wanted to be a doctor since I was a kid. I loved healthcare and all that. But being realistic, I don’t see myself there. Not only because of the cut-​off marks, but also because you have to study a lot more. … I’ve had the experience this year of realising which subjects I don’t like, so no. And [I’d like to be] a policewoman, because I like law and I see myself there.’ (Amira, AREWC, Baccalaureate) For their part, VET students in the NAWC fraction hope to access upper VET and more or less autonomous and semiskilled manual occupations with certain prestige (cookery, physiotherapy, aesthetics, laboratory work). Those in other fractions usually aspire to manual and low-​skilled occupations, and ideally wish to eventually start their own businesses (hair salon, shop, garage, and so on), but the lower fractions are also realistic about this possibility: “If only I had a business, but being realistic, it’s difficult to run a business, I don’t 118

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see myself doing that. I’d rather work for someone else and be in a good financial situation” (Nala, PWC, VET). Furthermore, except for the NAWC, students rule out more expressive choices related to their hobbies (arts, dance, music) prioritising more ‘realistic’ ones, which provide short-​ and mid-​term employment opportunities. Meanwhile, in the AREWC fraction the possibility of taking more ‘vocational’ options with uncertain job opportunities, like the arts Baccalaureate or artistic VET programmes, is not even considered, and in the PWC fraction this option is more often taken into consideration but usually dismissed or postponed, as the following quote shows: “We are five at home. Currently, my father is the one with a job, and he told me I could do the arts Baccalaureate if I want, but to take a VET degree before or something, to be able to work and help at home” (Albert, PWC, VET). This choice can be viewed as ‘a form of adaptation to and consequently acceptance of the necessary’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 372). This practical ‘realism’ of the working classes excludes personally rewarding but materially uncertain activities from their ‘horizons of choice’, unintentionally reinforcing the reproduction of their social position, as they usually ‘diverge’ from more qualified artistic and cultural occupations into others that are more manual or technical ones and are seen to offer more immediate ‘employability’.

Working-class students and the upper secondary choice process Concerning the process of upper secondary choices, families’ aspirations and practices play an important role among the working class. All our interviewees report their families share a common belief in the importance of going beyond lower secondary education and the desire for their children to attain a higher level of education than their own. Nonetheless, some differences emerge between the fractions. In the NAWC, the aspiration to go into higher education is fostered by parents, who share a marked belief in the importance of education and the social mobility it generates. In the other fractions, this belief seems vaguer and is usually stronger when their children have entered the Baccalaureate. Moreover, parents’ expectations are changeable depending on their children’s academic results (Martín Criado and Gómez Bueno, 2017). For instance, according to the students’ accounts, although working-​class parents would like their offspring to continue beyond lower secondary education, they seem more willing to accept the choice of the vocational track if their results are low, especially if they understand it is what their children ‘really want’ or it is the best for their well-​being: ‘[My mom] told me it was better for me to retake the school year and then take the Baccalaureate, because it is more prestigious, but she understood I wasn’t OK with that and she eventually understood’ (Daniela, AREWC, VET). 119

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Academic grades therefore play an important role in decision-​making, affecting the students’ academic identity, as well as families with harsh experiences of the academic track or in the labour market. ‘My sister did the Baccalaureate and she always seemed to be studying and was always under a lot of stress. … My friends also told me not to go to university if I didn’t want to, it’s too stressful. … If you want to do a degree, you need to get the right grade, and if I didn’t think I was much of a student in lower secondary education, then I’d be even less so in the Baccalaureate. I couldn’t see myself getting, for example, I don’t know what grade you need to get for psychology, but it’s a high one, an eight or something.’ (Rubén, TWC, VET) The role played by working-​class parents, as it appears in students’ discourses, is not homogeneous: while some do not engage in the choice process ‒ because of difficult working conditions or family situations ‒ and a few seem highly active when it comes to searching for information, attending open days and helping with paperwork, most of them do help their children discussing their possible choices. These differences, although related to families’ living conditions and capitals, are not always clearly aligned with class fractions. Students’ accounts reveal parental influence is sometimes ambivalent: while generally supporting their children’s upper secondary choices, some warn them about the difficulty of the Baccalaureate, as a kind of incorporated realism that is the product of their own educational trajectories and experiences and of their perceptions of their children’s grades and possibilities. ‘What your parents want, as they didn’t get an education, is for you to go as far as possible. So, when you tell them that you want to leave school at 16, they say: “you’re stupid, kid, I didn’t get an education and I’ve regretted it all my life.” ’ (Mario, TWC, VET) ‘[My mom] always tells me in my place she would have taken the easiest path, she’d have taken VET and that’s all, but she says I’ve worked really hard and she’s very happy.’ (Lucía, TWC, Baccalaureate) Parents and older siblings emerge in the students’ narratives as significant in providing useful knowledge, experience, guidance and support. In the more economically stable and educated fractions (NAWC and TWC), this support implies certain knowledge of the different educational pathways and is sometimes combined with external guidance resources. In the PWC, students report being pushed by their parents to study further but some also report being encouraged to lower their aspirations, partially delegating guidance 120

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and choices to teachers and counsellors. In the AREWC fraction, parents of Baccalaureate students seem to place high expectations on their children, conceiving university as the gateway to better jobs and social mobility, or at least to escaping precarious life conditions. However, VET students in this fraction report receiving support and talking with their parents about their choices, who sometimes accept these based on their own restricted knowledge of the available options: “They don’t know much about it, but they support me. … It’s not as if they know much about the subject, but they let me in the sense that they let me study, it’s not like they ask many questions” (Pol, AREWC, VET). Information and the scope for supporting one’s children in their upper secondary choices are therefore unequal within the working class, depending on each fraction’s experiences and cultural and social capital. A significant number of working-​class students, except for the NAWC, choose to follow one of their parents’ occupations or to fulfil their parents’ own unachieved aspirations. Older siblings, uncles and aunts are also sometimes emulated. Although not widespread in our sample, ‘inheritance’ of professional aspirations is more present in the TWC, PWC and AREWC fractions and almost absent in the more affluent fraction, where economic and cultural resources and expectations of social mobility are higher. The preference for specific activities can also be ‘inherited’: “I think [my interest in mechanics] came from my father, because he likes cars, rough things, metal, all that, a lot” (Alexia, AREWC, VET)11. But choices sometimes also relate to everyday practical activities and hobbies (animals, sports, videogames) and ‘styles’ (Archer et al, 2007). Choice is thus connected with what young people already like and know, which relates to their class lifestyles. Teachers can also play a significant role in the decision-​making process. For several TWC students in our sample, they encouraged ‘realistic’ choices adjusted to academic results or chosen future careers. Significantly, the Baccalaureate students from this fraction with better academic results and higher expectations explicitly acknowledge the desire to seek a school with a better reputation outside their municipalities and neighbourhoods in order to progress educationally and socially ‒ to partly escape their class contexts: “I think I’d have changed anyway because my school was OK but … the atmosphere there was very negative” (María, TWC, Baccalaureate). Interestingly, for some VET students in the NAWC, the vocational track is viewed as a deliberate, resolute personal choice, even if it means going against their teachers’ judgement. However, in some cases for the lower fractions, guidance seems to be frequently based on ability, and not so much on personal tastes. The fact that teachers emphasise that they should be content with intermediate VET shows the low expectations they put on these students: “They told us to ‘choose what you like, but keep studying, don’t leave it at compulsory education’ … and they told us to go have a look at VET courses” (Ángela, AREWC, VET). 121

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Finally, different rationalities are combined in students’ narratives of upper secondary decision-​making, irrespective of their class fraction. Those who take the Baccalaureate choose this track because they needed it to do what they want to do, because they perceive themselves as able to do it, because it is a ‘better valued’ option that leads to better career opportunities than VET and because it gives them more time to figure out what they want to do. Some members of the AREWC fraction add other reasons, such as following the path set by their family or siblings or not disappointing them, and/​or avoiding ending like some of their friends who entered the labour market early and are now suffering from poor working conditions. Although some VET students explain their choices in terms of a ‘vocation’ discovered in their childhood or a personal interest developed later on, one of the main rationales is to avoid the Baccalaureate: either because they expect to fail in the academic track and choose the vocational one as an alternative path that leads to the same ‒ or a similar ‒ destination, or because they perceive it as too generic and not ‘made for’ those who know what they want to do. Especially in the lower fractions of the working-​class, accounts also commonly refer to ability or personality: PWC and AREWC students taking VET usually feel they are ‘not the studying kind’ or ‘lazy’, and are not positive about going to university: “I don’t think I’m able to do it” (Mónica, PWC, VET). They feel they do not ‘fit into’ the academic track, or that it is not ‘for them’ (Reay et al, 2001; Archer et al, 2007). They rule out the Baccalaureate ‒ some never considered it a possibility ‒ because they think it is harder and requires more effort and academic work, and because they might need to repeat subjects or contents, but also because they perceive it to offer fewer immediate job opportunities. VET, on the contrary, is viewed to be specific, to provide ‘useful’ knowledge and to allow them to start working earlier, as the following quote shows: ‘The Baccalaureate is for getting into university and graduating, that’s all. … It doesn’t open up so many doors, you’ll get to work in what you really like in your 20s. On VET programmes, in a year or two, before you’re 18 you could be doing an internship and at 18 working in what you like’ (Girl, VET, AREWC). In this sense, ruling out the Baccalaureate (and university) is not experienced as a trauma by these working-​class students as they place it beyond their aspirations and expectations and do not conceive it as an option. A logic of self-​selection (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970) and cooling out (Goffman, 1952) is therefore at play, with the cooperation of family, friends and teachers, among those who choose to avoid the Baccalaureate, which is most common in the lower fractions and especially in AREWC. While all working-​class students appreciate the Baccalaureate for its greater social 122

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prestige and recognition compared to VET, and because it is the quickest path to university, they usually identify very little with its contents and lack of professional specialisation. Hence, and especially for VET students, the self-​selection logic combines with a more instrumental discourse that is focused on the utility of knowledge, its practicality and a less stressful student life in VET, although some recognise they chose VET because they did not have any choice.

Conclusions This chapter has explored how the different working-​class fractions deal with the processes of choice and transition to upper secondary education. Departing from a theoretical approach aimed at opening the black box of social classes as a ‘homogeneous set’, it has shown how working-​class heterogeneity is reflected in students’ educational trajectories and experiences and how different rationalities are constituted based on the characteristics of the different fractions of the working class. Considering the complexity of class fractions, it provides new evidence to understand socio-​educational inequalities in upper secondary transitions. First, the chapter provides a contextualised approach to the study of working-​class fractions, drawing on four large categories: the ‘new affluent working-class’ (Savage et al, 2013), the ‘traditional working-class’, the ‘precarious working-class’, and the ‘at-​risk of exclusion working-class’. These fractions provide a complex, detailed portrait of the existing diversity within the working class according to occupations, amounts of economic, cultural or social capital, and distance from or familiarity with school culture, leading to unequal horizons of action. Second, the analysis has shown how students from different working-​class fractions have experienced their school trajectories. Most of them share a consideration of themselves as ‘regular’ students (equated with ‘not good enough’) and moderate levels of engagement. However, relevant differences between class fractions have been identified, in particular with regard to distance from the school culture, with more affluent fractions tending to be closer and more connected to the school culture. While previous research has highlighted the centrality of social class in explaining proximity to school culture, and consequently, the unequal distribution of educational opportunities (Ball et al, 2002), these findings shed light on the way this mechanism works also within the working class. Third, the analysis also identifies heterogeneous aspirations and expectations within the working class. Instability at school or in living conditions does not benefit future projections or mid-​term plans. Indeed, most working-​ class students, and especially those in the lower fractions, prioritise the ideas of ‘getting by’ (Bourdieu, 1984) and ‘wait and see’, and are less likely 123

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‘to speculate about the future’ (Ball et al, 1995: 60). However, there is no mechanical correspondence between aspirations and expectations and class fractions: the former are dynamically defined and redefined in a process that involves the students’ families, friends and teachers, and their school outcomes. Hence, students’ school trajectories, choices of upper secondary tracks (Baccalaureate or VET), and the structural characteristics of their class fractions play a mediating role by reaffirming imagined horizons of action or, on the contrary, questioning them and increasing the gap between aspirations and expectations. Fourth, the analysis of expectations in upper secondary choices also shows an observed, generalised internalisation of the need to continue studying after lower secondary education. All working-​class young people, regardless of their class fraction, consider the pursuit of upper secondary studies to be necessary. However, the form and goal of this varies substantially. Those in the Baccalaureate, as well as those from the highest working-​class fractions, have the highest aspirations and the least reduction of expectations. However, those in VET, as well as those from lower working-​class fractions, present more diffuse, volatile, and fragile horizons. Furthermore, in various cases a negotiation of downward expectations is observed. In the less well-​off fractions, university does not frequently appear as a ‘thinkable’ option. This highlights the unequal distance from school culture between fractions of the same class and its impact on the construction of both expectations and aspirations (Romito, 2018). Finally, the rationalities at play in the process of upper secondary educational choices underline various aspects. First, the analysis shows that it is not true that working-​class families ‘couldn’t care less’: in general, as the students’ discourses show, families support and contribute to the process of choosing upper secondary studies. However, there are substantial differences between fractions in terms of the quality or quantity of information available to them. Furthermore, this participation does not necessarily occur from a logic of social promotion. In the choices of less well-​off fractions, ‘realism’ and ‘immediacy’ are often prioritised over taste or even ability. Second, a tendency to ‘inherit’ traditional professions characteristic of certain fractions of the working class has been observed, which is especially apparent in the TWC. Although it does not occur mechanically, there is identification with one’s closest significant environments and an adaptation of expectations ‒ in contexts of frustrated aspirations ‒ that is articulated consciously and actively. Finally, time is a relevant factor in the construction of horizons of action. The better working-​class conditions and positions are (and the greater their capitals), the broader the timeframe of educational choice. And the worse these material conditions are, the narrower and shorter term they are. This highlights the conception of time as an available ‒ and uneven ‒ resource that urges young people from the most precarious fractions to make their 124

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decisions from the logic of a ‘waste of time’ ‒ while the better-​off fractions develop discourses of ‘investment of time’. Overall, the chapter helps us to better understand educational transitions by adding more and better indicators of how they operate unevenly among the different fractions of the working class. It also contributes to open the black box of the ‘working class’, offering nuances that improve our understanding of its internal heterogeneity. In short, it improves understanding of the rationalities of action as socially framed and unequal, and questions the approaches that assume that youth educational choices are merely ‘rational’ ones. Notes Szreter analyses the origins and evolution of the classification of occupations and social profiles in Great Britain by introducing a sociological perspective to this topic. Until then, the predominant class scheme was that of the Registrar General, which was more administrative than analytical. 2 See Chapter 2 for a comparative analysis of how the two global cities under study, Barcelona and Madrid, manage the provision of upper secondary education. 3 See Chapter 1 for full information of the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the other chapters are produced. 4 See Chapter 5 for a detailed statistical analysis of how different school trajectories and experiences during lower secondary schooling lead to profoundly disparate upper secondary educational transitions. 5 Chapter 7 specifically addresses the many barriers that migrant students face with regard to their upper secondary educational transitions and choices. 6 These students’ experiences resonate with the typology developed in Chapter 5, particularly regarding those conceptualised as ‘good students’. 7 Students without a lower secondary education certificate can take an exam to access VET if they are older than 15 years. See Chapter 1 for further details of the structure of the Spanish education system. 8 See Chapter 9 for a detailed analysis of how VET students’ learner identities are mostly grounded on the rejection of theoretical knowledge. 9 As indicated in Chapter 1, in Spain, students who pass the Baccalaureate and want to go to university must take the national university entrance exam (called EBAU). Their chances of being accepted for university courses depend both on their results in the Baccalaureate and in this exam. 10 See Chapter 4 for a detailed explanation of how teachers mobilise and define vocations to make sense of young people’s upper secondary choices. 11 Chapter 8 focuses on the impact of gender on upper secondary educational transitions and choices, particularly in the case of non-​traditional VET itineraries. Alexia’s case is explored in depth in this chapter, together with other narratives of boys and girls that provide crucial information on how tastes, dispositions and choices are inherently classed and gendered. 1

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Understanding migrant students’ transitions to upper secondary education: devalued capitals and nonstandard timeframes Martí Manzano and Aina Tarabini

Educational transitions are a key process for understanding the school and life trajectories of young people (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). During transition processes, systemic, institutional and individual factors define unequal trajectories for individuals depending on their position in the axes of social inequality (Cuconato and Walther, 2015). In comprehensive educational systems –​as in Spain1 –​the transition to upper secondary education is the first moment in young people’s lives when their educational trajectories branch off into different pathways to which unequal and hierarchical meanings are attributed (Nylund and Rosvall, 2016). The aim of this chapter is to analyse the impact of the migratory histories of young people and their families on their upper secondary educational transition processes in the education system of their country of destination. Specifically, we focus on inequality directly associated with the migrant status of young people which, although it acts in concert with axes of ethnic/​ racial inequality, has its own causes and form that need to be identified and analysed as such (Pinson and Arnot, 2020). Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capitals (2012), the chapter starts from the assumption that migrant origin is a specific axis of inequality that generates uneven conditions in the transition to upper secondary education in comparison to young people without migrant family backgrounds. In Spain, the migratory boom of the late 1990s led to the incorporation of high numbers of migrant students in the country’s education systems. Despite the slowdown in immigration as a result of the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, the processes of family reunification and the gradual generational shift from migrant students to students of migrant descent explain why more than a quarter of students currently enrolled in compulsory education in Catalonia are migrants or descendants of migrants (Bayona et al, 2020). As for the distribution of these students among the different upper secondary tracks, studies (Castejón et al, 2020; Bayona and Domingo, 2021) confirm that in 129

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Spain, as in most European countries, migrant students are overrepresented in Vocational Education and Training (VET) tracks in comparison to native2 students. We therefore need to understand the mechanisms that explain this uneven distribution. Analysis of the students’ capital and, more specifically, of the relationship between theirs and their families’ cultural capital with the school institution, is a classic and well-​established tradition in the study of inequalities within the sociology of education (Bernstein, 2003; Van Zanten, 2005; Bourdieu and Passeron, 2008). However, there is still a long way to go in including the study of migration in a a research field that usually focuses on class-​ related dynamics. Migratory processes imply abrupt shifts between social fields that generate major changes in the patterns of migrants’ conversion of capital and, therefore, of their recognition inside and outside of the school institution. This chapter contributes to a better understanding, from a dynamic and transnational perspective, of capital flows and their devaluation through migration, and the explanatory factors of migrant youth school trajectories in general and of their transitions towards upper secondary education in particular. The chapter is organised as follows: it begins by presenting the theoretical grounds on which the analysis is based and makes particular use of Bourdieusian analytical resources to analyse the devaluation of migrant students’ capitals. Second, it explains the methodology and the sample used to conduct the analysis. The third section presents detailed results, starting with a statistical analysis that shows the educational inequalities between native and migrant students in both lower and upper secondary education, and continuing with a qualitative analysis of three main aspects: 1) capital devaluation and its consequences for the occupational and educational achievements of families and students; 2) the effects of linguistic capital on the upper secondary transitions of young migrants; and 3) the fit and misfit between the timeframes of migrant projects and the standards regulated by the education system. We close the chapter with some conclusions that summarise the main contributions and that open new debates and research questions.

A Bourdieusian toolbox to analyse the devaluation of migrant capital In recent years, numerous studies in the sociology of education (Cui, 2015, 2017; Franceschelli, 2016; Scandone, 2018) have drawn on Pierre Bourdieu’s work to analyse educational phenomena marked by migration and ethnicity. The theoretical triad of the concepts of field, habitus and (of special importance to this chapter) capital has been shown to be adaptable to the study of migrant trajectories and their consequences for educational processes. 130

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The concept of habitus can strike a balance between the structured dispositions of individuals and the intrinsic social change caused by migration. Some studies (Nowicka, 2015; Thatcher and Halvorsrud, 2016) point to the transformations and imbalances that habitus undergoes on arrival in new social fields in the destination country. All emigration is a rupture, so a certain period of disconnect is inevitable, involving relative ignorance and unawareness of the rules of the new social fields that are entered (Sayad, 2010). Likewise, capital ‘is given its value and efficacy by the specific laws of each field’ (Bourdieu, 2012: 129). It is therefore essential to identify how capital loses, maintains or gains value in the destination societies. The remoteness of social contacts, the (im)possibility of getting educational certificates recognised or even financial capital in the form of currency from countries of origin generate a loss of conversion value in the new social fields of the countries of destination (Joy, Game and Toshniwal, 2018). Consequently, the cultural capital of young people and their families, a fundamental predictor of educational trajectories in general and of educational transitions in particular, also suffers from devaluation. The relationship between cultural capital and education processes is derived from the relational understanding between school and social class: from the pedagogical point of view, social classes are at different distances from school culture and are differently inclined to recognise and acquire it (Bourdieu and Passeron, 2008: 126). So, the school institution rewards and recognises one type of capital over others. As Tara J. Yosso (2005) argues, it is not a matter of students of migrant descent having a lower or deficient cultural capital, but rather that their cultural capital is neither known nor recognised by the school. Capital devaluation, which takes different forms depending on the migrants’ social positions in their country of origin and the contexts in which they arrive in the destination country (Erel, 2010), triggers different strategies on the part of those affected to recover the lost value (Joy et al, 2018). One of the most common strategies to avoid this capital devaluation consists of an investment in cultural capital through the education system for themselves or their descendants. Migrants might also focus their agency on repositioning themselves within the destination country in fields where their cultural capital of origin holds value. One of the clearest processes of the effect of capital devaluation on young people’s educational trajectories is found in the linguistic sphere. Linguistic capital is a type of incorporated cultural capital that refers to the intellectual and social skills that are generated by being able to communicate in more than one language or style (Yosso, 2005: 78). Leading authors within the sociology of education cite sociolinguistic fit as one of the fundamental elements to explain the proximity and distance between the students and the school institution (Bernstein, 2003). One of the main conclusions of these analyses is 131

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that familiarity with the language of the destination country is a necessary but not sufficient condition to ensure positive recognition of linguistic capital. It is not only a matter of speaking, writing and thinking fluently in the language of the destination country, but also of understanding the sociolinguistic codes that the education system knows and recognises. This generates, for practical purposes, a dual barrier for migrant working-​class students: knowledge both of the required languages and of ‘good’ use of these same languages. When studies on language and literacy have focused on transnational realities marked by migration, they have used a Bourdieusian approach that allows them to understand languages and literacy as cultural capitals with different values in different social fields, such as within the family, workplace and, of course, school (Lam et al, 2012). In schools specifically, transnational analyses have focused both on young people and on the school institution itself. As noted by Eva Lam et al (2012) in their review of the literature on the topic, studies highlight both academic trajectories marked by a lack of recognition and representation of language and cultures, as well as a wide diversity of strategies to adapt to the devaluation of cultural and linguistic capital. They also stress the importance of the school institution through its role in the recognition and/​or invisibility of these young people’s capital and adaptation to their socio-​educational and linguistic needs. Some studies (Codó and Patiño-​Santos, 2014; Bonizzoni et al, 2014) have noted that low proficiency in the vehicular language of the destination country’s education system is an important factor in the formation and projection of teachers’ expectations. For example, in a study in Italy, ‘mastery of the Italian language is assumed to be one of the first and most legitimate criteria in judging a student’s ability to cope with upper secondary school requirements’ (Bonizzoni et al, 2014: 6). So, linguistic capital as recognised by the school is an indispensable condition for teachers and students themselves to consider the transition towards the more prestigious upper secondary tracks as even possible.

Methodology Our aim in this chapter is to identify the way in which the devaluation of cultural capital affects the upper secondary educational transitions of students of migrant origin. We have conducted mixed methodology research consisting of a questionnaire (n =​1,318) and qualitative interviews (n =​19) with students in the first year of upper secondary education both in the academic and vocational tracks at seven schools in the city of Barcelona.3 We explore, firstly, the impacts on the migrant generation of two main quantitative variables 1) educational results in lower secondary education, both in terms of grades and retention4; and 2) the transition to the academic or vocational track of upper secondary education. Second, and in order to 132

Migrant students’ transitions and timeframes Table 7.1: Understanding migrant students’ transitions: themes and codes for qualitative analysis Themes

Codes

Migratory process

Migratory process: how, when, from where, with whom Incorporation into the Spanish education system: school, stage, year

Family capital

Forms of economic capital (in the countries of origin and destination) Forms of social capital (in the countries of origin and destination) Forms of cultural capital (in the countries of origin and destination)

Educational trajectory

Academic results (in the countries of origin and destination) Self-​concept as a student

test the effect of capital devaluation, we compare the unequal capacity of parents to convert capital into jobs and educational achievements by their descendants between native and migrant students. This involves analysing a sub-​sample of the questionnaire made up of those students who have parents who have studied at university, to thereby identify how an equivalent educational credential (a university degree) is more or less convertible for natives and migrants. Taking a qualitative approach, we then analyse the interviews to capture discourses of young migrants about the factors they identify as significant for explaining their upper secondary transitions. From the total number of interviews with young people conducted in Barcelona (n =​68), 19 were selected for analysis in this chapter, corresponding to young people of migrant origin, both first generation (n =​10) and second generation (n =​9). Seven of these young people were in the first year of Baccalaureate (the academic track of upper secondary education) at the time of the interview and 12 were taking the vocational track, VET. All of the interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded with ATLAS.ti. The analysis consisted of a first systematic reading of the interviews to capture the specific factors at work in the upper secondary transitions of students of migrant origin to then proceed with a thematic analysis thereof. The themes and codes used to perform the analysis are as follows (Table 7.1).

