Job training and articulation with the world of work: a challenge to continue rethinking educational practices in Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract

This article addresses the supports linked to job training, in terms of educational policy actions to plan, articulate and sustain spaces for job inclusion after graduation from compulsory education. The data come from doctoral research whose objective is to analyze school supports at the secondary level as well as post-school supports linked to the transition processes to adult life of young people with disabilities in Córdoba, Argentina.

The background gives a fundamental role to the school in building bridges for social and labor inclusion, as well as highlighting the importance of training and guidance actions for the exercise of roles typical of adulthood such as incorporation into the labor market, through multidimensional and coordinated planning that, from a rights-based approach, enables access to the necessary support to achieve it.

The research design is framed in a multiple case study with a qualitative approach and descriptive scope, the selected cases correspond to 4 special modality public schools in the province of Córdoba. Key actors were questioned to analyze the problem, delving into the meanings of the training processes and their connection with subsequent experiences of insertion into the labor market.

Among the main results, a unidirectional view of adult life-work stands out, fundamentally associated with manual activities and jobs, as a practically unique destiny for people with disabilities and reaffirms the need for a critical review of the meanings that support educational practices, designed almost exclusively within institutions.

It is hoped to contribute to the debate on the role that schools play in training for inclusion in the labor market, challenging segregationist practices that reproduce the historical social disadvantage in which people with disabilities are placed.