Youth, Social Communities and Educational Challenges
Presenting Author: Larsen, Vibe; Canger, Tekla
Netværk: 05. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Introduction
Youth and education is becoming an increasingly large part of the debate in Danish media as well
as on the political scene. If one wants an acknowledged position in society as well as a job, education is often the means to achieve this goal. Most of the young people in Denmark finish mandatory schooling and continue on to further education and graduate. However, there is still a group of
young people who do not accomplish this satisfactorily, and who are excluded, not only from the
educational system, but also from the job market, and are thereby marginalized in society as
such. This is one of the arguments for an increased societal focus on having a larger part of the
youth get an education; and this need is to be met by focusing on subject knowledge, a differentiated approach to education and by focusing on the individual and its learning abilities. A much
lesser focus has been on the significance of social life, community and on social learning. In this
project we are interested in young people who are on the brink of exclusion, and we wish to investigate their situation by concentrating our research on a broader perspective on the youth in
question.
Our focus is on youth in the last years of mandatory schooling and on youth in a transitional
phase. We are not only interested in investigating young people’s social life because focus has
been on educational questions; we do it because schooling not only is a question of subject matter; it is also a question of being part of a group or a community (Lasgaard 2011). If learning is
seen as a social praxis which takes place in interaction, the sociality not only becomes important
in itself, it is also valued in relation to learning processes. However, social life in school and in
education is more complicated than it appears to be, and the question is, what it means for the
students’ school interest and learning processes if they do not feel a social belonging in school?
(Ratbøll, Lasgaard 2011). We are therefore interested in contributing with a critical approach to
the social life of young people in and outside of school; what are the possibilities for social community in a given educational context, in an after-school context in both formalized after-school
activities and in the local environment? What meaning is attributed to this social life by the youth
themselves? And what are the consequences of their belonging to social community in relation to
further education?
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Our research project as a whole takes its point of departure in an interest in how youth define
social community and how they use social community as a strategy in their educational attachment and school achievements. In the project, we are interested in finding out in which communities the youth in question are included, and which they are delimited from or choose not to be
part of. We are interested in investigating the significance of these communities in relation to
education, and we are interested in understanding how professionals surrounding the youth perceive the communities.
This interest has led to the following questions:
1. Which social networks and communities are the young people in question part of? How are
they spoken of and how are they valued by professionals and by the young people themselves?
2. How do professionals, institutions, pedagogical practices and the surrounding community
support or complicate the social networks and communities of the youth?
3. Which meaning is the communities given by the youth in relation to an understanding of being included or excluded of education and schooling?
State of the Art:
In both national and international research, there has not been a great interest in uncovering the
nature of young people’s social relations in school and its meaning in relation to education. Mathias Lasgaard is concerned with loneliness among youth in Danish upper secondary schools, and
shows through his research that 7-15% of the youth in question for a shorter or longer period of
time are lonely, and that for part of this group, a consequence is a marginalized position in a longterm perspective. These young people are particularly challenged by the fact that both upper
secondary as well as primary and lower secondary are places where social life is prioritized
among the young people themselves. Lasgaard also shows that there is a correlation between
loneliness and poor scholastic results.
In her research, Lise Ingeholt investigates relations and habits of young people in upper secondary school with special emphasis on the notion of participation. She also points out that social life
takes up a lot of energy among the youth, and she points out that in the teachers’ evaluation of
the young people and in their scholastic performance, there is a correlation with their participation in social life (Ingholt 2007) Ditte Dalum Christoffersen concluded in her study of everyday
life in the school that different positions in the classroom connect the social and the academic
level, and it is difficult to separate those levels in studies of the school. On that background she
concludes that school should not be based on didactics alone. This connection between the academic level and the social level allows different positions in the classroom (Christoffersen 2014).
