The impact of education on youth volunteer practices in conditions of the general formalisation of the system: the case of the Sverdlovsk Region

Abstract

The article analyses the features of volunteer activities of educational communities of students (schoolchildren, students of colleges and universities), which are formed under the influence of the educational environment. The purpose of the study is to identify differences in the volunteer practices of young people at different levels of education that affect the volunteer activities of students, to reveal the conditions for its formation and development. The empirical base of the work is the data of a questionnaire survey of young people aged 14-24 years (n = 996, the sample is by quota), including 42% of high school students, 30% of students of educational institutions of secondary vocational education and 28% of university students from 70 municipalities of the Sverdlovsk region. The survey is complemented by data from 9 focus group interviews with students from schools, colleges and universities in Yekaterinburg, N. Tagil and Krasnoturinsk conducted in 2022. The data of sociological research allowed to characterise volunteer practices typical for schoolchildren and students, related to the experience and nature of this activity among young people, as well as to the conditions of the educational environment. The educational community with the most pronounced volunteer subjectivity is university students. They have higher involvement in volunteering, self-identification with the status of a volunteer, self-motivation of volunteering. At the same time, the role of mentors is levelled in universities, the connection between education and volunteer activity is fragmented. Typical volunteer practices of schoolchildren are largely based on the values that are laid down in the framework of informal education. The school experience of volunteering is characterised by a pronounced emotional dominance, fragmentation, fragmentation, and largely unsystematic. It is effective largely due to the personality of the mentor-teacher, involving high school students. Volunteering of college students is characterised by a clearly reduced motivation with the dominant administrative-authoritarian nature of the organisation of volunteering by teachers-organisers and limited variability of projects and areas of volunteer participation. The article shows the dependence of the nature of volunteer practices of young students on the organisational environment of the education system at its different levels. The practical significance of the study is related to the rationale for the need to introduce the “service-learning” technology into the educational programmes of colleges and universities. It will increase the role of mentors in shaping students' volunteer practices and implement volunteer activities in the educational process, thereby influencing the deepening of students' involvement in volunteer projects, expanding the variability of the latter and increasing their attractiveness for young people.