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Youth Actors Cooperation Essential to Improve School Advice Services and Ease the School-to-Work Process
This presentation is based on an on-going empirical study conducted in Finland. It investigates the perspectives of youth workers on the implications of being young today and collaborating with youth researchers. The study also involves youth researchers. Four workshops were conducted with youth workers and youth researchers. Twenty-two participants took part in the workshops. This practice-oriented project seeks at 1) encouraging more collaboration between youth workers and youth researchers in order to 2) find more effective solutions and tools to ease young people’s transition into adulthood.
The first stage of the study revealed that both youth researchers and youth workers seek solutions to assist young people, but rarely engage in cooperative work. Both are experts in their own sector and could easily collaborate in order to support the youth more adequately in their school-to-work process. Both are also aware that the current career advice services in schools are mostly obsolete and promote old models of transition to working life that are no longer adapted to young people’s current requirements and socio-economic context. Such traditional model also contributes to perpetuating inequalities, and to widening the winner-loser divide. The career advice services require upgrading to the current societal structure, and to be more sensitive to young people’s needs by providing concrete tools for the youth to navigate through the world, not only career-wise, but also in terms of other areas of life.
Revising such a large service however requires discussions with and cooperation from all youth actors, including school representatives and youth policy makers. That is the next stage of this study.