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Caldwell and Wentzel reach the same conclusion in their study “Friendships, peer acceptance and
group membership relation to academic achievement in middle school( ibid 1997). In our research, the focus on social processes between the pupils in the classroom and outside the classroom/school provides us with a focus on one part of the connection. Dorte Marie Søndergaard
also studied the more complex and problematic social processes in school between and concluded that many pupils are aware of not being part of the group or community, and she calls the
phenomenon “fear for social exclusion” also for those who are in a high position in the community or group (Søndergaard 2013)
Theoretical framework
The theoretical framework for the project draws on different orientations – one being the ethnographic approach to understanding practices and positioning, another being a more sociological
approach: Since the problem of inclusion in and exclusion of educational settings is a far more
complex problem, we need to understand it as institutionally framed and therefore not a problem that can be solved or understood merely by focusing on the youth in question, but must be
addressed by looking at the structural conditions in which it is embedded. In that way inclusion
and exclusion must be understood as a dialectic relation between the participants in a given setting and the structural conditions of the setting itself. Furthermore, research shows that precategorization such as race, gender, ethnicity and class will add to the exclusionary mechanisms
in the educational system (Gilliam 2006, Moldenhawer 1999, Mørch 2006).
This paper argues that social processes among youth are important in the discussion of inclusion
and exclusion in education. Lave and Wenger’s concept of situated learning and communities of
practice allow us to choose this focus, because it shows that communities are important as learning processes, and furthermore, that we should draw attention to the context to understand these
processes. We investigate this concept directly as well as indirectly by studying different kinds of
groups, relations and communities in the school. The Danish psychologist Ole Dreier, who draws
his inspiration from Lave and Wenger, investigates the concept of participation and zones of participation to study the social processes and the community. This emphasizes young people as
actors producing the social relations, and through their acting, they create or construct the
community and what they have in common. They are acting as subjects why it is necessary to
study their interactions and how they understand and do relations and positions in the social
processes of community or groups. To investigate these social processes we differentiate between different positions or different way to participate. One is to be in the periphery, another to
be in the center of the group, or thirdly, to be in positions between. The periphery and the center
are of course two outer positions in the social process. The context is the classroom, the education and teacher, the school and the neighborhood.
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When using the concepts of communities, it is important to understand that all young people’s
social lives cannot be understood as communities. The Danish researcher Ingholt differentiates
between groups and communities. The groups are more weak, quick, fleeting and uncertain social relations which change all the time, where the communities refer to more strong relations
which produce a common identity and norms - and need to have something in common to be a
community, for example a history or background which is used in the construction of the relations (Ingholt 2007). Baumann uses the concept of communities in the same way to emphasize
that communities often involve common background, life stories or history, which makes up an
imaginary solidarity and produces strong structures. In opposition to this, Bauman talks about
networks as more weak and fluent, which often characterize the postmodern society (Baumann
2004). To understand young people’s social relations and social practice in this way, allow us to
understand the different meaning of it and through the analysis to look at, why some relations
are more inclusive than others. Or why some are more exclusive than others and what it means
for the relation to the school and the educational system in general.
We are also interested in investigating how social practice and social interactions between different positions and different forms of social relations create social learning or social knowledge.
