What Does Success Really Look Like After School?

The transition from childhood to adulthood represents a critical and often precarious period of change of young people. As formal schooling ends, individuals must navigate pathways that are frequently less structured and more fragmented, including higher education, vocational routes, employment, and community participation. This transition, typical occurring between the ages of 16 and 25, overlaps with the development period known as merging adulthood, characterised by exploration, uncertainty, and instability (Arnett, 2000, 2024; Nelson, 2020).

For neurodivergent young people in particular, these traditions may be further shaped by the responsiveness of educational systems, the availability of support, and broader societal expectations surrounding independence and success (Shogren et al., 2015; Pearson et al., 2020). Rather than viewing transition solely as an individual development milestone, this study understands transition as a relational and ecological process shaped by policy, practice, support structures, and opportunities for flourishing.

Despite longstanding commitments to inclusive education, educational systems frequently struggle to provide the relational continuity, environmental responsiveness, and coordinated support necessary for neurodivergent young people to flourish across this transition (Riddell & Weedon, 2014; Botha, 2021; Goodley, 2016). Flourishing, as conceptualised within positive psychology, philosophy, and educational theory, extends beyond academic attainment to encompass wellbeing, agency, relational belonging, and the capacity to lead a meaningful life (Seligman, 2011; Biesta, 2015). For neurodivergent young people however, pathways into adulthood are often mediated by systems that remain insufficiently responsive to cognitive and neurological diversity, resulting in uneven experiences of inclusion, equity, and support (Goodley, 2016; Slee, 2011).

Within contemporary education systems in Scotland and Denmark, inclusion and wellbeing are widely articulated as policy priorities. However, despite these ambitions, neurodivergent young people continue to experience fragmented support, precarious transitions, and unequal opportunities to flourish. My research, as part of my PhD in Education at Stirling University, explores how flourishing is conceptualised, enacted, and constrained for neurodivergent young people as they transition from childhood to adulthood within these two contrasting welfare and education systems.

Adopting a comparative hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, this study explores how neurodivergent young people experience flourishing during the transition to adulthood with differing educational and policy contexts in Scotland and Denmark. Combining a policy enactment perspective with in-depth interviews involving neurodivergent young people, parents, educators, and policymakers, the research examines how policies are interpreted, enacted, and experienced through everyday educational relationships, support structures, and transition pathways.

This approach highlights meaning-making, relational experience, and the ecological conditions through which through which belonging, agency, autonomy, and flourishing emerge or become constrained. My analysis shows that flourishing is rarely experienced as a stable outcome. Instead, it emerges as a fragile, relational, and context-dependent process shaped by emotional safety, recognition, identity affirmation, and access to enabling structures.

Transitions to adulthood function as critical fracture points where policy ambitions frequently exceed implementation capacity. While Denmark’s universalist infrastructure offers more predictable pathways, particularly through statutory post-school options, municipal variation however, creates inequities. Scotland’s rights-based framework provides strong normative commitments, but is undermined by proceduralism, fragmentation, and reliance on parental advocacy.

Based on this analysis, I emphasise flourishing as a relational-capability achievement, rather than an individual trait or wellbeing metric. However, I urge caution against reform that prioritise compliance, diagnosis, or outcomes without addressing relational and structural coherence. I argue that there is a need to reimagine education systems around flourishing as a systemic priority - one grounded in dignity, agency, belonging, and relational continuity particularly during transitions to adulthood.

I look forward to sharing my full thesis upon completion of my Phd soon. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out if you would like to learn more about my research or connect to discuss this work further. You can contact me at jmm10@stir.ac.uk.