Pedagogiek - Volume 40, Issue 3, 2021

Resilient against shame sexting and sextortion. Towards starting points for sharpened education about the risks of sexting among Dutch minors.

Adolescents have been taking suggestive and explicitly sexual pictures of themselves for others since instant cameras were around. But since the introduction of smartphones and social media platforms, the speed of making and sending material and the opportunity for sharing have risen strongly. Sexting comes with risks, though. Although general risk communication has made adolescents more aware of the general risks of sexting, they should become more aware of the fact that sext receivers can make screenshots and might share this material at some point with others, without permission. To gather insight into adolescents’ sexting-related risk awareness, perceptions, and behaviors and how schools can design effective education to make students more resilient against the risks of shame sexting (making and/or spreading sexual images or videos without permission of the featured person) and sextorting (the use of such images and videos as means of coercion to gain money or sexual acts from the victim), we conducted a questionnaire-based study involving a population sample (N = 188) of young people between fifteen and twenty-one years of age at a school for intermediate vocational education in the eastern part of the Netherlands. The students prefer education about the risks of sexting based on authentic victim stories and want to know who to turn to in case of falling victim of shame sexting or sextortion. We raise suggestions on how to realize effective education on the risks of sexting in classrooms and supply possibilities for future research.

Positive youth development outcomes of youth centers. International literature study.

This article is about open access youth centers. Because these centers focus on the age group 14-25, a target group that is in the transition from child to adulthood, they must seek to maximize positive developmental outcomes for youth. After discussing the positive developmental approach, we describe how open access youth centers realize youth development in the world. This article is based on an analysis of Dutch, English, French and German language studies on the outcomes, objectives and functions of youth centers in Europe, USA, Canada and Australia. The positive development outcomes, which I found in the literature, have been brought together in fifteen functions. The aim of this article is to give inspiration for improvement and innovation of youth work practice in Flanders.

Can Participative Action Research reduce the conceptualism-impasse?

The conceptualism-impasse emerges when educational authorities (such as the Education Inspection) offer conceptual knowledge based on ‘objective’ research while expecting that such knowledge consists of knowhow that is ready for use by teachers. Conceptual ‘knowledge that,’ however, is of a different kind than ‘knowhow’. Knowhow is embodied knowledge that cannot be transferred to other people via language. It is developed by deliberate practice. If authorities offer conceptual knowledge while expecting to offer the technical knowhow to make education work, they (inadvertently) impose inadequate requirements on teachers and draw untimely conclusions about teachers’ failure, with all due consequences for the pedagogical climate in schools.

The emergence of this impasse is related to a technical view of education that was established by behaviorism and resulted in an architecture of our education field in which knowledge and action are separated. This article addresses the question whether participative action research (handelingsonderzoek) that connects knowledge and action can prevent this impasse. It concludes that participative action research can contribute a great deal, but the present architecture of our educational field and the pretensions of ‘objective’ research need to be addressed too.

Inclusive social work needs ‘disrupting dialogues’ in daring spaces.

In this contribution we argue that ‘disrupting dialogues’ are necessary to connect the work of parenting and youth professionals with the lifeworld of young people who experience marginalisation and othering in the urban context. In these dialogues the experience and expressive language of youngsters form the starting point to explore different positions and blind spots. The cooperation between Ouder and KindTeams in Amsterdam and the theatre collective Lost Project shows how professionals can work creatively to engage with the lived experiences of youngsters and create empathic connections that boost mutual trust. This example shows how, through the use of theatre, professionals and youngsters can give shape to ‘daring spaces’ in which disrupting dialogues can take place. These daring spaces enable connections across multiple differences and counter the marginalisation of specific experiences and voices.