Finnish university student activists’ resources in student union activities: A Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective

Abstract

Active citizenship is an important political goal in the Finnish society. In this study, the challenges faced in student activism were studied through twelve student activists' narratives. The activists interviewed in this study were the chairpersons of the Finnish student unions at universities. The study leaned on the Positive Youth Development (PYD) theory. Challenges the interviewees mentioned were categorized into social, functional, emotion, and cognitive challenges and related resources. The positive coping with these challenges was analyzed through the elements of PYD. An especially relevant finding was that the student activists showed the development of active citizenship, which was contrasted as the sixth "C" of PYD, contributions to self, others, and society.

Emerging Evidence of Positive Youth Constructs and Purpose Development: Results From a Qualitative Approach

“…Focusing on specific numerical cut-offs may neglect the important features of a youth’s context. Thus far, researchers have adapted the 5Cs model to Irish (D’Urso, Symonds, & Pace, 2020) Icelandic (Gestsdóttir, Geldhof, Lerner, & Lerner, 2017), Lithuanian (Erentaitė & Raižienė, 2015), and Finnish (Ansala & Uusiautti, 2016) youth with great success. Given the similar Western European demographics and cultural context that the Scottish youth in this study represent, we believe this approach is similarly applicable to other Western democracies with homogeneous populations as long as flexible, qualitative measures are employed.…”