In a previous study (Project PIQS/SOC/50013/2003), aiming to characterize and explain the construction of school paths and youth transitions to the labour market, we have been struck by one particularly astonishing result.
The questionnaire applied to 1929 young students, boys and girls, from lower and upper secondary Portuguese schools, pointed out an important outcome to the question: If yes (to intend studying after completing secondary school) what course are you going to choose?; in fact, a considerable proportion of respondents didn0t know the answer to that question.
This fact reveals an interesting paradox: young people who have made a choice entering higher secondary education (the selection of a school path, studying specific subjects), but do not know what to make of it. Undetermination and uncertainty seem to be a common perception of future among some secondary pupils. However, the uncertainty on future studies raises the problem of "school achievement". The fact that one doesn't know what to choose means that probably he will experiment different routes (and failures) until discovering his "real" vocation.
By mobilizing some theories of individualization, this research aims to question the institutional definition of "school achievement", from the point of view of students. That institutional definition is based on a linear conception of academic paths, supposing the transposition of succeeding stages composing the course of study; and doesn't preview the reversibility of choices, once being made.
Now, that definition of success may not necessarily correspond to an experience perceived as successful by the student itself. In fact, in advanced, modern societies, the active quest of self-fulfilment may sometimes lead individuals' students, in this case -to the questioning of their options, which opens the way to winding, non linear paths, and belated compared with the institutional-defined term of a given course of study. Institutional time and individual time for succeeding in school may not match at all.
However, the individual construction of an academic path is far from being the result of one's own free will, although it may be subjectively experienced as such. It is influenced by several social constraints, which deserve to be enhanced.
Constraints derived from social background, in the first place. Nowadays, although living autonomy tends to be highly dissociated from social and economical independence, the economical condition of the student's family still clearly influence his own future perspectives.
The school itself also conditions individual options. Being an institutional context, proposing a specific range of courses of study, each school establishes a limited frame of choices available to its students. Additionally, its professionals (teachers and educational psychologists, as well) reveal themselves as vocational models and as important sources of information.
Friends and peer groups constitute another strong anchorage for individual experimentation. Within the group, information is shared, options are debated and anxiety due to uncertainty (about one's future) is mitigated. Friends' choices may therefore influence individual options - namely, at school.
Mass media, not only the press but specially television, revels itself as a strong means of breaking the links between time and space (Giddens, 2001). By doing that, mass media allows each individual to accede to information not available at the local level, and even to disclose new reference groups - although merely virtual ones - that might determine the discovery of one's hidden talents.
In this study, we also seek to analyse and determine how strongly these social factors influence individual choices (academic choices, future course of studies); thus, the potentialities and the limits of individualization arguments will be tested.