Abstract

The purpose of this article is first to make visible, examine, and illuminate the young generation’s perception of what they learn and how they learn during their visits to youth clubs and similar meeting places; second, through visitors’ own comments, interviews with visitors, and analysis of staff’s diaries, to reflect on and analyze the unconscious learning that might have been visible; and third, to discuss how these particular contexts contribute to learning. The research was conducted using two questionnaires, staff daily notes in diaries, and through interviews with young people visiting youth clubs and similar meeting places. The results of the empirical study show that there is a gap between the youngsters’ perception of what they learn or verbalize with the help of youth leaders and what they actually learn. To conclude, these meeting places can have a compensatory function to schools; a sort of expanded learning to help young people develop their citizenship. However, I shall take a critical view and argue that youth clubs and similar meeting places lack in making visible what young visitors actually can learn from their visits. To make it possible I suggest that the learning situations must be verbalized, discussed and made visible together with the youth leaders and the group of visitors or the individual visitors.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.