Publications

Deliverables

The primary task of the Data Management Plan is to provide a sound and coherent strategy for handling the data during the life time of the CLEAR research project and beyond. The Data Management Plan has to be developed as a living document, which reflects the empirical results as well as the current advancements in ethics and law applicable to the management of research data. In order to fulfil the task, we have gathered the most up-to-date information on data management in form of guidelines and examples, including the guidelines of the German Research Foundation, Science Europe, CESSDA and others. We have then developed template for data description and asked Partners leading the empirical Work Packages to provide the most accurate information. We have further conducted conceptual work on establishing and applying a model for data life cycle to the CLEAR research project and specified the handling of data during their life cycle. Finally, we have considered all possible measures necessary to safe, protect, and preserve our data, and to make them publishable and re-used by other researchers or policy makers.

In the Deliverable Working Paper on Ethical Issues, we have succeeded to frame the ethics strategy for the upcoming research activities by providing a systematic assessment of relevant ethical concerns and issues. Centred around the core international and European conventions and regulations, we have elaborated the specific ethical aspects applicable to the research in CLEAR.

The Deliverable provides first update on the data collected in the project. Within the project, we have collected and processed data in four empirical Work Packages (WPs): WP3, WP4, WP5, and WP6. In this Deliverable, we provide first characteristics of the data.

The second update of the Data Management Plan entails full data descriptions from empirical Work Packages, provides a summary of the data descriptions, and offers concluding remarks on the data management in CLEAR.

In the Deliverable Research Strategy Paper and Glossary, we have successfully developed an overall research framework to conceptualise the theoretical and methodological approaches, the terminology applied throughout the study, the assessment of ethical concerns and possible risks, as well as the application of participatory strategies and the detailed description of the work plan. The overall conceptual research framework, thus, informs the subsequent empirical and comparative analyses.

The task of the State-of-the-Art Report (Deliverable) was to develop an analytical framework for the analysis of learning outcomes in eight EU-member countries, including Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The task consisted of producing and integrating theoretical, analytical and methodological instruments capable to enquire into the complexity of factors involved in the construction of learning outcomes. The framework shall also provide a shared terminological and conceptual understanding within the project, define the links between concepts, theories, levels of analysis and methods of data collection, and embed the research object – learning outcomes – in the research and policy debates.

The task of the Report with Sites Selection (Deliverable) is to select and validate research sites for the empirical part of the project. For the selection and validation, the Core Team will develop and circulate a template and request the National Partners to collect and systematise the information for their respective countries. The selection of sites will take place on NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 levels. A part of the task is a comparison and synthesis of the results with the aim to validate the selection and prepare initial contextual information for the empirical explorations and comparative analyses.

This Deliverable synthesises the theoretical framework (Task 3.1) and the results of National Briefing Papers (Task 3.2) by enriching their results with descriptive statistical analysis, multivariate clustering and explorative micro-data analysis to provide a comparative interpretation and contextualization of learning outcomes at the regional level. The first results were presented during the project’s Consortium meeting in Barcelona (September 2023), with the collaboration of UAB and DIE Partners, with the aim to collect feedback from CLEAR Consortium partners considering their national expertise.

The Deliverable International Policy Review Report outlines the views of educators, employers and stakeholders of public employment services in order to interpret the institutional dimension of the life courses of people who struggle with learning due to several factors of social vulnerability. This evidence also indicates how intersectional inequalities are considered in certain decision-making processes. In course of the work, we have first mapped out the policies that aim at tackling the underachievement of 18- to- 29-year-olds in the regions studied. The academic perspective of life course research contributed to meet this goal. Second, we have explored to what extent skills formation and utilisation match. The evidence generally supports the claim that matches and mismatches hinge on the disparate social conditions that intersectional inequalities generate. The third objective was analysing modes of coordination. The strand of scholarship on spatial justice has been helpful to do this task, not least because coordination depends on local factors and varies between countries and regions.

In the Policy Brief we argue that educational authorities and the stakeholders of education, training and employment policies must build forms of coordination at the local level to help the youth achieve higher learning outcomes. It is indispensable that adult education, vocational education and training and higher education programmes provide meaningful frames of learning at different geographical scales for young people to fully take advantage of significant opportunities.

