The research questions of this project focus on how students from special needs schools manage their transition from school into after school life. How do their parents’ (educational/vocational) biographies influence their children’s vocational choices? Can students name important gatekeepers who accompanied their process of vocational choice? The aim is to give insight into biographical strategies, which are developed by young students with emotional and behavioural disorders who visited special needs schools. This target group was interviewed while facing the development task of transition from school to post school arrangements. As many researchers showed (e.g. van Essen 2013) especially learners from special needs schools are confronted with difficulties negotiating the phase of transition ‘successfully‘. So, the (successful) management of this development task means social participation, whereas failure or deviation leads to social exclusion. Bourdieu’s (1991) theory of field and capital and concept of habitus is used as a framework. Next to sociological theories educational biographical research is another framework of this project. This theory is considered in order to recognize educational transformations, which these group of young people experience. These transformations are interesting in particular with view to whom or which gatekeepers are there so support or guide the young people. As analysed interviews already showed, aspects of gender and masculinity aroused a biographical meaning for many young people and can be considered as a biographical coping strategy. Therefore a presentation of different case studies should give an insight into challenges students have to overcome, resources they see in their own lives, their hopes and dreams, their fears of exclusion and not being part of this society. The group of young people with emotional and behavioural disorders does not attract much attention, especially not in terms of a biographical and comprehensive research outline. Therefore, the aim of this research project is to understand how these young people manage the phase of transition. For this purpose narrative-biographical interviews (Schütze 1983) are conducted with the students at the end of their school lives and then about nine months later in order to talk about how they overcome the first months of their transition phase. In addition to the students, narrative-biographical interviews with the students’ parents should be conducted in order to gain information about the aspect of social reproduction and cross-generational tasks (van Essen 2013).

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Sozialer Raum und ›Klassen‹. Leçon sur la leçon. Zwei Vorlesungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Essen, v.F. (2013). Soziale Ungleichheit, Bildung und Habitus. Möglichkeitsräume ehemaliger Förderschüler. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Schütze, F. (1983). Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. In: Neue Praxis 13, 3, 283–293.