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The transition from school to work is one of the major developmental tasks for young adults and has important consequences for further career development. It is also a particular challenge for young people with learning difficulties. Social support is considered to be an important facilitating factor in early career development and is therefore particularly important for these young people. In general, social support is thought to have direct positive effects on different outcomes (e.g. well-being, performance) and to “buffer” negative effects of stress by providing coping assistance. In view of inconsistent empirical findings regarding this, there is a debate whether social support is domain-specific and about whether the probability of finding effects of social support is a question of “matching” between job demands and resources. The first two articles of this thesis refer to this idea and address the role of social support during vocational education and training (VET) for low achieving apprentices. The questions of the first study were (1) if social support mitigates the negative effects of stress in VET on self-rated performance in the VET-school or VET-company and on positive attitude towards life (“buffer-hypothesis”) and (2) which people are helpful in which situations and in regard to which outcomes (“matching-hypothesis”). Using data from an evaluation study of a VET-programme in Switzerland (N=525), we found direct effects of VETtrainers’ support on self-rated performance and of mothers’ support on positive attitudes towards life. Furthermore, we found an unexpected interaction effect of VET-trainers’ support. As expected, fathers’ support “buffered” the effects of stress at the VET-school and the VETcompany on a positive attitude towards life. In the second study, we were interested in the various pathways of support provided by teachers at VET-schools and trainers at VET-companies to foster apprentices’ career aspirations and to encourage the undertaking of further training. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse longitudinal data from the same evaluation study. Results show that VET-teacher support is directly and indirectly related to career aspirations at the end of the apprenticeship, whereas VET-trainer support only influences career aspirations indirectly. Domain specific constructs (ability self-concept at VET-school, skill variety at the VET-company) and selfesteem are important as intermediary variables. Ability self-concept at VET-school had a strong influence on further education three years after the apprenticeship. These findings suggest that it is important to distinguish between different support sources and outcome variables to better understand how social support works in VET. In the third study, we focused on the question of how peer-group experiences at school influence the overall perceived support in the social context. For this purpose, we analysed data from 321 pupils (before and after the transition from primary to secondary school) and their teachers using structural equation modelling. The results concur with our hypothesis that past and present experiences of being socially integrated have a significant influence on perceived social support and on life satisfaction. Overall, it can be concluded that school has an important function as an experiential space, which has effects beyond its boundaries. In summary, we consider that in spite of the fact that there has been much research into social support, it is still important to better understand the mechanisms and conditions of helpful support and to detect the problems of ineffective or even harmful relationships in and around VET-situations or schools. A better understanding will help us to optimise the positive impact of support and this is vital, given the limited resources that young people with learning difficulties have.

Wirkungsweise und Effekte sozialer Unterstützung in Ausbildung und Schule