Students’ urgent questions

High school students’ narratives about important questions on disciplinary approaches within humanistics, social sciene and science

Abstract

Several studies show that young people have pessimistic ways of looking at society and the future. This study examines 55 high school students’ texts about societal issues, including their views on the future in relation to the chosen issue. The study takes an interest in what themes are particularly prominent, whether the students have positive or dystopian views of the future and what types of scientific or disciplinary approaches the students use. The texts should include descriptions of the chosen urgent question, an explanation of why it looks the way it does, and a reflection about the future, and have been written anonymously without connection to any particular school subject. Four themes stand out as dominant: (1) human rights, (2) environmental issues, (3) social relations, and (4) medical solutions. 21 texts are optimistic, 17 are dystopian and the remaining 17 are mixed or neutral. There is a certain pattern in the analysis that shows that the disciplinary approaches used in the texts affect whether the students express themselves positively or dystopically. When students are given the opportunity to work on an issue that is important to them, they tend to use a wide range of disciplinary approaches. The texts on human rights were often written with a social science approach, while the environmental issues were largely handled based on a humanistic approach. This gives rise to a discussion on whether the urgent societal issues should be handled more unconditionally, without a strong connection to a given school subject, in order to enable the student to process urgent issues in new, open ways.