Youth, Social Communities and Educational Challenges

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.