Theorising and preparing students for precarity: how can leaders and educators better prepare students to enter an increasingly insecure workforce?

Abstract

Workforce insecurity has significant implications for the role of school leaders and teachers preparing students for changing worlds of work. For educators to better prepare students to enter an increasingly casualised labour workforce, there first needs to be an acknowledgement of how students perceive themselves in relation to post-school life.Drawing on a study of approximately 2500 secondary school students in the Australian state of Victoria, the figure of homo promptus is presented as a figure of youth to understand the real and imagined characteristics of students as workers-in-the-making. Homo promptus is entrepreneurial and strategic, yet on 'standby' as short-termism problematises future planning. This figure is overlaid onto students' perceptions of their own career identity relative to post-school aspirations and transitions. For some students, homo promptus is a conscious and lived identity, while it appears a surreality for others who believe that their post-school transitions will be unaffected by precarity. School leaders, teachers and schoolbased careers advisors have obligations to not only acknowledge the emergence of homo promptus themselves and the broader labour and education landscapes from which this conceptualisation has been developed, but to ensure students and their parents are fully aware of the future possibilities for precarity.

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