Conference Agenda

Educational achievement is considered central to economic development and social inclusion, which makes measuring and analysing learning outcomes central to education policy and research in Europe and beyond. Against the dominating views of learning outcomes as a phenomenon that can be made easily visible and objectively measured, the starting point of this study is that learning outcomes are constructed through complex processes influenced by manifold intersecting factors and actors. Thus, this study approaches learning outcomes as a dynamic, context-sensitive, and interactional phenomenon, which take various shapes, forms, and meanings for different people.

The objective of this study is to analyse and compare how young people perceive, cope with and relate learning outcomes to their life courses and biographies in the context of differing opportunity structures in Finland and Bulgaria. The study analyses the subjective meanings young people give to learning outcomes as part of their life projects in their particular contexts (c.f., Kovacheva & Rambla, 2022). The focus is on young adults who live in socio-demographically declining regions, who are or have previously been in vulnerable or multi-disadvantaged life situations, and who have faced disruptions on their educational pathways.

In this study, young people are addressed as experts of their own life courses and biographies. Theoretically the study draws from life course research and theorizations of opportunity structures (Roberts, 2009) together with the perspective of spatial justice (Soja, 2013). Life course research places young people’s life courses at the centre of the examination and considers how individual lives are embedded in institutional and socio-historical frames (Heinz et al., 2009). As part of individual life courses, also learning outcomes are constructed in the particular socio-historical contexts and socioeconomic conditions that form the structures of opportunities (Cefalo et al., 2020; Cefalo et al., 2024; Scandurra et al., 2020). Individuals are not seen as being imbued by social forces, order, and institutions, but also as active agents who respond and act to change them (e.g., Mortimer & Shanahan, 2003). That is, individuals exercise their agency within the limits of opportunity structures (Roberts, 2009). In other words, life courses of young people are constructed in a reciprocal and dynamic interaction of political, social, economic, cultural, and spatial conditions, welfare state regulations and provisions, and biographical decisions and strategies. In this frame, agency is understood as an intentional action within a given context, which is influenced but not determined by societal structures and socioeconomic conditions (Evans, 2007).

The viewpoint of spatial justice emphasises both the significance of space as an active force shaping human life, and the intersection of space and power in the distribution of socially valued resources and opportunities to use them (Soja, 2013; Williams, 2013). The spatial justice perspective is crucial when conducting in-depth comparative analyses in differing spatial contexts. In the field of education, spatial justice may be referred to the uneven distribution of resources and learning opportunities among regions, cities, neighbourhoods, and schools, along different divides and related to different factors. Spatial justice also helps to conceptualise learning outcomes as spatially conditioned phenomena. Furthermore, the spatial justice approach draws attention to the interaction of space and power and enables studying the spatial distribution of resources and opportunities of young people and their impact on the quality of learning outcomes. The spatial justice approach also re-interprets the analytical perspective on the agency of young people and their ability to shape their learning environments and navigate their life courses. Regarding young people in vulnerable and multi-disadvantaged positions, it helps to view them in light of the spatialised forms of exclusion and discrimination, which open or close their possibilities and opportunity structures.

Optimizing the developmental opportunities for all pupils is a major social concern. More collaboration between educational and youth care professionals in schools, as a preventive approach to prevent more serious problems, is recommended. This is important because of the difficulties teachers experience in handling students’ difficult behavior. In the Netherlands many students make use of youth aid and/or attend special education schools, due to their behavioral problems. However, interprofessional collaboration is difficult to realize. A systemic change, called ‘Passend onderwijs’ (a change towards inclusive education) was introduced in 2014 in the Netherlands, and evaluated in 2020. The evaluation shows that collaboration between education and youth services can create alignment issues (Ledoux & Waslander, 2020). It requires professionals to step beyond the boundaries of their own profession, and to implement daily educational practices, based on shared responsibility and shared expertise (Van Swet, 2017). Collaboration is "working with others to do things that you cannot do by yourself" (Sennett, 2012).

