This paper will introduce part of the project "The early dropout from Vocational Training: Design of an integrated career guidance plan (Orienta-2O)", financed with ERDF funds under the call for R & D PAIDI 2020 (Junta de Andalucía). This project is based on specific demands of the Second Chance Schools (E2O) of Andalusia in order to design integrated career guidance plans aimed at young people in early school dropout (AET) and that are based on educational research.

In the context of Spain, the AET group includes young people between 18 and 24 years of age who are not studying at level 3 of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). Statistics published by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (2020) reveal that 16.0% of the Spanish population leaves the education system prematurely, far from the challenge set by the European Commission for 2020 (10%). In the case of Andalusia, the figure reaches 21.8% (Statistics of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2020).

The situation of AET is associated with the risk of social exclusion due to the difficulties of finding employment in a context of increasing valuation of professional qualifications, which can lead to situations of high vulnerability and poverty. Among the measures that have been developed to address this situation are the Second Chance Schools. The Second Chance Schools (E2O) provide young people from 15 to 29 years old, without employment or qualifications, with an original pedagogical model based on innovative training and support in social demands, paying special attention to the most vulnerable (https://www.e2oespana.org/). Addressing AET implies focusing not only on the causes that personally affect the students who leave or on compensatory measures but also considering the need and the ways of promoting the development of key competencies from childhood to active ageing, through both formal and non-formal education and recognizing the learning carried out in the informal sphere. Among these competencies, career management competencies take on a preponderant role, offering the necessary tools to build academic and professional pathways in a conscious, motivated, and meaningful way.

The situation described becomes even more complex in a context of globalization, socioeconomic crises, permeability of career boundaries, instability in employment, in short, the characteristics of the postmodern liquid society, make it necessary for the individual to develop the competencies required to build his or her professional project, as well as the ability to manage his or her career in contexts of uncertainty (Nota & Rossier, 2015). Moreno (2017) argues that vocational training is key to the sustainable development of society, social cohesion, employability and personal fulfillment.

Unitwin (2020) express the need to develop lifelong learning actions and guidance processes for career construction that enhance empowerment and personal fulfillment, valuing the impact that careers have on planetary stability, global peace and sustainability. They thus speak of "sustainable careers" that combine individual, social and political action. To respond to this approach, the guiding action must be promoted through collaborative proposals that enhance community development.

The project aims to promote the creation of integrated vocational guidance plans aimed at young people in a situation of early school leaving, enhancing the dialogue between the different training and social agents and the young people themselves. Specifically, the contribution will focus on the second objective of the project: To analyze in depth and from a narrative approach, the academic, professional and life trajectories of young people in a situation of early school leaving, as well as the needs of guidance for the construction of a sustainable career (career guidance).

The methodology combines collaborative ethnography and autobiographical narrative. Regarding design, this research is a nested multiple case study, a type 4 design in the terminology used by Yin (2014). The participants are 35 young people between 16 and 29 years of age who carry out their training in 3 Second Chance Schools in Andalusia (Spain). The research process is developed in the three selected schools through a series of actions proposed to the young people (ethnographic research group actions) and autobiographical interviews and co-analysis conversations (individual). The sampling method used was the selection of critical cases (Patton, 2002; Flick, 2010) since it allowed to achieve the maximum variation in the sample from a small number of cases. The autobiographical narrative methodology has been frequently used in research on transitions of socially vulnerable people (Reid and West, 2018). The narrative is facilitated with recourse to qualitative career assessment techniques and procedures (McMahon and Watson, 2015) as well as arts-based ethnography (Kassan et al., 2017). This approach to career development is a dynamic process of co-constructing, de-constructing, re-constructing a new story (Brott, 2015). Both the qualitative career assessment process and the research actions were integrated into the curriculum developed in the classroom, through project-based teaching. The activities were agreed with the teachers and the management of the centers. The use of collaborative ethnography allows responding to the general objective of this project, as it enhances the collaboration between the research team and the participants throughout the research process (Campbell, Lassiter, & Pahl, 2018). The narratives generated in the co-analysis sessions offer elements that allow for co-production between the team of ethnographers and ethnographers (students, training and guidance agents, and research team). This construction occurs in a context of collaboration and dialectic relationship that is favoured through different forms of expression (oral, written, visual, bodily) (Pink, 2009).

At the time of submitting this abstract, we are still in the data collection phase. However, we can advance some expected results. Qualitative career assessment procedures and co-analysis through (autobiographical) interviews can make it possible to show life themes, the influencing factors of younger´s careers not only verbally, but also in a visual way, making it more effective in order to meet the younger’s needs (Chant, 2019). Many of these life themes remained on a hidden side, in the unsaid. The process developed enabled youngers to access the conscious and unconscious meanings of their life experience, the thread of their narrative and, therefore, can lead them to "active mastery of what was passive and suffered" (Savickas, 2011, p. 11). Through the research actions proposed to young people and the co-analysis of these actions, we will be able to co-produce a process of research-creation (Pahl & Pool, 2021). Here, the narratives of young people can emerge and flow, be constructed, de-constructed and re-constructed in order to create and generate new ways of conceiving and constructing sustainable careers.

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