The world faces a growing youth employment crisis: worldwide, young people are three times as likely to be unemployed as adults; and unemployment in youth leads to social exclusion, poor mental and physical health, social unrest, and a pattern of labor disengagement. Research has shown that young people who are at risk of unsuccessful school-to-work transitions experience school as an adverse context. Work-based education (WBE) is one of the most frequently recommended solutions for engaging young people in school while providing a basis for successful transition into meaningful employment. However, while there have been many practical efforts to implement transition systems for at-risk students in a wide range of contexts, there has been limited theoretical accounts of the mechanisms and structures that facilitate successful transitions for vulnerable students. The purpose of this chapter is to develop a person-in-context model with three overlapping domains - the individual, the social-cultural, and the economic-political - that addresses how WBE can promote a context of resilience for at-risk students. Specifically, WBE is held to provide a protective context that enables young people to navigate and negotiate influential facets within each of these domains as they transition from school-to-work. Our practical goal in developing this model is to address the vexing question: Which WBE programs are most likely to lead at-risk students to successful transitions into meaningful work? © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. All rights are reserved.
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