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The transition from higher education to the labour market is considered an important and uncertain life stage wherein young adults exchange an academic environment for an often-chaotic entry into the labour market. Specifically, for graduates with a lower socioeconomic status (SES), this transition involves several difficulties. Investigating these persisting SES differences in the transition is becoming more relevant given the increasing participation of students from lower SES backgrounds in higher education. This systematic review studies SES differences in the transition by looking through the lens of resource acquisition. The results demonstrate that graduates from lower SES backgrounds have more difficulty finding suitable employment and often experience lower job quality. Moreover, our findings show that the strong interdependence between the importance of different forms of capital and the (implicit) symbolic value attached to these capitals makes it difficult for graduates from lower SES backgrounds to overcome barriers in the transition.

Minoritised communities have a long history of self-organising learning to meet their youth's varied educational needs. Community education is a widespread societal phenomenon, yet a conceptual framework mapping the diversity of educational initiatives remained lacking. We bring together the body of academic work on community education in a systematic literature review and extract an array of cases. By regarding these cases through a conceptual framework based on their organisational form and their main objectives, we distinguish different types of community education and we deduce that different communities have different needs, which translate into different intended purposes. Distinguishing similarities and differences in community education across communities and countries is a necessary step in acknowledging the resourcefulness of minoritised communities in self-organising education, which is pertinent for stakeholders of community schools as well as for those researching community educational spaces.

Educational policy strategies give work-based learning (WBL) and dual learning pathways a prominent role in strengthening student engagement. Given this mounting policy attention, the current study aims to fill a knowledge gap with regard to the relation between WBL and student engagement, particularly within the context of dual pathways combining school- and work-based learning. To this end, we situated student engagement in the wider motivational framework of the self-system model of motivational development (SSMMD) to help theorize its antecedents in students' learning contexts and psychological self-system processes. The main purpose of this study was to test the hypotheses based on the SSMMD within a WBL context and to relate student engagement in WBL to engagement in school-based learning. As most measurements of the elements making up the SSMMD were validated within a school-based learning context, we used confirmatory factor analyses to test the measurement transferability to a WBL context. Our findings show the relevance of applying the SSMMD to the context of WBL, hereby confirming the facilitating or inhibiting role of a WBL context in fulfilling the basic psychological needs of needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence, which in turn supports engagement in WBL. Our findings also show the potential to study work- and school-based learning as two interrelated learning contexts, stimulating researchers, policy makers and practitioners to further study and invest in dual learning pathways that purposefully combine learning in school- and work-based contexts.

Tackling early leaving from education and training (ELET) is one of the headline targets for education policy in the European Union. Although ELET rates have been decreasing in most member states, male, socially disadvantaged and immigrant students remain overrepresented in ELET figures. Moreover, students in vocational tracks and students who experienced grade retention are steadily more at risk of ELET. These risk factors are, however, considered mostly beyond the reach of individual schools and educators. This study therefore targets to pinpoint more alterable factors that can support at-risk students' educational resilience. As there is broad scientific consensus to consider ELET as a potential endpoint of a gradual process of disengagement from school, this study explores the added value of the self-system model of motivational development (SSMMD) in explaining behavioural school (dis-)engagement among students considered at risk of ELET based on their sociodemographic and educational background characteristics. We make use of survey data purposefully collecting data from 483 students across 25 inner-city vocational secondary schools in Flanders. The structural equation modelling (SEM) testing the hypothesised structural relations of the SSMMD, overall showed empirical support for the model being an interesting theoretical framework for explaining student (dis)engagement through perceived social support and self-processes. The SEM, however, also showed few relations contradicting the theoretical hypotheses. We discuss how the hierarchically tracked and segregated educational context in Flemish urban vocational schools could provide explanations for these findings.

In Flanders, students with a migration background are highly overrepresented in the lower-status vocational and technical tracks, experience more grade retention and school and track mobility and have a higher risk of leaving school early than their native peers. The authors aim to shed light on the complexity of school belonging and its significance in these young people's pursuit of a diploma. The analysis focuses on the lived experiences of three young individuals and reconstructs their trajectories from their point of view to illuminate their perceptions on school belonging while they (tried to) navigate their way through secondary education. Their narratives reveal how a sense of school belonging is crucial yet difficult to find. Experiences of exclusion and struggles to claim specific educational spaces as places where they 'belong' often result in feelings of being an outsider rather than a valued member of the school community. The journeys through secondary education are mostly recounted as trying to find a 'good school' where they could 'fit in'.

This study aims to test stereotype threat theory hypotheses using a pupil survey database from Flemish urban secondary education characterized by a stratified tracking system. We relate these systemic features to stereotype threat effects by adding teacher--pupil relations to our analyses. Our results show that stigmatized groups--ethnic minority pupils in vocational education--experience the most negative teacher--pupil relations. To protect their academic self-concept from stereotype threat, they are also most vulnerable to psychological disengagement, discounting negative teacher feedback, and to disidentification from education. Moreover, teacher--pupil relations play an important role in explaining stereotype threat effects.

Tackling early leaving from education and training (ELET) is one of the main education policy targets of the European Union and many of its member states. This paper offers new insights on this issue by studying how so-called at-risk students develop their educational trajectory by embedding their attitudes towards and engagement in schooling within the various support networks they navigate. We argue that the concept of school engagement, operationalized within the broader theoretical framework of the self-system model of motivational development, is crucial for better understanding ELET. The structural equation modelling is based upon survey data from 1401 students in grade 10 and 12 of vocational tracks across 26 different urban school locations in Flanders, Belgium. The results show that parental, peer and in particular teacher support directly and indirectly strengthen students' academic and behavioural engagement. We argue that universal and targeted support by educators can positively impact pro-school attitudes and school engagement of so-called at-risk students and may be one of the most important strategies in addressing ELET.

Understanding early school leaving (ESL) remains a key issue on political and academic agendas. Most research focuses on the experiences of young people who intend to leave or have left school early without a qualification from secondary education. In addition, most studies focus on regular secondary schools. We aim to add to this literature by studying how school staff in regular secondary and adult education schools explain ESL, and to understand how both groups' views differ. We also study whether school climate has an effect on the explanations of ESL given by staff. We analysed survey data collected in Flanders (northern part of Belgium) among 780 staff members using exploratory factor analysis and multilevel modelling. Findings indicate that staff in adult education have moderate views on the causes of ESL compared to staff in regular education. Staff in adult education have a strong focus on student‐focused explanations for ESL, rather than on contextual or systemic explanations. Future research could delve deeper into the impact of school characteristics, conduct more cross‐comparative research and/or include more views on diversity. Policymakers could prioritise the follow‐up of ESL, including feedback mechanisms to inform school staff on reasons why individual students decided to leave school early. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that infants and preschoolers can learn novel words equally well through addressed speech as through overhearing two adults. However, most of this research draws from samples of ethnic majority children. The current study compares word learning in preschoolers (M age = 5;6) with an ethnic minority and an ethnic majority background (N = 132). An experimenter of the majority group (representative for most teachers in Flemish education) told a story in three different interaction situations: Addressed Speech, Overhearing Classroom and Overhearing Two Adults. Results show that children of both ethnic groups learn novel words in Addressed Speech and in Overhearing Classroom equally well. However, minority children learned significantly fewer words in Overhearing Two Adults. This study suggests important differences in how ethnic majority and minority children learn through indirect speech in educational (monolingual) settings. In addition, the study scrutinizes the potential role of social identification in overhearing mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]