In 2016 the government of Austria implemented the strategy “Education until 18” by law, which states that education and training are obligatory for young people until the age of 18. This meant extending already existing offers for young people who are not in education nor training in order to create a support network for them. Yet teachers report that especially those young people who are most in need of help often do not participate in supporting offers.
Why Citizen Social Science for Youth Employment in Vienna?
Although the overall aim of “Education until 18” is to include all young people in preparatory measures or on formal education, many young people fall outside this system. The measures implemented under the umbrella of “Education until 18” aim to minimize these inequalities. Still, young people who are facing multifaceted problems, in particular, tend to quit measures as they are perceived as being too restrictive or demanding. Thus, there’s a need to involve young people affected by “Education until 18” in the conceptualization and improvement of these measures, with the aim of developing offers that are adapted to their needs and circumstances.
How will it happen?
As CoAct, we plan to perform almost all steps of the research process together with selected early school leavers. In doing so, we put them at the center of the research process in order to understand their point of view, their interests, and needs for training and social policy measures. This means that the concrete research questions, the choice of method, the gathering of data, the analysis, the presentation, and dissemination of results will be done by the young people with support by adult social scientists.
In order to conduct a whole research process together with young co-researchers, social scientific terms, concepts, and methods need to be adapted to the target group. This includes the development of different methods such as school walks, drawing sketches, box for terms, research museum or content analysis by “stop and go” which are inspired by classic social research as well as classroom training methods.
https://coactproject.univie.ac.at/
Actions since January, 2020?
Attending the WAFF Conference on ‘Difficulties (with and for young people)’
Attending the WAFF Conference in January 2020 was important to become familiar with recent developments in the field of “Education up to18” as well as connecting with relevant stakeholders.
Cooperation with the Ministry of Social Affairs Service
February, 2020. A brochure with essential information about the project on a local level, namely the participatory research project with…
Preparation for Knowledge Coalition building
April – July, 2020. In this process, we did research on the field of the “Education up to 18”, introduced…
Internal session on informed consent and simplicity
In this session, members of the Consortium reflected and discussed Informed Consent and simplicity in order to make Informed Consent procedures more accessible for Co-Researchers.
Launching our homepage
We launched the homepage for the Viennese R&I Action. It provides information on the project in German and is relevant…
Internal session on re-writing informed consent
This collaborative work within the Consortium aimed at re-writing passages of the Informed Consent forms in Plain Language.
Preparatory conversations with members of the Knowledge Coalition
July – December, 2020. In order to get familiar with the insights and experiences of stakeholders in the field of…
Participation of Knowledge Coalition
September, 2020. To ensure dynamic participation of the Knowledge Coalition, an online form was set up on the homepage. People…
Dissemination
„Reaching the hard to reach? Reflexionen und Strategien zur Einbindung von Co-Forschenden, die als schwer erreichbar gelten“, workshop held at…
Dissemination
Presentation “Citizen Social Science. The example of participatory research with young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)” in…
Preparation of materials for the Co-Creation
October, 2020. We prepared visual materials to make information accessible to the participants. The following posters (in German) were discussed…
Internal sessions to prepare Co-Creation process
2 – 6 October, 2020. Preparatory work for first Co-Creation included discussions on Participatory Action Research and planning the one-week…
Launching our Instagram account
We use Instagram as a medium to reach not only young people, but also youth and social workers and youth organizations….
