Three Types of Tightrope Dance in the Comeback Process: Preliminary Findings from a Longitudinal Study of Young People at the Margins of Upper Secondary School in Norway

Fewer than half of the young people attending vocational institutions in Norway complete their education within the allotted five years. Indeed, many of these students have non-linear paths to completion. However, it is not changes in the dropout rate that make this different from earlier generations but the expansion of formal education and the rise of the knowledge society and individualisation. The term “tightrope biographies” is used here to encapsulate why individualisation cannot be thought of in terms of choice, because today’s youth are often held accountable for their educational progression rather than this progression being viewed as dependent on institutional mechanisms. The present study characterises young people as “tightrope dancers” in their interactions with vocational schools. Selected data collected from ethnographic interviews during the ongoing longitudinal project Youth, Completion and Dropout in Telemark are used here to capture the voices of young people. These data focus on the non-linear educational careers of these youth when they re-enter schools and explore the stories they tell about dropping out and re-entering. These stories suggest that, to succeed, students need customised support throughout the process from school to the workplace and that many depend on this support. The study identifies three different ways of understanding these students as tightrope dancers trying to get back on track, characterising them as The Steady, The Shaky and The Shivering

Snus- og røykeslutt på stand virker det?

Samfunnet vil ikke at unge mennesker skal røyke eller bruke snus. Hvilken virkning kan det ha å gjennomføre stand i fellesarenaene på videregående skoler hvor erfarne veiledere står klare til å samtale med elevene som passerer om tobakk og snus? Kan slike skolebesøk bidra til at elevene endrer sitt forbruk? Dette er det overordende spørsmålet i denne rapporten

Alkoholforebygging fra ung til ung

Denne rapporten er en evaluering av Juventes rusforebyggende prosjekt "FRISTIL" hvor niendeklassinger over hele landet går på intensive kurs over fire dager. Etter selv å ha vært på kurs drar deltakerne tilbake til skolen sin og underviser de andre i klassen sin om rusforebygging. Målet har vært å undersøke hvorvidt FRISTIL lykkes i gi økt kunnskap om rusmiddelskader, bidra til endrede holdninger i bruk av rusmidler og til slutt bidra til endrede mønstre i faktisk bruk av rusmidler. Sentralt i rapporten står en diskusjon om hvorvidt kursdeltakerne lykkes i å ta med seg det de lærer på kurset og formidle erfaringer til andre på egen alder på egne ungdomsarenaer utenfor skolen. Det som framkommer tyder på at FRISTIL lykkes i å rekruttere unge ledere på skolen til INTRO-deltakelse, og at disse deltakerne gjennom kursperioden får styrket sine kunnskaper om rusrelaterte spørsmål. Mange av INTRO-deltakerne ser også ut til å framstå sosialt med egne ruskritiske holdninger. Rapporten reiser spørsmål om dette er holdninger de på sikt vil ta med seg til de lokale ungdomsmiljøene de kom fra, eller om dette er holdninger som de først og fremst vil dele i egne ruskritiske miljøer. Rapporten er skrevet på oppdrag fra Juvente

Stedsløse slaur - Ungdom, skole og lokal forankring

The study investigates a common assumption from previous decades of educational sociology: Educational resistance seems to go hand in hand with strong local identity and belonging. In the early 1990s, the Norwegian sociologist Gunnar Jørgensen (1993) analysed how young people developed certain social roles in interactions with school and the local community. Based on school survey data from 2018, we present a quantitative analysis where we compared school rootedness and local community rootedness among students according to their educational resources. The study population consisted of students in upper secondary schools in Telemark, South-Eastern Norway (N=3510). Research questions: 1) Do students with less educational resources express less school rootedness and more local community rootedness compared to students with more educational resources? 2) Do students with less educational resources participate more in e-leisure, compared to students with more educational resources? The analysis showed that students with less educational resources expressed less school rootedness compared to students with more educational resources. Contrary to common assumptions as well as findings from Jørgensen’s study, students with less educational resources expressed less local community rootedness compared to other students. Furthermore, such students had higher frequencies with heavy e-leisure participation compared to other students, and more of them had friends with whom they only stayed in touch through the Internet. We discuss results in relation to “the schooled society” thesis (Baker, 2014), youth culture, and place theory. Finally, we question whether the classic geographical term placelessness (Relph, 1976) is appropriate to describe young students in lack of educational resources

