A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Young People’s Stories of School Failure and Remedial Trajectories – Clues to Prevention of School Absenteeism and Early School Leaving

  2023. Åsa Sundelin, Joakim Lindgren, Lisbeth Lundahl. European Education, 1-14

  Article

  This article aims to increase knowledge of ways to counter school absenteeism and early school leaving. It analyses stories of youths who either attended or probably would be referred to a Swedish remedial program because of failure to complete compulsory education. Histories of school absenteeism were frequent in both groups. Most participating students reported that a holistic approach, individually adapted support, and a respectful socio-emotional environment helped them to regain self-esteem and school motivation. The findings indicate essential factors for prevention of school absenteeism and early school leaving.

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• Studie- och yrkesvägledning i migrationens tid: kunskap, strategier och förhållningssätt

  2022. Åsa Sundelin, Fredrik Hertzberg.

  Book

  Studie- och yrkesvägledning syftar till att stödja människor att göra studie- och yrkesval och att hitta framkomliga vägar inom utbildning och arbetsliv. Vägledningen har en särskilt viktig funktion för inkluderingen av nyanlända i det svenska samhället.

  Grundboken Studie- och yrkesvägledning i migrationens tid behandlar utmaningar, möjligheter och överväganden som aktualiseras i mötet mellan vägledare och nyanlända vägledningssökande. Den belyser begrepp och fenomen som är viktiga för förståelse av hur migration kan påverka människors möjligheter inom utbildning och arbetsliv, som inkludering och exkludering, frågor om makt och erkännande samt erfarenhet av flykt och uppbrott. Områden som vägledningssamtal och mångkulturell vägledning introduceras och olika kommunikativa utmaningar som kan uppstå i vägledningssamtal med nyanlända belyses. Boken beskriver även konkreta metoder och strategier som kan användas i ett vägledningssamtals olika faser med exempel från aktuell forskning.

  Studie- och yrkesvägledning i migrationens tid vänder sig främst till studerande på studie- och yrkesvägledarutbildningen och verksamma studie- och yrkesvägledare, men även till andra yrkesgrupper som möter nyanlända och har en vägledande funktion i sitt yrke.

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• Managing critical transitions: Career support to young people risking ineligibility for upper secondary education

  2022. Åsa Sundelin, Lisbeth Lundahl. European Educational Research Journal (online), 147490412210944

  Article

  This paper focuses on the support given by schools to students who are likely to leave Swedish compulsory education without the grades required to enter upper secondary education (USE). The aim is to increase knowledge about career counselors' and teachers' strategies and work in lower secondary schools in order to facilitate this critical transition, and to examine factors influencing this support. It takes as its starting point theoretical frameworks stressing the agency of professionals in welfare organizations, and the importance of support during the educational transitions of young people at risk. The paper builds on interviews with 20 teachers and career counselors in six municipalities of varying character. Teachers' and career counselors' micro-choices have a major impact on the support provided to students. Their work consists of direct and indirect support, with the former referring to prescribed professional assignments. Indirect support, taking the form of advocacy, relational, and emotional work, is not officially recognized, but appears to be a necessary precondition for the direct support. The transition seems to be at risk of becoming overly fragile unless the support is characterized by sustained collaboration between school actors in compulsory school, and between compulsory and USE levels.

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• Om lärare och studiehandledares möjligheter att utveckla nyanlända elevers karriärlärande i undervisning

  2022. Åsa Sundelin.

  Other

  Att fatta beslut om utbildning och arbete och planera sin framtid är inte lätt för någon och i synnerhet inte för nyanlända elever som befinner sig i ett nytt samhälleligt sammanhang. För många blir de individuella vägledningssamtalen med en studie- och yrkesvägledare en viktig nyckel för att kunna planera framtiden men, det är fler i skolan som har nycklar till deras framtid. Forskning och erfarenhet understryker vikten av att skolan ger nyanlända elever goda förutsättningar att orientera sig vad gäller utbildning och arbetsliv och att det arbetet måste vara hela skolans angelägenhet. Skolan behöver bidra med undervisning som stödjer nyanlända elevers lärande om dessa frågor så att studie- och yrkesvägledning inte utgörs av enstaka samtalstillfällen. Hur skolor arbetar med nyanlända elevers lärande om utbildning och arbetsliv är med andra ord en central fråga där yrkesgrupper som lärare och studiehandledare spelar en viktig roll. Studie- och yrkesvägledning är också en av nycklarna till livslångt lärande och nationell kompetensförsörjning. Syftet med denna artikel är att ge inspiration och väcka tankar om hur lärare och studiehandledare kan arbeta med och utveckla karriärlärande i undervisningen och på så sätt bidra till att ge nyanlända elever en god grund för deras studie- och yrkesval.

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• High-Stakes counselling: when career counselling may lead to continuing residence or deportation of asylum-seeking youths

  2021. Jonna Linde, Joakim Lindgren, Åsa Sundelin. British Journal of Sociology of Education 42 (5-6), 898-913

  Article

  In this article we analyse what happens to career counselling when it is intertwined with the asylum process. A Swedish example is an amendment to the education legislation, regarding residence permits for upper secondary level students. Following the resulting changes in juridical, educational and interpersonal conditions, career counsellors must deliver 'high-stakes counselling' that can profoundly affect individuals' prospects of asylum or deportation. Our analysis is based on ethnographically inspired fieldwork, a survey and Bernsteinian theory. In current Swedish conditions, tight matching to demands of the labour market is essential in this 'high-stakes counselling'. We conclude that a consequence is institutional introduction of conditional citizenship of asylum-seeking students. This allows countries to select migrants through education, which severely conflicts not only with counselling ideals, but also democratic and equality values regarding possibilities to make choices for the future, thus creating ethical dilemmas for counsellors.

