Help for young people in a changing world
In today's rapidly changing world, young people face a number of tough challenges in society and employment. However, help may be just around the corner as an EU-funded project investigates what the education system is doing, and how it could bridge the capability gap. Most people have learned to expect that lifestyles change from one generation to the next. Some believe that the world has now begun to change at an exponential rate. Today's young people are facing more rapid economic, cultural, demographic and technological changes, on top of evolving local labour-market demands and regional inequalities, all of which are having a huge impact on their lives. The WORKABLE project ('Making Capabilities Work'), with EUR 2.3 million in EU funding, is looking at the match - or mismatch - between young people's skills and competencies and changing labour-market demands. The idea is to promote a progressive impact on youth policy in Europe. This policy is focused on tackling the situation of vulnerability and discrimination of youngsters in their transition from school to work. The project also addresses the difficulties faced by young people on their way from education to work or to apprenticeship. It also looks at the problem of youth unemployment, how institutions of the educational and vocational training systems in Europe tackle these problems, and the underlying political strategies. Led by Professor Hans-Uwe Otto of Germany's Bielfeld University, researchers will also explore how educational strategies are implemented and assess whether they really enable young people to convert their knowledge and skills into marketable capabilities, to act as fully participating and active citizens. Research is being carried out in three phases. First, institutional vocational and labour-market policies are being mapped, analysed and compared across all educational regimes. Second, case studies are being developed to uncover the conceptions, aspirations and practices of local actors implementing educational and training programmes. Finally, quantitative secondary analyses of national and European longitudinal data are being undertaken to reveal how effective our educational strategies have been at enhancing economic performance and closing the capability gap. Project partners say their work will build on and expand state-of-the-art in educational, economic, sociological and political theories, remaining both flexible and broad in scope. At the same time, it will lay the foundation for solving concrete problems, by enhancing opportunities, and developing the capabilities of young people. Policy makers should be particularly interested in rigorous comparative approaches being taken by the WORKABLE project, which will clarify the impact of local, regional and national contexts and create a new, wide-ranging theoretical understanding of the functioning of educational and welfare systems throughout Europe. For educators, WORKABLE will suggest more appropriate training and education strategies that enable young people to cope with the economic and social challenges of the emerging knowledge economy and society. This could mean a shift away from specialised skills and towards broader, more analytic generic skills. In addition technical and routine activities could move towards more autonomous work. On the scientific level, WORKABLE is likely to provide new theoretical and empirical tools for studying capability provision. A key focus will be the project's work to standardise databases and thus improve the transferability of national practices and experiences. Finally, the project partners believe their research will offer a fair progressive understanding of the transition process from school to work, which takes into account the growing difficulties faced by vulnerable young. This could change the political agenda and provide young people with a chance, and a solid perspective, in feeling like young adults who are valued in society.For more information, please visit: WORKABLE http://www.workable-eu.org/(opens in new window)
Countries
Austria