Results The results of this chapter explore how the migratory processes of young people and their families affect their upper secondary educational transitions. First, we use the data from the questionnaire to present an overview of the 133

Educational Transitions and Social Justice Table 7.2: Distribution of grades, grade retention and upper secondary tracks by migrant origin   Grades* Grade retention

Native

Second generation

First generation

Sufficient/​Satisfactory

40.1%

61.6%

70.1%

Good

45.5%

31.9%

24.3%

Repeated year at least once

17.6%

37.3%

43.6%

Never repeated a year

Upper Vocational secondary Academic track

82.4%

62.7%

56.4%

40.6%

54.5%

71.3%

59.4%

45.5%

28.8%

Notes: p ≤ 0.01. Value of Cramér’s V: for the variable ‘Grades’ =​0.169. For the variable ‘Grade Retention’ =​0.233. For the variable ‘Upper Secondary Track’ =​0.211. *The ‘Excellent’ value is excluded from this table for statistical reasons (expected frequency for a cell less than 5 cases).

educational situations of native and migrant students both in terms of their educational results during lower secondary education and in terms of their distribution between upper secondary tracks. In line with previous studies (Aparicio and Portes, 2014; Kilpi-​Jakonen, 2011), the results of the questionnaire suggest, firstly, that migrant students systematically achieve poorer results during lower secondary education (both in terms of grades and retention) and they appear in greater numbers in vocational upper secondary education than native students5. As detailed in Table 7.2, first generation students are particularly overrepresented in the low grade range (sufficient/​satisfactory, 70.1 per cent) and underrepresented in the high grade range (good, 24.3 per cent) and are also the ones with the highest grade retention rates during their time at school (43.6 per cent of first generation migrant students have repeated a year at least once, compared to 17.6 per cent of native students). Likewise, 71.3 per cent of these students take VET after finishing lower secondary education, as opposed to 40.6 per cent of native students. For all indicators, second generation students are in an intermediate position between both groups. ‘Degrees aren’t worth much here’: The devaluation of cultural capital Capital is devalued when its conversion value is reduced as a result of young people and their families’ migratory processes. To identify this effect, occupational and educational indicators are compared between migrant and non-​migrant origin students in families where at least one parent has a university degree. The hypothesis of this analysis is that: because of capital 134

Migrant students’ transitions and timeframes Table 7.3: Family social class of the children of parents with university degrees   Social class

Native

Migrants

Upper middle class

13.3%

4.1%

Middle class

75.5%

58.2%

Working class

11.3%

37.8%

Notes: p ≤ 0.01. Cramér’s V =​0.293.

devaluation, migrants are less likely to convert a university degree (objectified cultural capital) into jobs and educational achievements than natives. The variables that are compared are families’ occupational positions, summarised as the variable ‘social class’6, the educational results of their children, as the variable ‘grades’ and the upper secondary track that the students take. We can observe that, although they all have a university degree, parents have unequal possibilities of converting their institutionalised cultural capital into better status jobs (Table 7.3) or better grades for their children (Table 7.4) depending on whether they are native or migrant. Regarding the unequal ability to convert credentials into employment, while 88.8 per cent of native parents with university degrees have middle-​ or upper-​middle-​class jobs, only 62.3 per cent of parents with the same level of studies but from migrant backgrounds hold similar positions. Our interpretation of the adjusted residuals shows that the main variation is found among the working classes. Migrant parents with university degrees are highly overrepresented in working-​class status jobs, to the extent that more than one in three cannot convert their academic credentials into a job of a status corresponding to that qualification. In other words, it is easier for natives to use a university degree to get a well-​paid job than it is for migrants. Two examples of students with parents with university degrees whose ability to convert their degree has been devalued are the cases of Yanire and Lotfi: Q: A: Q: A:

Did your mother study in Honduras? Yes, a degree in Business Administration. What’s her job now? She doesn’t work in that. She’s a cleaner … because degrees, what you’ve studied, aren’t worth much here. They don’t recognise the certificate. (Yanire, first generation, family from Honduras, academic track)

‘Right now [my mother] is looking for work, because she always has done. She’s not an English teacher anymore because she’s 56 and she’s 135

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been losing things, she gets by doing micro-​jobs here for example, last year she worked as cultural intermediary, now she’s working looking after an old lady, sometimes she does cleaning work when she gets the chance, she’s doing what she can to bring some money home.’ (Lofti, second generation, family from Algeria, academic track) Yanire’s case exemplifies the legal dimension of the devaluation of credentials, given the difficulty in getting educational qualifications recognised. Meanwhile, Lotfi’s case is a chance to examine the dimension of incorporated capital and how its value is reconfigured in the social fields of the destination country. The cultural capital that Lotfi’s mother has made use of to work in Spain is not the institutionalised capital of her university degree, but an incorporated capital based on her familiarity with her origin country’s culture and language. It is worth little in Algeria but in Catalonia it is rare and valuable capital for use in jobs such as cultural mediation. This is an exemplary case of simultaneous devaluation of certain capital while the value of other capital is raised. As for the variables related to schooling, we also note a devaluation effect (Table 7.4): having parents with university degrees positively affects young people’s degrees. However, if that parent has migrated to Spain, the ability to convert that cultural capital into good grades for the child is visibly reduced. As shown in Table 7.4, while only 29 per cent of young people with university graduate parents that are not from a migrant background are in the ‘sufficient/​satisfactory’ grade range, the value shoots up to 54.2 per cent for students with parents of a similar education level, but who are migrants. Likewise, the percentage of migrant students in the table with ‘very good/​ excellent’ grades amounts to 3.1 per cent, significantly fewer than the 17.2 per cent for native students. As for tracks, students with parents that have a university degree are comparatively more likely to take the academic track than those without, but the intensity differs depending on whether they are native or migrant. While 80.9 per cent of native young people whose parents have university Table 7.4: Grades and track of the children of adults with university degrees   Grades

Upper secondary track

Native

Migrant

Sufficient/​satisfactory

29%

54.2%

Good

53.9%

42.7%

Very good/​excellent

17.2%

3.1%

Academic

80.9%

62.8%

Vocational

19.1%

37.2%

Notes: p ≤ 0.01. Cramér’s V: For the variable ‘Grades’ =​0.238. For the variable ‘Upper secondary track’ =​0.177.

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degrees were studying for a Baccalaureate, the figure for migrant students was 18 percentage points lower at 62.8 per cent. Continuing with Yanire’s example, this is what she says when asked about the academic support she receives from her mother: Q: There are subjects that you’re good at and others where you don’t do so well. And do you look for help with the subjects that you struggle with? A: Yes, I go to my mum’s friends. My mother didn’t know how difficult this was going to be, because people might have told her that it’s not so easy. My mum thinks chemistry is just about knowing the periodic table. … Q: Is your mother very demanding with your schoolwork? A: Yes, very. She doesn’t know if I have homework or not, but she’s very demanding about my grades. She always says she’ll support me as far as I want to go. (Yanire, first generation, family from Honduras, academic track) Capital devaluation is expressed here in the difficulties that Yanire’s mother has to offer her academic support or guidance with the available tracks prior to transition to upper secondary education7. When they were discussing the best ways to deal with the transition, they had to ask other people because “my mother and I had no idea”. This quotation also shows that not having the useful capital to support her daughter’s educational trajectory is compatible with ambitious educational aspirations. This is the tension described in the literature (Jackson, 2012; Fernández-R ​ eino, 2016) between high aspirations among some migrant groups and the greater difficulties they experience throughout their educational trajectories in the country of destination. ‘I found the language thing very hard’: the importance of linguistic capital All interviewed students of immigrant origin, with the notable exception of second generation Baccalaureate students, described academic difficulties related to the Catalan language8 (including for descendants of Latin American migrants) and also with Spanish for those of non-​Spanish-​speaking origin: ‘I was quite good at it at first. I mean, I was keen and all that. I was doing quite well in all subjects, getting good grades and all, except for Catalan because there was reading material and I found that hard and so I just got 5 or 6. … In fourth grade I did quite a bit better, passing everything except for social sciences, which was the only one where I got stuck … 137

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but it was always the same problem with Catalan, with reading.’ (Wilson, first generation, family from Dominican Republic, VET) A: Well, I like maths and that kind of stuff most and with the ones I didn’t like it was mainly because I was no good at the language. Q: Why do you think you struggled? A: I don’t know exactly. For example, I’d like to learn English and be able to speak and write Spanish and Catalan well. I tried but it got frustrating in the final years. (Noela, second generation, family from Bolivia, VET) These examples highlight how the languages of the destination country pose a greater challenge than other subjects for these young people. Wilson also warns that, as Catalan is the language in which most classes are taught at school, his problems with reading in this language also affect his results in other subjects like social sciences. It is also crucial to note that, as in Noela’s case, second generations also face these kinds of difficulties. This suggests that linguistic differences are not only a problem for students who have just arrived in a given education system, but they also affect second generation children born or schooled since the beginning of compulsory education in the country of destination. In fact, the maintenance or loss among different generations of their languages of origin, as well as the total or partial adoption of the language of the country of destination, are not automatic or equal processes for the whole migrant population. The phenomenon of assimilation of the language of the country of destination or the consolidation of multilingual situations among young people depends on a large number of factors, such as the parents’ level of education and type of work, the presence of mixed marriages, languages spoken in the home, linguistic contexts in which young people socialise, and stage when they join the education system (Alba et al, 2002; Verdon, Mcleod and Winsler, 2014). Edgar’s case is a good example in this regard: he arrived from Honduras and entered school in the second half of the final year of lower secondary education. Initially, he attended as a listener “to adapt to the Catalan language and find out how it works” and the following year, after grade retention, he passed. In Honduras he had been getting good grades, but the official grade recognition process meant all of his academic achievements were devalued, which affected his overall lower secondary grade. Q: Why did you decide to do VET and not Baccalaureate? A: First because of my grade. At my school I was good enough for Baccalaureate, but my teachers advised me to do a VET programme, because they could see how I was progressing in 138

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class. It didn’t matter how hard I worked, it was going to be much harder for me because the language shows a lot more there. And I was struggling with it. I’d ask the teachers: “Hey, teach, how do you think I’m doing? Do you think I’m good enough to study this?” And they’d tell me in all sincerity that because of being a foreigner and my language level, I’d find it very hard going, and I thought that if that’s what they’re saying, then they must be right. So I decided to listen to them. (Edgar, first generation, family from Honduras, VET) Edgar felt, in his own words, “capable and incapable” of taking the Baccalaureate9. Capable, because his school trajectory prior to migration was satisfactory and meant his self-​image was one of a good student. But he felt incapable because of the new obstacles in the form of language barriers, the devaluation of his earlier grades in the recognition procedure and naturalisation of these processes by school advisers. Edgar’s experience also highlights how language difficulties in the destination country not only act as academic obstacles for young people, but also as markers that influence teachers’ expectations and guidance practices. As identified by Bonizzoni et al (2014) for the Italian context, without a certain level of familiarity with the language of the school, transition towards the academic track is not plausible. The timeframe of capital conversion Investment in new convertible capital in the education field, such as linguistic capital or the internalisation of sociolinguistic codes (Bernstein, 2003) that are compatible with the education institution, is subject to a time factor. It not only matters how long the student has been in the destination country, but also the timeframe of the family’s migratory project and how it fits or not with the typical timeframes of educational trajectories that are institutionally defined and privileged as being ‘normal’. ‘Normal’ biographies within the school system consist of linear and continuous trajectories (du Bois-​Reymond, 1998; Furlong, 2009). This continuity, which implies sustained, complete trajectories within the same national education system, may be threatened by the mobility that is a typical feature of some migrant trajectories. In this chapter, we identify two interruptions of this ‘normality’ in terms of a linear, continuous timeframe among students of migrant origin: late entry and ‘circular’ mobility. Late entry involves joining the education system of the destination country at an older age than other students. This affects the transition to upper secondary education. The later migrant students arrive, the more 139

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likely they are to opt for VET. Of all the surveyed students who were born outside of Spain, the mean for the variable ‘age of starting school in Spain’ for those taking the academic track is 7.69 years while for the vocational track it is 10.57 years. An extreme case of this type is that of Edgar, cited in the previous section. Joining the Catalan education system in the year just before transition made it even harder for him to take the academic track. In fact, the school tried to extend Edgar’s trajectory by making him repeat the year in order ‘to adapt’. This mechanism by which schools respond to late entry also helps to explain the high grade retention rates of first generation students. While late entry implies a departure from ‘normality’ in terms of when trajectories begin, circular mobility implies a break in continuity over time within the same education system. Circular mobility among migrant students can arise both from movements back and forth between the country of origin and the destination country and from mobility within the destination country, In the current context of globalisation and transnational networks, the different timeframes of international migration are blurred, which can create a surge in circular movements for forced or voluntary reasons (Castles, 2014). In the Catalan education system, discontinuous educational trajectories affect between 12.7 per cent and 20.8 per cent of first and second generation migrant students, while the percentage for native students is 4.5 per cent (Bayona et al, 2020)10. This circularity generates major tension compared to ‘normal’ educational trajectories that are based on assumptions of linearity and permanence in the country where a student is schooled. Facundo and Nala’s cases are examples of circular migration that can be used to explore the consequences of this process on their educational trajectories and transitions. Facundo was born in Argentina and arrived in Catalonia at the age of 5 with his mother who had recently been divorced from his father, a doctor who stayed in Argentina. Before finishing primary education, he went back to Argentina only to return to Catalonia in the second year of secondary education. In his own words, “I couldn’t get off to a good start” (Facundo) and, after a few attempts, he had a year without school until he enrolled for the VET course that he was taking at the time of the interview. Nala experienced similar circularity. She arrived from the Dominican Republic at the age of 9, but in the second year of secondary education she went back to her home country until she was 16, when she returned again to Barcelona. The only option she was offered on return to school was a Basic VET programme 11 course, after which she enrolled for the intermediate VET course that she was on when we interviewed her. Both experiences share a circularity that pushes young people towards the most discredited educational tracks and, in particular, towards VET. 140

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‘People who come from somewhere else, well … that didn’t start lower secondary [in Spain] or have a school grade that isn’t recognised in Catalonia, they have to do a VET course. Even if they are the best people, the smartest, they have to do VET.’ (Facundo, second generation, family from Argentina, VET) A: I went to my country for a while … and when I came back again, they said I couldn’t go to school anymore because I’d left the country. So I had to go for a year without school because I was a few months too late. Q: Then they told you to do a Basic VET. What options were there? A: They gave me several options, there was hairdressing, painting, butchery and things like that. Those are roads you say you don’t want to go down. I don’t want to do that. They don’t really give you many options, environmentalism, gardening, things you see and you think you don’t want to do that, I don’t like them. Q: What Basic VET did you do? A: My mother, I don’t know how, found this programme at the Nautical Institute of Barcelona, that was in electricity. And so, out of all that there was, electricity, dammit, I’ll give that a go. Q: Had you ever planned to study electricity? A: No, not at all. (Nala, first generation, family from Dominican Republic, VET)12 Facundo and Nala’s stories show how the difference between the ‘normal’ timeframe of educational trajectories and the mobility of their migrant trajectories has implications for educational transitions. First, a discontinuous trajectory generates added academic difficulties or periods of time when young people are not enrolled for any school. The potential disadvantage in terms of students’ skills generated by this break from the ‘normal’ timeframe is one of the factors that explain their poorer educational results and overrepresentation in VET. Moreover, as these students’ quotations show, different timeframes also act as markers of incompatibility with the academic track, regardless of students’ real abilities. In previous studies (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021), we have detected that transitions are structured and oriented around the supposed correspondences between the abilities perceived in the students and the abilities perceived as necessary to take the different upper secondary tracks. Our results seem to suggest the existence of certain preconditions before the student–​track correspondence mechanism is triggered. Non-​fulfilment of these preconditions, such as insufficiently matched timeframes (and linguistic capital too), makes transition towards the academic track unlikely. 141

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Conclusions Our aim in this chapter has been to identify the specific factors that influence transitions to upper secondary education among students of migrant origin. As previous research has pointed out (Kilpi-​Jalkonen, 2011; Cui, 2017), educational results and teacher expectations are two central factors that explain the differences between native and migrant students when deciding on these transitions. Our research shows that capital devaluation during migrant trajectories plays a decisive role in explaining both the poorer grades of migrant students in comparison to native students and under-​expectations on the part of their teachers. In line with previous research, we have examined the phenomenon of capital devaluation by comparing the different jobs of parents with the educational achievements of their children, when they have equivalent qualifications but are from different migratory backgrounds. From these differences it can be concluded that, given equivalent qualifications, the native population is more able to use its cultural capital to work in the social fields they are familiar with. Meanwhile, the migrant population suffers from a process of capital devaluation, and they try to compensate for this through such strategies such as relocating to fields in which their devalued capital recovers value or through the support of social networks or the educational institution itself. We have seen that even migrant parents with university degrees have difficulties understanding school processes and guiding their children as effectively as native families do. The experiences of the young interviewees show that the internalisation of linguistic capital in the school’s own language is fundamental for achieving good grades, both in specifically language-​related subjects and in other academic activities. Language skills not only directly influence grades, but also play an important role as markers of the school institution’s expectations of a student’s compatibility or not with the requirements of the academic track. There is a dual effect on grades and expectations as a result of the misalignment between the standard timeframes of educational trajectories in the school system and the timeframes of migrant trajectories. As we can see in the analysed interviews, these non-​standard migrant timeframes take the form of both late entry in the educational trajectory of the destination country and circular mobility that involves interruptions and discontinuities. Both forms have a negative effect on academic outcomes, but also on the assessments of compatibility with the different upper secondary tracks. Therefore, linguistic capital and the ‘normality’ of trajectories are markers of compatibility or not with the academic track, and this pays relatively little attention to young people’s real skills. In other words, even if they 142

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obtain grades or skills that would normally lead towards the academic track, linguistic and temporal adequacy are seen as necessary conditions for transition towards certain upper secondary options. From a theoretical point of view, this chapter demonstrates the usefulness of thinking ‘with’ and ‘from’ Bourdieu in research in which social class is not the only axis of inequality that is analysed. From an intervention point of view, an apparently obvious response to the lack of recognition of the incorporated cultural capital that migrant students bring with them seems to be that schools should simply recognise this type of capital as valid. However, this debate is more complex. The perspective of social realism applied to debates in the sociology of education (Moore, 2013) insists that recommendations for the education system to recognise the kind of knowledge that it ignores need to be complemented with the equal redistribution of the powerful knowledge that the education system does reward. In the competition for limited social positions, apparent recognition of cultural capital within schools is of little use if it has no conversion value in higher education or the labour market. There is a risk that if the recognition of devalued capital is not accompanied by changes to its conversion values in other fields, such an investment could ultimately lead to the limitation rather than expansion of educational opportunities. Notes As pointed out in the introduction to this book (Chapter 1), the Spanish education system is compulsory and formally comprehensive from 6 to 16 years of age (6–​12, primary education, 12–​16 lower secondary education) and is divided into two clearly differentiated tracks, the academic and the vocational, from upper secondary education (16–​18). 2 See Chapter 1 for full information of the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the other chapters are produced. 3 As indicated in Chapter 5, we define native students as students born and schooled in Spain and who are the children of parents born in the same country. second generation as students who are born in Spain and/​or are schooled in the Spanish education system from the age of compulsory schooling (six years) and are the children of parents born in another country. Please note that these students are native, by definition, but for the purposes of comparison in the research they are referred to as ‘second generation’ throughout. First generation: students who are born in a country other than Spain and join the Spanish education system after the compulsory age for starting school (over six years old). 4 The grade retention rate among migrant students is particularly relevant. In some recent measurements (Bayona and Domingo, 2021), the suitability rate (percentage of students enrolled in the school year corresponding to their age) was 49.4% for first generation students and 62% for second. The suitability rate of native students in this same study was 79.8%. 5 This is also confirmed by results of Chapter 5. Additionally, this chapter shows a striking dichotomy between native and migrant students when it comes to represent the category of ‘good students’ both in objective (grades, promotion, grouping) and subjective terms (sense of futility, emotional bonding, school experience). 1

143

Educational Transitions and Social Justice Social class is calculated based on professional category as per the International Standard Classification of Occupation (ISCO-​08), and the highest level of education among the parents living with the student. 7 Chapter 6 provides further evidence of the role of family support in young people’s upper secondary educational transitions by developing a detailed qualitative analysis of different fractions of the working classes. 8 There are two official languages in Catalonia, Spanish and Catalan. Catalan is, according to current education law, the usual language of instruction used in schools. In contrast, the most commonly used language in neighbourhoods with the highest concentrations of migration is Spanish. For many of these students of migrant origin, school is the only place where they come into contact with Catalan. (Codó and Patiño-​Santos, 2014) 9 Chapter 9 further elaborate on Edgar’s case, together with other narratives of boys and girls, to provide a profound analysis of how the students’ identity as learners is crucial to understanding their transition to upper secondary education. It also demonstrate the critical role of teachers in forging this sense of (in)capacity. 10 Chapter 10 also demonstrates discontinuous trajectories are especially present within VET. See Chapter 1 for further details in term of the structure of the Spanish education system. 11 See Chapter 1 for details of the different levels of vocational education in Spain. These include the basic level for students of a minimum of 15 years and without the lower secondary certificate; the intermediate level for students of a minimum age of 16 who have the lower secondary certificate; and the higher level for students with a Baccalaureate certificate or a VET intermediate certificate after passing specific entrance exams 12 Chapter 8 applies a gender perspective to analyse Nala’s case, together with other boys and girls who chose a VET non-​normative gender track. Nala’s case is defined as ‘random’ or ‘instrumental’ choice, as she does not provide any gender-​based argument for selecting an electricity programme. 6

References Alba, R., Logan, J., Lutz, A. and Stults, B. (2002) ‘Only English by the third generation? Loss and preservation of the mother tongue among the grandchildren of contemporary immigrants’, Demography, 39(3): 467–​84. Aparicio, R. and Portes, A. (2014) Crecer en España: La integración de los hijos de inmigrantes, Barcelona: Obra Social ‘la Caixa’. Bayona, J. and Domingo, A. (2021) ‘La continuidad en el aula: el caso del alumnado de origen inmigrante en la transición hacia la educación posobligatoria en Cataluña’, Aposta, Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 89: 123–​41. Bayona, J., Domingo, A. and Menacho, T. (2020) ‘Trayectorias migratorias y fracaso escolar de los alumnos inmigrados y descendientes de migrantes en Cataluña’, Revista Internacional de Sociología, 78(1): 1–​17. Bernstein, B. (2003) Class, Codes and Control: Applied Studies Towards a Sociology of Lenguage: Vol. II, 2nd edn, London; New York: Routledge. Bonizzoni, P., Romito, M. and Cavallo, C. (2014) ‘Teachers’ guidance, family participation and track choice: the educational disadvantage of immigrant students in Italy’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(5): 702–​20. Bourdieu, P. (2012) La distinción, 2nd edn, Barcelona: Taurus. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.C. (2008) La Reproducción: Elementos para una teoría del sistema de enseñanza, Barcelona: Proa. 144

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Castejón, A., Montes, A. and Manzano, M. (2020) ‘Mismos caminos, distintos destinos@explorando el efecto de las trayectorias educativas y del origen social en las transiciones hacia la educación postobligatoria’, Revista de Sociología de La Educación-​RASE, 13(4): 507–​25. Castles, S. (2014) ‘International migration at a crossroads’, Citizenship Studies, 18(2): 190–​207. Codó, E. and Patiño-​Santos, A. (2014) ‘Beyond language: class, social categorisation and academic achievement in a Catalan high school’, Linguistics and Education, 25: 51–​63. Cuconato, M. and Walther, A. (2015) ‘“Doing transitions” in education’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(3): 283–​96. Cui, D. (2015) ‘Capital, distinction, and racialized habitus: immigrant youth in the educational field’, Journal of Youth Studies, 18(9): 1154–​69. Cui, D. (2017) ‘Teachers’ racialised habitus in school knowledge construction: a Bourdieusian analysis of social inequality beyond class’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(8): 1152–​64. du Bois-​Reymond, M. (1998) ‘“I don’t want to commit myself yet”: young people’s life concepts’, Journal of Youth Studies, 1(1): 63–​79. Erel, U. (2010) ‘Migrating cultural capital: Bourdieu in migration studies’, Sociology, 44(4): 642–​60. Eva Lam, W.S., Warriner, D.S., Poveda, D. and Gonzalez, N. (2012) ‘Transnationalism and literacy: investigating the mobility of people, languages, texts, and practices in contexts of migration’, Reading Research Quarterly, 47(2): 191–​215. Fernández-​R eino, M. (2016) ‘Immigrant optimism or anticipated discrimination? Explaining the first educational transition of ethnic minorities in England’, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 46: 141–​56. Franceschelli, M. (2016) Identity and Upbringing in South Asian Muslim Families, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Furlong, A. (2009) ‘Revisiting transitional metaphors: reproducing social inequalities under the conditions of late modernity’, Journal of Education and Work, 22(5): 343–​53. Jackson, M. (2012) ‘Bold choices: how ethnic inequalities in educational attainment are suppressed’, Oxford Review of Education, 38(2): 189–​208. Joy, S., Game, A.M. and Toshniwal, I.G. (2018) ‘Applying Bourdieu‘s capital-​field-​habitus framework to migrant careers: taking stock and adding a transnational perspective’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 31(20): 2541–​64. Kilpi-​Jakonen, E. (2011) ‘Continuation to upper secondary education in Finland: children of immigrants and the majority compared’, Acta Sociologica, 54(1): 77–​106.