The Indirect Approach

How do we do good guesswork at meaning if our informant lives in a secret world? Doing research often includes awkward moments, unforeseen events, and incidents. Here we name some of these “happenstances.” We suggest that happenstances may offer a solution to the problem of meaning discrepancies: The happenstance is one of those moments that allow the researcher to temporarily bridge into the meanings of his or her informant. We have carried out research on marginal youth. In both of our studies, happenstances have turned interview situations upside down. Here we identify how these unforeseen events provided us with valuable insights into our informants’ contexts. We conclude by addressing how these happenstances, though they appear to be a product of pure accident, may become part of a systematic approach in discovering contextual knowledge

Stedsløse slaur - Ungdom, skole og lokal forankring

The study investigates a common assumption from previous decades of educational sociology: Educational resistance seems to go hand in hand with strong local identity and belonging. In the early 1990s, the Norwegian sociologist Gunnar Jørgensen (1993) analysed how young people developed certain social roles in interactions with school and the local community. Based on school survey data from 2018, we present a quantitative analysis where we compared school rootedness and local community rootedness among students according to their educational resources. The study population consisted of students in upper secondary schools in Telemark, South-Eastern Norway (N=3510). Research questions: 1) Do students with less educational resources express less school rootedness and more local community rootedness compared to students with more educational resources? 2) Do students with less educational resources participate more in e-leisure, compared to students with more educational resources? The analysis showed that students with less educational resources expressed less school rootedness compared to students with more educational resources. Contrary to common assumptions as well as findings from Jørgensen’s study, students with less educational resources expressed less local community rootedness compared to other students. Furthermore, such students had higher frequencies with heavy e-leisure participation compared to other students, and more of them had friends with whom they only stayed in touch through the Internet. We discuss results in relation to “the schooled society” thesis (Baker, 2014), youth culture, and place theory. Finally, we question whether the classic geographical term placelessness (Relph, 1976) is appropriate to describe young students in lack of educational resources

Framing Narratives: Youth and Schooling, Silencing and Dissent

As completing upper secondary school has become increasingly important for young people to take their place in society, the problem of school dropout has prompted extensive research to identify the decisive underlying individual and school-based risk factors. However, less attention has been paid to interactions between individual students and institutions (Bunting & Moshuus, 2017). Such a shift redirects our attention from seeing dropout as an accumulation of risk factors (Rumberger, 2011) towards a focus on the processes leading some students to drop out (Brown & Rodriguez, 2009). From this perspective, this paper explores how interaction frames and silences those young people that drop out (Fine, 1991). Based on ethnographic narrative interviews, this qualitative longitudinal study explores schooling experiences through young people’s own accounts. The interpretation of the data reveals issues of young people having a voice or being silenced, staying and completing school or being excluded from school as silenced individuals or (less frequently) as outspoken dissidents. The study explores how these young people frame their narratives, as this factor seems to contribute to diametrically opposed outcomes (dropping out or completion). The findings indicate that young people who employ similar negative frames to describe their interactions both at home and at school are the most vulnerable to dropping out.Article first published online: March 1, 2017; Issue published: March 1, 201

Inaktive ungdommer - en av vår tids største utfordringer. Sluttrapport (2015 – 2018)

FARVE-prosjektet «Inaktiv ungdom en av vår tids største utfordringer» (2015-2019) kom som et tilsvar til den omfattende kvantitative forskningen på skolegjennomføring og –avbrudd som forelå i Norge rundt 2012, da det var mindre kvalitativ forskning om skoleavbrudd og gjennomføring, og lite som tok utgangspunkt i ungdommers perspektiv og fortellinger. Hovedmål med studien var å innhente kontekstuell kunnskap om hva som bidrar til skolegjennomføring og yrkesdeltakelse for ungdom, både fra ungdommene som fullfører skole og er i et utdanningsmiljø, og fra ungdom som ikke gjennomfører sitt skoleløp