RESEARCHING YOUTH PERSPECTIVES – GROUP DISCUSSIONS IN NON-FORMAL DIGITISED EDUCATIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

Abstract

In striving for equity, it is key to understand enabling and impeding factors of educational and digital participation of (marginalised) youth. Even though formal education is often focused on in the discussion on educational inequalities, non-formal and informal education need to be further considered, especially with regard to digitalised societies (Jeong et al. 2018; Spanhel 2020). Applying a broad understanding of education as a transformation of self-world-relations (Jörissen/Marotzki 2009), non-formal educational arrangements that revolve around digital media activities potentially contribute to educational and digital equity among youth by enabling processes of learning and experiences of self-efficacy. Therefore, this paper focuses on investigating the accessibility of educational participation from a marginalised youth perspective: Do non-formal digitised educational arrangements recognise (marginalised) youth realities? Our research aims at identifying conditions that enable resp. limit participation of (marginalised) youth in relation to their orientations within two non-formal educational institutions that specialise in digital media activities. Group Discussions are implemented with youth who take part in the researched educational arrangements and with youth who belong to the potential target group but do not participate. In Group Discussions, depictions and narrations are unfolded by the participants. Analysing Group Discussions with the Documentary Method allows for the reconstruction of collective patterns of orientations that influence everyday practice (Bohnsack 2010). Based on data extracts presented at AoIR 2024, conditions of participation in non-formal digitised educational arrangements from a (marginalised) youth perspective will be discussed.