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Moore, R. (2013) ‘Social realism and the problem of the problem of knowledge in the sociology of education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(3): 333–​53. Nowicka, M. (2015) ‘Habitus: its transformation and transfer through cultural encounters in migration’, in C. Costa and M. Murphy (eds), Bourdieu, Habitus and Social Research, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 93–​110. Nylund, M. and Rosvall, P.Å. (2016) ‘A curriculum tailored for workers? Knowledge organization and possible transitions in Swedish VET and possible transitions in Swedish VET’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 48(5): 692–​710. Pinson, H. and Arnot, M. (2020) ‘Wasteland revisited: defining an agenda for a sociology of education and migration’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 41(6): 830–​44. Sayad, A. (2010) La doble ausencia, 1st edn, Barcelona: Anthropos. Scandone, B. (2018) ‘Re-​thinking aspirations through habitus and capital: the experiences of British-​born Bangladeshi women in higher education’, Ethnicities, 18(4): 518–​40. Tarabini, A. and Ingram, N. (eds) (2018) Educational Choices, Transitions and Aspirations in Europe: Systemic, Institutional and Subjective Challenges, London: Routledge. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021) ‘Tracking, knowledge, and the organisation of secondary schooling: teachers’ representations and explanations’, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 74(1): 89–​106. Thatcher, J. and Halvorsrud, K. (2016) ‘Migrating habitus: a comparative study of Polish and South African migrants in the UK’, in J. Thatcher, N. Ingram, C. Burke and J. Abrahams (eds), Bourdieu: The Next Generation –The Development of Bourdieu’s Intellectual Heritage in Contemporary UK Sociology, New York: Routledge, pp 88–​106. Van Zanten, A. (2005) ‘New modes of reproducing social inequality in education’, European Educational Research Journal, 4(3): 144–​69. Verdon, S., Mcleod, S. and Winsler, A. (2014) ‘Language maintenance and loss in a population study of young Australian children’, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 29(2): 168–​81. Yosso, T.J. (2005) ‘Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1): 69–​91.

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8

Choosing against gender: making sense of girls’ and boys’ upper secondary vocational education choices Marta Curran and Aina Tarabini

Feminist scholars have been claiming for more than three decades that there is a mismatch between better performance at school among girls and a gender-​segregated labour market in which women are placed in positions of less prestige and in more precarious jobs (Niemeyer and Colley, 2015). Evidence shows that girls obtain better grades, have lower grade retention rates, and enrol in greater numbers for higher education than their male peers. Evidence also shows that there is a gender bias in upper secondary educational transitions between ‘female-​dominated’ studies –​education, health and social work and humanities –​and ‘male-​dominated’ ones –​technology, engineering, mathematics, manufacturing and construction (EIGE, 2017). These sectors enjoy different hierarchies in terms of social recognition. In recent decades, feminist scholars have continuously criticised mainstream explanations of boys’ underachievement from a narrative of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Burke, 2011: 174). The ‘poor boys’ perspective presents them as victims of a perceived feminised education system and has tended to omit the contradictions and tensions experienced by girls throughout their schooling. Likewise, popular media and political discourses have related this ‘crisis of masculinity’ to the decline of a manufacturing industry that employed a predominantly male workforce throughout the last century (Archer and Yamasita, 2003). In recent years, there has been a shift in research, with more and more studies focusing their attention on debating and promoting the importance of more women choosing masculinised educational tracks, such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), which have gained special relevance not only in the academic sphere but also in the political sphere. The aim of this chapter is to explore how gender dispositions are mobilised in upper secondary educational transitions, and specifically in Vocational Education and Training (VET) programmes. Of all educational stages, it is in VET where the greatest gender inequalities are found (OECD, 2012). The ‘nature’ of vocational training more closely corresponds to a highly 147

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gender-​segregated social division of labour than the academic track does (Niemeyer and Colley, 2015). In the past decade, a slight increase in men opting for feminised courses has been observed, but not the other way around (Aguado Hernández et al, 2020). In the light of this, our purpose is to focus on counter-​hegemonic choices in terms of gender in order to understand why young people take an atypical gender pathway. To examine this further we have formulated the following research questions: how do young people make sense of their upper secondary transitions and how does gender fit into this narrative? What attributes do young people assign to the different training itineraries from a gender perspective and how do they position themselves in relation to these attributes? How are gender-​atypical choices explained? Are there different implications for girls and boys who opt for gender-​ atypical choices? The chapter is structured as follows. In the first section we review the relevant literature to understand how students’ identities and choices are mediated by gender dispositions. In the second section we describe the methodology of data collection and analysis. In the third section we present an analysis of 17 in-​depth interviews with students who took a non-​typical gender VET programme. The analysis involves a detailed exploration of these girls’ and boys’ characteristics in terms of their social background, educational trajectories, and learning dispositions as well as an in-​depth inquiry into the reasons, meanings, and implications regarding their choices of these atypical tracks. Based on the empirical analysis, the conclusions discuss the implications for young people that take a non-​normative pathway and the effects that these atypical gender transitions have on the transformation of gender inequalities.

Gender-​segregated vocational settings Classic authors in the field of the sociology of education such as Raewyin Connell (1985) and Madelaine Arnot (2002) have spent more than four decades researching the role of educational institutions in the reproduction of gender inequalities. In the case of upper secondary transitions, evidence shows that in guidance practices, masculine and feminine cultures are more likely to be reinforced than challenged (Colley et al, 2003). Although counsellors are increasingly aware of the importance of promoting gender equality, during guidance sessions they emphasise rather than deconstruct gendered patterns (Lappalainen et al, 2013). ‘Choosing against gender’ can be seen as a risk, so making a choice according to one’s gender is encouraged. We agree with Colley (2006: 27) when she argues that, rather than discussing whether teachers should encourage girls to choose masculinised careers that they probably resist because of the discrimination they might face, girls need 148

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opportunities to: ‘understand why they desire the destinies they pursue; to ask critical questions about what those destinies both offer and demand; and to ask why their education contributes so often to the reproduction of social inequality’. However, the theoretical approach of this chapter avoids interpretations that analyse educational transitions from an individualistic perspective and interpret students as ‘free and rational choosers’ (Breen and Golthorpe, 1997). These interpretations have been criticised by several authors for omitting the role of structural variables in the process (Ball, Maguire and Macrae, 2000; Furlong and Cartmel, 1997 ). In this regard, we are interested in looking in greater depth at how gender subjectivities are constructed within specific cultural and institutional contexts. For this purpose, the term ‘gender habitus’1(Reay, 1998) seems highly appropriate as it precisely reflects this interplay between individual subjectivity and social structures when exploring the strong gender bias in upper secondary educational transitions. This approach allows us to explore why young people choose a specific track, but above all, it helps us to understand why young people exclude themselves from other tracks and the role of gender assumptions in this process. According to Diane Reay (2015), gender habitus refers to the internalisation of gendered norms in bodily practices and mental structures through which individuals interpret and respond to the social world based on their past experiences. Concerning the objectives of this chapter, gender habitus is related to self-​perceptions of students’ abilities, motivations, and hegemonic patterns of femininity and masculinity, intrinsically related to social class, that have an impact on their learner identities, expectations, and choices (Tarabini and Curran, 2019). There is a large body of literature that has explored how gender dispositions are reproduced across different VET fields, such as young women in the beauty industry in Sweden (Bredlöv, 2016) and healthcare in England and Norway (Colley et al, 2003; Hegna, 2017); and young men in masculinised VET fields, such as construction and engineering programmes in Sweden and England (Colley et al, 2003; Åberg and Hedlin, 2015); cookery trainees in Denmark (Steno and Friche, 2015); and STEM fields in different countries (Guimond and Roussel, 2001; Singh et al, 2007). In these studies, we observed different expected attitudes and behaviours among young women and men depending on whether it is a feminised or masculinised sector. Looking further into this division, it is very interesting to draw upon Lahelma’s metaphor of the hands.This researcher reflects on how hands in schools are often divided into ‘strong, technically competent and possibly dirty hands’ and ‘gentle, caring and artistic’ ones (Lahelma, 2009: 500). The former are viewed as intrinsically masculine, while the latter are seen to be feminine. 149

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Many of these studies focus on the configuration of professional identities, where a line of research has been developed mainly in the United Kingdom in relation to the concept of vocational habitus. This concept has been widely analysed by Colley et al (2003), who define it as a combination of idealised and realised dispositions that students need to observe in order to become ‘the right person for the job’ (Colley et al, 2003: 25). This implies understanding the process by which students learn particular attitudes and behaviours that are valued and seen as legitimate in their field, and which is strongly mediated by gender and social class dispositions. From a sociology of the curriculum perspective, Nylund et al (2018) argue that gender divisions imply having access to different types of knowledge which create different frames of opportunities in terms of imaginaries and actions. ‘The curriculum is organized in such a way that certain dispositions are invalidated and denied, while others are valorized, advised and legitimated to produce a respectable self ’ (Skeggs, 1997: 68). The incorporation of this moral dimension in the learning process is especially present in feminised sectors such as care and contributes to the reproduction of gender dispositions (Nylund et al, 2018). Evidence shows the importance of ‘correctly’ presenting dress and behavioural codes that act as signifiers of ‘proper’ moral disposition in this sector (Colley, 2006). What we observe from these programmes are the moral but also the emotional implications that are required of young women in many of these feminised sectors. From this gender bias in feminised sectors, we also become aware of an overlap between the public and the private spheres, and between productive and reproductive work. We also wonder what happens when young people follow VET programmes contrary to their own gender norms and what does the literature have to say on this topic. Most of the research that has explored counter-​hegemonic gender choices suggests that girls and boys have developed their non-​typical interests during their childhood and that this was often encouraged by a close member of the family (Evans, 2006). In any case, these counter-​hegemonic choices may have different meanings and motivations but, above all, different implications for young people who opt for them. First, counter-​h egemonic gender choices do not have to imply deconstructing gender stereotypes; instead they may reproduce a stereotypical understanding of men and women (Lappalainen et al, 2013). This is the case for some young women studying VET programmes in Finland, who felt more comfortable in male-​dominated school cultures because the atmosphere was less gossipy than in the feminised sectors. Additionally, atypical gender choices neither involve renouncing one’s gender identity nor gender expression. This is epitomised in the study by Evans (2006) of the case of a female trainee electrician who insists that her femininity is completely preserved even though she is in a male-​dominated sector. This student explains that she wore make-​up, perfume and jewellery on the course 150

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and was also proud that her utensils and equipment were much cleaner and better looked after than those of her classmates. Another question arising from this kind of research is whether taking a counter-​hegemonic VET programme has the same implications for girls and boys. The results of previous studies indicate that this is not the case. Choosing against a gender-​normative pattern may mean for girls ‘a way to perform autonomous subjectivity’ (Lappalein et al, 2013: 199), while for boys it may imply that their sexual orientation is questioned. This is precisely the case for boys who are interested in beauty and aesthetics, who have to deal with many homophobic comments from their peers. The roles and reactions of significant others also need to be considered. Here, evidence reveals greater approval when men are the ones who ‘choose against gender’ than the other way round (Korp, 2001; Lahelma 2009; Lappalainen et al, 2013; Kontio and Evalsson, 2015). In the case of girls in masculinised sectors, evidence shows that they often have to cope with derogatory language and patronising attitudes from their classmates (Termes, 2020), and that it is much more challenging for them to demonstrate the necessary skills to be considered and accepted as ‘real professionals’ (Jacinto et al, 2020). The little data available on the academic outcomes of counter hegemonic choices are not very optimistic. The data suggest lower graduation rates (Berik, Bilginsoy and Williams, 2011) and more difficult processes for moving into work among young people who choose non-​gender stereotypical training (Hatmaker, 2013). There is still much research needed to understand how VET students’ sense of belonging is affected by gender segregation in the vocational track.

Methods This chapter draws on qualitative research based on in-​depth interviews with 17 students (7 girls and 10 boys) who took a gender atypical upper secondary VET programme. From the total sample for the project2, the students examined in this chapter were chosen based on those VET sectors that are imbalanced in terms of gender. Table 8.1 shows the percentage of female and male students in Catalonia that are enrolled in each of these sectors and the number of cases in the sample representing each one. All the interviews were recorded and fully transcribed for subsequent analysis. In keeping with to the objectives of this chapter, the aim of this analysis was to gain information on the ways students made sense of their atypical choices and the role of gender in this process. Specifically, the analysis was structured around four main themes: 1) the students’ social profiles; 2) their trajectories and dispositions during lower secondary education; 4) their reasons for selecting a non-​normative upper secondary educational 151

Educational Transitions and Social Justice Table 8.1: Percentage of male and female students taking highly masculinised and feminised VET modalities in the interviews sample  

Percentage female Percentage male Number of students of the students of the total cases included total enrolment enrolment in the sample

Electromechanics

3

97

1

Electricity and electronics

3

97

2

Computing

6

94

2

Sports

18

82

2

Aesthetics and beauty

97

3

1

Dependent adult care

84

16

2

Assistant nursing

82

18

4

Hairdressing

80

20

1

Administrative management (legal)

70

30

1

Commercial activities (fashion industry)

67

33

1

Source: Authors’ own elaboration based on data of the Catalan Ministry of Education, 2020.

track; and 4) their experiences of their atypical choices in terms of present and future negotiations, contradictions and impacts.

Who are these girls? Who are these boys? In this section we analyse who the girls and boys are that take gender atypical VET programmes, both in terms of their social origin and their educational trajectories. The first thing we aim to point out is that of the total number of interviewees, only three –​all boys –​can be identified as middle classes, with varying amounts of economic, social and cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). The other 14 interviewees are all from different working-class fractions3. So, most of interviewees’ families have low economic and cultural capital. According to student Damian (studying dependent adult care) this explains why “I simply wanted to leave the school world and go into the labour world. I wanted to work”. This reflects the unequal social composition that characterises the distribution of students between the academic and vocational tracks both in Spain and in many other European countries (Bernardi and Requena, 2010)4. In fact, the three middle-​class interviewees explain that their ‘natural’ educational pathway had always been the Baccalaureate. Alex, a 17-​year-​old boy whose mother is a judge and whose father is an entrepreneur and who defines himself as “more than middle 152

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class” (Alex, assistant nursing), only started VET in the healthcare sector, specifically assistant nursing, after failing in the academic track. In the case of Roger, a 16-​year-​old boy whose family work in different sectors of the artistic field, “VET was never in my head. Everyone expected me to go to Baccalaureate, and so did I” (Roger, aesthetics and beauty). Then there is Pere, a 17-​year-​old boy with dyslexia whose family has stable work in the service sector: “I wanted to do the Baccalaureate because I wanted to go to college … but because of my dyslexia I was in a special class during lower secondary school, meaning I couldn’t take the academic track” (Pere, assistant nursing). At this point, it is important to note that even though working-​class girls also selected VET as the most adequate choice for ‘people like them’ (Bourdieu, 1990), none of them made any explicit reference to the choice of VET being due to its direct impact on their possibilities for entering the labour market. The connection between male working-​class identities and employment has been extensively analysed since Paul Willis published his renowned ethnography Learning to Labour (1977). Many other studies have explored the impacts of contemporary economic restructuring, post-​ industrialism, precariousness and unemployment on male identities and relationships (Nixon, 2018). However, the interviews with working-​class boys are very clear in pointing out the link between VET and the possibilities for entering the labour market, as one of the most prominent explanations for their choices, as the following quotes express: “My mentality was clear: I want to work and earn money” (Mario, administrative management); “Once you finish your VET course you’ll get a job” (Cristian, assistant nursing). These reasons, as the next section will explore in depth, are also crucial to understand the meaning and implications of boys’ atypical gender choices. Most of the students on gender atypical pathways had struggled in one way or another during their educational trajectories. Even if these were by no means homogeneous, most of them express different forms of school disengagement (Fredricks et al, 2004) that are expressed as poor grades, grade retention and a general feeling that ‘studying is not for them’5 (Tarabini, 2019). In Bernstein’s (1966) terms, all of the interviewees, except for one –​ Roger, the middle-​class student with high cultural capital –​developed attitudes to school that could be classified as detachment (arising when the student both understands and accepts the instrumental order but rejects the expressive order of the school), estrangement (which occurs when the student understands and accepts the expressive order and also accepts the ends of the instrumental order but fails to understand the means) and alienation/​ resistance (when there is a lack of understanding and/​or acceptance of the instrumental and expressive orders both in their ends and means) (Power and Whitty, 2002). As both Nala and Alex express: “Until you realise that lower secondary school is going wrong, you don’t think about VET” (Nala, 153

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electricity); “We are all similar because we are the ones who have always been told we are worthless and a lot of us have repeated” (Alex, assistant nursing)6. In spite of that, we have observed a greater homogeneity among male attitudes to school than among girls (Archer and Yamasita, 2003). In fact, all the interviewed boys –​with the exception of Roger –​explain their educational trajectories in terms of detachment, alienation, and active resistance (Willis, 1977), while girls also express attitudes of estrangement, and active forms of laddishness are less frequent in their narratives (Jackson, 2006; McRobbie and Garger, 2003). As Manel says: “When I started VET, I decided to sit next to the girls, as they are more attentive in class, they speak less than boys and they always get better marks” (Manel, assistant nursing). The following quote clearly expresses different forms of school resistance that working-​class boys developed before starting their upper secondary studies: “I was not a book type of person7. … I didn’t do my homework. Either I didn’t understand it, or I didn’t know how to do it, or it didn’t interest me, so I didn’t do it … and … yes, I was expelled once for hitting a guy, that was not very common, but sometimes I had some fights with classmates” (Omid, hairdressing). In contrast, girls are quicker to express forms of school estrangement where, despite understanding and being willing to follow school values and norms, they have difficulties achieving the expected results in terms of performance and behaviour. This disposition, as previous research also indicates (Tarabini and Curran, 2019), aligns with girls’ narratives that reveal their low levels of self-​esteem as proper learners. The case of Alexia illustrates this well: “I didn’t do badly in lower secondary. I was disciplined; I always did my homework. … Sometimes I got stressed because some subjects were really difficult and even if I studied I failed. … But I was always consistent in my work” (Alexia, electromechanics). In fact, when girls develop more typically male or ‘laddish’ attitudes during their school trajectories, they all mention being ‘punished’ by their teachers and by both their male and female peers. Furthermore, all the interviewed laddettes who behaved like this consider their attitude to be ‘typically masculine’, as hegemonic female attitudes do not tend to challenge the dominant ethos at school. The following quote is very clear in expressing the different implications that ‘laddish’ attitudes have for boys and girls: ‘I’ve never been a girl who is good at studying. I always scraped through. Passing was a struggle. … Also, the teachers always had it in for me and I had it in for them. … So I decided to misbehave on purpose. To screw them. … Sometimes when I wanted to cause trouble I’d join the boys and we’d stir things up. … Girls are always calmer, they behave proper, so when I wanted to have fun I’d join the boys … that’s way I’ve been always labelled a tomboy.’ (Virginia, Sports) 154

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So, laddettes have already followed a non-​normative school trajectory before choosing a counter-​hegemonic VET track, while this is not the case with boys, whose trajectories before their upper secondary education choices have been more gender normative. This has a critical impact on explaining the logic, meaning and implications of counter-​hegemonic choices, as we show in the following sections.

Boys’ non-​normative gender choices Girls and boys enrolled in counter-​hegemonic gender tracks are all very clear in recognising that they are the minority on their course. Despite that, an analysis of the students’ narratives regarding the reasons why they choose these tracks reveals striking differences. In fact, of the ten boys analysed in this chapter, only Roger describes his choice as non-​normative in terms of gender and he is the only one who says he was guided by reasons that were inherently connected to his tastes and personality traits. In the following quote, he expresses these traits, and recognises that they are more common among girls: ‘I like everything that is artistic. I really like make-​up, and interior design, drawing. … Everything started one day when I was with my stepsisters, they are older than me, we get along really well, and of course they used makeup quite a bit, then we were, you know, gossiping about things and such, and I started playing with the eyeliner, I don’t know, just for fun. I started to put makeup on them, and I had a knack for it, and then another day I did the same with my best friend, and all of them were like “wow Roger, you are very good at that”. And suddenly I thought “I should try on myself ” and I put makeup on myself for the first time and I posted it on Instagram and then, wow, I got a lot of support, people loved it, and I got more and more motivated, started trying new things.’ (Roger, aesthetics) In line with the theoretical review, Roger’s case expresses tension regarding how family and friends question or recognise young people’s choices when gender intersects with other variables such as sexual orientation. Roger describes how he received highly derogative comments among his peers at school when he showed interest in enrolling for the beauty sector. In a clearly homophobic environment, his interest in a feminised sector such as aesthetics was negatively related to him being gay. In spite of that, as evidenced in the quote and in contrast with what usually happens with young women who follow counter hegemonic trajectories, he also received a lot of recognition for his skills in the beauty industry. In the case of young women, as we will examine in the following section, questioning is more prevalent than recognition. 155

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In contrast, the other nine boys do not relate gender attributes to their upper secondary educational choices. In most cases they do not even connect their choice with a matter of taste or personality but to reasons that could be called random or instrumental. Alex, Pere and Juan are examples of random or second options. Alex and Pere are two middle-​class students that only chose VET –​both in the healthcare sector and specifically the assistant nursing course –​once they realised that for different reasons they could not take or continue the Baccalaureate. So, their narratives make no special references to the motivations to select this course; they are here but could just as easily be anywhere else. Juan is a working-​class student with a school trajectory based on active forms of resistance who is currently enrolled for a VET course on dependent adult care that he is, in fact, planning to quit as it has not met his expectations, which were very generic: ‘When I left the Baccalaureate, I was a bit lost. … Then talking with my mum, she told me I’m good with people and she had heard of this school, which is good, and of this course that she had been told was very good … and here I am.’ (Alex, assistant nursing) ‘Well, when I realised I couldn’t do the Baccalaureate, at first I had the idea that I wanted to study veterinary medicine but there is no VET in this area, so this is the closest thing to what I wanted to do.’ (Pere, assistant nursing) ‘I chose this course because I was told it was easy. They told me it was very practical, and that I wouldn’t suffer like I suffered at lower secondary school. … But I had no idea where I was going … so, yep, I’m about to quit, this is not for me.’ (Juan, dependent adult care) In contrast, instrumental choices are those that are fundamentally guided by work or prestige. Other complementary motivations are mentioned as explanations for these young people’s choices, but what prevails is the perception of some kind of future benefit. Mario, for example, is a 21-​ year-​old man who dropped out of lower secondary education and took different courses like welding and electricity. He is currently enrolled on a VET administration course, in the legal field, and he is very clear in arguing that, to achieve social mobility, he needs to detach himself from manual working-​class occupations. This is the main reason behind this choice: ”I matured a bit and I decided to do something that when I grow up could give me total reliability at work, physically and mentally. … In the end, you have to spend 40 years working so I decided to move to areas that I like but that are not so physically demanding, like welding and stuff like that” (Mario, administration). Mario clearly identifies that, in order to achieve 156

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social mobility, he needs to detach himself from typical manual working-​class occupations. This is not exclusive to Mario,since, in a more generalized fashion, the context of post-​industrial societies has played an important role in the reconfiguration of labour imaginaries, affecting men to a greater extent than women (Nixon, 2018). Omid, a 16-​year-​old boy born in Pakistan also made an upper secondary choice that explicitly aims to avoid typically male working-​class occupations. But in his case, this is not for reasons of social mobility but because of labouring being viewed as dirty. In fact, both his father and uncle own a men’s barbershop and that is why he chose a VET course in an area that is by no means seen as female-​oriented: “I thought about doing a VET course in mechanics but I discussed it with my father, and he told me that a mechanic will have the same salary as a barber, but will come home dirty” (Omid, hairdressing). We find here further evidence of how gender intersects with other variables, in this case with a cultural component, namely the recognition that hairdressing receives in Pakistan, explaining why, for Omid, choosing this profession is something to be proud of despite it being a feminised sector in the host culture. Andrew’s choice also bears similarities to those of Mario and Omid, even though it is in a very different sector: he chose VET in commercial activities and specifically in the fashion industry because he hopes to own a clothes store with his brother to get away from the precariousness that he has experienced all his life; he has always been in child care centres because of different problems with his family. He wants stability and a quiet life, and says that “I don’t think fashion is related to girls” (Andrew, fashion trade). He insists that he likes the sector because he does not want to look like his father, who he views as a typically scruffy man: A: I always liked to look good and dress up and such. Q: And where do you think this taste comes from? A: Because of my father, perhaps, because my father didn’t groom himself, he had long hair, really thick eyebrows. I never liked it. (Andrew, fashion industry) In these three cases, we find no gender references in relation to the characteristics of the selected VET course, which the interviewees consider to be non-​gendered. Instead, their choices are more or less deliberate ways of avoiding an aesthetic, relationships and a job identified as typically masculine and, specifically, working class. Also, in these cases there are no references or specific narratives regarding gender-​based tastes as none of them view their characters, trajectories or choices as non-​normative. The other two young men with instrumental upper secondary choices are purely related to future prospects. One of them, Cristian, is on the assistant 157

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nursing VET course and the other, Damian, is taking a VET in dependent adult care. As Cristian, an 18-​year-​old working-​class man, says: “I was looking for job opportunities and here you will always have a job, besides nursing assistants are well paid. … Health is always there, it’s always looked well upon. It is a good job, you help people, you have a track record”. Likewise, Damian, another 18-​year-​old working-​class man, with many financial problems at home and who describes situations that border on social exclusion, is clear in saying that the health sector always has a future. What is more, being a man is perceived as a factor in their favour that increases the chance of finding employment, in contrast to girls: ‘I was told this sector has a lot of future because in a few years’ time there will be a lot of older people and then these kinds of jobs will be needed. … Also this is a sector with a lot of job opportunities, because I can work in homes, or in hospitals, in private homes, and being a man is also a good thing … the elderly need to be looked after by people who are strong and all that.’ (Damian, dependent adult care) Finally, there is the case of Manel, a 16-​year-​old boy in a fairly similar social situation to Damian, who clearly selected VET because of the work prospects. As he says: “If you don’t study, you’ll get nothing … you will only get bad jobs, hard jobs … loading and unloading trucks, stuff like that. … It’s a lot of hard work and they don’t pay you well. I preferred to give this course a try” (Manel, assistant nursing). But the choice of the non-​normative gender track, in this case a VET in assistant nursing, is related to a long history of family and personal hospitalisations that have made him familiar with this sector and awakened his desire to be able to contribute to it8. His choice is therefore attributed to non-​gender related patterns.