This in turn can be used in other relations or provide new positions in school as well as in the
transition between lower and upper secondary school or similar levels of youth education. We
are inspired by the concept of social capital (Broady 2001; Putnam 2002). In this context social
capital refers to resources stored in human relations. Social capital works on different spheres
such as the family, the neighborhood, the city and in society as a whole. Broady’s concept is to be
understood as a way of structuring the possibilities of the actors. Putman describes two types of
social capital; the horizontal network and the vertical network, both of which the actor can engage in. The horizontal network can be compared to Baumann’s concept of network or Ingeholt
concept of groups, but is not similar (Ingholt 2007). In the horizontal network, the members are
equal in positions but have different backgrounds, which makes for a diverse group. The relations are not strong but open and inclusive, and the social capital is the information and networking with other people. The vertical network is based on homogenized and strong relations
where loyalty, a common identity, and common norms are valued, and the vertical network is
more exclusive. In detail it depends on the analyses what the content of the social capital is, and
it tells us something about what possibilities the young people have. If you have many connections or relations and participate in many networks, you will have a good and big social capital,
which you can use in different situation and consequently reach an attractive position in the social field. In Putnam’s theory the connections between people is therefore important. (Putnam
2002)
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Research methods
On trying to answer the previous questions, we apply an ethnographic and micro sociologic approach to the project and use different methods as interviews, fieldwork and observations (Atkinson and Hammersley 2007, Wacquant 2002, Ambrosius 2003). In parts of educational research, there is a tendency to operate with educational settings and pedagogical institutions as a
distinct area of investigation. Our interest is to open up that field and try to understand the processes in which inclusion and exclusion as phenomena are constructed, since what goes on within institutional settings influence what goes on outside of institutional settings, and vice-versa
(Sernhede 2011, Willis 1997). The hypothesis then becomes that the youth in question experience inclusion and exclusion in a variety of ways and in a variety of settings; which is why we
need to study the youth in their environment (the ethnographic approach) as well as the mechanisms that apparently add to experiences of inclusion and exclusion (the micro-sociological approach)
The project design falls in three phases: a pre-study, the main study and an intervention involving teachers and other professionals working with youth and schooling. The purpose of the prestudy is diverse, but most important, has been to uncover points of attention. Since our approach
in general is a bottom-up approach; and since we have no interest in reproducing pre-defined
categorization, our wish was to qualify the empirical part of the main study. In the pre-study we
produced data through interviews with young people, teachers and social workers in a limited
local area in the urban. Social mapping was also used to understand how the local places were a
factor for young people’s connections. It becomes clear that social communities are influenced by
a lot of factors and in the main study it is also necessary to study the neighborhood as a context of
places of dangers and attractive places to understand young people’s social communities.
The data of the main study collected so far consists of 4-6 weeks of field work in a graduating
class in a school located on the outskirts of central Copenhagen, in area better known as challenged in relation to unemployment, low or no education. It is an area characterized by a large
population of immigrants and descendants of immigrants from primarily Turkey, Pakistan, Former Yugoslavia and the Middle East. It also consists of interviews with 9 students and 2 interviews with teachers, and furthermore of fieldwork and interviews with social workers and youth
from the same. However, in this presentation, we focus mainly on data collected in the school.
The focus of the main study is on young people and their construction of communities or social
networks in a local area in the urban. The complexity is a part of the study, which can be studied
by choosing a local area instead of only focusing on the school. The data will not only be used to
describe the communities or networks but to understand how social communities are related to
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young people´s understanding of education and their choices in their transition between lower
and upper secondary school.
Preliminary findings:
Throughout our 5 weeks of observation in the school class in question, a couple of things in particular struck us; namely the dynamics within the classroom, the importance of “movement” for
social belonging, and the teachers role in maintaining, supporting or hindering social network
among the youth.
The dynamics within the classroom
The class consists of approximately 25 students, four of whom we never saw during our 5 week
observation study. Out of the remaining 21 students, there were five boys and 16 girls. At a first
glance, it seemed as if four out of the five boys were a pretty tight group – however – after a couple of days, we found out that only three of the boys were actually close, the fourth boy had only
been part of the class a couple of months. The fifth boy kept to himself and was frequently absent
from school. The group of girls was harder to figure out. At first they seemed to be pretty tight as
well, but as the days passed, it became obvious that there was a certain grouping taking place. A
large group of girls kept to themselves, interacted with each other, but not to the same extent
with the other girls. A group of three girls kept to themselves, seemed popular enough, but did
not interact with the large group of girls. Another group of girls – consisting of two girls did not
interact with anyone except themselves, and left the room when the others entered and viceversa. One girl did not interact with anyone, and was absent a great deal of the time, and a group
of 4-5 girls interacted with each other, with the boys and from time to time with the large group
of girls.
