Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of Spanish educational policies addressed to those youth who, without having achieved the compulsory education degree, enter a vocational training course named 'social guarantee scheme'.Since 1994 we have developed several researches focusing on this vocational training course: we have focused on teachers identities, we have paid attention to pupils perceptions of work; the pupils construction of identity, their self-perception; the way that 'conflict' is managed at the enterprise… Of course, as it is meant to be nowadays, our approach has been an interdisciplinary one: research team is integrated by pedagogues, psychologists, sociologists, etc.At this moment, to achieve our purpose, we have focused on the educational policies, that is, our text has been represented by legal texts that deal with how teachers and pupils are said to be together at the special context of the 'social guarantee schemes'.We try to seek on how the educational knowledge is produced and transformed at risk situations, and we understand that this is intimately linked with a particular approach on what and how to conduce a research, due to its influence on those who teach and learn. So, our main questions to answer are: how can we make a systematic investigation about the educational programmes offered to youth without any degree? Which identities pretend to conform the Ministry of Education through the legal acts that are established? How theese identities are linked, and in wich grade, to those developed by the European Union? In which way is the educational reform affecting relations between teachers and pupils? What kinds of relations are allowed according to the different educational contexts that participate at youth education? What kinds of researches are developed and what are they focusing on? What is to be learned and taught in a social guarantee schemes if you are teacher or if you are a pupil? Every question refers to: research on education related to youth at risk. But, as we say before, we are going to do it systematically, seeking on identities, remarking relations and attending contexts. This push us to a particular framework of reference: the model of pedagogical discourse of Basil Bernstein. This model is centred on what is to be transmitted as educational knowledge, and put into consideration that what it is transmitted is constituted by three rules, invariable in time and in space. We just say, by now, that the model is centred not only in what it is transmitted inside the classroom, but it allow us to systematize agents' performances, their own discourses at their own educational agencies at the different levels or arenas where the main purpose is the educational knowledge.Another purpose of this paper is that we want to give back what we learned about how educational policies are addressing our classroom management to those teachers that are working with youth at risk. So, we have conducted a systematic investigation. That's why we created the tools from the general methodology that may be seen in Bernstein's theory7. Our tools allow us to seek both at the interactional and structural dimensions of the pedagogical practices -that is, relations between discourses at the interdisciplinary level and, relations between agents: relations between teachers and pupils-, which has been useful to analyse the educational policies at the macro level of the system and, as well, at the micro level.We assist now to a peculiar moment where, from the European Union, we are getting involved in a dynamic where the international level is raising an increasing explanatory power to understand certain practices at the level of the schools in each country. The Bernstein's model give us a powerful tool to see the theory in the practice and the practice in the theory, to see the links between the official texts produced at the macro level (i.e. Educational Act, European recommendations, Scholar production) and what constitutes the local texts (the implemented curriculum, the pedagogical practice). It allows us to declare what is a change, what is the same, what is a variation and what is different. And theese facts, described accurately to theachers involved in youth at risk has become capital as for them, in order to better understand their pedagogical practice, as for us, researchers who have to conduct further research focusing on what matter: education and youth at risk.BERNSTEIN, B. (1990). The structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. Volume IV Class, codes and control. Londres; Routledge. BERNSTEIN, B. (1996). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Theory, research and critique. Maryland; Rowman & Littlefield. MORAIS, A. M. (2001). Crossing boundaries between disciplines: A perspective on Basil Bernstein's legacy. In S. Power et al. A tribute to Basil Bernstein - 1924-2000. Londres: Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Londres. NAVAS, A. (2006). Using Bernstein on Curriculum Studies Field. Paper presented at The Second World Curriculum Studies Conference. Tampere (FINLAND)