From Drop-Out to Meaning Making: Social Work and Education as Conversion Factors?

PhD student: Juno Tourne
Summary: Early school leaving (ESL) is at the forefront of current educational policy, research and practice. In these current policies and practices, a clear human capital approach can be identified, which leads to ‘strong education’. Seeing as this current approach to ESL is neither vastly reducing the amount of early school leavers nor the inequality in our education system, but rather reproducing and contributing to it, this research puts forward The Capability Approach as an alternative approach. This research aims to investigate how much space youngsters still have in the current education landscape in Flanders for ‘meaning-making’ and ‘exit’ and how this is reacted to. In this case, ‘exit’ refers to the chances that youngsters have to (temporarily) escape education, for example through unmotivated behaviour, truancy, (temporary) dropout, and early school leaving, at a reasonable cost. By reasonable we mean, for example, by having an opportunity to re-engage at a later time.
PhD in Social Work
Promoter(s): Lieve Bradt , Rudi Roose (Department Of Social Work and Social Pedagogy , Ghent University )
Periode of time: October 2018 - October 2022