Session Information
04 SES 06 B, Alternative Provision
Paper Session
Contribution
The discourses on drop-out from secondary education have been a core issue in European educational policy and in other parts of the Western world for some time (Janosz, Le Blanc, Boulerice, & Tremblay, 2000; Lamb, Walstab, Teese, Vichers, & Rumberger, 2004; Rumberger, 2004). To counteract secondary school drop-outs, multiple Norwegian secondary schools offer alternative educational programs within vocational training with extended work-practice, for those students to whom the regular educational programs do not seem to be meeting their educational needs (Hernes, 2010). This paper is drawn from a three year research study on the alternative program within vocational training with extended work-practice. The research focuses on connections between the students’ participation, learning and qualification. An overall perspective is on the one hand to understand inclusionary processes and the processes involved sustaining them, within the alternative program with extended work-practice. On the other hand the goal is to gain insight in institutionalized processes of exclusion and marginalization, and how these may be reduced (Ohna & Bruin, 2010).
The research project consists of a series of sub-projects which involve various aspects of the alternative program with extended work-practice. The current paper draws on one of these sub-projects, which is a series of interviews with eight students who participate in the program. The research question seeks to elucidate what the students’ narratives reveal about how the alternative program is of influence to the students’ representation of self and construction of identity.
This study is embedded in the sociocultural theoretical framework. Individuals are viewed as participants in social interaction and they learn through mediated action. An important aspect is how individuals use the symbolic and material cultural tools that their culture enables them to, and thus the focus is on interaction between individual and community (Rogoff, 2003; Säljö, 2001; Wertsch, 1998). People use narratives to remember, and to represent the past. As such, narratives can be seen as cultural tools (Wertsch, 1998). At the level of methodology, this perspective implies that analyzing the students’ accounts as narratives, enables us to understand their stories in such a way as to see that the students use narrative meta-structures as a frame for understanding while constructing their accounts. Individuals and groups construct identities through the narratives that they create (Kohler Riessman, 2008). As such, how do the participants in this study assemble and sequence events and use language to communicate meaning? (see also Kohler Riessman, 2008:11).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bruin, M., & Ohna, S. E. (2010). "Jeg bruker egentlig litt lengre tid for å lære ting". Alternativ opplæring med utvidet praksis - Åtte elevers fortellinger om fortid, nåtid og fremtid. Foreløpig rapport fra delprosjekt 3. Universitetet i Stavanger. Hernes, G. (2010). Gull av gråstein. Tiltak for å redusere frafall i videregående opplæring: Fafo-rapport 2010:13. Janosz, M., Le Blanc, M., Boulerice, B., & Tremblay, R. E. (2000). Predicting different types of school dropouts: A typological approach with to longitudinell samples. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(1), 171-190. Kohler Riessman, C. (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Lamb, S., Walstab, A., Teese, R., Vichers, M., & Rumberger, R. W. (2004). Staying on at school: Improving student retention in Australia. Melbourne: CPELL. Ohna, S. E., & Bruin, M. (2010). Elever i Alternativ Opplæring med utvidet Praksis: læring, deltakelse, måloppnåelse (AOuP 2009:12). Foreløpig rapport fra delprosjekt 1 og 2. Universitetet i Stavanger. Rogoff, B. (2003). The Cultural Nature of Human Development. New York: Oxford University Press. Rumberger, R. W. (2004). Why students drop out of school. In G. Orfield (Ed.), Dropouts in America: Confronting the graduation rate cirsis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Säljö, R. (2001). Læring i praksis: et sosiokulturelt perspektiv. Oslo: Cappelen akademisk. Thomas, G., & Loxley, A. (2007). Deconstructing Special Education and Constructing Inclusion. 2nd Edition. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as Action. New York: Oxford University Press.
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