Overview
This is a European Commission Jean Monet Network Project (2020-24), established to report on the extent to which young people across Europe understood the ‘European values’ of the Council of Europe and the European Community.
Members of the University involved in the Network Project were Alistair Ross (this part), Rossana Perez-del-aguila (Research Student Training) and Ifeanyi Nwachukwu (PhD student).
We were involved in leading the research working group, with members drawn from colleagues in universities in Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy Portugal, Turkey and the UK, (and initially Latvia and Ukraine). The group was chaired by Alistair Ross of GDIRC. We identified values that young people (10 to 20) discussed, in which contexts, and analysed how they described and used these. A substantial report is in the final stages of being published later in 2024.
Work based on this is expected to continue, and Centre members are welcome to become involved in this.
More information
Nearly all the states in Europe (the exceptions are Belarus and Russia) are members of the Council of Europe (CoE), which is built on its binding Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom (1950, with frequent updates since), and established a European Commission for Democracy through Law (The Venice Commission) in 1990 that advises member states on how to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The European Union enacted its (broadly similar) Fundamental Charter of European Rights in 2009. Both documents are legally binding, which makes them distinctive and ‘European’, but otherwise, many of these values are found elsewhere in various states and groups, and many pre-date these codifications in 1950/2009 by the CoE and the EU.
There has been widespread concern about the extent to which all citizens of the member states understand these values, how they are upheld through law, and particularly how young people come to understand the nature of these values and support them. The Council of Europe is in the process (2024-5) of establishing a European Space of Citizenship Education.
This project was asked by the European Commission (EC) to map the extent of young people’s knowledge and understanding of these values.
Undertaking new fieldwork in 2020-2 was impractical in the COVID-19 situation and its educational aftermath, so we used an existing dataset of transcripts of 324 transcripts of hour-long deliberative discussions that had been assembled by Alistair Ross (GDIRC member) in a study of how 10 – 20 year-olds in 29 European States identified themselves with a country/ies, Europe, globally, etc. The intention was not to prompt or lead them but to encourage them into a discussion that allowed the observation of these concepts being socially constructed between themselves (rather than with the researcher). Discussions, held between 2010 and 2016, involved 1,998 young people in 29 different European countries. In these discussions, they frequently referred to values that supported (or otherwise) their identification with their own countries and Europe. This data was qualitatively analysed and reported on.
The frequency that they referred to values made it a very useful dataset to analyse, particularly because references were completely unprompted, making this relatively unique in analyses of values. The working group categorised all mentions of values (over 5,300 times, by 82% of the sample. We noted their attitude to each value (positive, negative or ambivalent), the context in which it was raised (as an example, referenced also to time period, location, etc).
We have produced a detailed analysis, which shows how young people illustrate their values by often drawing on recent events (within just the preceding two or three years), often criticising when they though rights and values were not being upheld. They generally operated on a basis of ‘fairness’. The dates over which the data was gathered were in one sense outdated, but in a more significant respect showed how discussion of values were rooted in current and very recent events: for example, the predominant context in 2015-6 discussions was the Syrian migration movement: had the study been made when we started our work in 2020 it would almost certainly have been the Covid pandemic, and if we had started in 2022 (when our initial coding was completed) it would have been the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and if it was done in 2023/4 it would have been the situation in Gaza.
The Rule of Law seems a particularly misunderstood value. Most values are seen very positively: but ‘Respect for other cultures’ had 12.6% seeing this negatively, and a further 8.6% ambivalent. The most frequently mentioned values were Solidarity and Democracy, least frequently Social Inclusion and the Rule of Law.
Our Report also includes a description of the various ‘European Values in their current context, and pedagogical suggestions of activities that might be useful in schools.
We hope that our findings and suggestions will be useful to the Council of Europe’s forthcoming proposed Convention for a European Space of Citizenship Education, and are in discussion with the Head of Education for the Council of Europe about this. We also hope to be able to inform the proposed curriculum review for English schools after the next General Election.
Rossana Perez-del-aguilla has been part of the project working on the Training of Doctoral Research Students in the Area.
Alistair Ross was chair of the Working Group for Research into Young People’s Understanding of European Values.