Educational Trajectories The theoretical framework of the paper combines the notions of school disengagement and educational trajectories. We investigate school disengagement as a phenomenon of processual nature, usually triggered by a form of social or educational disadvantage and evolving within one’s educational trajectory. Our current research has demonstrated that several trajectories of school disengagement can be distinguished: unanticipated crisis, parabola, downward spiral, boomerang, resilient route, shading out. The text will focus on one trajectory type – the parabola – which describes a situation of youngsters that face increasing school disengagement, but when they are provided with substantial support, the trajectory changes and moves in the opposite direction. The analysis of the parabola trajectory will thus be treated as a source of positive inspiration and guidance as to how to offset the negative impact of social and educational inequalities and hence to reverse the negative direction in one’s educational trajectory. When analysing the educational biographies of students from secondary schools in Warsaw (both graduating and leaving school early), we will investigate the protective factors and successful interventions which can be found instrumental in fostering the educational success of youth at risk of school disengagement and early school leaving. The text will be based on the qualitative analysis of data obtained within the RESL.eu project: individual semi-structured interviews with Polish students at risk of early school leaving and youngsters who left school early but returned to education.

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