Doświadczanie życia w młodości - problemy, kryzysy i strategie ich rozwiązywania : próba opisu strukturalno-funkcjonalnego modelu życia preferowanego przez młodzież z perspektywy pedagogiki społecznej

The author’s attempt to provide a description of a structural and functional model of life, most popular with young people – a social pedagogy perspective This book attempts to characterize the phenomenon of youth and the way young people experience life. The problems confronting the young generation have been examined from an interdisciplinary perspective, which is characteristic of the social pedagogy approach. The publication aims at analyzing selected elements that are inherent in the process of experiencing life at a young age, and which have the status of self-knowledge, that is to say self-perception, perceiving one’s own problems and crisis phenomena, ways of coping with them, self-creation mechanisms, and developmental consequences arising from the way that young people experience their own life at a peculiar developmental age (“middle” and “late” adolescence). The first chapter interprets human life as a category of experiencing and visualizing; it focuses on identifying the main elements of human existence, as well as selected developmental dilemmas; and provides characteristics of the development process and its fundamental mechanisms. The second chapter deals with the category of young age, which has been regarded as a psycho-social phenomenon; and it outlines the most important problems specific to this period of development. Chapter three investigates the potential sources and kinds of self-creation problems, experienced by young people; and it characterizes young generation on the basis of selected results of the studies conducted in the previous decades. The next chapter contains detailed theoretical and methodological assumptions of the conducted examination. It outlines theoretical assumptions of the model of research on young people’s life, conducted from the perspective of social pedagogy, which is followed by the model of research investigating young people’s experiences and ideas concerning the shape of their own life. Chapter five, which is analytical and interpretative in character, exemplifies the ways young people perceive, visualize and experience themselves and their own life. The exemplification is drawn from the opinions expressed by young generation. In the last chapter the author attempts to present a model description of educational and creative activities, aimed at supporting the development of young people, which are grounded in analytical and empirical analysis, and compliant with the social pedagogy paradigm of activity. The book ends with a general reflection on the issues related to pedagogical activity, examined in the context of the peculiar character of young people’s development, and the specificity of social and cultural conditions in which the process takes place.