The choice of education and vocation : a series of empirical studies of pupils of the upper level of the compulsory school

This report is a summary and a discussion of several studies, that havebeen carried out within the SYO-project (syo=educational and vocationalguidance). The SYO-project, financed by the National Board of Education,has two major sources of information concerning the description andanalyses of (1) the content of syo and (2) different persons' conceptionsand notions of education, work, and choice of education and profession.The aim of this work is to investigate pupils in grade 7-9 regardingtheir actual choices and the particular conditions, that could influencethose choices e.g. the importance of the family and the syo. In theframework for conducting this study, some assumptions are made aboutthe role of school and syo. The pupils' choices and the conditions underwhich they occur, are examined from a societal, educational andindividual perspective. Furthermore, a model is developed to illustratehow pupils' conceptions and notions are formed. Both extensive andintensive studies have been executed, using parents, pupils, teachers andcounsellors. The data have been collected primarily from individualinterviews and questionnaires. The results have been published in sevenreports, nos. 4-10 in Pedagogiska rapporter/Educational reports.Department of Education, University of Umeå (in Swedish). The resultsdemonstrate, that the pupils choices of education and profession arestrongly related to sex and social class. Only their choices of educationseem to be stable. However, when they change, the differences betweensex and social class tend to be even larger. The influences from parentsand school coincides so as to support the pupils* conceptions and notionsof education, work, and educational and vocational choices, which arebased on an individual perspective. In contrast, there can also be a breakin the ideological transmission, such that, for example, the pupils1conceptions of work may reflect more of the parents' influences thanthe schools1. Different conditions of importance for the work of syo, inaccordance with official goals, are not fulfilled. Thus, the integrationof syo does not exist. For example, the number of pupils seems too largeand the expectations of teachers and other persons in the school,concerning syo, are quite different from those of the counsellors. Finally,a few limitations and the principal results of the work are discussedalong with suggestions for further research. The results concern, interalia, the socially based differences in knowledge between parents andpupils. These differences mean, in essence, that a basic condition forrational choice is not fulfilled. Furthermore, the role of syo as a sortingmechanism in the process of social reproduction is deemphasized. Instead,its legitimizing function appears as more important.digitalisering@um