Ensuring Comparison between Education Institutions and Youth in Challenging Contexts in 10 European Countries - Methodological Dilemmas, Decisions and Limitations

• In Event: Democracy Health of Educational Institutions and Perspectives of Youth on Democracy and Education in Digital Societies – Insights from 10 EU Countries

Proposal

This paper explores the dilemmas and decisions regarding a research design, methodology and analytical frameworks in the Horizon Europe research and innovation project Critical ChangeLab (Democracy Meets Arts: Critical Change Labs for Building Democratic Cultures through Creative and Narrative Practices) which is being carried in 10 EU countries – Austria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands. Project’s research phase comparatively explored democratic culture of European educational institutions (quantitative approach) and perspectives of youth on democracy and education in digital societies (qualitative approach). Project was carried as a participative endeavour with different partners collaborating in all research phases. In an extremely complex EU supranational context, comparative research lens, as a core element of the project from its outset, demanded a careful consideration in all research stages. In order to ensure comparability in quantitative research segment numerous decisions were made regarding the development and implementation of the sampling design. These will be discussed alongside the dilemmas in the development of the common instrument in 11 different languages. Furthermore, data collection issues that arise in complex comparative research designs are described. The methodological design of the qualitative research segment also enabled the adoption of a comparative perspective, and thereby allowing the examination of similarities and differences across ten case studies in 10 countries. The comparative perspective offered valuable insights into the diversity of perspectives of young people (target community group) living in various challenging contexts (target community locations) and a greater understanding of how variations in contexts and social structures may relate to their experiences, perceptions, and expectations. Here the three-dimensional cube adapted from Bray and Thomas (1995) was developed allowing for an array of possibilities of how to analytically include comparative dimensions to the examinations of the target community group and target community locations. One axis represents the target community location (10 sites) and proposes that the analysis might focus on the similarities and differences across case sites. A second axis describes participant groups (youth, educators, NGOs, government…) as a potential cross-cutting focus for comparative analysis. The third axis identifies various themes that were explored during the interviews with participants (being young, identity, digital society, education, democracy, participation, future perspective). This multidimensional perspective allows for exploration of various segments of the research. For example, a comparative analysis might focus on a single dimension and explore the variations between different locations or participant groups – European South vs. European North. However, the analytical lens might also be oriented toward the exploration of one or more sub-cubes within the whole three-dimensional cube. For instance, one might decide to analyse youth perspectives on participation in educational setting in three locations or to look at the differences between young participants’ and educators’ views on the role of digital technologies related to specific locations. Finally paper ends with a set of limitations to comparisons in large-scale projects such as Critical ChangeLab.

Author

• Boris Jokic, Institute for Social Research in Zagreb (ISRZ)