Education about and for youth activism: A comparative perspective across six countries

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Youth activism, engagement and the development of new civic learning spaces across six countries

Proposal

Education – whether formal, non-formal or informal – has been consistently identified as a key site for cultivating and expressing the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary for youth activism. This said, how education positions youth activism and, in turn, how youth activism positions education, remain complex and vital questions. Extending the focus on youth activism of paper 1, paper 2 focuses more specifically on education about and for youth activism. Drawing on extensive literature reviews across the six countries involved in the project – Australia; Canada; Singapore; Hungary; Lebanon and the United Kingdom – Australia; Canada; Singapore; Hungary; Lebanon and the United Kingdom. This paper will be concerned with education for active citizenship within and across the six participating countries. The paper will address the following research questions:

1. What are the educational benefits and drawbacks of young people’s civic activism principally regarding identity, capacity and efficacy for individual and social benefit from the local to the global?
2. In light of young people’s constructions of civic activism, what educational processes are apt for optimising the educational benefits of young people’s civic activism?

In examining these research questions, we will set out what the existing literature base within the six countries tells us about educating for active citizenship. Central in each case is the tracing of the respective socio-political discourses and contexts which shape how educating for youth engagement and activism is formulated, enacted and experienced in formal, non-formal and informal education. On this basis, the paper will argue that education for youth engagement is officially seen as high priority, but actually has low status in practice. It will also suggest that education for youth engagement and activism is shaped by the structures and systems in which formal, non-formal and informal education operate. In advancing our arguments, we will illustrate trends in educating for active citizenship by drawing in particular on examples from the UK and Singapore.

Authors

• Jasmine B.-Y. Sim, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

• Ian Davies, University of York