Girls’ non-​normative gender choices An analysis of girls’ non-​normative choices reveals an outstandingly different picture to the one emerging from boys. Of the seven girls whose narratives were analysed for this chapter, only two selected their VET courses for random or instrumental reasons, while the other five gave reasons related to tastes and personality traits that, in all cases except for one (Lara), were conceived as being gender-​oriented9. These traits are identified by most of the girls as having developed through life experiences, both inside and outside the school (Evans, 2006), that were clearly counter-​hegemonic, thus contributing to their gender-​atypical upper secondary choices. The two girls that give random and instrumental reasons for their upper secondary VET choices are Nala and Sonia. Nala is a 17-​year-​old working-​ class girl born in the Dominican Republic who is studying a VET in 158

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electricity. She argues that “I had never considered studying electricity, not at all … my father works in construction and I liked to watch him working, but he told me this is a very hard job and then my mother signed me up for this course” (Nala, electricity). Her narrative does not provide any specific reason for what seems to be a rather circumstantial and unintentional choice. Neither can Nala explain the gender segmentation of different VET sectors, for when she is asked about this topic, she merely answers: “I don’t know [why hardly any girls do electricity]. I’ve thought about this, but I haven’t reached any conclusions” (Nala, electricity). Furthermore, when she reflects on gender patterns, she tends to naturalise what she conceives as “inherently male and female skills” arguing that “men by nature are physically much stronger than women. … Since they are stronger, I’m in favour of them doing the heavy work. And as we are more skilled with our hands, we can focus on the wiring” (Nala, electricity). So, Nala is almost the only female interviewee who does not attribute any kind of gender significance to her choice, even though she considers there to be clear differences between male and female attributes. In line with Lahema’s (2009) research, Nala’s narrative clearly establishes a dichotomy between and strong male ‘hands’ and soft, female ones. In contrast, Sonia is an 18-​year-​old woman from a working-​class family who is studying VET in computing. She argues that this sector “can open a lot of options in the future. Nowadays everything is online, so there are good job prospects” (Sonia, computing). However, and in contrast with boys’ instrumental choices, she also argues that “I’ve always had a better relationship with boys than with girls. I was also very involved in the world of video games. I’ve always liked them. … When I came here, I already knew how boys behave. I felt comfortable” (Sonia, computing). So, even though Sonia gives instrumental reasons to explain her choice, she also incorporates a narrative on non-​normative gender tastes that were developed during her long laddish school trajectory. It is precisely this laddette attitude that socialised her into a ‘masculine world’ before selecting her upper secondary VET course. Her narrative around boys’ typical behaviour, however, does not deconstruct gender stereotypes (Lappalainen et al, 2013). On the contrary, her feelings of comfort in male-​dominated sectors express rejection and reification of girls’ ‘typical’ subcultures. The five other girls, in clear contrast with most of the male interviewees, are all very clear in referring to tastes and personality traits to explain and make sense of their upper secondary choices. However, in the girls’ narratives not all these tastes –​these gender habituses (Reay, 1998, 2015) –​are conceived as masculine. In fact, not all of them are even considered gendered. On the one hand, there are the cases of Virginia, Eliana and Daniela, three girls from different working-​class fractions with different attitudes to school (resistance, detachment and estrangement, respectively) and enrolled 159

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for different VET subjects (sports, electricity and computing, respectively) but with a critical element in common: all three view their choices as clearly gender counter-​hegemonic that are framed through school and life experiences that distanced them from the ‘typically feminine world’. Furthermore, they each affirm that precisely because of their non-​normative gender habitus, they have been punished, criticised and stigmatised during their school trajectories. The following quotes are highly illustrative of this: ‘I always liked sports, especially soccer, I can’t spend the whole day sitting on a chair. … They called me a tomboy, just because of my tastes, but I’m used to it, I don’t care, I do what I want.’ (Virginia, sports) ‘I always liked video games, computing, motorcycles, men’s stuff. … I guess that influence came from my cousins, I liked what they did … my mum and my grandfather always told me I had to look more feminine. … Yep, at school I was very discriminated because of this, they called me a tomboy, they asked me if I was a lesbian.’ (Eliana, electricity) ‘I’m not like the other girls. They like chatting about boys, flirting with boys, it’s all about that and I don’t like it. It’s not really my thing. I’m a bit weird. … I decided to do computing because I always liked it. … I’m very much a nerd.’ (Daniela, computing) Then there is Alexia, who we briefly introduced in the first results section. She is a 17-​year-​old working-​class girl whose attitude at secondary school was one of estrangement. She is currently studying a VET course in mechanics because “I love cars, gritty stuff, heavy metal, those kinds of things. It comes from my father. … I like action, where you can do things and in mechanics you are constantly on the move, talking to people. … It’s cool. Cars are cool, even cooler if you fix them. … And I decided to try.” (Alexia, electromechanics). But, in contrast to the previous cases, Alexia was not labelled as a tomboy at school, and neither is she now despite being the only girl in a class of 20 boys. The reason for this is that Alexia does not contradict the hegemonic-​female habitus. She doesn’t define herself as “weird”, “unfeminine” or having “men’s tastes” like Virginia, Eliana and Daniela did. On the contrary, she says: “I’m really feminine. I like makeup. I like dancing. I am very tarty. Mechanics does not have to fit with the image of being manly, tough, dirty.” In fact she feels that men, both because of their social skills and intrinsic abilities, are more suited to this sector. Because of this, Alexia admits that “I feel special being the only girl, they help me, they take care of me, I’m their girl”. Alexia’s case clearly demonstrates that atypical gender choices do not entail homogeneous forms of gender expression because in this case, in the same vein as in Evans’ (2006) research, 160

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her counter-​hegemonic choice does not involve renouncing or challenging the hegemonic expression of femininity. Finally, there is Lara, a 16-​year-​old working-class girl whose attitude during lower secondary school can be viewed as detachment or even a lack of commitment. She had no grade retentions and argues that “I always did enough to scrape by and pulled my finger out when I needed to” (Lara, sports). She defines herself as “the joker of the pack, the troublemaker, the one who never revised for exams but always ended up passing”, and because of that she always discarded the Baccalaureate as an option even though it was what her family and teachers recommended. So, she chose a sports VET because, as she argues, she developed a taste for it through her early social life. But, as in the case of Manel in the previous section, this taste is not related to gender patterns, neither personally nor in terms of her immediate relations. Also, as Table 8.1 shows, sport is less gender imbalanced than other VET sectors (18 per cent of girls, compared to 3 per cent in electromechanics and electricity and electronics and 6 per cent in computing) and this might explain Lara’s rationalities in relation to her choice. ‘I don’t want to be shut up all day [referring to the Baccalaureate]. What I want to do is sport, I want to do sport now. I don’t want to be sitting in a biology or language classroom. I don’t want that. … I really like sports. I always did. I have always played sports. I always played tennis, table tennis, soccer or basketball, then I started cycling with my father, then I started climbing. ... It’s been a passion since I was a child.’ (Lara, sports)

Conclusions The results of the analysis confirm that the VET system continues to be highly segregated in terms of gender10. What is more, even atypical gender upper secondary educational transitions do not seem to shake the foundations of the well-​established gender roles in the institutional settings of VET programmes. Most of the literature exploring the relationship between VET and gender has focused on analysing how VET programmes promote highly stereotyped professional identities (Colley, 2006). In this chapter we tried to go a step further and discuss how gender dispositions are mobilised in educational transitions and, specifically, how young people make sense of counter-​hegemonic transitions in terms of gender. The analysis has made two main contributions. The first is an exploration of the social background, educational trajectories and school dispositions of young people who have followed atypical gender pathways. Not by chance, most of the students following a VET itinerary 161

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in the sample are from working-​class backgrounds. All of the students we interviewed also share a trajectory characterised by low performance, grade retention, and different forms of disengagement with their educational process. There are, however, some differences in terms of school attitudes regarding gender: while a greater questioning of the usefulness of education is observed among boys (alienation) and some even confess to having been disruptive at school (resistance), girls express more recognition of the importance of studying but claim to have experienced severe difficulties with continuing their schooling normally (estrangement). However, there is also a group of girls who describe having behaved laddishly during their previous school trajectory (Jackson, 2006). The remarkable difference between these girls and boys who also displayed resistance at school is that the former claim to have experienced strong disapproval from their teachers and classmates as they did not meet the profile of ‘good students’ (Tarabini and Curran, 2019). As a result, these girls were already experiencing a non-​normative education trajectory in terms of gender that is somehow related to their upper secondary educational transition. Secondly, we have analysed the motivations that led these young people to take a non-​gender normative VET programme. We have identified significant divergences here. In most cases for boys who followed an atypical path, their choices are not observed to be given gender-​related meanings. They instead allude to instrumental factors –​future job options –​or express a certain indifference when describing their upper secondary choice processes. In contrast, girls’ choices are strongly related to expressive elements linked to taste and personality –​they are studying what they really enjoy doing. We observe greater awareness of the influence of gender among girls, not just in their choice-​making processes but also concerning the implications that these have throughout their educational trajectories. In this regard, choosing against gender seems to be more traumatic for girls as they receive much more pressure and questioning than their male peers. In conclusion, while the first main contribution of this chapter is aligned with previous research, the second contribution adds to the existing literature on the relationship between gender and upper secondary educational transitions and therefore needs to be further developed. However, it does not seem that young people who follow counter-​hegemonic pathways are going to transform gender roles. On the contrary, they still represent a minority who have to face many barriers –​throughout their educational trajectories and later on in their professional careers. More research is needed to understand how the relationship between gender dispositions and VET choice-​making processes represents a key mechanism for the reproduction of social inequalities.

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Notes See Chapters 6 and 7 respectively for an analysis of class and migrant habitus and their impacts on upper secondary educational choices and transitions. 2 The total sample of the interviewed students in Barcelona was 68; 42 of them were following VET and the other 26 were studying Baccalaureate. See Chapter 1 for full information on the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the chapters of this book are produced. 3 See Chapter 6 for a detailed explanation of working-​class fractions and their impact on upper secondary educational choices. 4 Chapters 1 and 2 provide key information at the level of the structure, the functions and the provision of both tracks that are of crucial relevance for understanding this unequal distribution. 5 Chapter 5 provides a detailed statistical analysis which demonstrates that ‘bad students’ are systematically over-​represented in the vocational track. It also proves how the school trajectories and experiences of these students are deeply influenced by the impact of institutional devices such as grade retention and ability grouping. 6 See Chapter 9 for an analysis of how VET students mostly select this track out of an extremely damaged identity as learners. Alex’s case is explored in depth in this chapter, together with other narratives of boys and girls that provide crucial information about how learners’ identities are critical to understanding upper secondary choices and transitions. 7 This resonates with the distinction between the conceptions of ‘book smart’ and ‘street smart’ in Hatt’s (2007) research. 8 See Chapter 4 for an analysis of how life experiences are critical in the framing of young people’s ‘vocations’. 9 This helps to dismantle those arguments assuming that tastes, personalities and choices are purely the expression of young people’s individuality, neglecting the many factors at the social, systemic and/​or institutional level that influence them. Chapter 4 contributes to this debate by proving that teachers’ narratives around ‘good choices’ tend to associate them with widespread notions of vocation, passion, sacrifice or personal gifts. Chapter 10 also contributes to this line of inquiry by demonstrating that young people themselves tend to revert to hermeneutic injustice to play down the impact of structural and systemic inequalities on their own upper secondary choices and transitions. 10 Chapter 2 provides plenty of evidence of the multiple mechanisms of segmentation of the Spanish upper secondary education system beyond gender. 1

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Reconstructing learner identity in upper secondary vocational education: from disaffection to recognition Aina Tarabini, Judith Jacovkis and Marta Curran

The sociology of education in general, and research on educational choices and transitions in particular, has devoted special attention to the study of young people’s identities and subjectivities to understand how and why different educational trajectories are shaped. This research has shown that the trajectories are the result of a complex process of negotiation and interaction between the available opportunity structures and the subjective dispositions that shape different fields of action (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997; Ball et al, 2002; Evans, 2007). Firstly, the institutional structure of education systems triggers certain transition opportunities (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021b); secondly, the accumulation of economic, social and cultural capital conditions students’ opportunities for choice-​making (Seghers, Boone and Van Avermaet, 2019); and finally, young people’s educational experiences and the subjective dispositions derived from them shape a ‘practical sense’ (Bourdieu, 1990) of what is considered suitable for each person. This ‘practical sense’ is expressed in processes of self-​classification and self-​exclusion from certain educational tracks. Although copious research has analysed the role of the school as a producer of young people’s subjectivities and identities (Reay et al, 2001; Archer and Yamashita, 2003; Hollingworth and Archer, 2010; Ingram, 2018), there has been less consideration of young people’s learner identities as a central element for understanding their educational trajectories and choices (Harris and Rainey, 2012). Various studies have investigated how young people’s social identities are projected, recognised, omitted and/​or enhanced by school (Valenzuela, 1999; Grant, 2006), but very few have focused on understanding how specific learning contexts contribute to the definition of a young person’s self-​image as a learner, or analysing how this image is gradually constructed throughout their school trajectories and experiences (Coll and Falsafi, 2010). There has been even less research focusing on the specific context of Vocational Education and Training (VET) (Brockmann, 2010).

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Our aim in this chapter is to analyse how VET students construct their learner identities based on their past and present educational experiences, and their future expectations. The proposed analysis not only considers that identity is constructed sequentially and cumulatively and is therefore subject to changes and contradictions that need to be identified (Jenkins, 1996), but that it is also relational and is grounded in symbolic attributes that are used to define oneself in relation to others (Reay, 2010). Therefore, to understand how learner identities are shaped among VET students, we need to consider the public mindsets and representations that are built around this educational track. In the case of the Spanish upper secondary education system, and adapting Hollingworth and Archer’s (2010) expression, VET continues to be a ‘demonised educational space’ that is less prestigious and generates fewer opportunities than the academic track (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a, 2021b)1. VET in Spain has undergone profound changes in the past 20 years that have partly been aimed at improving its image in terms of social prestige (García Jiménez and Lorente García, 2015). However, this educational track is still perceived as a second-​rate option in the social mindset. VET attracts a smaller proportion of students than the academic track (35.5 per cent in 2019–​20), and they tend to be more socially complex. The two tracks are still highly segmented in terms of both their functions and their forms of pedagogical and curricular content (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a, 2021b). As noted by Brockmann (2010) in England, the knowledge associated with the academic path continues to monopolise practically all subjects taught during lower secondary education. This reinforces, from the school institution itself, a hierarchy in which practical or applied knowledge is classed below theoretical or abstract knowledge, conforming what Raffe (1992) calls the ‘traditional academic mainstream’. Indeed, the segregating and stratifying nature of the education system affects young people’s experiences and identities differently depending on the educational track for which they are enrolled. This chapter therefore contributes to our understanding of young people’s educational transitions and trajectories by examining the processes whereby their learner identities are constructed. These identities, as Colley et al (2003) suggest, are always built in specific institutional contexts and within the framework of certain teaching and learning cultures.

Theoretical foundations: learner identity Identity is a relational category based on processes of identification and differentiation from others. It refers to who we are in relation to the world, to our symbolic thresholds of ascription and belonging (Valenzuela, 1999). Far from being an essence of individuals, identity is therefore a process that is built in a progressive, multiple and often contradictory manner, through 168

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social relationships (Jenkins, 1996). Identities are always produced within a framework of particular social and historical conditions and therefore cannot be understood in isolation from power and inequality relations (Archer and Francis, 2007). As noted by Roseneil and Seymour (1999: 2, cited in Colley et al, 2003: 492): ‘All identities are not equally available to all of us, and all identities are not equally culturally valued.’ School, in particular, plays a central role in the construction of identities. As noted by Furlong (1991), this social institution is fundamentally implicated in the production of youth, and in the construction of their subjectivity and public identity. School standards, practices and expectations provide key symbolic materials on the basis of which students make sense of their experiences and define themselves (Reay, 2010). Copious sociological research has shown how school, as an institution, transmits the image of the ‘ideal pupil’ and of what is required in order to be successful. Learner identities are then built around this image (Rees et al, 1997; Youdell, 2003; Hollingworth and Archer, 2010). Moreover, the image of the ideal pupil overlaps with the characteristics of certain social groups (white, middle-​class girls) and it is precisely because of this that some find it easier than others to construe themselves as ‘good students’ (Grant, 2006). We should also note that the concept of learner identity should not only be viewed only as a cognitive process, but also as a socially, culturally and emotionally produced one that is closely related to self-​esteem (Hollingworth and Archer, 2010). Students’ identities are not only nurtured by their own social traits and positions but are developed in institutional contexts characterised by specific learning cultures. As noted by Coll and Falsafi (2010), identities are both built through learning, and also mediate participation in learning. And this is because not all school contexts provide the same learning opportunities, nor do all students take the same material or symbolic positions as learning subjects. The concept of learning culture (Hodkinson et al, 2007) has led to the development of a highly significant body of research that views the construction of identities within the framework of particular learning experiences and the structures of specific learning opportunities (Colley et al, 2003; Ecclestone, 2007a; Brockmann, 2010). As noted by Rees et al (1997: 490) ‘an individual’s capacity to take up whatever learning opportunities are available is constrained by his or her previous history in this respect.’ Likewise, the structure of learning opportunities that individuals are able to access differs enormously depending on specific historical, regional and institutional settings. The research by Colley et al (2003) shows that the dominant teaching and learning cultures in VET contribute to the definition of a specific vocational habitus among students that is aimed at meeting the requirements of an obedient and disciplined future workforce. In fact, various studies (Wheelahan, 2007; Nylud and Rosvall, 2016) show that 169

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recent reforms to VET in different countries have led to an increasingly more technical curriculum, focused on the acquisition of specific skills that are easily transferable to the labour market. And this curriculum implicitly incorporates a definition of what learning should be and how it should be learned in this educational track. In the Spanish case, students accessing VET encounter an education system that differs in many aspects from the one that typically characterises lower secondary education and the upper secondary academic track. In the vocational track, the curriculum is organised around occupational skills rather than subjects. Such a structure typifies the intention to directly connect VET with the labour market through the knowledge and skills that are worked on in the classroom and that are required of students. In keeping with this, time is divided between activities of a theoretical nature and others of a practical nature, but they are all aimed at the development of the occupational skills associated with each area of specialist training and knowledge required for the labour market. Finally, students do internships that are designed to enhance their professional skills and provide them with knowledge and experience of the ‘real-​life’ environment of the profession they are being trained for. As a whole, the education system that is deployed in VET is associated to a specific professional experience and combines theoretical and practical knowledge linked to it and to the working habits that will be required of students once they enter the labour market. The cognitive and behavioural dimensions that are developed in this track help to foster a professional culture among its students (Colley et al, 2003) that also links them emotionally to their future profession. Likewise, the biographical research conducted by Michaela Brockmann (2010) shows that many students’ negative school experiences lead them to develop a learner identity that is grounded in the rejection of certain teaching and learning styles. Her study shows that VET is frequently chosen because students feel opposed to academic and theoretical forms of access to knowledge. However, the author claims that this process is not the result of students’ passive attitudes but due to their active disposition towards building their learner identities around manual and practical attributes. According to this author, these young people, far from the stereotypical view of VET students, do not see themselves as second-​rate students or an outcome of school failure. The construction of learner identities is intertwined with young people’s educational, labour and life trajectories. Research by Archer and Yamashita (2003), Ball et al (2000), Ecclestone (2007b) and Reay et al (2001) in the United Kingdom shows that young people’s educational choices are not explained as being the result of rational personal calculations or by the isolated effect of structural and/​or institutional factors. It is in the connection between 170

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structure and agency and, therefore, in the construction of identities that these choice processes must be understood. For this reason, the choice of an educational track is inexorably linked with one’s self-​perception and self-​ image, in the context of past school experiences and future expectations. As Ecclestone (2007a) puts it, students opt for tracks that reflect and reinforce a particular image of themselves as specific types of learners that are ‘suited’ for particular educational environments.

Methodology A study of young people’s identities necessarily implies a qualitative methodological approach that can examine their educational experiences and capture the structures of meaning and significance that lie beneath them. Identities are formed in and through discourse, which, far from being merely descriptive, has a strong productive component (Hollingworth and Archer, 2010) to generate frameworks of meaning, adherence or exclusion. This is why identities and discourses are so deeply intertwined and inseparable from power relations. As noted by Ball (1993), discourse exerts its power through the production of knowledge and ‘truths’. So, an examination of the identities of young learners implies understanding what discursive meanings they encounter in specific places and at specific times. To conduct this analysis, 42 in-​depth interviews were held with first-​year VET students at eight schools in Barcelona that all offer both lower and upper secondary education, but differ in terms of social composition, geographical location and the supply of upper secondary tracks2. The students selected were heterogeneous with regard to gender, social origin and educational track. Of the sample, 19 are girls and 23 are boys; six are middle class and 36 belong to different working-​class fractions3; 14 are taking a technical/​manual VET programme, 8 an administrative/​managerial one and 20 a health/​ social one. Although the sample is heterogeneous, this chapter examines the learner identities of VET students in general, without considering any internal differences. The interviews were transcribed and coded using ATLAS.ti. For this analysis, citations were grouped into three major codes: ‘educational trajectory’, ‘school experience’ and ‘learner identity’. The ‘trajectory’ code collects descriptive-​objective information about young people’s educational tracks; the ‘experience’ code refers to subjective experiences of these tracks; and finally the ‘identity’ code includes references to notions that are explicitly attributed to ‘I’, ‘us’ and ‘them’. The interviews were coded on the basis of the conceptual relationships shown in Table 9.1. These relationships summarise the crucial elements noted by the specialist literature on the identity-​building process in general, 171

Educational Transitions and Social Justice Table 9.1: Conceptual model for the study of identity Dimensions

Indicators

Sequential

Constructed in relation to the past Reconstructed in the present Projected into the future

Cumulative

Drawn from past learning experiences and practices (which may be contradictory) Reconstructed and expressed as a coherent narrative (selection of experiences, which can vary over time)

Relational

Constructed in relation to others Constructed by the view of other people

Social and institutional (also cultural, historical, political)

Overlapped with the characteristics of social position in terms of social class, gender and ethnicity

Multiple

Cognitive elements

Constructed in relation to the social, pedagogical and curricular characteristics of schools Behavioural elements Emotional elements

Expressed/​produced by

Discourses Practices

and on student identities in particular. Such systematisation represents an advance in the empirical development of this field of study.

