Educational volunteering: A new measurement approach

• In Event: Measurement tools development and assessment

Abstract

What is the role of civil society in the provision of public education? This question becomes ever more urgent amidst an educational crisis often overlooked, and in light of new public governance approaches that advance the involvement of civil society actors to attain public goals (Pestoff et al. 2013). However, research on civil society activities within the field of education is only in its early stages, with a predominant focuses on primary and secondary school education (Honingh et al. 2020, Kolleck & Yemeni 2019). Moreover, the pivotal role of individual volunteers, constituting the backbone of many civil society initiatives, has received little attention in scholarly and public debates (Rehnborg 2005).

The paper takes an important next step in quantifying and assessing the characteristics of what we call 'educational volunteers'. Based on original survey data for the German case, conducted in 2023, the paper proposes an innovative measurement approach. To arrive at this new measurement, the paper takes an interdisciplinary perspective, bridging quantitative methods of civil society research with insights from educational research. So far, surveys typically quantify volunteering in terms of distinct societal areas into which respondents categorize their engagement (e.g., sports, culture, social services, education, etc.). For Germany, the representative German Survey on Volunteering indicates that more than 11% of the population volunteer in the area of education, comprised of the two areas "school or nursery” and “out-of-school youth work or adult education” (Simonson et al., 2021). However, from educational research we know that learning processes are not limited to formal educational institution, but are also happing in the way of informal and non-formal education (Overwien, 2020). We base our new measurement on such a notion of education as a life-long process that takes place in various (non-class) settings, involving other learning modes, places and actors. We also expect that, based on such a notion, the actual extent of educational volunteering is much larger than existing measurements suggest and extends to many other fields of civic engagement.

To examine this assumption, we devised a new survey instrument that systematically considers two crucial aspects volunteering, namely the actual activity and the place where the volunteering takes place. Both aspects can inform us to what extent volunteers provide public education. More specifically, respondents had to answer if their volunteering includes one or more out of four specified activities (e.g., promoting skills), and if their volunteering is located at a formal or non-formal educational site. We tested our instrument in a large-scale online survey of 3,000 participants living in Germany. Results show that educational volunteering is more than two times as wide-spread than previous studies suggested, spanning various areas of engagement.

Apart from quantifying the extent of 'educational volunteering', the paper will delve deeper into its specific modes of action, motivational drivers, and political demands, contrasting people involved in educational volunteering with the general population and 'non-educational volunteers'. By doing so, we add important insights into a crucial, yet often overlooked area of civil society.

References

Honingh, M., Bondarouk, E., & Brandsen, T. (2020). Co-production in primary schools: A systematic literature review. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 86(2), 222–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852318769143

Kolleck, N., & Yemini, M. (2019). Understanding third sector participation in public schooling through partnerships, collaborations, alliances and entrepreneurialism. Journal of Educational Administration, 57(4), 318–321. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-07-2019-223

Overwien, B. (2020). Informelles Lernen. In P. Bollweg, J. Buchna, T. Coelen, & H.-U. Otto (Eds.), Handbuch Ganztagsbildung (pp. 231–242). Springer Fachmedien. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-23230-6_18

Pestoff, V., Brandsen, T., & Verschuere, B. (2013). New public governance, the third sector, and co-production. Routledge.

Rehnborg, S. J. (2005). Government Volunteerism in the New Millenium. In J. L. Brudney (Ed.), Emerging areas of volunteering (Vol. 1). Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary.

Simonson, J., Kelle, N., Kausmann, C., Karnick, N., Arriagada, C., Hagen, C., Hameister, N., Huxhold, O., & Tesch-Römer, C. (2021). Volunteering in Germany: Key findings of the Fifth German Survey on Volunteering (FWS 2019).

Authors

• Charlotte Roessler-Prokhorenko, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Center for Civil Society Research

• Jana Priemer, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Center for Civil Society Research