ERIC Number: EJ1199538
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Oct
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-2158-2440
EISSN: N/A
Ambivalent Biographies in Adolescence: What Vocational Students Think and Feel about Their Schooling
Kiprianos, Pandelis; Christodoulou, Michael
SAGE Open, v5 n4 Oct 2015
Despite the fact that vocational adolescents are in a disadvantaged position regarding their post-secondary high school routes, research has highlighted the resistant and innovative ways they set in motion so as to grapple with their estranging schooling experiences. Our article aims to contribute to this research area by focusing on how adolescents' narration of their schooling frames their life planning. In particular, we explore a major finding of our research--namely, their defending of vocational training--by means of the notion of ambivalent biographical identity. We argue (a) that today's adolescents do not openly reject vocational training, and they try to transform the unofficial skills and knowledge obtained in their cultures into official cultural capital capable of making them enter the job market and (b) that their life planning is tied up with a biographical identity formation through which they try to coherently reconcile their embodied cultures with the vocational qualifications they aspire to acquire.
Descriptors: Vocational Education, Adolescents, Student Attitudes, Job Skills, Cultural Capital, Biographies, Identification (Psychology), Foreign Countries, Postsecondary Education, Value Judgment, Student Satisfaction
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Greece
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A