First informal meeting with the first group of young people
In this informal meeting we got to know each other and introduced the project as well as the topic of…
Dissemination
Participation at the Citizen Science SDG Conference with the following workshop: “Participatory approach centering life-world experiences”, facilitated by Mariam Malik…
Second informal meeting with the first group of young people
In this online meeting we continued to talk about the topic of #MyChallenge and gathered insights in topics that were…
Pilot study: first Co-Creation process with the young people
2 – 6 November, 2020. In this Co-Creation sessions, we did research with young people attending measures of the Education…
Internal sessions on the evaluation of the first Co-Creation phase
17 – 19 November, 2020. The team reflected on the process of the first Co-Creation, at some point also with…
Final Version of the Knowledge Coalition Report
As the other R&I Actions, we completed the Knowledge Coaliton Report in which we mapped the local context of the…
Invitation for first Knowledge Coalition meeting
In December, we sent out the invitations for a first meeting of the Knowledge Coalition, which was scheduled for January…
Internal session on Informed Consent in Co-Creation process
The aim of the internal online session was to enhance the collaboration between the R&I Actions and reflect on Informed…
Knowledge Coalition
In January we organised the kick-off event for the members of our Knowledge Coalition. A broad group of people including…
Presentation
Since the research activities in Vienna were influenced by Covid-19 and accordingly the restrictions placed upon the educational sector we…
1st Trainer-Only Meeting (KC)
The trainers of educational measures for unemployed youth brought to our attention that there is a lack of opportunities for…
Co-creation sessions
6th of April / 20th of April / 26th of May Since young people in E&T up to 18 measures…
2nd Trainer-Only Meeting (KC)
What challenges do trainers and coaches working with young people in E&T up to 18 measures face? How can we…
Webinar Digital Youth Work
To react to the current circumstances affecting youth researchers and youth workers alike, we organised a Webinar with Juha Kiviniemi…
Co-Creation online research with young people
11th of May and 18th of May Together with 7 young people we started a two-day exploratory online co-research session…
3rd KC-Trainer-Only meeting
The 3rd trainer-only meeting provided a platform for communicating recent research activities done with young people as well as gave…
Kick-Off meeting Participatory Evaluation Event
As a result of our cooperation with Knowledge Coalition members a need was detected to organise an event specifically for…
2nd Knowledge Coalition Event
The Knowledge Coalition event updated the KC members on the activities of the project.
Publication Launch
As part of our activities with all members of CoAct we intensely discussed how to ethically implement Informed Consent in…
Beta Version of the Inclusive Toolbox for Citizen Social Science
In the last months we created a first version of the toolbox that allows young people to research topics around…
Co-Research with young people
16.-19th August – Our 2nd research week with young people in Education and Training up to 18 measures took place!…
4th KC-Trainer-Only meeting
The 4th trainer-only meeting corona measures taken within institutions was still a topic but mainly the issue of too little…
Co-Research with young people
27.09. – 01.10. – Our 3rd research week with young people took place in September. This time the young people…
Co-Research with young people
11.10.-18.10.2021 – In the 4th research week with young co-researchers of an Education and Training up to 18 institution, the…
5th KC-Trainer-Only meeting
The 5th KC-Trainer-Only meeting revolved around the upcoming events in 2022. 1) the Roundtables with policymakers and other stakeholders and…
‘Actionbound: Train the Trainers’
Before releasing the Actionbound we organized a workshop for practitioners working directly with young people to introduce the tool. To…
Release Actionbound “Action research on Education and Work” (in German)
After implementing the feedback given by young people in educational measures we officially released the Actionbound “Actionrsearch on Education and…
Report on Informed Consent Procedure Requirements and Challenges
In December we submitted the deliverable D2.3 on Informed Consent. The report connects theories on informed consent with practical experiences…
3 Roundtables with young people and policy stakeholders
In January, three roundtables on the central topics of the co-research were organised, bringing together young people in employment measures…
Special Event “On your marks, get set…join in! Let’s see what you want to change!”
In February, around 80 young people and their trainers participated in a special event about the participatory evaluation of the…
KC Trainer only meeting
The final KC meeting for Trainers of “E&T up to 18” measures took place. In cooperation with the ZSI the…
Co-Development of the Board Game FAB! of the Inclusive Toolbox
12 young people participated in the development of the board game FAB! and gave valuable feedback on its content and…
D4.3 Inclusive Toolbox for Citizen Social Science
https://zenodo.org/record/7418787#.Y77LauKZMUo
KC Meeting: How to implement the results in the design of E&T up to 18?
The last KC meeting of R&I Action #2 focused on the demands and suggestions developed in the co-research with young…
Release of the German project report “Partizipative Forschung zur AusBildung bis 18”
The report summarises the most important results of the co-research with young people and includes an overview of the Citizen…
Presentation of the results in various E&T up to 18 committees and network meetings
From October to December – The results of the co-research with young people were presented and discussed in three national…
Exhibition
The exhibition showed the results of the co-research with young people in a local library. The exhibition programme included activities…
Project Presentation
At the vernissage of the exhibition, the main results of R&I Action #2 were presented by the project team. To…
Panel Discussion
During the exhibition programme, the team of the University of Vienna organised a panel discussion about the topic “Changing social…
Policy Report
The D4.4 report prepares the key findings of the co-research with young people in E&T up to 18 measures for…
FAB! The Research Game on Education and Employment
FAB! The Research Game on Education and Employment is part of the Inclusive Toolbox for Citizen Social Science and allows…
