In this article educational challenges and developments are analysed from a youth
studies perspective. Youth research is engaged in understanding the links between
societal change and youth responses with a focus on the relation between social integration
and individualization. The article shows how a new analysis of the relation
between youth, modernization and competence might influence both the general
understanding of youth understanding and educational developmental perspectives.
In modern society, the period of youth is changing from being a transition to a highly
valued period in its own right. In this way, youth life functions as a reserved situation of
fragmented contextualization of modern development. This change questions the traditional
educational perspective and underlines the new challenge of developing
general competence for modern life. In this situation, conversely, young people should
not learn to be adults but to be youth. |