With whom do young Europeans’ discuss their political identities?

Abstract

This article explores how young Europeans (12–19) describe how they discuss political issues with their friends, their parents, and teachers in their schools, and the ways in which these appears to impact on their political understanding and identities. Based on 324 group discussions with 2000 young people, in 104 locations in 29 different European states, the findings suggest that many young people see parents as the people with whom they most often talk about politics. They describe a range of situations – from intense discussion and support from parents to antagonistic arguments about their parents’ political views. Discussion with teachers was relatively less common, and more often dependant on individual personalities than as part of a pedagogic programme. Instances of citing citizenship education as locations for political discussions were rare. The article discusses the methodology that gathered this data, and suggests that this might contribute to an effective pedagogy to discuss political identities with young people.

Associations Between Global Competence and Right-Leaning Population: Evidence From PISA 2018 and European Social Survey

“…We argued that that 15-year-olds results in the PISA 2018 assessment of global competence may be affected by a given political-ideological context of the country as reflected in the political-ideological views of the society. The findings of the current study do support the research of Ross (2020) stating, that students' political socialisation is happening outside of school. It can therefore be assumed that expedient education on cultural heterogeneity, core values of democracy, empathy, and diversity could help support higher students' global competence.…”

“…Such educational goals as social justice, intercultural inclusion, integration and active democratic citizenship might be the ones who are overlooked. As described by Ross (2020) who was studying to what extent do the schools contribute to the formation of students' political selves -the majority of students recognize that their teachers are reluctant to talk about political issues in the classroom. The author highlights the need for reflexive, critical and in-depth look at the education per se.…”

“…Nevertheless, we identified a few studies that did focus on politics per se and students' competencies. Ross (2020) studied and described how and where do students get their political influences from. The research was based on 324 group discussions with 2000 young people, in 104 locations in 29 different European states and concluded that young Europeans see parents, not teachers, as the people with whom they most often talk about politics (Ross, 2020).…”

Lowering the voting age to 16: Young people making a case for political education in fostering voting competencies

“…Echoing this question, the above-mentioned study by Hill et al (2017) reports that one-quarter of students never discuss or debate politics or political issues in school. More recently, in this regard, the study by Ross (2020), involving 324 group discussions with 2000 young people from 29 European countries, also points out that political discussions were not a regular practice in schools; this resonates with the study of Huebner (2021) that shows a broad consensus among the young people interviewed that schools were not doing enough to prepare them for political participation. Furthermore, there is also research indicating that school textbooks neglect the discussion of politically controversial subjects (Piedade et al, 2018), which further reinforces the perception that school lacks the ability to promote young people's political reasoning.…”

Young People Developing Their Identity Perception and Values: How Can School Support Such a Process by Bringing in Controversial Issues?

“…The fieldwork was conducted in two phases: the first phase (2010-2012) covered countries that joined the European Union after 2004, while the second phase (2014-2016) included additional countries. At least two locations were visited in each country [12].…”