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In the light of the core pedagogical ideas, theoretical framework and methodology of the MaCE project, this chapter will discuss implications and options for working with young people in higher education. A core finding in MaCE points to the fact that the participatory approach is very fruitful for working with young people, in order to enhance their feeling of belonging and commitment in the educational system. From educational research, we know that the dropout rate is high in the students' first year of higher education. Therefore, we consider it important to build a solid foundation of trust and well-defined expectations among students and teachers, starting the very day they pass the doorstep of higher education. When applying such inclusive strategies, it becomes possible to collaborate with students as co-researchers in a socio-cultural learning environment. From the MaCE research, we learned that students thrive when academic hierarchies are toned down, making mutual reflections and partaking in discussion accessible for all students. A participatory pedagogy that involves students and builds relations empowers students' sense of meaning and belonging, making them more engaged and thus help decrease dropout rates in higher education. This points to the importance of strong relations and sufficient time for counselling and tutoring.

This chapter focusses on the importance of young people's families and relations outside school. In interviews, a significant number of the young informants from the Danish part of the MaCE project speak of their relationship with parents, siblings, other family members or friends outside school, when they express the crucial role such support or lack thereof have played in relation to their educational experiences. In the final section of the chapter, we argue that when working with children and young people in education, remembering a holistic perspective is of utter importance. Daring to talk with students about their whole personality and extensive experiences, and not just their school identity, seems self-evident, but perhaps too often forgotten.

This chapter explores the discourse and phenomenon of ‘early school leavers’ (ESL) through a policy lens from the United Kingdom, Norway and Denmark and from an international critical theoretical perspective. We look at political documents to find out how ESL and the young people involved are perceived. This chapter will equip the reader with an overview of a range of frames on ESL and the impact those have on societal attitudes, educational practices and, ultimately, young people.

This chapter explains how a socio-cultural learning model was used in the Marginalisation and Co-created Education project for students to challenge prevailing deficit models of social disadvantage. This chapter draws on accounts of participant engagement in the project to reveal how a supportive socio-cultural model can develop knowledge about the subject of marginalisation and about wider higher education elements whilst also developing self-belief and raising aspirations of participants.

The Marginalisation and Co-created Education project has established and utilises a conceptual framework called ‘Equalities Literacy’ (Stuart et al., 2020) that evolved from the first yearlong action research cycle of the project. The framework was initially informed by the practice experience and theoretical knowledge of the international and interdisciplinary team and later substantiated and adapted in the light of the 100 international youth narratives collected in the second yearlong action research cycle. In this chapter we propose the Equality Literacy Framework is a potent tool for direct work with young people and adults, as an indirect tool to understand young people and adults, as a practice framework and as a research framework.

Young people leaving school before graduation is a challenge for most countries in the western world. Qualitative research points to the teacher–student relationship as being one of the most important factors influencing the student's completion. In this chapter, we will explore how young people in vulnerable positions describe their relationship to teachers, and the relationships' impact on their education. This is described through the narratives of three young people struggling with school and their relationships with teachers. The main findings confirm the teacher–student relationship is one of the most important factors in young people's education, pointing at verbal expressions, body language and acknowledgment of students' learning difficulties. The students describe teachers who label them as misfits and who make them do tasks in set ways, impossible for them, despite knowing they have learning difficulties. Experiences like this are described as struggles. As a consequence of a troublesome student–teacher relationship, some students change their educational programme.

This chapter seeks to understand inclusive education, seen from the perspective of young people who had trouble learning at school. With the indirect approach, an explorative interviewing technique, we seek to find out what they, when looking back, think would have been important in order to learn. In this chapter, we meet three young people from Norway with the experience that their school was not sufficiently inclusive. All three point out that there should have been more room for being different and a greater focus on practical approaches to teaching.

This chapter will strive to broaden the debate about school dropouts with a holistic analysis of two interviews applying the ‘Equalities Literacy Theory (EQL)’ as an analytical framework. We also use other theories and concepts such as Pierre Bourdieu's theory of fields and capitals, Etienne Wenger's concept of practice communities and McDermott's terms of contexts. In the chapter, we will meet Stine and Marlene, two young Danish women, both from close-knit families.¹ Bullying and social exclusion became the topics for both interviews as each of the informants narrate how it impacted them back then and how it has influenced their lives. We will use these two narratives to emphasise the importance of seeing vulnerability, dropout and marginalisation as situated in a context-based perspective.