• Journal of School Social Work
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• v.43
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• pp.49-79
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences on the school life and career choice of youths who aged out from institutional care. For the purpose, we conducted two sessions of in-depth interviews for each of eight youths We analyzed youth descriptions by utilizing Giorgi's phenomenological approach for qualitative research. For this, firstly, we separated meaning units from the youths' descriptions and drew three categories and eight sub-categories from the meaning units. The three categories were 'What I learned at school is shame', 'I learned how to live in school', and 'The graduation of high school as a good student is a condition for safe escape from the institution. The study participants became aware of the negative social perceptions toward institution children in their school lifes. The participants have commonly shared their experiences of being hurt by the perceptions. However, they have learned how to protect themselves and adapted to school life. Additionally, they took advantage of the public benefits and cares in career choice by adapting to the controls of institutions for successful aging out. Based on the findings, we suggest practice and policy implications for youths in institutional care.