Lynne Chisholm

Youth transitions, gender and social change

European youth studies increasingly use critical modernisation theory to understand the changing social circumstances and cultural context of contemporary youth in advanced western societies. It is generally argued that the social biography of youth is taking a new form and meaning in the light of individualisation and destandardisation/destructuring processes. On the basis of data drawn from two recent studies of British and Dutch teenage girls, this paper argues that the relationships between youth and social change are more complex and fragmented than has been frequently implied. In particular, youth transitions continue to be marked by the effects of systematic social inequalities, such as gender relations, and these imply that gender-specific adult Normalbiographien remain of sociological and personal significance.

Action Research: some methodological and political considerations

Action research enjoys an established position in educational thinking and practice. Feminist theory and praxis has inspired and guided anti‐sexist educational policy and practice. However, ‘anti‐sexist’ and ‘mainstream’ action research in education draw on divergent methodological and political discourses. This is revealed in the sense of distance/difference the two traditions can experience when they encounter each other in the educational community. We might alternatively approach the issues raised in such encounters by considering the contradictory elements built into action research itself. These oppositions mirror the dualism of our accustomed ways of thinking. Some characteristic shortcomings of action research projects result from avoiding rather than confronting these contradictory elements. The problems they entail may be ultimately irresolvable, but they cannot be circumvented if action research is not to become increasingly vulnerable to political ‘actionism’.

Girls and Occupational Choice: anti‐sexism in action in a curriculum development project

Abstract This paper is an interim report on the Girls and Occupational Choice Project at the Institute of Education, London. The research design and methods used are briefly described but the paper focuses on the action research component of this project, and discusses anti‐sexist curriculum development and implementation in a number of schools. The emphasis is on methodological and political issues which arise in doing anti‐sexist action research in the educational setting.

Youth Transitions in Britain on the Threshold of a 'New Europe'.

This paper considers the social construction of the youth phase and discusses the fact that, on the whole, transitions to adulthood in Britain are completed biographically sooner than in comparable continental European countries. Education and training arrangements and participation rates are important distinguishing features. Central aspects of the timing and shaping of youth transitions in Britain are placed in European Community contrast; young Britons’ prospects in ‘Maastricht‐Europe’ are considered and education policy implications are drawn.

Re‐contextualising learning in second modernity 1

Changing boundaries between categories of knowledge, together with changing relations with propositional and experiential knowledge, demand reconsideration of what counts as learning. Such re‐contextualisation processes can be approached from three standpoints: deconstruction‐decoding (learning as a differentiated set of related practices), refocusing‐repositioning (situating learning sites in a life‐course perspective) and reconstruction‐recoding (specifying pedagogic discourse to embrace non‐formal and informal learning). Learning in second modernity might hold emancipatory promise, but this requires fundamental re‐structuring of teaching/learning contexts in all respects, not least in the re‐positioning of all learners as adults, in the sense of being autonomous and responsible shapers of their potentially highly differentiated learning biographies – but it equally heralds an intensification of discipline of the self.

Gendered youth transitions: Are patterns changing? A view from The Netherlands

Abstract Changes in the social structuring of of the life‐phase ‘youth’ and high rates of youth unemployment during the eighties have opened discussion over posited shifts in young peoples work orientations and a weakening of the gender‐specificity of youth transitions. Using data from The Netherlands, this paper argues that changes in educational participation, patterns of family life, and work orientations have certainly taken place, but that these cannot be straightforwardly interpreted in terms of individualisation processes and their consequences. Young people remain firmly attached to paid work as a central component of their identities and life plans, and this is increasingly so for young women. Nevertheless, youth transitions remain highly gendered in character, frames of meaning, and implications for the course of adult life.

Junge Erwachsene zwischen Phantom und Realität

Anlaslich einer Hochzeitsfeier im Norden Italiens befand ich mich neulich in einem Unterhaltungskomplex, welcher wohl fruher als Discothek bezeichnet worden ware. Nach dem offiziellen Teil der Feierlichkeiten gegen Mitternacht ladt das Brautpaar — beide um die 30 Jahre — alle Gaste ein, mit ihnen die Festivitaten etwas lockerer ausklingen zu lassen. Der Autokorso setzt sich in Bewegung. Der Zielort entpuppt sich, auf den ersten Blick, als ein mit ubergrosen Fabrikhallen in Leichtbauweise ubersates Industriegelande. Auf dem riesigen Parkplatz vor unserem Zielgebaude sieht es wie beim Volksfest aus — hunderte von Autos werden von Parkwachtern herumdirigiert und scheinbar Tausende von Menschen warten geduldig auf Einlas. Wir — so etwa um die 40 Jahre alt — haben Bedenken, ob wir in unserer nicht unbedingt der neuesten Mode entsprechenden Kleidung die Eingangsmusterung wohl uberstehen werden. Weit gefehlt. Sowohl die Menschen als auch ihre Kleidung bieten eine bunte Mischung aus allen Alterstufen — zwischen etwa 8 und uber 50 Jahren — und jeder erdenklichen Moderichtung. Unsere Braut steigt sogar in ihrem Brautkleid aus dem Auto. Niemand — auser uns — scheint davon besondere Notiz zu nehmen.

Vorsprung ex machina? Aspects of curriculum and assessment in cultural comparison

In the midst of rapidly evolving educational policy and programmes for secondary curricula, new forms of assessment and new examinations, and teacher appraisal, together with longstanding and bitter disputes between professional practitioners and the government, Her Majesties Inspectorate (HMI) have published a report (1986) about aspects of curriculum and assessment in the FRG ‐ a country increasingly held up to the UK as a model to be emulated in many respects. This paper sets the wealth of information contained in the HMI report into its West German cultural and political context, explores its relationship with UK educational policy at the present time, and considers the nature and purposes of documents which attempt to make aspects of other cultures accessible and instructive. It concludes that whilst HMI strive to be accurate and fair, the dangers of drawing simplistic and ultimately culture‐bound ‘lessons’ can hardly be avoided; and in the process, such material will inevitably be employed superfici...

A Singular History? The development of German perspectives on the social analysis of education

Abstract Few accounts of how sociology of education as a specialist sub‐discipline has developed in other parts of Europe are available in the English‐language professional literature, but these may be helpful not only as information in itself but also as a stimulus to critical reflection upon the history and contemporary positioning of the field in Britain. In this paper, sociology of education in the Federal Republic of Germany offers an exemplar for the potential insights that may be gained from such accounts. A ‘natural history’ of the emergence of the field is used to explore three topics: relationships between sociology and education as disciplines of knowledge; images of sociology of education as a force for social and political progress; and the question of schooling as the core thematic focus of the field. Notable differences between German and British sociology of education are clarified in this process, but equally questions are raised about the taken‐for‐granted in professional self‐image.

Bildung in Europa

Die Uberschrift dieses Kapitels ist auf den ersten Blick denkbar einfach zu entziffern: Eine Praposition verbindet zwei Nomina, die im Alltag und in der Fachsprache unablassig vorkommen. Der Gegenstand ist Bildung, hier in Bezug zu Europa. Einen Beitrag zu diesem Thema zu verfassen, ist jedoch alles andere als einfach: Die Deutung der Uberschrift ist keineswegs selbstverstandlich, vielmehr enthalt sie mehrere Deutungsdimensionen.