These preliminary observations led us to construct some categories of center and periphery. At
the center of the class was the large group of girls, and surrounding them we found several
groups in the periphery. What characterized the center-group, and the reason for naming them as
such, was their ability to influence the culture of the class, the mood, the level of noise and the
ownership of artifacts in the classroom. The following excerpt is from our field notes:
We enter the classroom – loud music is playing – most of the songs are
played till the end. The pupils sit in smaller groups; at the time where most
are present, we count 14 girls and no boys. The girls standing by the computer are singing along and most of the songs are supplied with lyrics that
can be seen on the whiteboard. The girls are singing loudly and are moving
to the music. Other girls are on their phones or on ipad […] I enter during
recess. Today Marianah is not in the class, so Sheena and some other girl
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control the music. They are playing Arabic pop music (observations from
the first week)
As this excerpt shows, the computer and the Internet plays an important role in between lessons.
Not a day went by where the computer was not used to play music during break. What was interesting was, that after a couple of observations, it became clear that not everyone shared in on
choosing music, on singing along, on dancing… and what became even clearer over time, was that
it was the same group of girls who defined what was to take place in the classroom during break.
As the last part of the excerpt shows, one day when one of the girls who used to monopolize the
computer, was not in school, the computer was up for grabs for someone else to define style of
music, and which numbers were to be played… but not having music during break was not an
option – what we observed was that a number of students simply chose not to stay in the classroom during break.
The picture that was gradually painted, was one of a rather large group of girls having the power
to define the culture of the classroom, a rowdy, boisterous and vibrant culture, that at a glance
could seem inclusive, but left little room for students who were less loud. This not only became
clear during breaks, but also during the lessons. The following is another excerpt from our observations. It takes place in a physics lesson with their regular teacher:
11:07 Ewa siger at Salih er så tæt på at få den… han smider en blyant efter
hende – hun smider den tilbage. Læreren forholder sig ikke til det… det
udvikler sig ikke. Der er rigtig meget snak ved bordet med Mousra, Songul
og Ewa…Mousra skriver på Salahs nakke. Ewa sidder på bordet. Milla har
front mod tavlen men følger ikke med. Lærer: hvad betyder det at det er
stabilt? Songul: at der er lige mange elektroner og neutroner. Lærer: nej –
det har jeg sagt nej til tre gange. De griner – de begynder at snakke ved
Songuls bord og Malika taler med. Marjana og Fatima taler også. 11:15:
koncentrationen er lav…ca. 8 elever lader til at lytte med. Læreren siger
shh… med jævne mellemrum – det lader ikke til at have den store effekt.
11.20: Mustafa får lov til at hente sin Ipad – et minut efter forlader Adriana
rummet. 11.22: Songul løber ud af lokalet. Adriana har sat sig over til
Nussas bord. Nussa, Adriana, Mustafa og Salih sidder og pjatter. Adriana
har sin ipad fremme og Salih viser noget til pigerne og Mustafa på sin ipad,
men ikke noget der har med fysik at gøre.
Pigerne ved Songuls bord sidder og er på deres telefoner. Nussa sidder og
griner højt… kaster med ting efter Mustafa og Salih
As is illustrated, the level of concentration is low, but more importantly, there is a lot of noise, a
lot of moving around inside (and outside) of the classroom, the students doing things on their
Ipads not related to the lesson, and a lot of friendly bullying.
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The scope of our methodology was to play interviews up against these observations, which in
turn meant that part of the interview guide dealt with what we had observed. In confronting the
students we interviewed with some of our observations, we found that what we had seen, was in
fact part of the culture and the self-understanding of the majority of the class, but what we also
found, was that not all the students found it particularly enjoyable. One of the girls we interviewed said as follows:
And I just think that it is so noisy and they don’t respect anyone. The other
school was like this: when the teacher said ’be quiet’ we would be all quiet
and then we would do what we had to. So I am not used to the noise. Jonathan can sometimes say: ’be quiet, be quiet and again be quiet’ and he can
keep on asking but they never shut up (interview with girl from one of the
peripheric groups)
Although she is uncomfortable with the level of noise in the classroom, she herself does nothing
to stop it, as the dominant culture of the class it noisy and rowdy. By doing something to change
that, she risks exclusion, which in turn is of no interest to her.
