When it comes to hard to solve problems, the significance of situational knowledge construction and network coordination must not be underrated. Professional deliberation is directed toward understanding, acting and analysis. We need smart and flexible ways to direct systems information from practice to network reflection, and to guide results from network consultation to practice. This article presents a case study proposal, as follow-up to a recent dissertation about online simulation gaming for youth care network exchange (Van Haaster, 2014).
Leadership development concerns a complex subject because it pertains an extensive number of combinations of features of people, purposes and contexts. Much research has been conducted on the development of adult leaders, but little is known about youth sharing the leadership in the context of playing sport, while the ability to choose the right leader is crucial for being successful. Youth leadership development should not only focus on building the capacity of individuals but emphasise the collective, a shared leadership approach, taken the relational network of influence into account. A 5 P’s framework (precondition, person, process, position and purpose) is used to analyse the shared leadership capacity in elite youth team sport. Shared leadership development requires a combined leadership approach whereas youth teams in sport can choose between an individual, distributed or shared leadership approach at which leader - and follower identities are claimed and granted to achieve common purposes.
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The online environment, where the boundaries between the domains of home, school, work, and leisure are blurred, poses new challenges for youth work practice. Due to limited research on this subject matter, the theoretical underpinnings of the online youth work practice are constrained. The fulfilment of youth work’s aims online, the position it can take in the online context, and its relation to its partners in the online lifeworld need a theoretical base. This paper seeks to analyse the role of youth work in the online lifeworld according to adolescents and youth work’s partners. The research was conducted in the Netherlands in collaboration with 14 youth work organisations. A qualitative research design was used: group conversations with young people and semi-structured interviews with youth work’s partners (i.e., parents, schools, informal networks, neighbourhood support teams, police, and municipal officials). The findings indicate that youth work in the online lifeworld, according to the respondents, is part of the general youth work practice, with a primary role of addressing the developmental needs of young people and creating new developmental opportunities. This role is expected to be fulfilled by engaging and connecting with young people in the online lifeworld and providing them instrumental, informational, socioemotional, and cognitive support. To do so, according to the partners, youth workers can make use of their vantage position in the online relationship with adolescents in order to access online information relevant for support and prudent prevention aimed at adolescents’ development. This vantage position may potentially encourage a collaboration between young people and partners, and between the online and offline youth work practice.
Energy transition is key to achieving a sustainable future. In this transition, an often neglected pillar is raising awareness and educating youth on the benefits, complexities, and urgency of renewable energy supply and energy efficiency. The Master Energy for Society, and particularly the course “Society in Transition”, aims at providing a first overview on the urgency and complexities of the energy transition. However, educating on the energy transition brings challenges: it is a complex topic to understand for students, especially when they have diverse backgrounds. In the last years we have seen a growing interest in the use of gamification approaches in higher institutions. While most practices have been related to digital gaming approaches, there is a new trend: escape rooms. The intended output and proposed innovation is therefore the development and application of an escape room on energy transition to increase knowledge and raise motivation among our students by addressing both hard and soft skills in an innovative and original way. This project is interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary and transdisciplinary due to the complexity of the topic; it consists of three different stages, including evaluation, and requires the involvement of students and colleagues from the master program. We are confident that this proposed innovation can lead to an improvement, based on relevant literature and previous experiences in other institutions, and has the potential to be successfully implemented in other higher education institutions in The Netherlands.
The latest IPCC Report (2022) provided by the UN shows us that, to guarantee a safe future for upcoming generations, we must change how we lead our lives on several levels. However, the increasing urgency to act and behave in a way that is not damaging the climate is bringing many psychological concerns to young generations. Worldwide reports are demonstrating how the issue of eco-anxiety is increasing daily, and how young people are feeling more hopeless than ever. Climate change has become a climate crisis, and individuals are experiencing pressure and fear incessantly (Marks et al., 2021). We, as Climate Streamers, have often found ourselves in this situation as well, but rather than freezing, we decided to take this challenge and think of solutions. Therefore, with the support of Breda University of Applied Sciences, the Performatory community, the BUas Startup Support Team, and outside mentors, we created Climate Streamers Foundation: a new youth-led non-profit organisation and a movement working towards a more inclusive and less polarised climate action. By working with leisure elements and a positive and appreciative approach, we want to give back hope, voice and power to the youth and inspire each other genuinely and sustainably. The purpose of this application is to allow us to elaborate a feasibility study concerning our MVP (minimum viable product), the card game, and boost the overall concept. We intend to implement the researched data to improve the design and sales management. The card game aims to stimulate appreciative conversations by giving space to players to express their opinions and personal stories and it is designed so everyone can play it, regardless of background and knowledge. After giving 200 games in production, we launched the card game in July 2022.
We live in a time of radical changes in Europe. The climate crisis, the war in Ukraine, energy crisis, the pandemic, increasedprice levels and interest rates, digitalization, robotization, reduced birth rates, an aging population, migration, a decliningdemocracy index and increasing friction level between continents and powerful states makes us uncertain about tomorrow.Deglobalization, shorter production lines, changed export models, bloc formations and sovereignty might be results of someof the large challenges we see today. We see tendencies towards increasing poverty and a declining middle class. It isperhaps more important than ever in recent times to show optimism on behalf of young people and future generations.European cooperation and the link between the right skills for the right future seems to be more actual and important thanever. A report from McKinsey Global Institute (2017) about future work life, competence development and digitalization,shows that approximately 50 % of todays jobs can disappear in the nearest future caused digitalization, robotization and AI.MGI’s in-dept report have covered more than 20 countries and 30 industries (mckinsey.com). We have also a commonEuropean challenge reagarding too many youth outside the working life. The NEET index (Not in Employment, Education orTraining) was 14 % totally for the EU countries, 9.6 % for Germany, 6.3 % for Netherlands and also 6.3 % for Norway in2021 (ssb.no).This is a challenge we have to solve as we need to increase the work participation as welfare costs willincrease as a consequence of more immigration and several older people.
