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

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，智利在过去几十年中经历了相当大的教育扩张。过去，技术和职业教育与培训政策的目的是为寻求快速进入劳动力市场的弱势青年提供教育机会，但如今这些政策的方向和目标不那么明确，因为有更多的中等技术和职业教育与培训毕业生继续接受高等教育，并在毕业后将教育和工作结合在一起。在这方面，技术和职业教育与培训仍然是提高大多数处境不利的青年终身技能的战略部门，但这些青年从中学到高等教育和从教育到工作的过渡正变得更加困难，原因是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。该项目旨在了解智利技术和职业教育与培训政策潜在的相互竞争和矛盾的方向和目标，它们与中等职业技术教育和培训毕业生的愿望的兼容性和矛盾性，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青年的观点(他们的期望、愿望和战略)纳入关于技术和职业教育与培训政策如何能够更好地支持处于不利地位的青年过渡到工作的辩论中。通过这样做，该项目旨在促进技术和职业教育与培训政策的设计，以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，强调这类研究在智利等转型经济体的这一特定时刻的相关性。在概念上，该项目基于三个主要的理论视角--文化政治经济学、生命历程研究和治理视角。这些不同的思维系统的结合与这个话题的广泛的不同维度相匹配。拟议的项目汇集了不同的学科社会科学方法，由于其复杂性，其目的是以适当的方式将研究问题概念化；此外，其借鉴了教育科学、社会学和政治学的理论和方法，声称通过跨学科的视角解决与复杂的决策动态有关的方法问题。为了达到目的，本研究被设计为国家、地方和个人层面的多层次定性研究。在国家层面，我们将绘制技术和职业教育与培训政策和计划，审查政策法规，并采访国家政策制定者和利益相关者。在地方一级，我们将进行个案研究，与地方当局、职业技术教育与培训学校和其他人进行访谈。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技术教育和培训毕业生进行类型抽样的访谈。该项目预计将扩大关于智利职业技术和职业教育与培训政策的研究证据及其对职业技术和职业教育与培训毕业生毕业后轨迹的影响。我们期待为智利案件提供的证据将有助于关于技术和职业教育与培训如何改善中等收入和低收入国家处于不利地位的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.