The changes that have occurred in the field of education over the course of the last couple of decades have been associated with increased demands that are not only placed on individuals from both within and beyond the education system, but also on the support they require to make successful educational choices. One central way this need is being addressed is through educational and vocational guidance provided at different stages and transition points of educational trajectories. The aim of this article is to provide a context for the research findings presented in the subsequent articles of this special issue by illustrating the ways educational trajectories are regulated through the organization of schooling and the structures of educational and vocational guidance in the eight countries that participated in the Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe (GOETE) research project. This article presents three country clusters of education and welfare based on the comparative analysis conducted by the project.

This present study investigated the roles identity capital and school's socio-economic status have on adolescent worry about future education, employment, and social status. The 354 participants were 14-to 15-year-old students from affluent (56.8%) and disadvantaged (43.2%) Finnish lower secondary schools. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypothesis that a higher level of family-related identity capital is connected to a lower level of future worry, and that this connection is mediated through intrapersonal forms of identity capital, specifically academic self-concept and general self-efficacy. Adolescent future worry was also examined across school status with an independent samples t-test. The findings suggest that, in the relatively equal societal context in Finland, adolescents are rather confident about their future education, employment, and social status regardless of the socio-economic status of the school they attend, and when their level of identity capital is high the future worry decreases further.

This article examines the implications of the school choice policy, which has contributed to the segregation of basic education in urban Finland, by analysing the connection between the socio-economic status (SES) of schools' student populations and parents' satisfaction with their children's schools. The 318 participants were parents of lower secondary school students attending socio-economically affluent, average, and disadvantaged schools in three Finnish cities. Multiple indicators multiple causes modelling, with school SES and parental education as covariates, was used to test the hypothesis that a school's higher SES is connected to higher levels of parental school satisfaction with different aspects of the school's functioning. The hypothesis was partially verified as the results showed that a higher SES of a school implied more parental satisfaction with home-school cooperation and school culture. The findings suggest that the social segregation of basic education in urban Finland has implications beyond the differentiation of students' academic achievements and provide empirical evidence on the workings of one of the segregation mechanisms. ARTICLE HISTORY

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