Matching Qualitative Longitudinal Research and Aspirations in Education: Experiences from Two Case Studies

Aspirations play a key role in shaping young people’s trajectories and transitions in education. Rather than simply reflecting individual preferences, these aspirations emerge from a complex interplay of social and educational factors as class, gender, race or ethnicity. Moreover, aspirations are embedded in a particularly relevant temporal perspective, as they are the articulation between future projections, present positions, and the accumulation of past experiences. In this context, Qualitative Longitudinal Research (QLR) provides invaluable tools to address the methodological and epistemological challenges inherent in studying aspirations.

This presentation interrogates how time operates in specific aspirational configurations and how QLR helps us to understand the temporal reality of aspirations. With this aim, we compare the experiences of the authors in two different studies on young people’s educational trajectories and aspirations, both of which implement similar QLR methodological designs.

The two studies highlight how QLR provides insights into the evolution of aspirations. First, QLR reveals how aspirational horizons change over time, including shifts towards less prestigious goals, changes in desired fields, stability in aspirations, and transformations in students' perceptions of how to achieve them. Second, the studies show how present emotional and contextual circumstances shape future projections, and how QLR helps to identify these influences. Finally, the paper explores how students negotiate educational challenges, revising their goals and values based on evolving perceptions and opportunities, adding temporal reflexivity to the concepts of cooling out and adaptative preferences.

In conclusion, this paper shows that by using a processual definition of aspirations −one that acknowledges their temporal dimension and evolving nature over time− QLR becomes an especially fitting methodological approach for any research aimed at understanding young people’s career horizons and futures.