Continuity and discontinuity of the educational context

early leavers' in-between life stories

Luca Tateo

pp. 29-52

in: Giuseppina Marsico, Marilena Ristum, Souza de Souza Bastos (eds), Educational contexts and borders through a cultural lens, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

Through six case studies of young Italian people not in education, employment, or training, I tried to understand the systems of beliefs, representations, values, and justifications as well as the psychosocial dynamics concurring to the sense making of school failure and early leaving in relation to personal experience and micro-social contexts. From the theoretical point of view, I discuss the idea of an autopoietic development of the individual guided by delegated social institutions, such as school, that set the condition for the person's potentialities to express and contribute to the system organization. At the same time, this guidance is value-driven and defines the range of objectives, boundaries, and deviance that define an acceptable developmental outcome for the community. The educational system can operate on what is considered schooling and defining the boundaries of what is "not schooling," being unable to guide towards a new definition of the person. Thus, once a student drops out of the educational system without entering another system, such as the job market, a dramatic situation emerges.