ABSTRACT
As the introductory chapter in this book notes, transitions have become a major political, popular and academic concern in the UK and Europe. Factors such as the proliferation of pathways for young people, the drive to retain them in education, the increasing individualisation of social lives, and economically driven imperatives for lifelong learning have made the management of transitions – in particular, linear progression from one educational stage or institution to another – central to education policies. Transitions and their relationship to learning – both formal and informal – have also been a focus of numerous studies of young people in the sociology of education (e.g., Banks et al. 1992; Bates and Riseborough 1994; Hodkinson et al. 1996; Pollard and Filer 1999; Ball et al. 2000; Colley 2003; Reay et al. 2005). But as Ecclestone (2006) also notes, this concern takes us into difcult territory: while policy makers’ understandings of transitions dominate much practice and research, they are contested strongly by critical perspectives that challenge the theoretical and methodological assumptions on which they rest.