Results Educational pathways built upon damaged learner identities The learner identities of VET students are shaped from an educational experience in lower secondary education that is usually marked by poor grades, failed exams, grade retention and, in many cases, by being allocated into remedial or lower streams4. Going through such systems supposes, according to the young people interviewed, a limitation on their future educational opportunities, both in terms of the acquisition of knowledge and the chances of accessing upper secondary education. As Pere and Omid say: “I am not as good at maths as I could have been if I hadn’t had to go to the remedial group” (Pere, assistant nursing); “In the lowest ability group [Group C] we were all going to do VET. If you wanted to do Baccalaureate, you had to be in Group A or B, but in C you can’t do Baccalaureate” (Omid, hairdressing). This school experience generates a fragile learner identity (Brockmann, 2010) that makes it hard to view oneself as a ‘good student’ and leads to the 172

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internalisation of the idea of school failure. As shown by previous research in this field (Valenzuela, 1999; Archer and Yassamita, 2003; Hollingworth and Archer, 2010) those who had negative school experiences during their educational trajectories tend to blame themselves for their own failure, and consequently to define themselves as less clever and less capable than others5. Furthermore, dominant rhetoric on individualisation and choice makes’ it extremely difficult to construct a narrative about their own educational trajectories that does not involve an element of self-​blame (Ball et al, 2000)6. This also explains, as argued by Biggart and Furlong (1996), why it is much harder today to find forms of school resistance similar to those identified by Paul Willis in his studies in the 1970s. The identity-​building process in an environment of individualisation contains both relational and institutional elements that are shared. However, the interviews reveal that the sharing of these elements is not enough to transcend the space of individual action. As Alex says “Well, we are all similar because we are the ones who have always been told we are worthless and a lot of us have repeated years and stuff” (Alex, assistant nursing). At present, this negative school experience is also fostered by participation in an educational track that is still highly discredited. And this social construct of VET as a ‘demonised educational space’ (Hollingworth and Archer, 2010) has a clear impact on how students’ learner identities are shaped. In fact, the young people interviewed are fully aware that their track represents a ‘second-​rate’ option in the collective mindset and that it is for people who are not ‘prepared’ or ‘able’ to take the academic track. Moreover, their narratives reveal the fundamental role lower secondary teachers play in the construction of this negative image of VET. This supports the results of previous research that has adressed school guidance as a key technology of disciplining students in contemporary education systems (Romito, 2019). In the following quote, Lorena reports the frustration of having been guided towards a track that is presented, both materially and discursively, in negative terms: “ ‘VET seems to be for the outcasts. You could call it something of a taboo. [Lower secondary teachers] speak more highly of Baccalaureate and VET is for people who find schoolwork hard. Nobody ever asked if I’d like to do Baccalaureate, they directly told me “you’re going to do VET” (Lorena, assistant nursing). This negative view is not only transmitted by the pedagogical authorities (tutors and counsellors) but is also reinforced among peers. Hence Edgar’s classmates view him as a ‘bad student’ because he was guided towards VET: “A lot of my classmates were going to do Baccalaureate. When I told them I wanted to do VET, that it was the only option I’d been given, they said ‘too bad mate, VET is for people who don’t study” (Edgar, electrical and automatic systems). The construction of VET students’ learner identities cannot be understood in isolation from the construction of the identities of students who take the academic track. The former is 173

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constructed and produced not so much in relation to but in opposition to the latter. Academic students are viewed as ‘smart’, ‘hard-​working’ students who like to study and do not find it difficult. In contrast, VET students strongly identify themselves as second-​rate learners (Eccelstone, 2007a). They not only describe themselves based on the attributes that they are perceived to possess but, above all, on those that they are sorry not to have: the cognitive or attitudinal attributes that will allow them to take the track that opens the doors for social mobility. As a result, they develop a downgraded identity (Hollingworth and Archer, 2010). Q: Would you say that certain study options are more suitable for certain students than others? A: Yes. For example, people who are more intelligent than others can do more advanced courses and can access all kinds of jobs. Q: So it’s a question of intelligence? A: Yes. (Manel, assistant nursing) ‘Baccalaureate is for intelligent people.’ (Paula, assistant nursing) Such a ‘damaged identity’ is expressed through a variety of dimensions (cognitive, behavioural and emotional) (Fredricks, 2004). In cognitive terms, VET students demonstrate a lack of confidence in their abilities, feel that studying is not for them, that they are no good at it, that they find it hard to concentrate and that they get poor grades. The way these young people describe themselves as learners tends to include sattributes such as ‘slow’, ‘bad’, ‘normal’ and ‘regular’, often in an essentialist manner. These descriptions also distance them from the core subjects of lower secondary education (and of the academic track), such as languages and mathematics. Subjects that are strongly associated with abstract knowledge and also with transmissive teaching styles. ‘I have a different way of learning, a bit slower, calmer, because otherwise I get bogged down and don’t understand stuff, which is when you get stuck and don’t want to learn anything.’ (Alexia, vehicle electromechanics) ‘I’d say I am a regular student. I’m normal, passable.’ (Nala, electrical and automatic systems) ‘I wasn’t a good student. I’m no good at languages.’ (Fernando, micro-​ computing systems and networks) ‘Numbers and me don’t get along.’ (Laura, aesthetics and beauty) 174

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From a behavioural point of view, the young people interviewed project a self-​image of not being adapted to the prevailing standards or the ‘grammar’ of lower secondary school (Tyack and Tobin, 1994). They define themselves as lazy, and find it difficult to stay seated for many hours and to concentrate on what the teachers are saying. In contrast to their own identities, they define school standards as if they, together with the definition of merit or effort, were naturally and/​or inherently associated to the actions of individuals, rather than social and cultural constructs that, as such, are deeply traversed by the axes of social inequality (Youdell, 2003). As Pere expresses when asked how he would define a VET student: “Certainly someone who doesn’t like it much to always be with a book or taking notes, someone who prefers to be in direct contact with what they’re working with” (Pere, assistant nursing). VET students, consequently, are not ‘book smart’ but ‘street smart’ in the terms of Hatt (2007). Finally, and from the emotional point of view, the interviews show how these young people do not fit or identify with what is taught during lower secondary education. As we will show in the following section, the emotional bond with what is being studied is a key element in the construction of a learner identity. This is, in turn, connected with the assessment and recognition by others of one’s own aptitudes and attitudes. This highlights the difficulties for these students in successfully getting through lower secondary education, and the idea that others find it easier, which often leads to a self-​exclusion process whereby the academic track is not even considered as a possible option. Vincent’s answer to the question of why he took the VET trajectory not Baccalaureate is simply: “Because I didn’t see myself as capable” (Vincent, micro-​computing systems and networks). Recognition and certainty to resignify learners’ identities Learner identities are nurtured by past educational experiences (and their subsequent selection and reconstruction), by present educational experiences, and by future projections that give them meaning (Coll and Falsafi, 2010). As we have seen, the experiences of VET students during lower secondary education have clear negative connotations (failure, the idea of being a poor student, comparison with the academic track) that makes it difficult for them to define themselves as ‘good students’. For many students, taking VET represents a reconversion of their self-​ image as learners and of their relationship with the school institution7. So it is worth highlighting three factors that help us to understand how one’s self-​image as a learner is modified through the process of incorporating a vocational habitus (Colley et al, 2003), which is associated to the differential characteristics of VET with respect to lower secondary education and the type of relationships that are established with peers (Ecclestone, 2007a). 175

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First of all, VET students identify with a more practical or applied kind of knowledge than that which is prioritised during lower secondary education. In their discourse, this serves both to reflect on the causes of their disaffection with school in the previous stage and to explain their greater connection with vocational studies. Many of the interviewees hint at a reappraisal of the self-​image as a ‘bad student’ that occurs when one’s ‘practical’ skills are recognised in VET. This recognition somehow enables them to revise their notions of ability, capability, intelligence and skill. So their own (past and present) school experiences play a part in improving their self-​image and their views of their chosen track in a process of sequential and cumulative reconstruction that leads them to modify their own learner identities: “In Baccalaureate they make you learn everything, which you end up forgetting, and you don’t do anything practical. I think you learn a lot more through practice than by memorising” (Blas, electricity). The applied orientation of VET also gives a broader meaning to the education process as preparation for employment. As shown in the previous section, during lower secondary education and in the transition to upper secondary education, intelligence tends to be associated with the academic track and lack of aptitude with VET. However, the following quote shows that, in the context of VET, another type of knowledge is valued that young people view as a ‘comfort zone’ (Ecclestone, 2007a) or ‘act of recognition’ (Coll and Falsafi, 2010). This comfort zone is what leads them to conceive crafts and skills as knowledge and, therefore, to attribute a symbolic value to it on the basis of which they can build a new image of themselves as educable or successful students (Hollingworth and Archer, 2010). However, although these ‘acts of recognition’ might improve students’ self-​image, they do not question the prevailing idea that different students are almost innately ‘gifted’ for different types of knowledge, and that such knowledge is mechanically associated with the different upper secondary tracks: A: In Baccalaureate you might be stupid, and have a low IQ, but if you spend all day studying, you’ll get there in the end. Q: And you don’t think that’s the case with VET? A: Here it’s partly the practical part. You might get full marks in exams, but here practical skills are also appreciated, being good at doing things. (Cristian, assistant nursing) Secondly, the experience of VET causes a change not only in the ways students relate to learning but also in how they ‘are’ in the classroom. The stigma of the ‘troublemaker’ is softened. Although a significant number of interviewees describe the educational environment in VET as ‘turbulent’ or ‘noisy’ because of the majority characteristics of its students, they also think 176

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that people work hard and are in a good environment. Their relationship with school takes on an unconventional form that does not necessarily fit with the ‘conventional’ image of it being typically orderly, silent and still. Although some students might have defiant or even disruptive attitudes, they feel they belong to the school, are committed to their studies and appreciate the purpose of being in a classroom setting. The way our interviewees link behaviour in the classroom to the interest aroused by learning and the idea of ‘knowing what you want to do’ is especially interesting. We see this in the following quote: “Some were troublemakers in the past, but we are all here because we want to study. We are all here for a reason. A lot have come a long way and have had to make sacrifices to be here” (Edgar, electrical and automatic systems). Edgar’s words refer to a recurring element in the interviews: the relationships that students establish with their peers. There are frequent mentions of the heterogeneous ages of the students doing upper secondary VET, but these differences do not seem to hinder a sense of belonging to the group, which is based precisely on the shared interest in successfully completing their training. The ways in which they feel bonded to their peers have less to do with what makes them the same or different in terms of age, trajectory, gender or origin, and more to do with what they have in common regarding their interests and aspirations. As noted in the previous section, these young people tend to view their interests and aspirations as the product of personal and individual decisions. So, despite the tendency for VET to be homogeneous in terms of social class, these students consider what they have most in common with their peers is their shared interests. These interests are defined in opposition to a ‘general culture’ that is attributed to the academic track. In fact, this attribution stresses the subsidiary role that practical knowledge plays in young people’s mindsets (and in the structure of lower secondary education), where it is situated outside, and not as part of, general culture. Moreover, these interests are considered to denote a clear idea of what they want to do: they are specific and are associated with the real world: “I think people who have opted for VET have greater value, because it’s like they are already sure what they want to do. … Meanwhile, in Baccalaureate you’re stuck in a book and don’t know anything about the world outside” (Damian, dependent Adult care). Damian’s quote introduces a third element of the process of modifying the learner’s self-​image: the connection between the specificity of courses and what students are motivated by or want to study, usually as a means to find a job. The instrumental value they attribute to VET is much greater than that assigned to the academic track, since it allows them to find employment quicker and with better relative qualifications than they would have if they were seeking work at the end of the academic track. In any case, the sequential dimension of learner identity is relatively shorter for this group 177

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of young people, since their status as learners expires when they complete upper secondary education: “Baccalaureate in itself doesn’t open as many doors. You don’t start doing what you really want to do until you are 20-​ something. … In VET, by doing a year or two, you are doing internships before you turn 18 and once you’re 18 you can work at what you like” (Ángela, assistant nursing). As we have seen, VET teaching puts (with greater or lesser success) the link with the labour market at the centre. Despite the instrumental value that students attribute to VET, there is also some tension with regard to the connection between preferences, studies and the labour market. Although VET may improve the positive elements through which students build their learner identities, their discourses on the explicit content of the training and their hopes of finding a job are often critical. The following quote helps to give an idea of some of the tensions that emerge from a dichotomous view of theoretical and practical knowledge, and from the connection made between one’s own training and the foreseen access to the labour market : ‘I like it when we do practical work because I like working with people, but I find studying a drag, stuff about ulcers and whatever are not things we’re going to be doing because, forgive my language, we’re going to end up wiping butts and cleaning up after the doctors. Here they teach you as if you’re going to be on a par with the nurses, and I don’t like to feel that they’re taking us for a ride. Because they’re taking me for a ride.’ (Lorena, assistant nursing). The tension reflected in Lorena’s words highlights two critical elements in relation to the (potential) impact of the resignification of learner identity on the educational trajectories of VET students that are consistent with the results of previous research such as Colley et al (2003) and Brockmann (2010). The first element has to do with the legacy of the dichotomy between theory and practice that VET receives from the previous stages, and especially from lower secondary education. The almost inherent rejection of theory (Brockmann, 2010) in the new learner identity of VET students is undoubtedly an element that limits their future educational opportunities and trajectories. And the second element refers to the precarious conditions in which VET graduates usually enter an increasingly segmented, uncertain and insecure job market. It would seem, then, that VET is responsible for educating the increasing number of ‘disheartened workers’ that authors such as David Raffe (1992) and Andy Biggart and Andy Furlong (1996), among others, define in their research. In this regard, the vocational habitus that is constructed during this stage, and which serves as a link between past and present education experiences and future projections, plays an ambivalent role with respect to the 178

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possibilities of emancipation or rupture. Identification with an occupational culture raises the possibility of an educational bond for a type of student who has traditionally been excluded from the school system, in part because of their dislike of abstract knowledge. However, and precisely for this reason, it reinforces a dichotomous and hierarchical distinction between the two types of knowledge, and an identification by VET students with one (the practical) as opposed to the other. Although VET students reconstruct their identities towards a more positive one at this stage, their recognition of the situation in which they are going to enter the labour market and, to a certain extent, their resignation, suggests that the vocational habitus may play a more reproductive than emancipatory role.

Conclusions Our aim in this chapter has been to analyse how VET students construct their learner identities based on their past and present educational experiences, and their future projections. Following the contributions of authors such as Michaela Brockmann (2010), Helen Colley et al (2003) and Kathryn Ecclestone (2007a), we found that these identities are built around specific educational experiences that are generated in specific institutional contexts. The chapter also supports the importance of analysing young people’s identities in order to understand how their educational trajectories unfold. As noted by Ecclestone (2007b), the concept of identity, understood as a self-​image in relation to the world and to others, can be used to analyse educational tracks and transitions beyond the overly dichotomous views of agency (the capacity for individual autonomous action) and structure (the effects of constraining or enabling factors). Nevertheless, we argued that there is still insufficient research analysing student identities, and in particular their identities as learners as part of a development process that incorporates time and change (Colley et al, 2003).a Furthermore, we claimed that, although copious research has explored the effect of structural elements on the construction of identities (fundamentally class, gender and ethnicity), there has been far less focus on the impact of school-​specific elements on the same (Coll and Falsafi, 2010). In other words, although numerous studies have shown how the axes of social inequality contribute to a self-​image that is recognised and/​or enhanced by the school context (Reay et al, 2001; Archer and Yamashita, 2003; Ingram, 2018), far fewer have turned the equation around and analysed how school contexts contribute to the creation of self-​images through specific learning activities and relationships that are inevitably mediated by axes of inequality. The main conclusions of the analysis are threefold. First, young people’s learner identities emerge in specific institutional contexts that are marked by power and inequality relations. Most of the interviewed students had had 179

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negative experiences of lower secondary education, with a trajectory marked by low grades, failed exams and grade retentions, and hence find it difficult to view themselves as ‘ideal pupils’. Moreover, this experience is intensified by taking an educational track, VET, that is still held in low esteem. If they choose VET it is because they are not ‘good’ or ‘disciplined’ enough to take the academic track. This self-​image has been gradually developed throughout their entire school trajectories in several ways, including streaming during lower secondary education (with the different consequences this entails for access to upper secondary education); guidance practices that treat VET as a place for ‘invalid’ students; and teachers telling them that they are ‘no good at studying’. These are just a few of the factors that structure their experiences during lower secondary education and that lead to a highly downgraded learner identity (Hollingworth and Archer, 2010). Second, the results of the analysis lead us to affirm that VET is a fundamental educational context for young people to reconstruct their self-​image as learners and their relationships with the education system. As Ecclestone (2007a) puts it, this learning space has been defined as a ‘comfort zone’ for young people who have been ‘expelled’ from lower secondary education. A central element of this reconversion process is a classroom methodology in which practical and applied knowledge plays a central role in pedagogical and curricular practices. In fact, when the value of practical work is stressed, young people view this as an ‘act of recognition’ (Coll and Falsafi, 2010) of what they consider to be a constituent part of their way of being and learning, and which had until now been ignored. And this is why they are able to reconstruct themselves as learners and develop what Colley et al (2003) define as a vocational habitus. Third, the analysis shows that this process of reconstructing one’s learner identity is not without contradictions and that, despite the intention to foster change (using the expression offered by Willis, 1977), it can end up having a reproductive effect. Certainly, defending the value of practical work as a form of knowledge can be viewed as an act of resistance: it’s not that they aren’t ‘good students’, it’s the educational system that doesn’t recognise their abilities8. The very fact of using the word ‘knowledge’ to describe practical knowledge is in itself an act of empowerment that allows them to see themselves as learners. However, the dichotomies between theory and practice that run throughout the organisation of the education system and its various upper secondary tracks are a reflection of the structure of social inequality and, in particular, of the social division of labour (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a). Rejection of theory as a constituent element of their new learner identities allows students to reconcile with themselves and with the school system in the present, but closes doors for them in the future, and even more so in consideration of the segmentation and instability of the current labour market. 180

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It is therefore essential to look in greater depth at the role of learning cultures and their effects on the construction of learner identities in order to further our understanding of young people’s upper secondary educational transitions and choices from a sociological perspective. The choice of an educational track or the development of a school trajectory cannot only be explained by the structure of the education system or the axes of social inequality. More segmented education systems would undoubtedly generate greater inequality in the patterns of young people’s educational transitions (Dupriez et al 2008; Nylund et al, 2017). Likewise, the opportunities for choice and the ways in which they are materialised depend on the structures of social, economic and cultural capital that are available to young people (Seghers et al, 2019). Along with these factors, however, it is essential to extend sociological analysis of the role of school contexts, and in particular their pedagogical methods and ways of organising knowledge, in the construction of self-​concepts as learners, and also of how these environments progressively generate material and symbolic markers that encourage or discourage decisions to take different educational pathways. Acknowledgements This chapter was previously published in the journal Revista de Sociología de la Educación (RASE). The original version can be found here: https://​ojs. uv.es/​index.php/​RASE/​arti​cle/​view/​18047/​0 Notes See Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 for details of the structure and organisation of the Spanish education system and for understanding the multiple mechanisms of segmentation that traverses it. 2 The total sample of the interviewed students in Barcelona was of 68; 42 of them were following VET –​and are the ones analysed in this ­chapter –​and the other 26 were studying Baccalaureate. See Chapter 1 for full information of the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the other chapters are produced. 3 It is not a coincidence that most of the students of our sample following a VET upper secondary track are from a working-​class background; this clearly represents the social segmentation of the upper secondary transition field. See Chapter 5 for a statistical analysis proving the concentration of working-​class students in VET. See also Chapter 6 for a detailed explanation of working-​class fractions and their impact on upper secondary educational transitions and choices. 4 Although formally comprehensive, lower secondary education in Spain often resorts to different curricular diversification or streaming mechanisms that formally depend on abilities. For further information on this matter, see Tarabini et al (2018). Chapter 5 also provides further evidence of this. 5 It is worth noting here that the results of our analysis differ from those of Brockmann (2010). As shown in the following section, although some students do, through their experiences with VET, manage to actively reformulate their learner identities in their passage through lower secondary education, they do come to view the accumulated failures during that time as personal failings. 1

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Educational Transitions and Social Justice Chapter 10 is an excellent example of this as it shows how, by means of hermeneutical injustice, young people fail to recognise the many factors that condition their upper secondary educational choices and transitions, leading to a strikingly individualistic narrative of their educational journeys. 7 There is no room here to go into the different forms of identity that students construct with regard to vocational education. This section therefore only focuses on the discourse of students who display a reconversion of their learner identity in association to their decision to take VET. 8 See Chapter 7 for further analysis of this lack of recognition in the specific case of migrant students. 6

References Archer, L. and Francis, B. (2007) Understanding Minority Ethnic Achievement: Race, Gender, Class and ‘Success’, London: Routledge. Archer, L. and Yamashita, H. (2003) ‘“Knowing their limits”? Identities, inequalities and inner city school leavers’ post-​16 aspirations’, Journal of Education Policy, 18(1): 53–​69. Ball, S. (1993) ‘What is policy? Texts, trajectories and toolboxes’, Discourse, 13(2): 10–​17. Ball, S.J., Maguire, M. and Macrae, S. (2000) Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-​16: New Youth, New Economies in the Global City, London: Routledge. Ball, S., Davies, J., David, M. and Reay, D. (2002) ‘“Classification” and “judgement”: social class and the “cognitive structures” of choice of Higher Education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(1): 51–​72. Biggart, A. and Furlong, A. (1996) ‘Educating “discouraged workers”: cultural diversity in the upper secondary school’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17(3): 253–​66. Bourdieu, P. (1990) In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Brockmann, M. (2010) ‘Identity and apprenticeship: the case of English motor vehicle maintenance apprentices’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 62(1): 63–​73. Coll, C. and Falsafi, L. (2010) ‘Learner identity: an educational and analytical tool’, Revista de Educación, 353: 211–​33. Colley, H., James, David, J., Diment, K. and Tedder, M. (2003) ‘Learning as becoming in vocational education and training: class, gender and the role of vocational habitus’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 55(4): 471–​97. Dupriez, V., Dumay, X. and Vause, A. (2008) ‘How do school systems manage pupils’ heterogeneity?’, Comparative Education Review, 52 (2): 245–​73. Ecclestone, K. (2007a) ‘Commitment, compliance and comfort zones: the effects of formative assessment on vocational education students’ learning careers’, Assessment in Education, 14(3): 315–​33.

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Ecclestone, K. (2007b) ‘Lost and found in transition: the implications of “identity”, “agency” and “structure” for educational goals and practices’, Keynote presentation to Researching Transitions in Lifelong Learning Conference, University of Stirling, 22–​24 June 2007. Evans, K. (2007) ‘Concepts of bounded agency in education, work, and the personal lives of young adults’, International Journal of Psychology, 42(2): 85–​93. Fredricks, J.A., Blumenfeld, P.C. and Paris., A.H. (2004) ‘School engagement: potential of the concept, state of the evidence’, Review of Educational Research, 74(1): 59–​109. Furlong, J.C. (1991) ‘Disaffected pupils: reconstructing the sociological perspective’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 12(3): 293–​307. García Jiménez, E. and Lorente García, R. (2015) ‘Recorrido por la imagen social de la formación profesional: un camino hacia su revalorización’, Revista Española de Educación Comparada, 26: 119–​34. Grant, B. (2006) ‘Disciplining students: the construction of student subjectivities’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(1): 101–​14. Harris, R. and Rainey, L. (2012) ‘Learning pathways between and within vocational and higher education: towards a typology?’, The Australian Association for Research in Education, 39: 107–​23. Hatt, B. (2007) ‘Street smarts vs. book smarts: the figured world of smartness in the lives of marginalized, urban youth’, The Urban Review, 39(2): 145–​66. Hodkinson, P. and Sparkes, A. (1997) ‘Careership: a sociological theory of career decision making’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(1): 29–​44. Hodkinson, P., Biesta, G. and James, D. (2007) ‘Understanding learning cultures’, Educational Review, 59(4): 415–​27. Hollingworth, S. and Archer, L. (2010) ‘Urban schools as urban places: school reputation, children’s identities and engagement with education in London’, Urban Studies, 47(3): 584–​603. Ingram, N. (2018) Working-​Class Boys and Educational Success Teenage Identities, Masculinities and Urban Schooling, London: Palgrave. Jenkins, R. (1996) Social Identity, London: Routledge. Nylund, M. and Rosvall, P. (2016) ‘A curriculum tailored for workers? Knowledge organization and possible transitions in Swedish VET’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 48(5): 692–​710. Nylund, M., Rosvall, P. and Ledman, K. (2017) ‘The vocational-​academic divide in neoliberal upper-​secondary curricula: the Swedish case’, Journal of Education Policy, 32(6): 788–​808. Raffe, D. (1992) ‘Participation of 16–​18 year olds in education and training’, National Commission on Education, Briefing Paper, 3, London: National Commission on Education.

