This research project offers a new perspective on post-sixteen transitions. Combing secondary data with narrative accounts it describes how young people in the UK make choices at the end of their compulsory schooling and provides a dynamic model of decision-making and a thorough critique of current research in the area, beyond fashionable concepts.

Acknowledgements List of Tables List of Figures Abbreviations and Terms Introduction Educational and Career Decision Making: An Introduction to the Issues Methods, Conext and Sample Contextualising Post-Sixteen Transitions: National, Regional and Historical Trends Conceptualising Choice: Types, Stages and Models Choice Motivations in Year 9 Choice Factors and Rationales in Year 11 Destinations, Aspirations and Trajectories Concluding Remarks Appendix Index

Education and Career Choice represents a refreshingly different take on the issue of student choice at the age of 16, mixing existing figures on participation and in-depth interviews with students at the time of making choices. Understanding more about this process of choice will be important for policy-makers and academics, in the UK and elsewhere, faced with widening participation and a 14-19 curriculum attempting to offer choice of both vocational and academic routes without creating a two-track system. - Stephen Gorard, Anniversary Chair of Educational Studies, University of York, UK '...a well-written piece of research. It certainly comes to life and engages the reader when the author lets the students speak for themselves as they narrate their stories of decision making and taking...The end result is an erudite piece of research with a human face.' - Dione Mifsud, British Educational Research Journal