Affiliates currently work within six broad domains encompassing most of the human life course. Check them out and consider which ones are relevant to your own research and practice. New domains are always under development.
what we're up to
domains of inquiry
sequences, forecasts, and navigation
Finding patterns in sequences is central to pathways science. We start from the premise that progress at school and work is cumulative: prior accomplishments set conditions for subsequent ones, with meaningful advancement happening through a series of iterative steps.
identity, motivation, and emotion
Human beings are complicated decision-makers. They use their brains to seek and weigh information and consider options, but they also follow their hearts and go with their guts.
curricular structures and grading systems
How requirements and grades are structured can substantially influence how students make progress and make sense of their fitness for particular academic paths.
education and work across the life course
Relationships between school, work, and the life course are in flux. Twentieth-century models of human-capital development imagined that people would receive virtually all formal education and training in the first twenty years of their lives; spend the next thirty in a full-time career (whether paid or unpaid); then move into retirement. Such models are no longer tenable — if indeed they ever were.
evaluation and admissions
Many of the most important decisions influencing pathways at school and work are made by third parties.
responsible use
an approach to data utilization that balances concerns about assent, equity and privacy with the commitment to use data to improve systems and the lives they serve.