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Reay, D. (2010) ‘Identity making in schools and classrooms’, in M. Wetherell and C. Mohanty (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Identities, London: Sage, pp 277–96. Reay, D., Davies, J., David, M. and Ball, S. (2001) ‘Choices of degree or degrees of choice? Class, “race” and the higher education choice process’, Sociology, 35(4): 855–​74. Rees, G., Fevre, R., Furlong, J.C. and Gorard, S. (1997) ‘History, place and the learning society: towards a sociology of lifetime learning’, Journal of Education Policy, 12(6): 485–​97. Romito, M. (2019) ‘Governing through guidance: an analysis of educational guidance practices in an Italian lower secondary school’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(6): 773–​88. Seghers, M, Boone, S. and Van Avermaet, P. (2019) ‘Social class and educational decision-​making in a choice-​driven education system: a mixed-​ methods study’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 40(5): 696–​714. Tarabini, A., Curran, M., Castejón, A. and Montes, A. (2018) ‘Framing youth educational choices at the end of compulsory schooling: the Catalan case’, in A. Tarabini and N. Ingram (eds), Educational Choices, Transitions and Aspirations in Europe: Systemic, Institutional and Subjective Challenges, London: Routledge, pp 95–109. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021a) ‘The politics of educational transitions: evidence from Catalonia’, European Educational Research Journal, 20(2): 212–​27. Tarabini, A. and Jacovkis, J. (2021b) ‘Tracking, knowledge, and the organisation of secondary schooling: teachers’ representations and explanations’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 74(1): 89–​106. Tyack, D. and Tobin, W. (1994) ‘The “grammar” of schooling: why has it been so hard to change?’, American Educational Research Journal, 31(3): 453–​79. Valenzuela, A. (1999) Subtractive Schooling: US-​Mexican Youth and the Politics of Schooling, Albany: State University of New York Press. Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs, London: Saxon House. Wheelahan, L. (2007) ‘How competency-​based training locks the working class out of powerful knowledge: a modified Bernsteinian analysis’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(5): 637–​51. Youdell, D. (2003) ‘Identity traps or how black students fail’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(1): 3–​20.

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Hermeneutical injustice in upper secondary educational transitions Alberto Sánchez-​Rojo and Miriam Prieto

In 2010, Stéphane Hessel, a 93-​year-​old former diplomat and surviving member of the French resistance against the Nazi occupation, wrote a short book encouraging young people to be outraged (Hessel, 2010). In just a few weeks, it became a bestseller, was translated into several languages and ended up being the inspiration for youth movements and protests in different parts of the world. The severe economic crisis that had devastated the world at the end of the previous decade and the austerity measures that governments had imposed as a solution had left young people without a future. Social movements such as 15M in Spain and Occupy Wall Street in the United States are just two of the many significant examples from around the world and in a very short space of time that featured demonstrations and riots in which young people publicly expressed their outrage (della Porta, 2015). However, although some of these movements led to the creation of political parties that brought with them a certain amount of hope in some countries (della Porta, 2017), as far as actions outside of traditional representative politics are concerned, the flame soon burned out. Although a huge majority of young people felt a strong sense of outrage about their plight, very few could offer a real account of the causes. And so their struggle could never amount to anything more than a cry of protest (Žižek, 2012). Spanish novelist Cristina Morales, who was highly active in 15M, had one of her characters speak out in defence of young people by saying that it is not up to them to justify their outrage. They inherited this world from another generation and the important thing, if they feel uncomfortable with it, is to express that disagreement, rather than try to explain or resolve a problem for which they are not responsible. But her character nevertheless concludes his speech by recognising that ‘a minimum of criticism, in the sense of appreciation or valuation of what lies ahead is perhaps indispensable’ (Morales, 2020: 40). The fact is that if young people do not know anything about their context, if the only thing they have is a feeling of outrage, then those who handle all the information can misrepresent it in such a way that, despite not being the guilty party, young people end up feeling responsible. In a free society, it is easy for people to believe that if they had taken other 185

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options in life, they may have avoided such precariousness. However, the choices we make never depend exclusively on ourselves and it is important for us to be aware of that (Sofritti et al, 2020). Miranda Flicker claims that we are facing a case of hermeneutical injustice ‘when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences’ (Flicker, 2007: 1). The complexity of our world means that young people’s life experiences are affected by a multitude of variables that are out of their own control, many of which they do not know how to or cannot detect, even though they are hugely influenced by them. This puts many young people at an unfair disadvantage with respect to other groups that are aware of these influences and take advantage of them. That is why it is important to teach young people about these things. Only through knowledge can they truly face their futures in a responsible manner (Ojala, 2017). There is no doubt that a society in which young people can be outraged and openly disagree is healthy. However, it is even more so if they know how to channel that outrage in a deliberate and responsible way. Bearing this in mind, this chapter looks in depth at the understanding that young people from four schools in the city of Madrid have of the factors that condition their decisions and choices when transitioning to upper secondary education. The chapter is structured in four sections: the first introduces the theoretical framework based on the notion of biographical experiences; the second section describes the methods; the third section analyses the narratives that emerge from the interviews carried out. Finally, a fourth section presents the main conclusions, highlighting that, when transitioning, young people are not only guided towards certain pathways, and conditioned by contexts in which they set out from different starting points, but that, since they are unable to detect these circumstances, their interpretations of their school and academic experiences are incomplete.

Educational transitions as biographical experiences Educational transitions are the setting for the complex interrelation between the structural factors that condition people’s identities and behaviours, and the capacity for agency that defines the human being (Furlong et al, 2011). From their beginnings, sociological studies of educational trajectories have revealed the influence of such structural factors as social class, gender, ethnicity and others1 (Tarabini and Ingram, 2018). However, the various social changes and transformations that have occurred in many Western countries in recent decades (extension of schooling, liberalisation of the labour market, economic and technological developments, and so on) have eroded the social and regulatory frameworks within which students construct their identities, generating in young people the need to build identities of 186

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their own (Cuconato and Walther, 2015). In the context of education and training, this erosion has led to the de-​standardisation of school trajectories (Walther, 2006) into what have been called ‘yo-​yo transitions’, in which young people follow less defined and more erratic pathways between youth and adulthood (Biggart and Walther, 2005). And, although it is true that the gradual extension and de-​standardisation of trajectories has increased the possibilities and options for students making their way through the education system, there has been no increase in the opportunities for the most vulnerable groups, whose unequal circumstances continue to have a decisive effect (Tarabini and Curran, 2019). Although it is important to analyse external conditioning factors when examining students’ transitions through the education system, it is also important to consider young people’s cognitive and emotional characteristics (their biographies), which lead them to make decisions that should be viewed as pragmatic orin line with their situations and circumstances, rather than rational (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997). It is a fact that the everyday nature of any context inevitably ends up influencing actions and behaviours. Bourdieu (2002) calls this habitus and describes how decisive a factor it is. However, it does not influence everyone the same way, which is why it is essential not to lose sight of the fact that every life is unique and specific. We also need to take into account how the gradual shift towards individualisation in the field of education has meant that the configuration of education systems is based on equal opportunities that are achieved not by working with groups, but exclusively with individuals, assuming that any change in the way individuals move will depend fundamentally on interventions and modifications with regard to themselves and not so much on their contexts (Saura and Luengo, 2015). This assumption is reflected, for example, in the way that academic and vocational guidance is understood within the Spanish educational system, mainly in lower secondary education: it is addressed at each student and focuses on helping students to identify their abilities and interests to help them choose the educational or vocational track that best suits their capabilities2. This individualisation has a decisive influence on students, who may share similar contexts and experiences, but tend to view themselves as a group whose trajectories depend exclusively on their own agency (McDonald, 1999). In a context of de-​standardisation where social conditions and expectations seem to be diluted, learning becomes a personal responsibility (Brunila et al, 2011). In the case of transitions, the choice of a school option becomes a right and a duty that is apparently free from external influences, and which is presented to students as a free choice based solely on personal interests and competencies. Hence, the responsibility, both for the decision and its consequences, lies with the person (Walther, 2006). Consideration of transitions as the exercise of free and autonomous choice puts the emphasis 187

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on the person and their possibilities of agency. This highlights individual subjectivity and prioritises questions regarding aspirations and expectations on the basis of which decisions are made and the reasons why choices are made. From this perspective, the study of school transitions calls for the use of biographical approaches to try to unravel the individual processes that students follow when moving between institutionalised courses of action (Cuconato and Walther, 2015). Although the literature has confirmed the influence of both structural and individual factors and the dialectical nature of their interrelation, it does not necessarily follow that young people are aware of the existence of both factors and their influence on the decisions they make. To complete the analysis, we need to consider the contributions of the biographical perspective (Casal et al, 2006), which incorporates the notion of trajectory, and permits comprehension of how choices, despite being made at a certain moment, are the result of one’s own personal, family, school or academic histories. From this perspective, the study of students’ narratives regarding their perceptions of their school transitions constitutes an element of interest not only in terms of the consideration of the individual factors present in choices, but also of the structural conditioning factors. Hermeneutical injustice emanates from situations in which individuals lack the necessary resources to understand their own experiences. Therefore, an understanding of the phenomenon of school transitions not only requires knowledge of the processes that young people follow, but also their narratives, in order to identify their own knowledge and awareness of the structural factors that influence their school trajectories and biographies. This aspect has been described using the term ‘biographicity’, which refers to individuals’ ability to reflect on their own learning history in relation to external conditioning factors (Alheit, 2015). According to this notion, awareness generates a biographical structure of past experiences that the subject uses to order future experiences, so increasing and at the same time restricting their own possibilities of action in the future. Following Hodkinson (2009: 10), ‘position is also internal and subjective. How we perceive of our position is part of that position, and influences how we can and do act.’ Given the proliferation of discourses that tend to reward action directed at people over action directed at contexts when it comes to trying to reduce inequalities, there is a need to reverse the process, since without modifying the context, a real increase in opportunities cannot be achieved (Jacovkis et al, 2020). Additionally, action directed at students does not merely consist of increasing the number of alternative programmes and pathways adapted to them, as education legislators tend to believe (Kantasalmi and Holm, 2017), for it should also involve an increase in the personal resources that they can access in order to recognise and interpret their realities (McCollum, 2012). 188

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Methods The objective of this chapter is to analyse young people’s narratives about their school trajectories in order to identify the weight they attribute to structural factors and to their own agency. To conduct the analysis, 29 semi-​structured interviews were held with students in the first year of upper secondary education, taking either the academic or the vocational track at four schools in Madrid3. The young people were selected according to criteria of age, gender and variety of subjects and schools. They were asked questions in four areas: educational trajectory, transition process to upper secondary education, first experiences in upper secondary education, and family and socioeconomic conditions. The schools were selected by combining three criteria: the offer of lower secondary education as well as the two tracks of upper secondary education, ownership (state school or state-​subsidised) and social composition. With respect to the first criterion, the academic track subjects included at the selected schools were sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as International Baccalaureate (IB), while the Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses represented in the sample were management, nursing assistant, pharmacy assistant, care for dependent persons, information technology and hairdressing. Regarding the ownership and social composition of the schools, there was one state school and one state-​subsidised school in low socioeconomic areas, a state school in a medium socioeconomic area and a subsidised school in a high-​level area. The interviews with the young people were carried out during the 2018–​ 19 school year. Analysis of these revealed the inductive emergence of the categories ‘will’, ‘ability’ and ‘denial of structural factors’ (especially gender and socioeconomic level). The category ‘will’ was applied in those cases in which the young people alluded to subjective matters (desires, interests, preferences) as causative factors of educational choices, while ‘ability’ was used in the cases when they referred to aspects related to performance, talents, aptitudes and intelligence. ‘Denial of structural factors’ was applied in cases in which the interviewees denied the influence of external factors beyond their control. The analysis of trajectories deductively applied the classification by Walther et al (2015), and specifically the following categories: ‘academic uniform’, ‘academic discontinuous’, ‘vocational uniform’ and ‘vocational discontinuous’. The academic category is applied in the cases of students who take the Baccalaureate, and the vocational category is applied to students who are studying VET. The trajectory is classified as continuous when it occurs according to the years and ages established ordinarily in the organisation of the Spanish educational system (as explained in the Chapter 1, lower secondary education covers ages 12 to 16 years, and the two tracks of upper secondary education, academic and vocational, run from 16 to 18 years), and discontinuous when there is grade retention or dropout. 189

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Upper secondary narratives in transition Linearity in the academic track contrasting with discontinuity in VET The transitions of young people who take the academic track mostly follow what Walther et al (2015) call ‘smooth academic’ trajectories, without breaks (see Table 10.1). This fits with the certain natural continuity of the structure and organisation of the Spanish education system4, in which there is a clear continuity between the academic focus of lower secondary education and the academic track of upper secondary education (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2019). As seen in the Table 10.1, only three students following the academic track report a certain deviation from the usual trajectories of young people who take this upper secondary pathway. Two of the interviewees were retained for a year and a third was retained twice. One of the students who repeated the third year also took a special education scheme (PMAR) in the second year. These deviations do not imply that the trajectories are not classified as linear (since grade retentions are recognised within the education systems’ regulations and can therefore be considered part of it). Following the classification by Walther et al (2015), these would be discontinuous trajectories., Although they lead all the same to the academic track of upper secondary education, the pathway is more heterogeneous due to low performance. These cases seem to represent an exception to the rule that students who choose the academic track are those with a successful academic background5. However, if we look closer at these young people’s narratives, we find that there are attributions, either of their own or their families’, with regard to VET that generate a cognitive barrier that prevents them from taking that option, since they associate it with a drop in social status and with academic failure (Atkins and Flint, 2015; Caterall et al, 2014; Horcas and Giménez, 2017): ‘It’s because, although it’s hard for me to admit it, if you say: “I did intermediate or upper VET and went for a degree” or say “I did Baccalaureate and went for a degree”, they look at you differently, I’ve seen that and I understand it.’ (Hugo) ‘No, I mean, but because my parents have always had careers, I mean … they took official exams and all that, so they did Baccalaureate, but if you mention VET, well it’s like … “you’d be better off doing Baccalaureate and…”.’ (Amira) In contrast, the narratives of the young people on VET programmes reveal greater variability in their school trajectories (see Table 10.2). The linearity of the trajectories of young people on the academic track contrasts with the erratic nature of the trajectories of those doing VET, who drop out 190

Hermeneutical injustice Table 10.1: Trajectories of the students in the academic track Student’s pseudonym

Grade Academic retentions trajectory

Summary of trajectory

Héctor

0

Smooth

Took lower secondary education in Mexico. He is in the first year of International Baccalaureate. In the future he wants to study something related to engineering.

Zoe

0

Smooth

Took lower secondary education at the same school (except for a year she did in the UK). She plans to go to university.

Nuria

0

Smooth

Took lower secondary education at the same school. She wants to study law to be able to enter the police force directly as an inspector.

Hugo

2

Discontinuous

Repeated the fourth year of lower secondary education and is repeating the first year of the academic track. He wants to go to university to study programming. He considered VET, but his parents convinced him that the academic track is more reputable.

Amira

1

Discontinuous

Took lower secondary education at the same school. She repeated the third year of lower secondary education. She wants to study teaching. She never considered VET because her parents think the academic track is better.

Carlos

1

Smooth

Took lower secondary education at a subsidised school. He repeated the third year of lower secondary on a special education scheme (PMAR)a. He wants to be a policeman. Depending on his entrance grade (EBAU)b he aims to go to university. He is not considering VET.

Mónica

0

Smooth

Joined the Spanish education system in the first year of the upper secondary academic track. She wants to study engineering and become a manager.

Juan

0

Smooth

Did lower secondary education smoothly. He chose upper secondary studies based on that experience. He has always been clear that he wanted to take the academic track, because it offers more opportunities. He doesn’t know what he will do afterwards.

Javier

0

Smooth

Did lower secondary education normally. He wants to study veterinary science.

María

0

Smooth

Did lower secondary education normally. She wants to go to university, but she doesn’t know what degree to take. She is not ruling out VET if the academic track doesn’t work out. (continued)

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Educational Transitions and Social Justice Table 10.1: Trajectories of the students in the academic track (continued) Student’s pseudonym

Grade Academic retentions trajectory

Summary of trajectory

Mariana

0

Smooth

Did lower secondary education normally. She wants to study audiovisual communication.

José

0

Smooth

Did lower secondary education normally, despite having several difficulties in his fourth year. He wants to study journalism.

Notes: aThe Programa de Mejora del Aprendizaje y del Rendimiento (PMAR; Learning and Performance Improvement Programme) is a diversification programme offered as an alternative way of taking the second and third year of lower secondary education is which contents and subjects are reorganised so that pupils with serious learning difficulties can reach the fourth year of lower secondary education and up with the school leaver’s certificate. b As indicated in Chapter 1 Evaluación para el Acceso a la Universidad (EBAU; University Entrance Exam) is a test that the Spanish education system requires in order to take university degrees.

of and return to the education system. Non-​linear transitions ‘involve breaks, changes of direction and unusual sequences of events’ (Furlong et al, 2006: 231) with respect to the trajectories set out by the structure and organisation of the Spanish education system. According to Walther et al (2015), vocational pathways can be classified either as uniform, meaning those paths that lead to VET without breaking from the standard organisation of the education system, either at the student’s own behest or following a process of adjustment of aspirations resulting from poor performance in lower secondary education6; or discontinuous, in which vocational training is taken after breaking from the usual school pathway because of different factors, including academic failure or poor performance. Discontinuous, or what Furlong et al (2006: 231) call non-​linear trajectories ‘can involve extended or repeated experiences of unemployment, frequent moves between jobs and returns to education and training after periods in employment’. As shown in Table 10.2, non-​linear trajectories emerge in the narratives of young people who study VET, especially in relation to experiences of dropping out of the education system, in several cases without having passed the lower secondary exams, followed by relatively long periods of employment, to later return to the education system and study VET. In addition to non-​linear transitions, the narratives of VET students also reveal greater diversity in whether they follow uniform or discontinuous trajectories. The options offered by the education system (see Chapter 1 for details) mean students do not only enter VET via lower secondary school certificates, but also via alternative pathways such as upper secondary academic certificates, Baccalaureate certificates, basic level VET certificates or the entrance exams. These are reflected in how the young interviewees 192

Hermeneutical injustice Table 10.2: Trajectories of VET students Student’s pseudonym

Grade Academic retentions trajectory

Summary of trajectory

Camila

2

Discontinuous Repeated the second year of primary education and second year of lower secondary education. She started the academic track, but it didn’t go well and she switched to VET. She is studying an intermediate VET programme and plans to continue with an upper programmea. She has no expectations of going to university.

Alexis

2

Discontinuous Joined the Spanish education system at the age of 14, finished lower secondary education and left the education system to work. He is taking an intermediate VET programme and hopes to go to university after taking an upper secondary VET course.

Carolina

2

Discontinuous Took a basic VET course, passed the first year, but turned 18 and could not continue. She dropped out of school. She obtained a lower secondary certificate from an adult education programme. She is taking an intermediate VET programme.

Huang

?

Smooth

Joined the Spanish education system in the first year of primary school. He repeated the first year because he didn’t know the languageb. He did lower secondary education smoothly. He is taking an intermediate VET programme and wants to continue with an upper secondary VET one.

Manuel

1

Smooth

Repeated the second year of primary school. He did lower secondary education smoothly with good grades. He is taking an intermediate VET programme and wants to continue with an upper secondary one. He has no expectations of going to university.

Naiara

0

Smooth

He did primary and lower secondary education normally and then started the academic track, but in his first year he switched to an intermediate VET programme. When he finishes he wants to continue with an upper secondary one. He has no expectations of going to university. (continued)

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Educational Transitions and Social Justice Table 10.2: Trajectories of VET students (continued) Student’s pseudonym

Grade Academic retentions trajectory

Summary of trajectory

Ali

1

Smooth

Progressed to the third year of lower secondary education in her country of origin (she repeated the sixth year of primary school). She obtained a lower secondary certificate in the Spanish system through adult education. She took an intermediate VET programme in catering and is currently doing another in hairdressing (she wanted to do an upper secondary VET course but could not afford it but hopes to do one when she can). She has no expectations of going to university.

Tania

1

Smooth

Repeated the third year of lower secondary education. She is on an intermediate VET programme, and then wants to do another intermediate and an upper secondary one.

Marina

2

Discontinuous Repeated the second year of lower secondary education. In the third year, she took the intermediate VET entrance exam and passed, but also finished the final year of lower secondary education. She wants to take an upper secondary VET course, and, if she feels able, study psychology at university.

Rosa

2

Discontinuous Repeated the second and fourth years of lower secondary education and started the first year of the academic track because she wanted to study law. She dropped out of school and worked for a year. She is currently doing an intermediate VET programme.

Víctor

0

Discontinuous Did lower secondary education smoothly and then continued with the academic track. On completion, he left the education system to work because he had no choice. He tried to combine an intermediate VET programme with work but gave up. At the time of the interview he had started a different intermediate VET programme.

Gabriela

1

Discontinuous Joined the Spanish education system in the third year of lower secondary (in her country of origin she repeated the sixth year of primary school). She completed lower secondary education on a diversification programmec. She then took the academic track, but only for one term, as she failed everything and then dropped out of school due to pregnancy and in order to work.

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Hermeneutical injustice Table 10.2: Trajectories of VET students (continued) Student’s pseudonym

Grade Academic retentions trajectory

Summary of trajectory

Eva

1

Smooth

Repeated the fourth year of primary school. She struggled in lower secondary education but without grade retention. She wanted to take the academic track to study veterinary science, but her family and teachers convinced her otherwise. She weighed up her options and chose an intermediate VET programme by process of elimination.

Luis

0

Discontinuous Did lower secondary education smoothly through to fourth grade and then had to repeat but opted to take an intermediate VET entrance exam instead. He is not considering an upper secondary VET course, but another intermediate one is a possibility.

Elisabeth

1

Smooth

Juan Carlos

2

Discontinuous Struggled with lower secondary education, with two grade retentions, and moved to a basic VET programme. He eventually dropped out of the education system and worked for two years as a waiter. He got onto an intermediate VET programme with a lower secondary certificate. He is not ruling out an upper secondary VET course but has no plans to go to university.

Laura

0

Smooth

Joined the Spanish education system at the age of 14. She repeated the second year of lower secondary education, struggled in her third year and started a basic VET programme, and from there progressed to an intermediate one. She is not considering further studies.

She wanted to do an intermediate VET programme as a nursing assistant, but did not get a place, so she did hairdressing for a year. The next year she got a place on a nursing assistant programme and wants to do an upper secondary one too before studying nursing at university.

Notes: aSee Chapter 1 for details of the different levels of vocational education in Spain, mainly: the basic level for students of a minimum of 15 years of age and without the lower secondary certificate; the intermediate level for students of a minimum age of 16 who have the lower secondary certificate; and the higher level for students with a Baccalaureate certificate or a VET intermediate certificate after passing specific entrance exams. b Chapter 7 provides striking evidence of how the lack of recognition of linguistic capital of migrant students considerably conditions their educational trajectories and is a source of biased orientations towards VET among teachers.

