Education to social responsibility: Impact on youth maturation, open problems and potential solutions
Manuela Guardiani
Recently the intensification of the social individualism has determined an increase of deviant behaviours among youngsters highlighting the importance of the teaching of prosociality. To this end, a valuable approach is represented by the pedagogy of service learning that combines social service with reflective activities. This approach is widespread in the anglosaxon world and in Latin America but hardly known in Italy. This work is part of a wider project, aimed at monitoring the most important experiences of prosocial education in Italy, investigating the relation between service learning programs and the development of increasing levels of social responsibility. The work also explored how the moral values drive the behaviour of the youth and allowed the collection of a precious feedback and suggestions for the improvement of service learning programs by several conversations with the students and comparing the experiences of Italian and international students.
Keywords
Service learning, prosociality, education to social responsibility.