Supporting Young People in the Transition From School to Work

Context: In academic discourse, teachers are considered to play a ‘key role’ in vocational orientation at school. They accompany young people over many years as they develop their skills and find their identity, they create the appropriate learning spaces and maintain contact with legal guardians and extracurricular stakeholders, ideally working together in a multi-professional team. Interestingly, however, students do not assign such a prominent role to their teachers and assign parents and peers a more important role in their career choice processes. Teachers themselves also tend to see their role in other areas of school and identify a number of challenges in the implementation of vocational orientation at school. Approach: Schools in the north-eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (M-V) are facing the challenge of implementing a cross-grade and interdisciplinary educational concept for vocational orientation at lower secondary schools. In the period 2017-2019 the University of Rostock developed a vocational orientation programme called „Mission ICH“ on behalf of the Ministry of Education of M-V in cooperation with 12 general education schools. Pupils are sent on a ‘journey’ to explore their ‘universe ME’ as well as the world of work and careers. Subject teachers and class teachers become ‘travelling companions’ and support the young people in grades 7 to 9 on their explorations. In this contribution we will identify the various challenges faced by teachers who are supposed to implement vocational orientation. e.g. „Mission ICH“ in their lessons and at their school. To this purpose, we will look at the feedback from teachers from „Mission ICH“ teacher trainings and support events as well as from a teacher survey of „Mission ICH“ schools. The contribution ends with an outlook on future needs for action and research. Findings and Conclusions: The article points out the important role of school administration and vocational orientation coordinators in regard to implementation. They are relevant as enablers of implementation, whereas the individual teachers are primarily important as companions during the realization with the pupils. Teachers as well as school management and coordinators are confronted with challenges of structural, resource-related or traditional aspects.Survey results also show that the implementation of „Mission ICH“ is not yet carried out in accordance with the concept at all schools and that there is further potential for internal school agreements and coordination.