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advance through the education system in a non-​linear manner, not only dropping out of the system, but also changing track within it. One aspect to highlight is that, in contrast to young people on the academic track, VET students share two common denominators regarding their past school experiences and future expectations. Firstly, most have experienced at least one grade retention, in several cases two, and those who have never repeated are the exception. Students who aspire to go to university are also in the minority, with an upper secondary VET course being a more frequent goal. It can thus be concluded that in the case of these interviewees, VET is associated with experiences of low academic performance, and it is also chosen to balance aspirations and expectations, which tend not to involve access to university. ‘[Going to university,] I don’t know, it wasn’t in my plans … I never considered it … not even just trying it out. … I went more for an intermediate VET programme. … My only intention was to get the lower secondary education certificate and, if I got it, I might do something else … like now. I’m doing an intermediate VET programme, and I might be able to get into a good company afterwards and combine it with an upper VET programme. … That’s the idea.’ (Naiara) ‘Having a degree is a good thing, but I also think that if I go for an upper VET programme, there are the internships. … After all, at any company where you work, you’ll be more appreciated because of your practical experience than because of whatever you have studied, won’t you? Then I’ll go for another VET programme. … Instead of investing four years in doing a degree, I could pass two upper VET programmes, and then I would already have the practical experience, even though it’s worth less than a degree.’ (Eva) These results are in line with those reported by Jacovkis et al (2020) for the case of Barcelona, in which young VET students report far lower expectations and aspirations with regard to university entrance than those on the academic track. Acknowledging individual while denying structural factors According to Bourdieu and Passeron (1979) the individualism on which capitalism is sustained leads to a tendency for both success and failure to be internalised as one’s own deeds, while ignoring the fact that the configuration of the system itself may also be a cause of them. Indeed, not one of the interviewees makes any direct reference to any aspect of ‘habitus’ as a reason 196

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for their success or failure. Instead, all their reasons refer to personal issues, and particularly two: will and ability. There are even those who describe personal desire and will as a total guarantee of success. As one of the interviewees states: ‘In general, anyone is capable of doing anything as long as they really put their mind to it. I have met people who never wanted to do anything, but took one thing really seriously and achieved in a few weeks what other people take a year to do. So, a student’s motivation and desire [are fundamental].’ (Hugo) That is why it is important to feel interested in what one is studying. As another student says: “if they really try, anyone can do anything, but the fact is that you’ll do better at things that you enjoy” (María); this is supported by another respondent’s words when he says: “if you thought, or in principle wanted to study something, and then changed because you like something else more, you know the consequences of changing, and what you want. There’s no big problem with that, I’d say” (Héctor). As can be observed, it is a question of discovering one’s own interests and striving to do well at them. What these young people’s explanations omit but discourses show, however, is that will is not a neutral concept, and that social class and economic and cultural capital play a key role in it. In line with Gale and Parker (2018), we can conclude that for elite groups possibility is determined by desire, as is the case with a young woman taking the academic track (Zoe), who says that if she does not get the right grade to go to a public university, she is sure that she will go to a private one. For those who belong to marginalised groups, it is possibilities that determine will. The young people also make references to ability as the main cause of success and failure. However, most of the young interviewees who are taking the academic track do not relate their results to their economic and cultural capital, instead emphasising how much effort they put into their work, their interests and their will. Many of the VET interviewees, and especially those who followed more erratic trajectories, equate their results with their ability, that is, they emphasise not what they want, but what they can do, and not what they do, but what they are. Thus, a young women doing VET who has followed a non-​linear trajectory, with two grade retentions and having got onto an intermediate VET programme via an entrance exam, repeatedly claims that her pathways have less to do with her will than they do with her ability, to the point of saying that “it would be cool, if I think I’m up to it, it would be cool for me to take a university entrance exam to do a degree in psychology, but I don’t know, I could give it a try” (Marina). It will depend on her grades, which will reaffirm or not her ability. In a similar vein, a young man studying IT, who has also had an erratic trajectory, says that 197

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success does not depend “on the type of course, but on the type of student you are; what you are capable of ” (Alexis), which will also be reflected by good or bad results. For young people, academic results are a key source of information for making their choices and the achievement thereof seems to depend only on themselves, when deep down they are influenced by a considerable number of external conditions (Elias and Daza, 2019). Although they are able to observe the structural characteristics around them, and even come to perceive certain consequences that these may have on them, when narrating their trajectories, they do not view them as factors. The flipside of individual-​self primacy is a clear denial of the weight of the context in which they operate. Of these structural factors, and although the interviewees do not feel that they influence their choices and trajectories, the most frequently cited are mainly gender, social class and the school institution. Regarding gender, they claim that it is not a determining factor when choosing which courses to take, whether academic or vocational, or a modality or family within each option. The omission, denial or naturalisation of structural factors in relation to gender occurs indistinctly among both academic and vocational students. In the case of VET, the omission is exemplified in the following quote from one of the female interviewees: “I too was shocked when I came to this course [intermediate VET programme], because there was only one other girl, and I said ‘we’re the only girls in the class!’ ” (Camila). In the case of the academic track, it is reflected in the following conversation: A:

There are 23 in my class and only seven of us are girls, while in the A group, which is arts, there are only like four guys and there are 20 something, or 30 something, of us, I don’t know. Q: And why do you think that is? A: That I’m sure I don’t know. Engineering always has more boys than girls. It’s always been like that, I don’t know why. To be honest I don’t. … I can’t explain why a girl is going to be more inclined to take arts. That’s up to each person to decide. (Mariana) Just as they deny, naturalise or omit the influence of structural gender factors and reduce choices to subjective and individual issues, the same occurs with factors related to socioeconomic status. This denial is reflected in this quote from a VET student: Q: Why did you choose this school? A: Well, I’d say because it’s close by. Because the others were further away. I’d have had to change metro line, so no way. And so I chose this one. Q: Did you look at many places? 198

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A: Yes, I looked at several. Q: Which? A: I looked in this neighbourhood and a few private centres. But the prices were through the roof. They were well expensive. I saw one that was asking 5,000 or something. For one year. Q: So you ended up picking this one because it’s closer. Any other reason? A: I don’t think there was any other reason. Just because it’s close. (Alexis) Although the young man recognises the influence of the economic capital on his narrative, as it led him to discard the private schools as an option, he does not include it as a criterion or condition when choosing a school to study VET, simply citing proximity to his place of residence7. In a similar vein, this International Baccalaureate8 student speaks of her former classmates in lower secondary school, who are not taking the IB academic track, and says that “apart from costing more money, I mean, it’s not about the money either. It’s also because everyone decides what kind of future they want, don’t they? I mean, if I want to have an international certificate, then that’s what I choose” (Zoe). This can also be found in relation to certain school practices or institutional habitus (Tarabini et al, 2016). Such is the case of one of the VET students who, after saying that his school streamed pupils by level and that he was in the lowest group, and when asked if this had gone on to influence his trajectory, replied “yes, because you learn less” (Luis). However, a little later, when asked if he had ever heard that some students are more suited to certain pathways than others, he replied “well, not exactly, because if you can’t, you can’t…” (Luis), and finished by saying that the choice between the academic track or VET “depends on the person”9. In other words, he does not recognise any influence of institutional practices, despite having only just said that some of these had been detrimental to his development at school. He is taking responsibility away from external institutional agents, who use a whole series of common discourses and practices (Clycq et al, 2014; Horcas et al, 2015) that tend to lead students, even when they observe the external circumstances that affect them, to end up blaming themselves and being unable to find reasons for their success or failure beyond their own individuality. However, they do recognise in a general manner the influence of the labour market when advancing through the education system, although this is always conditioned by their tastes or abilities. The same occurs with families and teachers, whose importance in terms of opinion and support is mentioned in most interviews. However, and despite the wide variety of influences that they acknowledge to have affected their trajectories, the students ultimately view themselves as being solely and exclusively 199

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responsible for their success or failure. As shown by Goodman et al (2012), young people’s total self-​attribution of responsibility with regard to their grades and trajectories leads, in cases of failure, to a loss of self-​esteem that can easily cause them to drop out of the system, be in denial of their own hopes for improvement and even of finding work in the future. In fact, self-​concept has been revealed as a key factor in preventing young people from dropping out of school early (Filippello et al, 2020; Garcia Gràcia and Sánchez-​Gelabert, 2020). It is clearly unfair that their self-​concepts are impaired by the influence of social factors that do not depend on them. However, it is even more unfair that the influence of this sense of inability means they are unable to interpret their own experiences more objectively. These experiences, as we have seen and as opposed to what they might think, are not exclusively related to their will or their intellectual capacity. We therefore encounter cases of widespread hermeneutical injustice of both a social and institutional nature that might be more common and have more negative consequences among the most socially vulnerable groups, but that affect all the young interviewees (Medina, 2011).

Conclusions As we have been able to observe, there are structural conditions that have a major influence on the educational trajectories of young people. However, more important than this is the fact that they are not aware of the influence that these conditioning factors exert. A time will surely come when the interviewed girls who are studying traditionally male-​dominated subjects will get fed up with being such a minority group. And the boy who was looking at different schools and ended up choosing the only state school close to his home that offered the courses he wanted might moan about the lack of options. And the VET student who contradicted himself by describing trajectories merely in terms of ability might even lament the limited nature of his options. Any of them could clearly be outraged, and with good reason. However, just as occurred with the outraged youth of the early 2010s around the globe, that outrage, that dismay, that nonconformity, would come to nothing. A protest without a clear explanation, no matter how well-​motivated, soon fades away. The situation would be very different, however, if they were aware of the reasons underlying their situation. Girls who take male-​dominated subjects could run campaigns to promote these courses in lower years, investigating and showcasing the extent to which women have been separated from the professions with greater public prestige and how important it is for there to be more women working in these fields. The boy who claimed to have based his choice on proximity when in actual fact he had turned down several schools because of his limited finances should be made truly aware of the inequality 200

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that this entails, and could demand more funding, grants and scholarships. Finally, if the VET student who explained his choices exclusively on the basis of his ability were to realise what a negative influence his school’s streaming system had had on him during lower secondary education, he would stop believing that individual possibilities simply come down to ability, he would have greater self-​confidence and find his options expanded. In other words, if they were more aware of the influence of structural factors on the configuration of the habitus, they could be more responsible with respect to their agency. We live in a complex world. Very few people today can unequivocally predict their long-​term future, as we interact with and are affected by many factors that we cannot control. Whether in the political, economic, social or even the most intimate and personal spheres, there are many elements, and also variables that engage with those elements, that we simply have to accept. However, the shift towards individualisation in education makes people believe that everything related to their academic trajectory will depend either on their ability or on their will. This belief is clearly mistaken and that is why so many experts have defended the importance of working not so much on people but on their contexts. Although we consider this to be an important goal to work towards in order to reduce inequalities, this chapter has sought to show that this alone is not enough. It is not only essential to work on contexts, but also for the stakeholders to be aware of them. That is fair. We cannot make the world less complex, and the reduction of structural inequalities is an arduous task. Reduction of hermeneutical injustice, however, means educating people in such a way that they become truly aware of their own experiences. Acknowledgements This chapter was previously published in the journal Revista de Sociología de la Educación (RASE). The original version can be found here: https://​ojs. uv.es/​index.php/​RASE/​arti​cle/​view/​17843 Notes Chapters 6, 7 and 8 provide detailed analysis of how social class, migration and gender respectively condition young people’s upper secondary educational transitions and choices. 2 See Chapter 4 for a detailed analysis of teachers’ perspectives on the role that guidance should play in identifying students’ vocations and guiding them with their upper secondary educational choices. 3 See Chapter 1 for full information on the methodology, techniques and sample of the project from which all the chapters of this book are produced. 4 See Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 for further details of the organisation of the Spanish education system and the provision of upper secondary education in the two cities under study. 5 Chapter 5 statistically demonstrates that ‘good students’ are systematically over-​represented in the academic track. Chapter 9 explores this idea in greater depth by providing qualitative evidence of how most VET students have a negative self-​image as ‘proper learners’. 1

201

Educational Transitions and Social Justice See Chapter 6 for further analysis of the educational aspirations and expectations of different working-​class fractions. 7 Chapter 3 provides crucial evidence on the spatialised nature of upper secondary transitions and choices, both in material and symbolic terms. 8 The International Baccalaureate (IB) is an education scheme offered by a nonprofit foundation (the International Baccalaureate). The IB provides an international education in the form of four programmes for students from 3 to 19 years of age. The one that corresponds with Baccalaureate is the Diploma Programme, which lasts for two years and whose main aim is to train students who ‘have excellent breadth and depth of knowledge; flourish physically, intellectually, emotionally and ethically; study at least two languages; excel in traditional academic subjects; explore the nature of knowledge’ (see https://​ www.ibo.org/​). 9 Although research on tracking has proved that social inequalities are caused by not only by external structural factors, such as socioeconomic or cultural capital, but also those within education systems, such as curricular tracks (Buchmann and Park 2009; Holm et al, 2013; Sevilla and Polesel, 2020; Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021) and teachers’ expectations (Auwarker and Aruguete 2008; Dunne and Gazeley 2008; Tarabini, 2019). 6

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Towards a comprehensive understanding of educational choices and transitions Aina Tarabini

This book has provided a comprehensive study of upper secondary educational choices and transitions from an approach that integrates the macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis. By means of a solid theoretical perspective and robust empirical evidence, the book has offered new evidence of the many layers that condition and shape young people’s educational opportunities in global cities (Sassen, 1991). In line with previous research (Reay et al, 2001; Ball et al, 2002; Archer, Halsall and Hollingworth, 2007; Ingram, 2018; Tarabini and Ingram, 2018; Seghers et al, 2019), it has been demonstrated that educational choices, whether regarding tracks, subjects, schools or any other area, cannot be fully understood in terms of individual, rational processes. Choices are socially produced in relation to particular contexts, resources, actors, expectations and hopes that generate different opportunities and constraints for different groups of people. Choice, as Reay and Ball (1997) assess, is a social device through which social class differences (and I would add gender and ethnicity/​ migrant differences) are rendered into educational inequality. Certainly, there are no linear relationships between the axes of social inequality and the processes of educational choices. An understanding of the complex interactions between structure and agency is paramount in order to produce robust interpretations of people’s logics of action (Evans, 2007). And this is even more evident in a context where young people’s lives and transitions have become more complex and de-​standardised than ever (Walther, 2006). There is no doubt that the ‘illusion of individuality’ (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997) of hegemonic western narratives does not work in contemporary societies. The immense inequalities that traverse our societies, our education systems, our schools and our lives should be acknowledged, exposed and challenged. Furthermore, in times of rampant individualism and dominant meritocratic discourses (Young, 1958), it is of crucial importance to understand ‘not only social class inequalities [and I would add gender and 209

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ethnic/​migrant inequalities] in education but also the substance and texture of those inequalities; how they are enacted and experienced on an everyday basis in different cultural and national contexts’ (Reay, 2010: 402). This has been precisely one of the main objectives of this book. One might wonder to what extent it is actually possible to achieve a fair education system in a profoundly unfair society. To varying degrees, capitalist societies always produce inequalities in terms of economy, employment, health, housing and so on that go beyond the action of specific education policies and school practices. However, I completely agree with Diane Reay (2012) when she argues there is still enormous room for improvement in purely educational terms. Furthermore, an education system that cannot provide equitable educational experiences and results for all students is profoundly unjust and antidemocratic (Van Zanten, 2005). Chapters 2 to 10 of this book have provided ample empirical evidence of the multiple sources of power, exclusion and injustice that traverse young people’s upper secondary transitions and choices. The book has also demonstrated the convenience of treating educational transitions as a field, where different forms of knowledge, status, rewards and/​or opportunities are produced and mobilised according to different actors’ positions on material and symbolic battlefields. That field, as we have shown, is traversed by multiple sources of inequality that are expressed at different levels: structural, systemic, institutional, relational and subjective (Tarabini, 2022). The following is a summary of how these mechanisms of inequality are involved in the production of educational transitions, as shown by the empirical evidence in this book.

Structural inequalities and the production of educational choices and transitions One of the main conclusions of this book is that educational choices and transitions, need to be understood as social processes that are intrinsically related to the main dimensions of social inequality, mainly but not solely social class, migration/​ethnicity and gender (Ball et al, 2000; Reay et al, 2001; Archer et al, 2007). Educational choices are inevitably bounded by young people’s objective opportunities and constraints (Reay, 2004). Drawing on distinct forms of capital –​ namely economic, social, cultural and symbolic –​(Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) young people have different resources that can be accumulated, activated or exchanged within the education system in general and in the making of upper secondary educational choices and transitions in particular. And these capitals clearly condition the available opportunities for making choices. Where do young people and their families live? What public and private elements of the supply can they consider? Where and how do they collect information about 210

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the system? What types of schools do they feel ‘are for people like them’ (Bourdieu, 1990)? These are critical questions for understanding educational transitions that are clearly traversed by different amounts and sources of capital. Chapter 2, for example, has reflected on the high presence of the private sector in the provision of upper secondary education in the two cities under study –​Barcelona and Madrid. In this context, the possession of economic capital is clearly an asset that sustains upper secondary educational choices. In the same sense, Chapter 3 has provided evidence of the intrinsic spatialised nature of upper secondary provision and, again, of the impacts of different structures and volumes of capitals on the possibilities ‘to be mobile’ (Farrugia, 2016) within the upper secondary educational space. Cultural capital, in particular, plays a central role in explaining the unequal conditions under which young people have access to upper secondary education. As shown by ample research in this area (Lareau, 2003; Reay et al, 2011), middle-​class families are the ones with the sense of entitlement and belonging to the school space, who know from experience how the education system works and who have the knowledge and information to help their children navigate it successfully. It is precisely the ‘archives of experiences’ (Gale and Parker, 2015) that middle-​class families accumulate that provide them with the sense of entitlement, confidence and safety to ensure that their children make ‘good’ choices with regard to their schooling. Several chapters of this book have provided evidence of the impact of cultural capital, both in its objective and embodied dimensions, on the process of educational choices and transitions. Chapter 6, for example, demonstrates how different fractions of the working classes activate their particular forms of cultural capital to navigate their educational pathways. This chapter also reveals how educational expectations and aspirations are intrinsically classed, thus affecting track choices. Chapter 7, meanwhile, offers striking evidence of the processes of capital devaluation as a result of young people’s and their families’ migratory processes. This devaluation has a clear legal dimension based on the difficulty of getting educational credentials recognised in the destination country. It is also connected with a lack of familiarity with the language and the intricacies of the new education system. Overall, this puts migrant students in a clearly subordinate position for the development of their upper secondary educational transitions. Ultimately, there is a clear structural shaping of educational choices and transitions, mainly explained by the impact that capitals generate on the opportunities and conditions to develop different educational pathways. Furthermore, as this book has demonstrated, these capitals do not act alone. They are recognised, neglected, omitted and/​or reinforced by the education system –​by its structure, its institutional design, its actors and its relationships. Schools and teachers are not neutral in their appreciation of these capitals. Furthermore, these capitals are also incorporated in young people’s habitus, 211

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producing particular dispositions towards schooling in general and towards educational choices and transitions in particular. In the following sections, we will see how these different mechanisms of inequality interact.

Systemic inequalities and the production of educational choices and transitions The research presented in this book contributes to the extensive literature signalling the critical role of different educational tracks in the (re) production of social inequalities (Dupriez et al, 2008). Ample research has revealed the impacts of tracking on both the pedagogic practices of schools (their curricula, teaching methods, assessment procedures, and so on) and the education experiences, results and trajectories of students (Boone and Van Houtte, 2013; Holm et al, 2013; Nylund and Rosvall, 2016; Liou and Rotheram-​Fuller, 2019; Sevilla and Polesel, 2020). As highlighted by Jeannie Oakes and colleagues (Oakes, 1985; Oakes et al, 1997), tracking is one of the most persistent barriers to achieving equality educational opportunities. This book demonstrates that the segmentation of education systems into different tracks (in the case of Spain, the upper vocational and academic tracks) is by no means neutral or natural. It also proves that its impact on the reproduction of social inequalities is not linear or inevitable, but related to the way it is provided and organised in terms of its supply, its social composition and its curriculum (Polesel, 2008). At the very beginning of this book, we saw that upper secondary tracks in Spain, as in many other European systems, are by no means equivalent. The Baccalaureate is indeed a linear pathway, mostly projected for young people who have taken a ‘ladder-​like’ trajectory (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997), while access and trajectories in VET are much more complex, and traversed with many obstacles and difficulties that the very system establishes (see Chapters 1, 2 and 3 for details). Paradoxically, despite the academic track being the one with the greatest prestige and legitimacy, it is the easiest in terms of access (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a). On the contrary, ensuring a ‘good’ VET selection, given the massive heterogeneity within the sector, requires higher capital accumulation in all of its modalities. This clearly demonstrates the interaction between the structural and systemic mechanisms of inequality traversing the upper secondary transition field. It also shows the need to explore the multiple forms of segmentation that exist not only between but also within upper secondary tracks (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021b). As the book shows, this segmentation occurs with regard to the planning, functions and provision of the curriculum, and this, ultimately, explains why migrant working-​class students, mostly boys, are over-​represented in VET. 212

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However, VET is not a homogeneous social space. It is traversed by different forms of inequality, status and prestige. While some VET subjects are cheap, public, and offered in a generalised manner throughout all urban spaces, others have a very limited supply, are mainly private, highly concentrated in specific locations and require high academic grades as an entry requirement. This confirms the existence of ‘elite’ forms of vocational education as signalled by Atkins (2017), as well as the importance of opening up the ‘black box’ of different modalities of school provision in different education systems in order to understand their impacts on young people’s opportunities. As an example, Chapter 8 of this book shows how the supply of upper secondary education, particularly in VET, is clearly gendered and provides evidence of its impact on boys’ and girls’ upper secondary choices, albeit not in a fixed, linear or predetermined way. In fact, our book demonstrates that these multiple forms of segmentation both between and within tracks shape the actions, representations, rationalities and imaginaries of all actors (policymakers, teachers, students and families) involved in the educational choices and transitions. As the empirical evidence presented in the book demonstrates, the making of upper secondary educational transitions, both in objective and subjective terms, is the result of complex interactions between opportunities and constraints emerging on different scales. For some people, certain tracks are unavailable, inaccessible and unaffordable; or they do not wish to be doomed to following a track that is socially, systemically and institutionally denigrated; or cannot imagine themselves taking a track that does not offer a future. But such people are not random. Instead, people of certain classes, races and genders face extremely unequal conditions for tackling the material and symbolic obstacles that lie in the structure of the system. Research presented in this book has also shown that the systemic inequalities traversing the upper secondary education field are produced discursively, and such discourses are deeply intertwined with and inseparable from power relations (Fairclough, 2003). They express, produce, question or legitimise social relations and inequalities through interpretations, beliefs, associations and values. So, discourses not only reflect the highly differentiated and hierarchical structure of upper secondary education but also contribute to the legitimisation of this segmentation. Chapters 2 and 3 particularly demonstrate how the discourse of policymakers and stakeholders around upper secondary educational choices and transitions tend to naturalise this dichotomised structure and to frame young people’s choices within highly individualistic and meritocratic discourses. Chapter 4 further supports this conclusion by illustrating how teachers generally ignore the conditions under which certain upper secondary choices are not only possible but also desirable. Chapter 10 depicts the culmination of this process whereby young people themselves tend to revert to hermeneutic injustice (Flicker, 2007) to 213

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play down the impact of structural and systemic inequalities on their own educational trajectories.

Institutional inequalities and the production of educational choices and transitions More than 50 years ago, classic education sociologist Basil Bernstein (1977, 1990) claimed that all pedagogic practice entails power relations and means of social control and, as such, plays a critical role in explaining the processes of social reproduction through schooling. By means of different pedagogic modalities, types of curricula, and evaluation procedures, schools produce different opportunity frameworks for their students to develop holistically, learn and configure their identities (Reay, 2010; Tarabini, 2019). Adding to this line of research, this book, and particularly the teachers’ and students’ narratives contained in Chapters 4 to 10 inclusive, has provided copious empirical evidence of the role of different institutional settings and devices in explaining upper secondary educational opportunities. Both teachers and students define the dominant model of lower secondary education in Spain as based on a strong curricular classification, a high degree of pedagogical homogeneity, and a pronounced academic orientation (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021a, 2021b). This is what Mons (2007) calls a ‘uniform integration model’ shared by other European countries such as France, Italy and Greece. As shown in Chapter 4, many teachers criticise the lack of experimentation and practical knowledge in lower secondary schooling. Moreover, they argue that this clearly limits the role of schools in the development of students’ vocations in practical fields, and particularly the choice of specific modalities of VET. The vocational world is mainly absent from lower secondary schooling and this reinforces the image of VET as a secondary or subsidiary track. Likewise, evidence from Chapters 6 and 7, for example, demonstrates that the most vulnerable students in terms of social class and migrant status are those who feel least engaged in lower secondary education because they do not feel represented by the dominant pedagogic and curricular standards. Furthermore, Chapter 9 provides striking evidence of the rejection of theoretical knowledge as one of the most prominent reasons why students choose VET. Evidence from Chapter 5 also highlights the role of specific pedagogic devices in framing young people’s school trajectories and upper secondary choices, and it particularly demonstrates the harmful effect of the widespread practices of streaming and grade retention on both objective and subjective opportunities to achieve school success. Furthermore, research presented in this book helps to demonstrate the growing polarisation between the pedagogic and curricular provision of academic and vocational tracks in upper secondary education. In line with previous research (Gamble, 2006; Wheelahan, 2007; Young, 2013; Nylund 214

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et al, 2017), different chapters of this book (for example, Chapter 9) highlight the many risks associated with the provision of a VET curriculum that is increasingly disengaged from abstract or theoretical knowledge, to the benefit of practical and procedural aspects. Weakening the articulation between theory and practice in favour of competence-​based training reduces students’ educational, labour and life opportunities, as well as the opportunity for intellectual growth and personal fulfilment (Wheelahan, 2007). Certainly, VET can be a means to democratise the school curriculum precisely by engaging more at-​risk students with more practical forms of knowledge (Polesel, 2008). Research presented in Chapter 9 clearly demonstrates this: some students feel more identified with a VET learning culture that prioritises practical knowledge, which enables them to reconnect with their learning processes. Overall, the book demonstrates that educational choices and transitions need to be understood within a framework of broader educational trajectories. And these trajectories, in turn, need to be analysed within particular institutional frameworks with different forms of pedagogy, curricula and evaluation that generate specific educational experiences and learning opportunities for different students. Moreover, the analysis presented in this book provides new evidence of the multiple connections between different mechanisms of inequality. Institutional inequalities are clearly part of a systemic framework that goes beyond the actions of particular schools and teachers. However, institutional settings, practices and devices have a bidirectional relationship with structural inequalities: they are structured by the axis of social inequality in terms of class, gender and migration/​ethnicity and, at the same time, they structure different opportunities for different students depending on their social profile.

