In mapping the skills and the trajectories of VET graduates (WP4), AiVet will draw inspiration from an elaborate Austrian qualitative panel research project (Wege in die Zukunft/Pathways towards the Future) conducted in five waves between 2016 and 2021.* Through biographical-narrative interviews, the panel followed students from their last grade of basic lower secondary school (Neue Mittelschule) towards the final stages of upper secondary education and training careers.
Biographical-narrative interviews are one of the most open forms of interviewing. Interviewers try to prompt the interviewee to give an extensive account of their life course through an initial opening question, while interviewers only listen and take notes. After the initial narration phase, follow-up questions try to prompt detailed narrations about aspects of the interviewee’s life course. These follow-up questions are first targeted at the interviewee’s initial narration (internal narrative questions) before the interviewer poses questions that are more targeted at their own analytical interest (external narrative questions). (see Rosenthal, 2004)
In designing its own interviews to be conducted in Barcelona and Sofia, AiVet will particularly draw on the various themes regarding school-to-work transition that came up during the panel interviews and were documented in the original project – ranging from young people’s future dream jobs and their likelihood of coming to fruition to the everyday challenges encountered in their vocational education and training (VET) trajectories. The Viennese team, on the other hand, will perform secondary analysis on a selection of interviews with students who attended VET programs.
References:
Rosenthal, G. (2004). Biographical research. In C. Seale, G. Gobo, J. F. Gubrium, & D. Silverman (Eds.), Qualitative research practice (pp. 48-64). London: Sage. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-56725
For more information, see: https://www.soz.univie.ac.at/forschung/wege-in-die-zukunft-institutsprojekt/datenerhebung/ (only available in German)
by Yuri Kazepov and Niklas Pernhaupt