The Deliverable National Qualitative Report places young people’s own viewpoints and experiences at the centre of examination and seeks to understand their capacities in dealing with failures and successes in education and learning along their life courses. The main objectives are to gain a deeper understanding of how policies and local opportunity structures open and/or close young people’s life opportunities, and to attain in-depth information about how young people themselves exercise their agency in interpreting and dealing with educational success and failure along their life courses. To that end, 169 young adults aged 18-30 years from eight European countries who are in vulnerable and multi-disadvantaged positions were interviewed using narrative biographical approach. Based on the extensive fieldwork conducted in 16 European regions, national teams of the CLEAR project produced eight research reports in which the main national level findings of the study are presented.

In the Deliverable International Qualitative Analysis Report, we synthetise national level findings, discuss and compare their main results and conclusions. The results presented in this report are divided into three subsections. The first section (5.1) addresses educational pathways and experiences of young adults in vulnerable and multi-disadvantaged situations. It focuses on young adults’ learning outcomes by examining their learning trajectories through different stages of the formal education system and their experiences regarding non-formal and informal learning. The second subsection (5.2) approaches the construction of young adults’ learning outcomes from temporal perspective by examining their views of the future. It explores young adults’ aspirations and orientations regarding their futures and aims to understand the extent to which living conditions and regional contexts influence these orientations. The third subsection (5.3) focuses on young adults’ perceptions of local and regional opportunities, constraints, and inequalities. It seeks to understand how young adults reflect on the relationship between the spaces they live in and their learning outcomes.

The CLEAR research project investigates the development of learning outcomes and its underlying dynamics and interactions among different actors and contexts. It considers these tools the result of various intertwining dimensions at multiple levels, including individual, institutional, spatial, structural, and relational level. Against this background, Deliverable Experts’ Opinion Report offers insight into how these factors are declined in the policy debates of the countries involved in the project, pointing at possible lines of conflict and cleavages among groups of actors dealing with learning outcomes. In this sense, it contributes to the overall aim of examining the combination of multiple factors shaping learning outcomes and affecting their quality.

The Deliverable European Policy Brief bridges the gap between research and policymaking by addressing the challenges involved in analysing and structuring policymaking arenas on learning outcomes. It builds on the findings of the previous reports and the second participatory activity outlined, offering policy recommendations to address the main challenges identified in policy coordination.

The Deliverable Comparative Analysis Report draws from the results of the project’s empirical studies and participatory activities. Based on the preliminary findings and the large amount of data, the comparative analyses seek to address the project’s overall objectives and main research questions. The Report is structured in 14 chapters. The introductory chapter presents the project’s overall design and heuristic criteria for the comparisons. The next 12 chapters are clustered in three Parts, each Part addressing one central research question from a specific thematic focus. The concluding chapter synthetises the results of the analyses and embeds them in wider research and policy debates on learning outcomes. The project has yielded new evidence on the assessment of learning outcomes. By embracing a holistic approach and incorporating a large number of aspects other than statistical indicators only, it has assessed the process of constructing learning outcomes from multiple angles. Given the current scholarly and policy debates on learning outcomes, we conclude with the following statements: (1) Our analyses have identified and problematised several shortcomings of the mainstream conceptualisation of educational (under-)achievement and learning outcomes. Against this background, we call for a systematic re-assessment of both concepts, arguing that their indifferent, decontextualised application threatens a just educational provision. Our conclusions contradict the instrumental use of LOs as an anticipatory tool and call for a holistic, context-sensitive approach to education; (2) We have provided evidence for structural and spatial factors affecting the quality of LOs and posit the need to de-essentialise vulnerability and spatiality in relation to young people. The findings suggest that essentialising ascriptions and spatial representations persist to affect educational processes, which is why we argue to examine more precisely how the spatiality of educational pathways, decisions, and programmes can be re-imagined and re-adjusted to better fit the situations resulting from the interplay of space and education; (3) We have engaged multiple actors in our participatory actions and illustrated the role of innovative policy arrangements in tackling poor LOs. In that respect, we advocate for a stronger recognition and participation of local/regional voices in educational policymaking. Besides re-framing the role of factors and spaces in constructing LOs, we promote the empowerment of actors directly involved in educational processes at the local and regional levels.

