Author: Eeva Sinisalo-Juha

In this blog, I reflect on what youth workers thought about their potential as global educators, based on my doctoral thesis. The title of my dissertation is Youth Worker as Human Rights Educator.

A professional youth worker is seen as an educator. On the European level youth work has a strong connection with human rights education. Human rights education, on the other hand, is seen in this context as an umbrella concept under which, among other things, global education is placed. The hierarchy of concepts is defined differently depending on the point of views from which the issue is examined. In any case, both global education and human rights education are particularly relevant in the time period we live in now.

What does global education mean for youth workers?

There were three case studies in my thesis and this blog is about one of them. It is based on a 15 ECTS course on human rights education for youth workers.  The aim was to get trainers for human rights education for youth work in different parts of Finland. Data used in this article was collected among youth workers participating in training on human rights education. Participants were for example, asked about the relevance of human rights education themes, such as global education, in a Webropol survey before and after the training. Additionally, interviews were carried out which addressed the importance of these different themes in the everyday lives of youth workers.  What were their views regarding, for example, global education?

The answers revealed the significant variance between participants’ understandings concerning global education. One of the main findings was that global education as a word alone seems to be challenging. “Global” is describing something big and intangible, too far from one’s own opportunities to make a difference. The impact of global education was even more difficult to define. What does it aim to achieve and who would be the target audience?

In the Webropol survey, participants’ average score for the relevance of global education in youth work was 7.2 out of a maximum score of 10, before the training, and 8.3 prior to completing the training. Comparatively, participants’ scores concerning values and morals in education was 8.9 before the training and 9.3 prior to completing the training for values and morals education. Global education received the lowest scores both times. The number of respondents decreased because some youth workers had to drop out of training.

	Before training 2016 (n=18) Average	After training 2017 (n=15) Average
Education in values and morals	8,9	9,3
Education for peace	8,2	8,9
Education for sustainable development	7,9	8,7
Education towards democratic citizenship	7,7	8,6
Global education	7,2	8,3

Table 1. Some of the youth workers’ responses on the relevance of different human rights education themes for them in their work, on a scale of 1-10.

By interviewing the participants, I wanted to better understand what these youth workers thought about global education and why it was not considered more important. The interviews revealed that for some youth workers global education was relevant and for others it seemed completely alien. Global education was described as an almost all-encompassing umbrella concept that is challenging to approach in everyday work. It was perceived as too broad and vague in meaning, and difficult to manage.

“And then the global education, the thing that makes that number so low, I wonder if my own response to it has probably been like that. That what happens in the global world somehow doesn’t touch me so much or it’s so far away or it feels like I can’t influence it, by means of youth work.”

“Global…education, is a bit of a new term, and I think that in youth work maybe we haven’t defined what we want to put inside it, or when we use the word global education, what we mean by it.”

On the other hand, global education was seen by some participants as the basis of everything and also as the starting point for human rights education. In particular, it should also be mentioned that in one city there was an explicit global education team led by one of the youth workers who participated in the training.

“Our task is precisely this kind of global education. That’s precisely what removes racism and this all. It would work well, as this particular area, specifically against this kind of hate speech and racism and discrimination and other things. …and likewise, this education for democratic citizenship. They are the same grounds for starting to talk about human rights at all.”

“We have a global education team in youth services. [Laughter] And I’m leading that team, and we’ve got… We’ve got the idea there, the big idea that you are, is that every child and young person learns to understand the effects of their own actions, regionally and [in the city] and in Finland and worldwide. Both to other people and to the environment, and it kind of came from there, that global education is the issue for us, or a pretty big thing, and it holds a lot of things in it.”

The above quotes from the interviews reveal how different ideas about global education were raised by the youth workers.

Global education and youth work — any common future?

The main challenge for global education seems to be the understanding about the word itself. The word “global” sounds somehow too big to deal with. Conversely, those youth workers who recognized the term “global” consider global education as an inherent aspect of their work.

As a representative of higher education in youth work, I find the situation concerning. Global education does not seem to be adequately addressed in the youth work curriculum. As mentioned previously, it was a conceptually challenging term for many participants.

On the other hand, it is precisely for these reasons that the role of global education in youth work can perhaps easily be strengthened. It already has its own natural place in the everyday life of youth work. If we open up the meaning of the word in training and reflect on it, more and more youth workers will see its significance and use it in their everyday work. Consequently, global education’s place in youth work will hopefully therefore continue to grow and strengthen.

Sinisalo-Juha, Eeva (2024) Nuorisotyöntekijä ihmisoikeuskasvattajana. Helsinki: Nuorisotutkimusverkosto/Nuorisotutkimusseura, julkaisuja 247, Tiede.

Eeva Sinisalo-Juha is D.Soc.Sc and a vocational teacher. She is working as a senior lecturer at Humak University of Applied Sciences in the field of Community Education. Her interests are in youth work and human rights education.