London Met Repository

Young people's understanding of European values: enhancing abilities, supporting participation and voice

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Ross, Alistair, Loughran, Tom, Brunold, Andreas, Hartsmar, Nanny, Liljefors Persson, Bodil, Chistolini, Sandra, Dotta, Leanete Thomas, Freires, Thiago, Kõiv, Kristi, Lopes, Juliana Crespo, Pembecioğlu, Nilüfer, Pereira, Fátima and Spinthourakis, Julia Athena (2024) Young people's understanding of European values: enhancing abilities, supporting participation and voice. Project Report. European Commission, Brussels.

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Abstract

This report is prepared as part of the Jean Monnet Network on Citizenship Education in the Context of European Values. It investigates: the knowledge of young people in European countries about civil society, its principles, citizenship, European values and the European Union; and the citizenship experiences and young people’s attitudes to European values and institutions, their willingness to participate in societal life and spread democratic ideas, Europeanism and global responsibility.

Understanding values has always been important. In a time when we are exposed to so many different explanations and commentaries, when social media allow and almost require instantaneous responses, that seem to have to be short, pithy, emphatic. Opinions appear as sharper, less nuanced, insistent. Conspiracy theories can become magnified, imperative and divisive. Young people in particular need to develop the resilience to resist the subversion of values, and have, in some senses, fewer resources and experiences to do so. Yet many of them can do this, and can display depths of understanding and tolerances of diversity.

Presentation of the analysis:
A: The demographic characteristics of the survey population.
This gives a short description of the data set: the countries surveyed, the distribution of ages and gender, the population of the locations, and parental occupations
B: A pattern of rights.
This section provides an overview of how young people referred to values across Europe as a whole. The intensity of discussions is analysed, and the number of overall individual references are given, contrasting these with the number of individual young people who made multiple references to the same value.
C The European values in depth.
The first level of detailed analysis is of the value. Each is introduced in turn, and for each there is
• an overview of the value in the current European context: its source in the Convention and the Charter, and its development and contemporary meaning;
• an analysis of how young people discussed the value –
• differences in different Regions of Europe, and
• differences in the characteristic descriptions, by timing, location, and type of othering (described in statistics and by illustrative quotations of remarks by young people)
• a discussion of the implications of this for pedagogic practice about furthering the understanding of the specific value.
D An analysis of regional and other factors.
E Teaching issues.
We draw together the implications of the analysis for educating young people about understanding these values
F Conclusions and recommendations.

We conclude by summarising our principal conclusions, and making recommendations at teacher/lecturer, school/college, state and European level.

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