The Deliverable Final Report to Research, Policy, and Practice draws on cumulative results continuously elaborated in the previous research phases, synthetizes the results achieved in the project’s WPs, and deliberates on research and policy implications derived from the comparative analyses. It offers first-hand information for our three key audiences: research community, European and national policymakers, and local/regional professionals in education and employment.

The Deliverable Innovation Forums yields new information and insights deriving from the process of design, organisation, and implementation of the Innovation Forums at local levels. The Innovation Forums are collaborative and interactive events, organised with the aim of encouraging open dialogue, critical thinking, and the sharing of diverse stakeholders’ viewpoints through the application of participatory methodologies. Specifically, the main target groups of participants are policymakers/experts in education, professionals in education and young people. The Innovation Forum provide a space where individuals from different sectors and perspectives within the field of education come together to engage in constructive conversations, promoting mutual insight and the co-creation of imaginative and effective responses to complex challenges.

The Deliverable National Participatory Report consists in the production of the National Participatory Reports, where problems and achievements related to the application of participatory activities are discussed, and a further elaboration of the Innovation Forums’ outcomes, aiming at providing recommendations targeting policy makers in education and social researchers interested in integrating participation into more traditional methods of research. The main dimensions of participation discussed in the National Reports focus on the Participatory Actions integrated into the empirical Work Packages of CLEAR, and the Innovation Forum held in its final stage to share, disseminate and discuss the project’s outcomes with heterogeneous groups of stakeholders in education.

The task of the Publication and Dissemination Plan and Visual Image is to develop a unified approach to all publication and dissemination activities in the research project and to prepare diverse communication strategies and tools to reach different audiences. In this way, we seek to maximize the project’s impact, which is not measured only by the quality of our results but also by their outreach. The effective and timely communication of our findings can have a vital impact on the educational policymaking targeting learning outcomes and educational (under)achievement and can contribute to promoting educational justice and social inclusion.

The Deliverable Guidelines to Use Participatory Methodologies summarizes the experience gained in applying the transversal participatory approach within the CLEAR project. The document is aimed at researchers who wish to effectively integrate participatory methodologies into their studies, offering a set of practical and conceptual guidelines. The drafting of these guidelines specifically drew upon the results and reflections from the National Participatory Report, which highlighted how participatory activities are a crucial means to challenge dominant interpretations of social phenomena and to involve social actors as active partners in the co-construction of knowledge. The purpose is to demonstrate how empirical research can be enriched and validated through a constant dialogue with the social actors directly involved in the phenomena being analysed.

The Deliverable Policy Brief is an updated version of the project’s two Policy Briefs submitted in Work Packages (WPs) 4 and 6, and utilizes the cumulative results from comparative analyses and participatory actions. In doing so, it addresses the key policy issue of enhancing poor learning outcomes in Europe by developing clear, actionable recommendations for policymakers.

The Deliverable Dissemination and Publication Activities in Period 1 covers the communication, dissemination, and publication activities carried out between October 2022 and September 2023. The information contained in this Report was collected every 3 months from team members through the completion of a template, which serves as the basis for Annex 1 of this document, and in accordance with what was defined in strategic Deliverables.

The Deliverable Communication and Dissemination Activities in Period 2 presents the second and final update of the CLEAR project’s communication and dissemination strategy. It covers the period between Month 13 and Month 36 of the project and follows on from the first implementation report, which documented the initial deployment of the communication strategy during Months 1 to 12. In this second period, the CLEAR consortium significantly intensified its communication and dissemination activities, building upon the foundations established in the first reporting phase. The progress of scientific work (including data analysis, comparative synthesis, participatory fieldwork, and policy-oriented outputs) translated into an expanded and diversified dissemination effort, anchored in the principles of Open Science, epistemic justice, and inclusive engagement..

Further Publications

The CLEAR Consortium partners have a proven track record of expertise in their relative research fields. We present here a selection of their works and contributions.

