UPdate – New approaches to civic education in youth work

Background The rise of nationalism, attacks on migrants and refugees or propaganda and violent xenophobia have been a growing issue for years. As a result national and European political stakeholders had called upon the youth sector, in cooperation with the education and other relevant sectors and actors to take joint action for strengthening democratic civic education at member state and European level. Furthermore, the Covid pandemic has shown that the erosion of the rule of law and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has reached a level that puts not only the European project as such into question: Shrinking spaces for civil society and youth work have become a real and existing danger. Experts from the European youth field had therefore called out for a qualitative leap in the direction of a more critical, democratic, emancipatory and empowering pedagogical youth work practice for young people to become "change makers", agents of social and societal change. This is where the idea of the UPdate project was born. Objectives The UPdate partner consortium thought that the time was more than ripe for daring to make a substantive breakthrough in (European) youth work and training for (European) youth work that puts democracy into the focus and into practice. The project aimed at making a practice-relevant contribution to "best practice" in the context of European critical youth citizenship education and to enhance the quality of youth work through developing and implementing new approaches to civic education in current initial and further training curricula training activities for youth workers and youth leaders. The project reached out to the following objectives: - Advocating for the use of critical emancipatory pedagogy in youth work to promote critical youth citizenship, - Supporting the capacity building of youth workers and youth leaders regarding critical youth citizenship education, - Promoting innovation through developing and testing an integrated approach of critical youth citizenship education (blended learning) Implementation At first, the consortium conducted an in-depth analysis (literature review and an online survey with young people, youth workers, trainers and organisations) about civic education in the youth sector and existing civic education concepts in initial and further training curricula of youth workers and youth leaders in Germany, France and Tunisia. Recent publications and initiatives by stakeholders from the European youth field as well as national discourses, publications and projects were considered for the analysis. When assessing the needs of youth workers, trainers, organisations and young people in Tunisia, France and Germany, it became more than obvious that young people want to be taken seriously as citizens and be able to contribute to social and societal change. The analysis also revealed that many youth workers don’t feel comfortable or competent to tackle “hot topics” or controversies within their work with young people. Additionaly, they often show great difficulties to acknowledge the political dimension of youth work. Based on this analysis the consortium developed an innovative blended learning training curriculum for trainers/educators of youth workers and youth leaders on critical youth citizenship education. Achievements The curriculum includes four thematic modules which were tested by trainers/educators as well as students/trainees of youth work and youth workers in existing initial and further training curricula of youth workers and youth leaders in Germany, France and Tunisia and resulted into an educational training guide. The guide contains the following four thematic modules: Modul 1: Youth worker: Position, role and attitude Modul 2: Youth work and citizenship education Modul 3: Digital citizenship education Modul 4: Young citizens’ projects The modules offer competence-based training elements that embrace knowledge as well as skills and attitudes. Each module is designed in a blended learning format that is flexible and can be fully or partially implemented by any interested trainer/educator in initial and further training activities of youth workers and youth leaders. The offline activities are described in the guide, the online exercises are accessible via a link/QR Code that is integrated in the guide. The guide is available in Arabic, French and German language.