New patterns of youth transition in education

Current research provides evidence that new relationships are being forged between youth and education. Increased participation in post-compulsory edu cation, combinations of work and study and uncertain career outcomes have b ecome common experiences. There is an emerging disparity between the stated goals of education and the changing priorities and choices of young people . In particular, the linear notion of transitions, expressed in the metapho rs of pathways used in policy documents, is increasingly at odds with the p atterns of life experienced by young people in many nations. Three themes s tand out in the research on young people in the 1990s. First, an awareness of foreclosed options in educational outcomes is a consistent thread across a range of studies. Secondly, there is a discernible shift by the end of t he 1990s toward more complex life-patterns and a blending or balancing of a range of personal priorities and interests. Thirdly, the need to give 'act ive voice' to young people about the dramatic social and economic changes t hey have been subjected to, is unmistakable in the light of the increasing disparity between the rhetoric of youth and education policy and their own experience of its outcomes.