• Benasso, S., Bouillet, D., Neves, T., & Parreira do Amaral, M. (Eds.) (2022). Landscapes of Lifelong Learning Policies across Europe. Comparative case studies. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Cavaco, C., Paulos. C., Alves, N., Guimarães, P., & Feliciano, P. (2022). Insucesso escolar numa perspectiva de género – a percepção dos alunos. Educação & Sociedade, 43, e241548, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1590/ES.241548
• Cefalo, R., Scandurra, R., & Kazepov, Y. (2020). Youth labor market integration in European regions. Sustainability, 12(9), Article 3813. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093813
• Dagnes, J., Carbone, D., Barberis, E., & Bazzoli, N. (2021). Decision-making processes, conflict and coordination in Italian schools in the era of distance education. Studi Organizzativi, 13(1): 51-78. https://doi.org/10.3280/SO2021-001003
• Desjardins, R., & Ioannidou, A. (2020). The political economy of adult learning systems – some institutional features that promote adult learning participation. Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung, 43(2), 143–168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40955-020-00159-y
• Järvinen, T., & Silvennoinen, H. (in press). Educational Policies, Lifelong Learning and Social Diversity. In M. Berends, B. Schneider & S. Lamb (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook on the Sociology of Education. SAGE Publications.
• Kazepov, Y., Barberis, E., Cucca, R., & Mocca, E. (Eds.) (2022). Handbook on Urban Social Policies: International Perspectives on Multilevel Governance and Local Welfare. Edward Elgar Publishing
• Lima, L. C., Guimarães, P., & Mikulec, B. (2022). The debate on intergovernmental organisations and adult learning and education policies: intersections between the political and scientific fields. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2022.2110619
• Malafaia, C., Neves, T., & Menezes, I. (2022). The gap between youth and politics: youngsters outside the regular school system assessing the conditions for be(com)ing political subjects. YOUNG, 29(5), 437-455. https://doi.org/10.1177/1103308820987996
• Parreira do Amaral, M., & Jornitz, S. (2019). Die Konzeptualisierung von Bildungsverläufen Jugendlicher: eine Governance-Perspektive auf Lebenslauf. In R. Langer & Th. Brüsemeister (Eds.), Handbuch Educational Governance Theorien (pp. 417–440). Springer.
• Parreira do Amaral, M., Kovacheva, S., & Rambla, X. (Eds.) (2020). Lifelong Learning Policies for Young Adults in Europe. Navigating between Knowledge and Economy. Policy Press.
• Rambla, X., & Milana, M. (2020). The stepping- stones of lifelong learning policies: politics, regions and labour markets. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 39(1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2020.1747589
• Rambla, X., & Kovacheva, S. (2021). Constructing meaningful transitions in a vulnerable situation – The role of lifelong learning policies in European regions. International Journal of Social Welfare, 00, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12505
• Rodrigues, R, Amorim, J. P., & Neves, T. (2022). “The holiness of minute particulars”: can the community compensate for the schools’ shortfalls in affection? Pastoral Care in Education, 40(1), 41-60. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2020.1855672
• Scandurra, R., Cefalo, R., & Kazepov, Y. (2020). School to work outcomes during the Great Recession, is the regional scale relevant for young people’s life chances? Journal of Youth Studies, 24(4), 441–465. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2020.1742299
• Scandurra, R., Cefalo, R., & Kazepov, Y. (2021). Drivers of Youth Labour Market Integration Across European Regions. Social Indicators Research, 154, 835–856. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02549-8
• Siri, A., Leone, C. & Bencivenga, R. (2022). Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Strategies Adopted in a European University Alliance to Facilitate the Higher Education-to-Work Transition. Societies, 12(140), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc12050140
• Tikkanen, J. (2020). Constructing Life Courses in Times of Uncertainty. Individualisation and Social Structures in the Context of Finnish Education. University of Turku.
• Tikkanen, J., Parreira do Amaral, M., Järvinen, T., & Alves, N. (Eds.). (2025). Constructing Learning Outcomes: Problematizing (Under)Achievement in Europe. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350445901. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/constructing-learning-outcomes-9781350445901/