How Young People and Managers Construct the School to Work Transition: A Critical Discursive Psychological Approach

Research on the school to work transition (STWT) tends to privilege either young people’s voices or employers. The current project adopted a relational perspective, exploring two under-researched populations in STWT research: young people from the ‘missing middle’, choosing work rather than university following the end of compulsory schooling; and small business managers. A qualitative, multi-modal approach (using interviews, drawings and photographs of organisational artefacts) was adopted. Thirteen young people from a school and further education college in areas of relative disadvantage in England drew pictures of their occupational possible selves and support networks prior to the STWT. Seven small business managers drew pictures of young people entering their workplace straight from school. A critical discursive psychological approach was used to aid interpretation of participants’ talk about their drawings, looking at why (via dominant Discourses young people and managers reproduce and resist), along with how (via discursive devices used for positioning) identities are shaped in the STWT. Contributions focus on the STWT as a discursively contested and relational space, with potential for the reproduction of social inequalities and unequal power relations. Findings suggest that young people reproduce and resist dominant careers, aspiration-raising and meritocratic Discourses as part of their construction of future occupational possible selves, generating richer feared-for as opposed to hoped-for selves. Support prior to the STWT appears nuanced, with individuals positioned on the ‘inside’ (family, teachers, friends) or ‘outside’ (careers advisors). Findings also suggest that small business managers discursively ‘other’ young people in apparently positive and negative ways, reducing them in general to a ‘less than’ category. Othering is further interpreted as a form of paternalistic leadership discourse, used to relate to young people in work. The study offers several practical applications to support a range of actors across the STWT, including critical discourse interventions and career counselling tools.