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Key objective 1

To explore the relation between students representational spaces and a) the existing categories of the state of the art, (attitude towards school & learning, school engagement, self-concept & self-beliefs, b) the perception of future, time, & porosity c) the dropout and under-achieving propensity. (WP4)

Qualitative research: students’ representational spaces will be investigated using two types of maps. a) Dwelling maps: printed world maps will be given to students so that they can design their “imagined geographies” & b) Concept maps: students will be invited to create concept maps “of their personal path to success”. The aim is to provide comparable maps, permitting to pass from individual geographies to collective discourse among a group or sub-groups of students and to capture the perceived significant elements and their relations for the chosen educational and career paths. The categories of territory, boundary, border & scale will be used as points of entry to explore the dynamics of power, place, space and scale. Visual methodologies will be applied because they “go beyond the standardization of statistics and language” (Banks, 2007). Semiotics & content analysis will be used for the analysis of results.

Quantitative research: attitudes towards school & learning, school engagement self-beliefs & self concept, time perspective, utopias, dystopias will be explored through questionnaires. Results will be analyzed with SPSS and correlations will be explored to investigate cross-scale comparisons.