The Transition to Adulthood for Vulnerable Youth in Norway

Author(s):

Jon Olav Myklebust(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

14 SES 05 A, Schooling of Ordinary and Vulnerable Youth. Transitions between Levels of Schooling and Transitions to Adulthood (Part 1)

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-14

10:30-12:00

Room:

KL 25/134,G, 70

Chair:

Linda Mary Hargreaves

Contribution

The purpose of this paper is to examine what circumstances influence transition to adulthood among vulnerable young people. In this study about 500 adolescents who received special support in upper secondary education, were followed prospectively through school and into different domains of adult life. The analyses are based on longitudinal research funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and the Council of Research.

When transitional processes are to be studied, the life course perspective is a natural choice of approach. The life course is a theoretical orientation with an emphasis on temporal dimensions and rooted in contextual perspectives. This approach is useful when analysing how individuals adapt to historical contexts, local environments and structural arrangements, e.g., placement in special or regular classes in school.

When studying the life course in the short term the idea of transitionembedded within larger trajectories is the most appropriate. A transition is a marked, and more or less, permanent change that is influenced by social norms and expectations (cf. Elder & Johnson 2003). Transitions analysed in this paper include moving out of the parents’ home, finding work, establishing a romantic relationship, and having children.

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse multiple transitions in various domains of life and, thus, show a picture of the life courses of vulnerable youth that is as complete as possible. In accordance with the ambitions of modern life course theory (cf. Mayer 2009), the goal is not only to study single transitions but also to analyse interrelated trajectories from adolescence to adulthood. Patterns of cumulative advantage and disadvantage may then be revealed, for example how disabilities and educational outcomes influence subsequent adaptation to adult life. However, in a rather short paper this can only briefly be indicated.

This longitudinal study draws inspiration from two complementary fields of knowledge: life span psychology and life course sociology. The first of these includes the proximal context (e.g., family and social relationships), whereas the second approach includes more distal features (e.g., structural and cultural context). The combination of proximal and distal contexts ‘supplies a set of space-time coordinates, which differently shape the timing and form of the transitions through which the life course is constructed’ (Bynner 2008: 219).

Method

A research project titled Adult Life on Special Terms provides the data for this paper. This research started collecting information on special needs students as early as in the spring of 1996. Two cohorts of special needs students were involved: (1) the admission cohort of upper secondary schools in the autumn of 1994 from three counties, Møre og Romsdal, Nord-Trøndelag, and Hedmark, and (2) the admission cohort of upper secondary schools in the autumn of 1995 from these same three counties, in addition to the counties of Finnmark, Rogaland, and Oslo. From the spring of 1996 to the winter of 2002, information was obtained about these adolescents once or twice a year. Class teachers and school counsellors filled in questionnaires, whereas the parents and the special needs students themselves were interviewed by telephone.In the follow-up sample, data on all of the 760 students were obtained from the schools. During the winter of 2002, we succeeded in interviewing 494 of the former special needs students, yielding a response rate of 65%. Compared with most other follow-up studies of adolescents with disabilities, a response rate above 60% is considered to be a rather good one (cf. Myklebust 2007).

Expected Outcomes

Are these successful transitions? In this paper this question has been answered – at least indirectly – by presentation of data from four spheres of life: finding full time work, acquiring an independent living, establishing romantic relationships, and having children. First should be noted that at an age of 23 to 24 years, most of these former special needs students are rather successful. They do find full time work, they do live independently from their parents, and they do establish romantic relationships. Approximately a quarter of the women and a tenth of the men also have children. (For many this is a somewhat ambiguous indicator of success, since at third of them do not live with the other parent.) However, a considerable number of them – 40% of the men and 60% of the women – have no full time job. Furthermore: One-fifth of these young people have never lived outside the parental home, and practically an equal number of them have never had any romantic relationship. Most of them have modest educational success. In sum, this depicts a darker picture of transition to adulthood than what is the case for adolescents without special educational needs (cf. Myklebust & Båtevik 2005).

References

Elder, G.H. & M.K. Johnson (2003). The Life Course and Aging: Challenges, Lessons, and New Directions. In: Invitation to the Life Course. Toward New Understandings of Later Life. New York: Baywood Publishing Company Bynner, J. (2008). Developmental Science in the Melting Pot. Journal of Social Issues.Vol. 64, No. 1:219 – 225. Mayer, K.U. (2009). New Directions in Life Course Reearch. Annual Review of Sociology. 35:413 – 433. Myklebust, J.O. (2007). Divergent Paths: Competence attainment among students with special educational needs. International Journal of Inclusive Education. 11:215–231. Myklebust, J.O. & F.O. Båtevik (2005). Economic Independence for Adolescents with Special Educational Needs. European Journal of Special Needs Education. 3: 271–286.

Author Information

Jon Olav Myklebust (presenting / submitting)

Volda University College

Department of social sciences and history

Volda

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