The reshaping of educational trajectories in European Knowledge Society

In the current educational discourses, a great emphasis is set on the notion of a European educational space with the concept of lifelong learning as one of its most powerful driving force. In this direction, a trend has started in 2000 through the Lisbon Declaration of the European Council that envisaged Europe as “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy in the world”, with education – as the main tool to achieve global competitiveness and increased social inclusion – at the heart of this transformation. This trend has been further developed in the ongoing Europe 2020 strategy that gives a prominent place to education, with the aim of promoting lifelong learning, study mobility in the EU, and taking-up of higher education in order to help young people’s transition into work.The chapter analyses whether and to which extent the educational trajectories in Europe have been reshaped according to this common goal, emphasising how different educational trajectories develop in the same structural context according to the individual meaning attached to education and the strategies adopted to cope with it. In the European knowledge society students’ educational trajectories need therefore to be analysed adopting. Second, it illustrates the EU-funded research project Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe (GOETE) on which finding this book is based. The project dealt with the mechanisms of decision-making underlying students’ educational trajectories in eight European education systems/countries (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom). The focus laid on the transitions of students classified as disadvantaged in their respective contexts from lower secondary to general or vocational upper secondary education. Third , it offers an overview of the book’s chapters.