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From Vocational Training to the Labor Market

Stage 6 is designed to study adolescents' and young adults' transitions from the education system to working life. This life phase is characterized by numerous interdependent transitions and reciprocally influential status passages: access to the vocational training system, passing through one or more training schemes, and finally entering a job. The following research questions refer to these status passages:

Access to Vocational Training

  • What determines a young person's decision on what job to train for? In particular: How do accumulated individual resources and experiences (such as school-leaving qualifications and the prior education biography), social contexts (e.g., parents and peers), and institutional regulations of access to vocational training influence these decisions?
  • What strategies for searching for a training position or apprenticeship are available to young people, which ones do they pursue, and how far are differences in the strategies they apply determined by differences in their school biographies, by the competencies they possess, their interests and social environments as well as their career orientations, and, on the other hand, how much are they determined by the local availability of training positions?    

Successful Completion of Vocational Training

What are the determinants for a successful completion of vocational training? How does going through vocational training impact on the acquisition of general cognitive and occupational competencies, and what influence do learning environments have on competence development during and as a consequence of vocational training?

Entering a Career and the Transition to the Labor Market

How do school and vocational training biographies, the experiences, competencies, and qualifications acquired through them, along with other variables, influence the transition to the labor market ? What patterns can be found in those graduating from schools below the Gymnasium level? And how can individual and structural differences be explained?

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