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• Finding ways: Career guidance in schools for migrant youths’ career transitions and inclusion

  2021. Åsa Sundelin. Book of Abstracts

  Conference

  This proposal presents a work in progress about Swedish schools' work with career guidance and counselling (CGC) to support newly arrived students' career transitions and meaning-making about the future. The study is part of a research project with the aim to study the importance of inclusion and recognition in the organization and design of CGC. Specifically, this study examines how newly arrived students learn about education and working life, and what opportunities for meaning-making about career issues the students are given. The study has an ethnographic approach and has been conducted at the language introductory program (LIP), whose target group is newly arrived students, at four upper secondary schools. The analysis is ongoing but so far it points to that without a comprehensive work based on knowledge and understanding of both career issues and inclusion challenges, the students are at risk of being left to manage their inclusion on their own.

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• Om konsten att stödja nyanlända elevers lärande om karriärfrågor

  2017. Åsa Sundelin.

  Other

  Syftet med denna artikel är att stödja lärande om utbildning och arbetsliv (karriärfrågor) i vägledningssamtal med nyanlända elever.

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• Om språkliga asymmetrier i vägledningssamtal med nyanlända elever

  2017. Åsa Sundelin.

  Other

  Interaktion i studie- och yrkesvägledande samtal utgår allmänt från en kunskapsmässig asymmetri mellan deltagarna genom att vägledaren besitter kunskaper om samhället som vägledningssökande ofta behöver. Vad gäller samtal med nyanlända elever finns dessutom språkliga asymmetrier som påverkar samtalen. Nyanlända elever är ofta nybörjare i det svenska språket. Denna artikel tar sin utgångspunkt i dessa språkliga asymmetrier mellan nyanlända elever och vägledare. Det övergripande temat för denna text är möjligheter och utmaningar vad gäller språk och förståelse i vägledningssamtal med nyanlända elever.

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• Samtalsmetodiska ideal - möjlighet och begränsning i vägledningssamtal med nyanlända elever

  2017. Åsa Sundelin.

  Other

  Utgångspunkten för denna artikel är vägledningssamtalets centrala roll i skolors studie- och yrkesvägledande verksamhet. Vägledare verkar dock uppleva sin kompetens som otillräcklig i samtal med nyanlända elever. Artikeln diskuterar detta i relation till vägledares samtalsmetodiska ideal. Den visar på samtalsidealets möjligheter, men även på att otillräckligheten kan ha ett ursprung i krockar mellan samtalsmetodiska ideal och nyanländas behov och situation.

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• The Swedish report on intellectual output (IO) 02. Collation of Qualitative Questionnaires/Interviews from Experts.

  2017. Åsa Sundelin.

  Report

  This is the Swedish report on intellectual output (IO) 02 in the Erasmus+-project CMinaR. The project CMinaR aims to develop higher education courses for career counsellors working with refugee and migrant integration into the labour market. Part O2 of the project involves carrying out a needs analysis that aims at identifying needs, requirements, wishes and preferences of the projects target groups; career counsellors and refugee clients. The needs analysis is based on interviews with experts in the field of career guidance and counselling (CGC) for refugees.

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• Att skapa framtid

  2015. Åsa Sundelin (et al.).

  Thesis (Doc)

  This is an empirical study that aims to contribute to knowledge about the opportunities the career counselling conversation offers young migrants in shaping their future. Conversations play a central role in career counselling activities in Swedish schools; furthermore, the question of how the Swedish society promotes the inclusion of its immigrants has become an increasingly urgent issue. The study draws on a dialogical framework on interaction and meaning making and seeks to gain insight into how meaning about the future is formed in career counselling conversations. The following questions were formulated:

  • How is the interaction between migrant students and their counsellors formed in counselling conversations?
  • How can the interaction be understood in relation to the participants and their contexts?
  • What seems to enable or constrain students’ meaning making about the future in these conversations?

  The study was conducted in an introductory course for newly arrived immigrants at the upper secondary level. Researcher followed a series of two career counselling conversations between five students and five counsellors, respectively. The empirical material comprises three parts: audio-recordings of conversations, observations of these conversations and audio-recorded interviews with counsellors and students. The students, three men and two women, have a non-European background and had been in Sweden between one and three years. All except one can be considered a refugee. The material was transcribed, and the conversations were analysed with the concepts of communicative projects and strategies. The conversations are the primary empirical material.

  The results show that the counsellors’ and the students’ communicative projects primarily are complementary. Both the counsellor and the conversations appear as crucial for students learning about Swedish opportunity structures and meaning making about the future. The analysis also elucidated interactional patterns and interplay that seem to constrain the students’ possibilities to shape a future with their own conditions within the conversations. The conversations focused on Swedish career opportunities and lacked a transnational perspective. Furthermore, the students’ migrant background was not made relevant in the conversations; hence, the conversations risk contributing to students’ stigmatisation. The counsellors’ methods also seem at risk of individualising issues related to institutional preconditions and structural constraints. However, the analysis also displayed how the counsellor can counteract these constraining effects.

  The result implicates, in alignment with other studies, that the responsibility for the students’ career processes cannot be put on counselling conversations alone; more comprehensive and integrated activities for career learning in the schools are necessary to provide immigrant students with reasonable possibilities for shaping a future. Moreover, the conclusion is drawn that counsellor’s conversation skills are important for the students meaning making about the future but that counsellors also must have, among other things, the ability to comprehend migrants’ feelings and existential issues regarding the future and, not least, knowledge about the conditions of migrants and the ability to both comprehend and actively recognize injustices and different expressions of power. There are seldom others advocating for the rights of migrants.

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Show all publications by Åsa Sundelin at Stockholm University