ABSTRACT
Due to the relative newness and contemporary emergence of environmental concerns and sustainable development challenges, policies and forms of work, little is known about the transitioning patterns from education to work. As environmental occupations are found in multiple sectors, and at multiple levels, it is necessary to understand how diversity of disciplinary foundation, historical factors and the nature of the field-based occupation as it is emerging influence transitions into work, especially for highly specialised occupations that are in high demand, such as wildlife vets or wetland ecologists, and in critical occupations that shape sustainable development for whole communities, such as sustainable development employees in municipalities. This chapter utilises a complex notion of learning pathways as neither completely individualistic nor wholly structurally determined, and positions our interest in transitions research within a framing of critical vocationalism that seeks to address not only individual experiences of transitioning, or individual agentive factors, but also structural dynamics and structural processes that can help to ‘ease’ the transitioning process in these critical areas of green skills development.
