Newton RCUK-CONICYT Governing the educational and labour market trajectories of secondary TVET graduates in Chile

在过去几十年里，由于个人和家庭对教育的需求日益增长以及正规经济部门对合格工作的职位竞争，智利经历了相当大的教育扩张。在过去，职业技术培训政策旨在为寻求快速进入劳动力市场的弱势青年提供教育机会，而今天，鉴于越来越多的中等职业技术培训毕业生追求高等教育，并在毕业后将教育和工作结合起来，这些政策的方向和目标就不那么明确了。在这种情况下，职业技术教育仍然是提高大多数弱势青年在其一生中技能的战略部门，但由于高等教育供应的高度分层，经济中合格工作的稀缺以及针对年轻人的公共政策协调不力，这些年轻人从中等教育到高等教育以及从教育到工作的过渡正变得越来越成问题。该项目旨在了解智利职业技术培训政策的潜在竞争和可能矛盾的方向和目标，它们与中等职业技术培训毕业生的愿望的兼容性和矛盾，以及它们对这些年轻人的教育和劳动力市场轨迹的有意和无意的影响。该项目的一个重要贡献是将年轻人的观点（他们的期望、愿望和战略）纳入关于职业技术教育政策如何更好地支持弱势青年向工作过渡的辩论中。通过这样做，该项目旨在促进职业技术教育和培训政策的设计，更好地适应不断变化的劳动力市场和社会中弱势青年人口的需求和需要，这强调了这类研究在智利等转型经济体的特殊时刻的相关性。从概念上讲，该项目基于三大理论视角——文化政治经济学、生命历程研究和治理视角。这些不同思想体系的结合与该主题的广泛多样性相匹配。由于其复杂性，拟议的项目汇集了不同学科的社会科学方法，旨在以适当的方式概念化研究问题；此外，它借鉴了教育科学、社会学和政治学的理论和方法，旨在通过跨学科的视角解决与决策的复杂动态有关的方法论问题。为了达到研究的目的，本研究被设计为国家、地方和个人层面的多层次定性研究。在国家一级，我们将绘制职业技术教育和培训政策和项目图，审查政策法规，并与国家决策者和利益相关者面谈。在地方一级，我们将进行案例研究，包括与地方当局、职业技术培训学校和其他机构进行面谈。最后，在个人层面，我们将对具有不同教育和劳动力市场轨迹的中等职业教育专业毕业生的类型样本进行访谈。该项目旨在扩大智利职业技术教育政策的研究证据，以及这些政策对职业技术教育毕业生毕业后发展轨迹的影响。我们希望，智利案例所提供的证据将有助于有关技职教育如何改善中低收入国家弱势青年的生活条件和劳动力市场机会的辩论，这是当今许多发展机构的优先事项。

Chile has experienced considerable educational expansion over the past few decades as a result of the growing demand for education from individuals and families and the positional competition for qualified jobs in the formal sector of the economy. While in the past TVET policies were designed to offer educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth seeking a quick insertion in the labour market, today the orientations and the objectives of these policies are less clear given the larger number of secondary TVET graduates that pursue tertiary education and combine education and work in their trajectories after schooling. In this context, TVET continues to be a strategic sector for improving the skills of most disadvantaged youth over their life course but the transitions of these young adults from secondary to tertiary education and from education to work are becoming more problematic due to the high stratification of tertiary education supply, the scarcity of qualified jobs in the economy and the poor coordination of public policies targeting young adults. The project aims to understand the potentially competing, and possibly ambivalent, orientations and objectives of TVET policies in Chile, their compatibility and contradictions with the aspirations of secondary TVET graduates, and their intended and unintended effects on the educational and labour market trajectories of these young adults. An important contribution of the project is the incorporation of the perspective of young adults (their expectations, aspirations and strategies) into the debate on how TVET policies can better support disadvantaged youth in their transition to work. By doing this, the project aims to contribute to the design of TVET policies that better accommodate the demands and needs of vulnerable young populations in changing labour markets and societies, which emphasize the relevance of this kind of research in this particular moment in transitional economies like Chile. Conceptually, the project is based on three major theoretical perspectives - Cultural Political Economy, Life Course Research and Governance Perspective. The combination of these different systems of thought matches the topic's broad variety of dimensions. The proposed project brings together different disciplinary social scientific approaches, which aim at conceptualising the research questions in adequate ways due to its complexity; further, its drawing from theories and methods from Education Science, Sociology and Political Science purports addressing methodological issues related to the complex dynamics of policy-making by means of an interdisciplinary perspective. In order to achieve its aims, the study is designed as a multilevel qualitative research at national, local and individual level. At the national level, we will map TVET policies and programs, will review policy regulations, and will interview national policy makers and stakeholders. At the local level, we will conduct case studies that will involve interviews with local authorities, TVET schools, and others. Finally, at the individual level, we will carry out interviews with a typological sample of secondary TVET graduates with different educational and labour market trajectories.This project expects to expand the research evidence on TVET policies in Chile and their implications for the trajectories of TVET graduates after school. We expect that the evidence produced for the case of Chile will contribute to the debates on how TVET can improve the living conditions and labour market opportunities of disadvantaged youth in middle-income and low-income countries, what is a priority for many development agencies today.