Experiences of school transitions: Policies, practice and participants

Abstract

It is important to neither over-emphasise nor understate the importance of productive post-school transitions. However, for students who are at risk of unsuccessful transitions, there are potential and long-lasting risks. Consequently, there is a need to understand more about post-school transitions and the ways in which policy settings, and school and community practices as well as students themselves can assist the transition process in contemporary and future times. Indeed, the imperatives for productive transitions come from governments. Their concern that education systems prepare and support young people's post-school transitions leading to productive outcomes in terms of employment or further education and avoiding drifts to unemployment and disengagement from productive economic and societal roles is evident in policy. Parent and communities may well similarly look to the schooling provision to achieve productive outcomes of these kinds for young people, and industry for related but different purposes. In many ways, these transitions are seen as tangible measures of schools' and the schooling system's performance. Yet, factors beyond the school itself also shape the kinds of provisions offered to school students and, importantly, how these students engage with such provisions. Hence, to understand transitions and how they might progress productively requires a consideration of the range of contributing factors and also how students take them up: affordances and engagements. This chapter provides an overview of how combinations of affordances and engagements are enacted through the perspectives, approaches and practices articulated through the contributions to this book from the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Switzerland and Australia. These contributions range from the articulation of practices, policies and implementation issues across a range of nation states, through to comparisons of how such factors play out in schools across a single educational jurisdiction. In all, they emphasise that post-school transitions are events shaped by more than school policies and practices alone and their worth, enactment and intents are subject to the actions and appraisals of those who participate in them directly or indirectly.