What is also interesting is that the understanding of the class culture and the notion of whether
or not it is a good class environment, to a very large degree is dependent of point of departure;
the narrative on the class culture and the level of feeling like part of the group differs quite a lot
when speaking to the students of the center group and to students from one of the periphery
groups, which is illustrated by the two following quotes from a girl from the centergroup and
from the periphery group respectedly:
I always hung out with Marjana and Fatima – we were this small group.
But now it’s – I think it’s the whole class and not just me – we are more together… in very large groups – I mean; we don’t exclude noone […] I like the
class as a whole because we stick together and don’t exclude noone” (Interview with girl from the center group)
I know it isn’t just me, because sometimes I’ve talked with Milla about it.
Sometimes we just feel that the class hates us. - I don’t know if it’s only us,
it’s like a feeling – but sometimes it’s also the way they look at us – and
sometimes you’re used to them saying ’hi’ and then you go past them and
they completely ignore you […] sometimes you just don’t want to be in that
class because you feel that they hate you – it doesn’t feel nice to be in there
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[…] sometimes they’re really nice to you and the next day they ignore you
(interview with girl for one of the peripheric groups)
These two quotes demonstrate quite a different take on the social environment of the class. If
belonging to the large group that has the power to define the culture of the classroom, the social
environment seems inclusive, and – as the girl puts it – has room for everyone despite behavior
and preferences. The picture painted by the girl from one of the groups on the periphery is a different picture. Her understanding is of a class where insecurity rules – her uncertainty is linked
to never knowing whether or not she is ‘in’ or ‘out’… that in turn makes schooling an insecure
project.
The teachers’ role in the social life of the class
The understanding of the social life of the class – as shown above – is very much dependent on
who one asks, and is – in all its inclusive atmosphere, at times very exclusive. The teachers are
aware of their role in this, but to a certain extent stand helpless in creating an environment
where the groups in the periphery will feel included. This is – in part – due to the very nature of
how school and teaching is perceived in Denmark. The home teacher of the class puts it this way:
”I think that the way I teach to a very high degree can work against the
more quiet pupils… someone is bound to take power; I mean those who talk
a lot, will talk even more in my classes. And those who don’t will think that
it is like recess or something like that. And in that I think lies an important
task; at least that’s the gut feeling that I am carrying around; that exactly
the more introvert girls are those who are lost in a more dialogic approach
to teaching. (Jonathan, teacher)
His understanding is that his mere way of teaching and of allowing for a certain amount of rowdiness is part of the exclusive culture of the class. However, abandoning the dialogical approach
is by no means the answer to this problem according to the teacher. And as the material shows,
teachers with a less dialogic approach, do not either succeed in creating an environment where
the students who are less than fond of the noisy atmosphere feels more at home.
Besides the way of teaching, the teachers do little to understand the dynamics of the classroom;
they acknowledge it, but do not as such act upon this acknowledgement. One example of this is
what is called homeroom lesson, which is organized as a democratic meeting with the students
themselves creating the agenda, acting as chairs and taking notes for further action. One of the
reasons for organizing this lesson in this way, has to do with the ambition of bildung, but observing several homeroom lessons, left us with the same impression – and even somewhat more – of
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the center group having the power to define the content and the atmosphere, leaving the groups
in the periphery in the same position as the did in the other lessons.
One of the actions that their homeroom teacher does take, is the time to listen. One student puts
it as follows:
”For instance, Jonathan, he is like… he talks to… he is like a friend or something. And then for instance, Signe, she gets angry so fast and starts throwing people out […] I’ve talked with him [Jonathan] several times, like for instance if you get in a fight with someone, then we always talk about it afterwards” (boy from the group of boys)
His understanding is that the teacher’s ability to actually listen makes it easier for him to cope
with school. And the students we interviewed answered in unison that the attitude of the homeroom teacher outside of class, was very much appreciated. They felt heard and understood… but
taking that experience onto supporting a more inclusive environment still lacked.
The importance of movement:
In the beginning of the fieldwork it was clear that there was a lot of moving in and out the classroom. It was normal practice that some pupils in the middle of class walked out of the classroom.