Relational inequalities and the production of educational choices and transitions The fourth mechanism of inequality that traverses young people’s educational choices and transitions is of a relational nature and particularly refers to the impact of teachers’ expectations and beliefs on students’ opportunities. There is copious sociological evidence that the prevailing image among teachers of the ‘ideal student’ resembles that of a person from a white middle-​class family whose parents are professionals, particularly in sectors such as education, health, the arts, law and so on. (Archer, 2008; Maguire, 2009; Van Houtte, 2011). Feminist scholars have also shown how the ‘ideal student’ fits with the attributes expected of girls in terms of both behaviour and attitude with regard to formal education (Reay, 1998; McRobbie and Garger, 2003; Jackson, 2006; Tarabini and Curran, 2019). By not taking into account the influence of class, gender and ethnicity on students’ experiences and relations 215

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to schooling, teachers are expecting all students to behave and learn in a way that is assumed to be independent of their context. Intrinsic interest in school knowledge and the unquestioned recognition of the teacher as a legitimate pedagogic authority are assumed to be universal dispositions, and equally available to all students. Chapter 4 of this book has particularly focused on teachers’ narratives in order to understand how they conceive students’ vocations in association with upper secondary school choices. The results of the analysis have demonstrated widespread disregard for the conditions under which both vocations and choices are developed and/​or a naturalisation of these conditions as a form of ‘social determinism’. As demonstrated, teachers’ hierarchise young people’s upper secondary choices according to their attributed vocational nature, assuming that ‘vocational choices’ are intrinsically better than instrumental ones. If a student makes choices in response to their ‘inner call’, their personal gifts and passions, without succumbing to external influences, then they are making ‘good choices’. If, on the other hand, they make their upper secondary choices in consideration of their immediate labour prospects, but they are not completely sure what they like or what they are good at, or if they receive ‘bad’ influences from their family, friends or the media, then they are labelled as making ‘bad choices’. However, extensive sociological research, as well as the evidence provided in this book, have demonstrated that gifts, passions, futures and influences are highly conditioned by the axis of social inequality. Moreover, teachers’ expectations have a crucial impact on upper secondary guidance strategies. Ample evidence indicates that guidance practices tend to reinforce rather than challenge the social segmentation between the academic and vocational tracks in terms of social class, gender and ethnicity (Lappalainen et al, 2013; Bonizzoni et al, 2014). Chapter 7, for example, shows how a lack of linguistic capital is perceived by migrant students as one of the main reasons why teachers overwhelmingly advise them to take the upper secondary vocational track, irrespective of other elements. Likewise, Chapter 6 demonstrates how students from the lowest fractions of the working-class are systematically oriented towards VET under the pretext that they achieve poorer grades at lower secondary school and consequently are less likely to be successful if they take the academic track. But ‘ability’ is not an objective, fixed or individual construct. It is a multidimensional and procedural concept, of an intrinsically social nature. It is a cultural practice (Hatt, 2012) that is (re)produced within schools and which critically serves to rank, sort and moralise students (Ladwing and McPherson, 2017). We have provided ample evidence in this book (see, for example, Chapters 5, 8 and 9) that ability in terms of academic results is not equally or randomly distributed between social groups, but that the most widely represented groups within the category of ‘school failure’ are 216

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precisely the most disadvantaged ones. And we have also shown that the self-​ perception of intelligence is crucially conditioned both by the students’ social class, gender and ethnicity and by the way schools and teachers constantly neglect particular learning identities and styles. As Hatt (2007) argues ‘the ways smartness is constructed within schools is especially harmful for racially, ethnically, and economically marginalised youth’ (Hatt, 2007: 148). Teachers’ expectations are indeed of crucial importance for shaping students’ own identities as learners. Their conceptions of ability not only inform, but also, and above all, enable or limit different identity constructions for young people, with critical consequences for their self-​esteem, educational dispositions, and upper secondary transitions and choices. Evidence from Chapter 9, for example, reveals the fundamental role that lower secondary school teachers play in the construction of a negative image of VET in general and of VET students in particular. VET is assumed to be an easy, ‘second-​rate’ option for students who are not ‘able’ to take the academic track. Consequently, VET students are expected to be the ‘worse’ ones and this is constantly transmitted during the course of everyday school life and in their actors’ interactions. Moreover, in this discursive and relational framework it is very difficult for students to choose VET from a positive learner identity. Meanwhile, evidence provided in Chapter 8 shows how teachers’ demonise schoolgirls whose attitudes do not fit with the expected feminine ideal of being well-​behaved, hard-​working and ‘respectable’. It is therefore very difficult for girls to self-​identify as ‘good students’ if they have never been treated as such. Overall, the book helps to demonstrate that both identities and choices are intrinsically relational, and are grounded in symbolic attributes that are used to define oneself in relation to others (Reay, 2010). And teachers, as the legitimate pedagogic authority, together with the rewards and punishments that they deliver, play an extremely powerful role in shaping the way that students view their own selves.

Subjective inequalities and the production of educational choices and transitions Finally, educational choices and transitions are explained by the effect of subjective inequalities. Or, more precisely, by the impact that structural, systemic, institutional and relational mechanisms of inequality generate on young people’s subjectivities and identities. Choices are indeed at the heart of habitus (Reay, 2004) and operate as internalised frameworks that make certain possibilities inconceivable, unthinkable or unacceptable. A broad range of sociological research has explored how young people’s educational trajectories represent a process of adjusting their identities to new fields (Ball et al, 2002; Ingram, 2018), so that when making choices, students project and 217

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define their own identities; they define, distinguish and (re)signify themselves in relation to others. Overall, the habitus of young people affects their whole educational experience in the form of a ‘practical sense’ of what is perceived as appropriate and adequate for ‘people like them’ (Bourdieu, 1990). Our book provides copious evidence for how students’ habitus shapes the way they engage with the schooling process in general and with upper secondary choices and transitions in particular. It is precisely through not only a classed habitus, but also a gendered and racialised one, that young people internalise the idea that particular educational trajectories, choices or identities are unsuitable or unthinkable for ‘them’. Consequently, certain learner identities are not symbolically acceptable for certain social positions (Ingram, 2018), and it therefore requires significant emotional work to negotiate these conflicting demands. Several chapters of this book (particularly from 5 to 9, inclusive) demonstrate that not all students have the same resources, confidence and legitimacy to perform, negotiate or challenge the dominant school culture; not all of them have the same opportunities to express and develop their agency within the school system; not all of them can materially and symbolically develop a ‘positive’ attitude, an ‘educated habitus’ as Nash (2002) puts it, towards the ethos of formal schooling. In fact, considerable research demonstrates that it is easier for white middle-​class students, particularly girls, to construe themselves as ‘good students’, because the characteristics of their social position fit more closely with the dominant image of this ideal student (Grant, 2006) and also with the internalised dispositions of their habitus. In contrast, it is more common for working-​class students, particularly boys, or students from minority cultural backgrounds, to define themselves as ‘bad students,’ as ‘not good enough’ for the academic track, or ‘not ready’ to go to university precisely because they have been portrayed and treated as such throughout their entire school experience (Valenzuela, 1999; Hatt; 2007; Nieto and Bode, 2007). The research presented in this book reinforces this view. Chapter 5 in particular has produced a typology of school trajectories that evidences the role of student diversity in the choice of upper secondary tracks. It specifically demonstrates that ‘troublemaking’ students disproportionally take the vocational track, not only because of their objective school trajectories (poor grades, lower ability groups) but also owing to a subjective school experience that makes them feel they do not belong to the academic track. Chapter 8 reinforces this idea by showing the negative external and internal, and objective and subjective, impacts that being a ‘bad student’ generate for girls. As stated earlier, they are punished for adopting laddish attitudes for choosing counter-​hegemonic gender tracks. They also need to symbolically and emotionally reconcile the tensions and contradictions attached to non-​performance of the hegemonic-​female habitus. Chapter 9 218

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is particularly powerful in showing how students’ self-​images as proper or improper learners during lower secondary school critically shape their transitions to upper secondary education. In light of this evidence, it would seem that it is only the students who feel deeply committed to the ends and the means of schooling, and who do not criticise, suffer, challenge or contest the ‘grammar of schooling’ (Tyack and Tobin, 1994), that are subjectively suited for the academic track. And this is the result of the many ways in which upper secondary education is segmented by means of structural, systemic, institutional and relational forms of inequality, and which is internalised in a way that does not subjectively allow ‘good students’ to select VET or for ‘bad students’ to select the Baccalaureate. The book also demonstrates that the school experience is highly emotionally charged, particularly for those suffering from the ravages of school failure or being labelled as failures. Chapter 9 specifically highlights the suffering, anger, sadness and self-​blame among students who have had extremely negative experiences during lower secondary education and who select their upper secondary track from an extremely damaged learner identity. As Francis and Mills (2012) argue, schools are damaging organisations that, in general, fail to include all students and harm them in a variety of symbolic and material ways. One of the most salient consequences of this, as Chapter 10 demonstrates, is the hermeneutical injustice that prevents young people from recognising the many factors that condition their upper secondary transitions and choices, leading to a strikingly individualistic narrative of their educational journeys. It is therefore impossible to fully understand educational choices and transitions without including an analysis of students’ voices, identities and experiences and their subjective and intrinsically heterogeneous dispositions towards schooling and learning. Overall, ensuring social justice in educational transitions entails a global understanding of the multiple mechanisms of inequality traversing this field. These mechanisms are structural, systemic, institutional, relational and subjective in nature and a wide range of actions in terms of education policy and practice are required in order to ensure equal conditions for educational trajectories and success. References Archer, L. (2008) ‘The impossibility of minority ethnic educational “success”? An examination of the discourses of teachers and pupils in British secondary schools’, European Educational Research Journal, 7(1): 89–​107. Archer, L., Halsall, A. and Hollingworth, S. (2007) ‘Class, gender, (hetero) sexuality and schooling: paradoxes within working class girls’ engagement with education and post-​16 aspirations’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(2): 165–​80. 219

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Index A ability  189, 216–​17 grouping, impact on educational opportunities  116 and personality, vocation  69–​71 success or failure attributed to  197–​8 academic grades  children of adults with university degrees  136–​7 important decision-​making role  120 academic track  children of adults with university degrees  136–​7 linearity in  190–​2 alienation, student attitude  89, 153, 154, 162 Araujo, K.  64 Archer, L.  168, 170–​1 AREWC (‘at-​r isk of exclusion working-​ class’)  113, 115–​16, 117–​19, 121–​2 Arnot, Madelaine  148 arts Baccalaureate  72, 119 aspirations  high among migrant students  137 parents of working-​class students  119–​21 role of schools in reducing  110–​11 viewed as personal decisions  177 of working-​class students  116–​19, 123–​4 Atkinson, W.  109, 110 attitudes to school, Bernstein’s typology of  89, 153–​4, 159–​60

B Baccalaureate  Barcelona and Madrid study  32–​8 even supply of in Barcelona  49 expectations to study for  152–​3 linear transition compared to VET  190–​6 positive image of  173–​4 teacher discourses  68–​80 VET students’ views of  172–​8 working-​class fractions  116–​23 Ball, S.  170, 171, 209 Barbehön, M.  28 Barcelona studies  migrant students’ transitions  129–​43 politics of upper secondary transitions  25–​40 VET students’ learner identities  167–​81 working-​class students’ choices  107–​25 young people, mobility and spatiality  45–​60

behavioural engagement  88, 99, 112 Bernstein, Basil  64, 88, 214 typology of student attitudes  89, 99, 153 Biggart, Andy  173, 178 biographical experiences of young people  170, 186–​8 ‘biographicity’  188 Bonizzoni, P.  139 Bourdieu, Pierre  5, 11, 27, 109, 129, 130–​2, 143, 187, 196–​7 Brockmann, Michaela  168, 170, 178, 179 Burke, P.J., ‘crisis of masculinity’  147

C ‘calling’, vocation as a sense of  65, 72, 78 capital  131 economic  113, 118, 199, 211 linguistic  131–​2, 137–​9, 142–​3 see also cultural capital capital conversion, timeframe of  139–​41 capital devaluation, migrant parents and students  130–​2, 134–​7, 142 cognitive engagement  88, 99, 112, 114 Coll, C., learner identity  76, 169 Colley, Helen  148–​9, 150, 169, 178, 179, 180 compliant pole, political discourses  52, 55–​6, 58, 59 Connell, Raewyin  148 counter-​hegemonic gender choices  147–​8 analysis of girls and boys  152–​5 boys’ non-​normative gender choices  155–​7 girls’ non-​normative gender choices  158–​61 gender-​segregated vocational settings  148–​51 methodology of study  151–​2 study conclusions  161–​2 Creswell, J.W.  11 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)  50 critical pole, political discourses  52, 55, 56, 58–​9 critical policy analysis  26, 27, 38 Cuconato, M.  86–​7 cultural capital  74–​5, 113, 131, 211 and careers in the arts  67 devaluation of, migrant students  134–​43 languages and literacy as  132 Cultural Political Economy (CPE)  27–​8 Culture as a Vocation (Dubois)  66 curriculum  academic orientation in secondary schools in Spain  76 224

Index and gender bias in feminised sectors  150 linked to practical knowledge in VET  170, 215 need for more flexibility in VET  37

D damaged learner identities, VET students  172–​5 ‘denial of structural factors’  189, 196–​200 desire (to study), guarantee of success  197 detachment, student attitude  89, 115, 153, 154, 159–​60 devaluation of migrant capital  130–​1 language barriers  131–​2, 142 parents with university degrees  employment prospects  134–​6 grades and track of children  136–​7 deficit thinking, influence of  47 Dubois, Vincent  66, 67

E Ecclestone, Kathryn  170–​1, 179, 180 economic capital  113, 118, 199, 211 educational guidance practices  34, 37 and competition between schools  55 reinforcing gender segregation  148–​9 teacher narratives  77, 80 educational trajectories  85–​7 key element in transition to upper secondary education  94–​5 of migrant students  129–​43 role of education system and school institution in shaping  87–​8 school experience as central element of  88–​9 social class as mediating factor  95–​8 students on gender atypical pathways  147–​62 typology of previous  90–​4 and working-​class heterogeneity  107–​25 and young people’s learner identities  167–​81 young peoples’ narratives  189–​200 EDUPOST 16 project  6, 10, 11 emotional engagement  88, 110, 112, 114 employment  aspirations, VET students  117–​19 job opportunities, gender atypical  158 and male working-​class identities  153 occupations of working-​class fractions  113 prospects for migrant parents with university degrees  134–​6 for social mobility  156–​7 VET training leading to  170, 177, 178 estrangement, student attitude  89, 153, 154, 160, 162 Eva Lam, W.S.  132 Evans, K.  150–​1, 160–​1

expectations  of parents  119–​21 of teachers  115, 121, 132, 142, 215–​16, 217 VET students  196 of working-​class students  116–​17, 123–​4

F Falsafi L., learner identity  76, 169 femininity and gender atypical educational choices  150–​1, 160–​1 Flicker, Miranda  186 Francis, B.  219 frictions, Barcelona and Madrid educational system  29 identifying  32–​5 solutions proposed for  35–​8 fulfilment, personal  65–​6, 67–​8, 78 Furlong, Andy  4, 86–​7, 173, 178, 192 Furlong, J.C.  169 Furlong, V.J.  12

G Gale, T.  197 gender habitus  149, 159–​60 gender segregation in vocational training  147–​51 analysis of girls and boys  152–​5 boys’ non-​normative gender choices  155–​7 girls’ non-​normative gender choices  158–​61 methodology of study  151–​2 study conclusions  161–​2 Goldthorpe, J.H.  108–​109 Goodman, R.  200 Greene, J.  11 guidance practices  see educational guidance practices

H habitus  131, 187 gender  149, 159–​60 institutional  199 and subjective inequalities  217–​18 vocational  150, 169, 175, 178–​9, 180 Hansen, D.T.  67 happiness and self-​realisation  64, 72, 78 Hatt, B.  217 hermeneutical injustice  185–​6 educational transitions as biographical experiences  186–​8 individual vs structural factors leading to success/​failure  196–​200 methodology  189 trajectories of academic vs vocational tracks  190–​6 Hessel, Stéphane  185

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Educational Transitions and Social Justice hidden students  76 Hodkinson, P.  188 Hollingworth, S.  168 Hughes, E.C.  73 humanities and social sciences Baccalaureate  73

I IB (International Baccalaureate)  see Baccalaureate ideal pupil, image of  96, 169, 180, 215 identities  217–​18 academic  120 class  110 male working-​class  153 professional  150 see also learner identities individual versus structural factors, acknowledging  196–​200 individualisation rhetoric  making learning a personal responsibility  187–​8 and self-​blame for failures  173 and young people’s educational choices  47, 64 individuality, illusion of, Furlong and Cartmel  4, 45, 209 inequalities  institutional  214–​15 relational  215–​17 spatial dimension of  48–​9 structural  210–​12 subjective  217–​19 systemic  212–​14 institutional inequalities  214–​15 institutional practices, students not recognising influence of  199 invisible students  76

J Jacobs, A.  48 jobs  see employment

L labour market  see employment laddish attitudes  154–​5, 159 Lahelma, E., hands metaphor  149 Lahire, Bernard, vocation  66–​7 language difficulties, migrant students  137–​9, 142 Lather, P.  11–​12 Leal, J.  6 learner identities  167–​8 educational pathways built on damaged  172–​5 limiting vocational outlook  76 methodology  171–​2 recognition and certainty to re-​signify  175–​9

study conclusions  179–​81 theoretical foundations  168–​71 learning cultures  169 learning opportunities  169–​70 Lingard, B.  27 linguistic capital  131–​2, 137–​9, 142–​3 location, factor in school choice  54, 56, 58–​9

M Madrid studies  politics of upper secondary transitions  25–​40 working-​class students’ choices  107–​25 young people’s narratives  185–​201 Martuccelli, D.  64 masculinity crisis and underachievement of boys  147 meritocracy  47, 57, 73 and inequalities  209–​10 middle-​class students  parents with degrees  135 school trajectories  96, 97 and working-​class fractions  109 see also social class migrant students’ transitions  129–​30 cultural capital devaluation, Bourdieusian analysis  130–​2 methodology of study  132–​3 parents with university degrees  employment prospects  134–​6 grades and track of children  136–​7 results of study  133–​41 study conclusions  142–​3 Mills, M.  219 mobility  circular mobility, migrant students  140 social  156, 157, 174 working-​class parents expectations  119, 121 mobility problems within cities  48–​9 barrier to taking VET courses  56–​8 material, emotional and symbolic constraints  52–​3 Mons, Nathalie, ‘uniform integration model’  8, 214 moral issues  and feminised sectors  150 and vocational choices  67–​8 Morales, Cristina  185 Mullet, D.R.  50

N narratives  teachers, vocation  64–​80 young people’s  185–​200 NAWC (‘new affluent working-​class’) students  113, 117, 118–​19, 121

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Index neighbourhood, factor in school choice  54, 56 Noël, A.  28 Nylund, M.  3, 150

O Oakes, Jeannie, tracking  212 Oberti, M.  48 occupations  see employment outrage of young people  185 Ozga, J.  11

P Pallas, A.M.  86–​7 parents  cultural influence on children  74 migrant, unrecognised degrees  134–​6 vocation of, children following  74, 121 working-​class  aspirations of  119 guidance and support from  120–​1 Parker, S.  197 Parreira do Amaral, M.  29 Passeron, J.C.  196–​7 peer relationships  177 personality and vocational choice  64, 69–​71 poles of (political) discourse  52, 55, 58–​9 political construction of transitions  25–​6 comparison of two urban cities: Barcelona and Madrid  30–​1 methodology  26–​9 results of study  31–​8 study conclusions  38–​40 proximity, factor in school choice  49, 52, 56, 199 public discourses/​representations  of educational choices  55–​8 mobility of students around cities  52–​5 spatial distribution of upper secondary education  51–​2 of young people  46–​8 public-​private distribution of VET supply  35 PWC (‘precarious working-​class’) students  113, 114, 115, 119, 120–​1, 122

R Raffe, D.  168, 178 Raffo, C.  45–​6 Reay, Diane  5, 47, 149, 170–​1, 209, 210 Rees, G.  169 relational inequalities  215–​17 resistance, student attitude  89, 153, 154, 159–​60, 162 role models, teachers as  76–​7

S sacrifice and vocation, teachers’ discourses  68, 73 Saraví, G.  6

Sassen, S.  6 Savage, M.  109 Schlanger, J.  65 school engagement  and class background  107, 108, 110 dimensions of  88, 99 and educational trajectories  112–​14 school experience  central element of trajectories  88–​9 generating a fragile learner identity  172–​3 scientific Baccalaureate  73 segmentation of education system  212–​13 self-​concept  200 self-​esteem  and learner identity  169 low levels/​loss of  154, 200 questioning  73 self-​exclusion  110, 167, 175 self-​image  as a learner, VET students  167, 175–​6, 179–​80 migrant student  139 self-​realisation  64, 78 ideal of  72 and secular notion of vocation  65–​6, 67 Shain, F.  11 social capital, working-​class fractions  113 social class  and cultural capital  74–​5, 131, 197 effect on choice of educational track  95–​8 of students taking gender atypical VET programmes  152–​4 boys  156–​8 girls  158–​61 study variable  92 see also migrant students’ transitions; working-​class students social inequalities  see inequalities social media, influence of  75, 79 social mobility  achieving via occupation type  156–​7 working-​class parents’ expectations  119, 121 social movements  185 Sorando, D.  6 spaciality  see urban educational spaces spatial dimension, urban space  45–​9, 51–​5 structural factors  188 young people’s denial of  189, 196–​200 see also social class structural inequalities  210–​12 student attitudes, Bernstein’s typology of  89, 153–​4, 159–​60 subjective dimensions of choices and transitions  86, 89, 90–​1 subjective dispositions  167 subjective inequalities  217–​19 systemic inequalities  212–​14

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T

atypical gender choices  147–​61 Barcelona study  mobility issues  52–​3, 56–​8 unequal distribution  49–​50, 51–​2 and learner identities  167–​8, 169–​70, 172–​9 migrant students  130, 138–​41 negative image of  173–​4, 217 Spanish education system  8–​9, 30–​40 versus Baccalaureate  decision to study  120–​3, 138–​9 non-​linear transition  190–​6 working-​class students  aspirations and expectations  116–​19 decision to study  120–​3 see also vocations, teacher discourses vocational habitus, Colley  150, 169, 175, 178–​9, 180 vocations, teacher discourses  68–​9 language and concept of  69–​73 the making of vocations  73–​7 study conclusions  78–​80

teacher expectations  impact on guidance strategies  216 of VET students  115, 121, 217 teacher narratives of vocational choices  64–​5 language and concept of vocation  69–​73 the making of vocations  73–​7 sociological understanding of vocation  65–​8 study conclusions  78–​80 study methodology  68–​9 teachers as role models  76–​7 theory and methodology  3–​5 location of research  6–​9 organisation of book and analysis  12–​16 qualitative approach  10–​12 tracking, educational and social inequality  212 transition regimes  7–​8 TWC (‘traditional working-​class’) students  113, 114–​15, 117–​18, 121

W

U

Wacquant, L.  6 Walther, A.  7, 86–​7, 189, 190, 192 Weber, Max, vocation lectures  66 welfare regimes  7 will  189 and guarantee of success  197 Willis, Paul, Learning to Labour  173 working-​class students  14, 107–​108 educational aspirations and expectations  116–​19 ‘hard-​working’ profile  96–​7 language barriers for migrant  132 school experiences and educational trajectories  112–​16 study conclusions  123–​5 study context and methods  111–​12 sub-​classed choice  108–​109 upper secondary choice process  119–​23 Wright, E.O.  108–​109

university  academic students’ plans  191 migrant parents, devaluation of degrees  134–​7 VET students’ expectations  193–​5, 196 and working-​class students’ aspirations  117–​18, 122 urban contexts, politics of upper secondary transitions  25–​6 education system in Madrid vs Barcelona  30–​1 methodology of study  26–​9 results of study  31–​8 study conclusions  38–​40 urban educational spaces  45–​6 methodology of study  49–​51 public representations  51–​8 study conclusions  58–​60 theoretical background  46–​9

Y

V Vieira, M.M.  67 vocation, sociological meaning of  65–​8 Vocational and Educations Training (VET)  ability versus structural factors  197–​9, 200, 201

Yamashita, H.  170–​1 ‘yo-​yo transitions’  187 young people’s narratives  185–​200

Z Zelinka, J.  29

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“This book is a valuable resource for researchers and educators who want to understand the complex injustices shaping young people’s educational transitions through upper secondary.” Louise Archer, University College London “Young people leaving school face an uncertain future and difficult choices. This careful and insightful mixed method study shows how such uncertainties work to highlight and intensify social inequalities. It speaks directly to policy and practice.” Stephen J Ball, University College London “This book offers an excellent discussion of the intricacies of negotiating access and social justice in and through educational transitions. A remarkable exercise in providing research insight to today’s pressing issues.” Marcelo Parreira do Amaral, University of Münster Transitions to upper secondary education are crucial to understanding social inequalities. In most European countries, it is at this moment when students are separated into different tracks and faced with a ‘real choice’ in relation to their educational trajectory. Based on a qualitative driven approach with multiple research techniques, including documentary analysis, questionnaires and over 100 interviews with policymakers, teachers and young people in Barcelona and Madrid, this book offers a holistic account of upper secondary educational transitions in urban contexts. Contributors explore the political, institutional and subjective dimensions of these transitions and the multiple mechanisms of inequality that traverse them. Providing vital insights for policy and practice that are internationally relevant, this book will guarantee greater equity and social justice for young people regarding their educational trajectories and opportunities. Aina Tarabini is Associate Professor in Sociology at Autonomous University of Barcelona.

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