Diversified transitions and educational equality? Negotiating the transitions of young people with immigrant backgrounds and/or with special educational needs

The focus of this contribution is on the targeted transition practices of career guidance and on the opportunity structures they frame for young people with immigrant backgrounds and/or special educational needs. By analysing curricular documents and interviews with representatives from the local education authorities, such as administrators, principals, guidance counsellors and special education teachers (n = 16), we aim to examine critically the options provided for these groups of young people. We conclude that targeted transition practices do not recognise enough the heterogeneity of young people, and can therefore be limitative and exclusive.

• Youth with immigrant backgrounds and/or with special educational needs have reported to have difficulties in getting into mainstream education.
• The young with immigrant background face 5 x odds to be positioned outside the education and work compared to Finnishorigin youths • (18-29-years, Myrskylä 2011) • NEETs in Helsinki: Majority 7% vs. Immigrant background 22 % • (2013; 16-29 years, Finnish or Swedish-speaking vs. other mother tongues; Statistics Finland) • Young people with special educational needs usually continue their studies in vocational instead of general upper secondary education.
• Aim is to analyze the ways in which local education authorities governing educational transitions consider the structural possibilities and obstacles that frame the educational transitions of young people with immigrant backgrounds and/or with special educational needs.
1. How do the authorities reflect the opportunity structure for the young people with immigrant backgrounds and/or special educational needs?
2. How are these reflections constructed in relation with national core curriculum?

Aims and research questions
• Institutional opportunity structure -"different problematisations, mechanisms and solutions to issues in education policy and governance" (Dale & Parreira do Amaral 2015) • Universalistic transition regimeextended public sector and a wide variety of counseling and activation policies (Walther 2006) • Education and educational transitions are recognized as arenas where the viewpoints of different actorsstudy counselors, principals and administratorsencounter and form doxa, orthodoxy and heterodoxy (Bourdieu 1977; see also Simola 2015)

Theoretical framework
www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto • The focus is on local education authorities from lower and upper secondary education.
• Upper secondary education is approached with an ethnographic setting including observation notes and interviews (3 study counselors, 8 teachers and other administrators).
• Analytical frame: the national core curricula of basic education, preparatory training programs and general and vocational upper secondary education.

Orthodoxa of upper secondary transition?
The national core curricula of basic education, preparatory training programs and general and vocational upper secondary education.
1. Post-compulsory transition is linear path either to vocational or general upper secondary education.
• Each and every (with the exception of students with special educational needs) student is expected to make personal choices according to their abilities and interests.

National curriculasingle orthodoxa for educational transitions?
2. Vocational upper secondary education (and preparatory education programs) can be considered as instrumental and process-like.
• The overall approach is pluralistic and holistic.
• Different educational routes and special educational needs are recognized and supported.

National curriculasingle orthodoxa for educational transitions?
3. General upper secondary school (and preparatory programs) emphasizes study guidance as a tool for supporting the individual learning processes, readiness to study, and studying skills.
• Special educational support is designed to develop adequate Finnish skills required for studying in general upper secondary education. • Vocational school: relevance of transition in the frames of labor force • Emphasizing the importance of guiding the young people to such study places where they could be motivated and educated for professional labor force.
• General upper secondary school: emphasizing student abilities (learning skills and outcomes)

Societal relevance of transitions (in the sight of the local education authorities)
1) The image of the uniform (dual) and institutionalized one-step transition do not tally with the reality that the local education authorities face.
• Alternative routes make the system flexible and nimble, the constant flux make them haphazard, difficult to predict, locate, and guide through.

The construction of upper secondary transition
"This --jungle of non-traditional options, is a bit different every year, and may change within a year. It is like -from the perspective of the families and the young people -one hell of the mess to find out what is offered and when."

Study counsellor, comprehensive school
The construction of upper secondary transition www.helsinki.fi/yliopisto 2) Strong determinative power of the language skills • Unrecognized skills?
• Young people with 'not sufficient' language skills (often immigrant backgrounds) often guided into vocational education.
• Tricky links between language skills, upper secondary education and employment: studying in Finnish without adequate support and skills is demanding, and even if the young people manage to graduate, employment without fluent Finnish skills is difficult.

The construction of upper secondary transition
"--Especially the intelligent students with immigrant background might not be recognized because of insufficient language skills, although these skills are developing there beneath. Our system cannot navigate through this, but proceeds exactly based on what can be seen at the time. Then there might become difficulties and they end up changing study places, or to think things through again." Principal, comprehensive school

The construction of upper secondary transition
3) Some young people with special educational needs somewhat lost in transition • The transition of students with severe special educational needs seem to be more holistically but also strongly guided and prepared. These transitions concern most often only the vocational special education institutions.
• Young people with minor special educational needs (therefore not eligible for these institutions), are often guided to vocational upper secondary institute's general study groups, where their support needs are not necessarily responded. • "Immigrant optimism" and "paradoxes"; "unrealistic" choices • The necessity of independency, self-confidence and strength  Urge to see young people apart from the (Finnish) language skills and/or special educational needs

Young people with immigrant backgrounds an/or special educational needs
" And, of course, the aims might be unrealistic. There is a lot of talk about distinguished professions like doctors and lawyers. Then we have to see how their strengths match with these aims and see that [for example] the math numbers seem to be quite weak for even passing the general upper secondary education. The need to understand the realities is different with the students with immigrant background." Study counsellor, upper secondary school • The analysis of the interviews provided a clear heterodoxa for curriculum text, especially in the case of basic education.
• From the perspective of local education authorities, the transitions seemed fragmented, non-linear and haphazard.
• The institutionalized common and uniform transition was seen to marginalize all other transitions as