Youth in Transition: Fostering Resilience for Vocational Education

A considerable number of adolescents are not able to make the (immediate) transition from obligatory schooling to working life. About 20% of the school graduates who do not find adequate training on the upper secondary level (e.g. in the form of vocational training) end up in transition measures (so-called 'interim solutions'). These measures aim to better prepare the adolescents for vocational training and to find a suitable placement. There is a sufficiently clear picture of the number of students and the underlying processes regarding the transition from obligatory schooling to vocational education and training in Switzerland. The factors regarding the effectiveness of specific support interventions have, however, not been researched yet. In particular, the question of how to support the development of adolescents' personalities has hardly been investigated. The proposed project aims to address this research gap by evaluating the effectiveness of specific interventions, issued within existing interim solutions, with the objective to foster the adolescents' resilience. The interventions are theoretically founded in resilience theory, social learning theory, and motivational theories. During a 'pre-study', promising interventions have been developed, theoretically founded, and agreed upon with experienced partners from practice. The effectiveness of the interventions is to be measured with a "randomized control-group pretest-posttest-follow-up design". The study will be conducted in an authentic setting, i.e. with participants of Swiss interim solutions as part of their regular classes and integrated in their subject-oriented learning process. Four schools offering 'interim solutions' in the Swiss canton St. Gallen already agreed to carry out the interventions.