Type of Project: Funded project Joint project
Inclusive Vocational Education in Rhineland (Germany)

Education and work are focused areas of life in rehabilitation research. They are linked by the phase of vocational training and education. There are only a few systematic studies on how this stage of life is formed for youth with disabilities in Germany. Most research focuses on services (assisted training Conrads et al. 2020) or training formats (vocational training Zöller et al. 2017). Only occasionally research examines young people or their trajectories and/or experiences (Blanck 2020; Bergs 2017). The research project "Inclusive vocational education and training of young people with severe disabilities in Rhineland - access, design and continuance" approaches the question of how educational and employment trajectories of young people with severe disabilities shaped in a region of a federal state (Rhineland). The focus is on access to in-company training and the conditions of its arrangement (Zölls-Kaser 2018; Wansing et al. 2016). The multi-method research design investigates the educational and employment paths for a cohort of school leavers with disabilities in longitudinal section. For this purpose, data will be collected at several points in time during the project period from 08/2020 to 12/2024: on vocational goals and access, design conditions and experiences, and continuance. The research project will center on the subjective biographical views of the young people, which will be collected in group discussions and individual interviews. The young people's legal guardians will also be interviewed in group discussions and additionally a questionnaire survey in a panel design on the young people's vocational training histories will be conducted. Representatives of funding agencies and integration services, as well as trainers, will be included in the qualitative surveys in group discussions. This is preceded by an explorative documentary research to identify criteria of the assignment practices.