Although teachers generally feel competent in dealing with problematic student behavior, dealing with externalizing behavior evokes feelings of inadequacy (De Boer, 2020). Youth care professionals are insufficiently involved in questions regarding preventing problem behavior, encouraging positive behavior, and promoting well-being in the classroom. Research shows that working together on prevention strategies contributes to student well-being (Splett et al., 2020). In our study we developed several prevention strategies as tools for schools to make youth services accessible to all students. Providing a safe school environment and promoting wellbeing is important for all students to prevent behavioral problems (Lester & Cross, 2015).

In this research project it is examined how to support students’ social emotional learning by providing an integrated preventive approach which was developed by both teachers and youth workers, and implemented in the classroom. Teachers and youth workers collaborated in the classroom, they actually worked together. The participating schools in this project are special education schools, regular primary and secondary schools, with their respective youth care partners. This gives us three school types: Special education (SP), regular primary education (PE), and regular secondary education (SE). We present the findings of our questionnaire study among students and teachers (see Table 1) who filled in a questionnaire at the beginning of the project (2019), and after two years of implementation (2021).

The research questions are:

1) What is the contribution of the intervention to students' social-emotional learning?

2) In what ways and to what extent is the cooperation between education and youth welfare services strengthened during the project?

3) What competencies do teachers develop through the collaboration with youth care providers?

The findings suggest that the interventions in each school practice foster students’ social emotional learning and lead to an increased sense of wellbeing. Also, teachers learn to better manage complex behavioral situations in the classroom by collaborating with youth care professionals. Finally, the teachers and youth care workers work better together, due to an increased interdependency and flexibility. They need each other to achieve goals, and they learn to explore the boundaries of their own profession.

School drop-out is a multifaceted phenomenon, concerning in Italy all those underage students who, at different school stages (up to the age of 16) or training (up to the age of 18), manifest difficulties of different kinds, from dropping out of compulsory education without obtaining a qualification to repeated interruptions up to repetition rates and absenteeism. From the 1980s to the 2000s and beyond there is a progressive attenuation of the socio-economic model towards a multifactorial reading; but there are still few studies that directly question school components. The European Commission noted the importance of learning on this phenomenon through approaches capable to integrate large-scale quantitative surveys with qualitative analyses. Currently there is a gap in qualitative data, especially in research that seeks to explore the effectiveness of interventions to contrast school drop-out.

So, the research within which this contribution is embedded aims to study the effectiveness of some interventions designed to contrast school drop-out, which are still little studied in Italy. A privileged point of observation and field of intervention are those schools which propose alternative models of teaching and learning to the traditional school system, such as the popular and second-chance schools, which are a bulwark against drop-out. There is little scientific literature on second-chance in Italy and almost none on alternative education (with the exception of “method” schools, to which in Italy the concept of “alternative” is linked). The larger project aims to fill the gap starting to survey alternative education interventions and exploring some models of popular and second-chance experiences, in an inter-institutional perspective and connection between school and territory.

So, the first research question is: How widespread is alternative education in Lombardy? The larger project also asks: What are the main characteristics of these schools and interventions? What is their effectiveness in terms of well-being and school results?

This contribution presents the results of the first step of the research project, dedicated to mapping: a questionnaire will be distributed to all schools and some social realities in Lombardy – and selected schools in Italy – to map the presence of alternative schools/interventions in the region. This emerges as a very delicate phase in achieving the final output of the project, which is to set up a recognisable network of the schools and social realities dealing with alternative education in Lombardy, also with the collaboration of stakeholders and policymakers. This work will allow new experiences to be added to the roster of those already known: the second-chance schools “Sicomoro I Care” of the Foundation “Sicomoro per l’Istruzione” in Milan and Lodi; the alternative school “Scuola Bottega” in Milan; and the popular school of the Social Enterprise “Il Carro” in Monza. This phase will open to a two-phase exploratory design (mixed methods methodology) and to a professional development action-research addressed to teachers and educators working in alternative education.