Funded Research

FOLLOWING the SUCCESS:
Promising Workplace Learning Practices in Marginalized Youth Employment

By Dr. Peter H. Sawchuk, PhD
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto,

In Partnership with The Boreal Institute for Civil Society,
The Ontario Association of Youth Employment Centres,
& The Toronto Training Board

Description

Executive Summary (PDF 37KB)

Full Report (PDF469 KB)

In Canada and elsewhere, a great deal of research has described patterns of youth unemployment and difficulties in youth school-to-work transitions. A significant proportion of this has focused on the types of barriers facing particular groups of youths who, in turn, become marginalized in relation to labour-market accesses, career development and society.

Findings

The Following the Success (FTS) project builds on the research described above and explores additional issues that are less well represented in the literature. These issues spring from three general gaps:

  1. Despite a solid understanding of the effects of marginalization on youth labour-market outcomes, the perspectives of both youth and employers on forms of marginalization are less well understood.
  2. The bulk of existing research essentially tracks failed labour-market transitions. This is important. However, equally valuable is research devoted to understanding instances of ‘success’ during which youth obtain stable and potentially career-establishing positions in the labour market.
  3. The bulk of research in this area frames marginalization as a relatively static process.

What is needed is a dynamic perspective that takes into account how both youth and employers learn to overcome these marginalizing factors to varying degrees within youth employment. The FTS project was designed to respond to these three main gaps in the research literature in order to further supplement knowledge of the relationship between workplace learning practices, employment and marginalized youth success.