Peer-Reviewed Journal Details
Mandatory Fields
Cefai C.;Downes P.;Cavioni V.
2016
April
European Journal of Psychology of Education
Breaking the cycle: a phenomenological approach to broadening access to post-secondary education
Published
()
Optional Fields
Access Early school leaving Post-secondary education Resilience Social exclusion
31
2
255
274
© 2015, Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisboa, Portugal and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Over the past decades, there has been a substantial increase in post-secondary education participation in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European Union countries. This increase, however, does not necessarily reflect a parallel equitable growth in post-secondary education, and early school leaving is still an issue of concern in particular regions and countries across the world. This paper presents a study on increasing participation in post-secondary education in Malta, the country with the one of the highest proportions of early school leaving in the European Union. The study was carried out in a region with one of the highest rates of early school leaving in the country, making use of a phenomenological approach as well as a resilient systems perspective to early school leaving. On the basis of students’ narratives, the study identifies a number of risk and protective factors in early school leaving and makes various suggestions on how to build more resilient systems to facilitate access to post-secondary education, particularly for students coming from low socio-economic, excluded backgrounds.
0256-2928
10.1007/s10212-015-0265-6
Grant Details