Sometimes they just walked out to get some water or to get some fresh air, but other times the
pupil who left the classroom never came back. This was a part of the culture in the class, and the
teachers allowed them to do so for most of the time. Other teachers had another point of view,
and in their lessons, not all the pupils were allowed to leave the room. This was only a part of
what we identify as movements. Other movements were in recess where some pupils from the
class went out to the shop in the neighborhood or went to another classroom to meet some
friends. Some would go see if their brother or sister was all right. What is important to note here,
is that it seems that this movement was a way of constructing social relations and the positions in
the groups and the communities. When you move you can walk with those you prefer to be together with, and you can walk away from those you do not want to be together with. When you
walk out and away from the school in the middle of class, you show that you have the power to
choose if you want to be a part of the class community or not. When you walk, you can go as a
large group, because the movement gives your body a common language and a common acting.
The interesting thing here is therefore who walks and who does not? How do the bodies move
together? Intensely or slow? And with few or many young people in the group? The movement is
not unusual in the higher grades in the Danish school system, and therefore it is a category we
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became aware of in the students’ construction of social relations as network/groups or communities and thereby social capital.
Local community and its value in the understanding of the social processes of the youth in question
The local community plays an important role in relation to school and social belonging (meaning
that the place where the majority of the youth lives, is as important in their understanding of being part of a community/network. The school is a local school and opposite some of the private
schools, a lot of the pupils are from the surrounding neighborhood. “Lottoparken” is one of the
local areas, and is a central part of all narratives from youth who live there – that is where they
find their friends, that is where they feel as part of something, and they think of the school and
the local community as very much linked together in their understanding. This is in spite of their
knowledge of the neighborhood as a low status area. One of the girls tells in the interview that
she was very afraid, when she moved to this particular school, because everyone said that it was
a bad school. In her early school years, her parents had chosen a private school away from the
area, so both the school and the area were ‘dangerous’ from this point of view. Another girl tells
that her mother wants to move, because it is dangerous to be in the neighborhood, and she tells
that her little brother has some problems and have some friends her parents do not prefer. On
the other hand, the youth is very attached to the local community, and it seems that this is where
some of them have their stronger relations.
When asking were they want to live when the grow up and have a family of their own, most of
them want to stay. The local community carries different kinds of meaning in the production of
important social relations, but it also makes the difference between what Putnam call a horizontal and a vertical network, or Bauman’s concepts of communities and network. The local area
seems more to product of a vertical network or community in Baumann’s word, because it allows
the youth to have a common story, and allows them to share the norms and values in a different
way (Baumann 2004). They know each other and know what they have in common. It is different
from the groups or the horizontal network in school, which some of them also are members of,
and it seems to makes a difference between who is included and who is excluded. This seems to
be important if we relate it to the concept of social capital, but it is too early to say anything definite, but it is something we need to be aware of.
Conclusions
Much of our data points towards a further focus on studying social processes and social interaction among the youth in question, in order to acquire knowledge on how the youth feels included
or excluded. However, at this point in our study, it is too early to conclude on the question in
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large, but what we can do is enhance some of the partial conclusions, which appear through our
analyses:
That the positions of center and periphery is important in relation to feeling included or excluded; and that these positions are complex and change over time and dependent on context. What
we have also found in this area is that the class culture has a strong hold on those who define that
culture, as well as on those who do not.
That the teachers role in maintaining and supporting the social life of the class is ambivalent –
that the teachers are aware of their role and function, but at the same time have very few tools in
order to administer that task.
That the movements that take place through what we name ’wanderings’ at first seemed to be
disturbances, but when studying these further, turned out to be central in relation to understanding some the processes that were co-constructing the relations of the youth.
That not only the social network within the school contributed to constructing and maintaining
social relations, but also the surrounding context mattered. In the interviews it became clear that
the local community plays an important role in the social life of the youth. This is where the
young people would meet when not in school, and this would be their point of referral in relation
to friends and social belonging. As with the rest of the analyses, the understanding of the local
community is as complex as the rest of the categories, since this becomes a contested place of
danger, but at the same time the place where their friends are their friends – and therefore a safe
haven.
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