The PhD Defence in Educational Sciences of candidate,  Carla Manuela Cardoso will take place at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto (FPCEUP) on 13 september  2022, at 2.30PM. The thesis entitled  ‘Youth Cultures and Participation in Catholic Youth Groups; experiences, trajectories and formation processes’was developed under the supervision of Sofia Marques Associate professor, FPCEUP andTeresa Medina, Assistant Professor at FPCEUP, both members of CIIE

 

The session is open to the public.

Evaluation Pannel:

Chair: Isabel Menezes Full Professor,  FPCEUP

Members:

Elizabeth Macedo, Professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Vitor Ferreira, Assistant Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.

Alfredo Teixeira, Associate Professor at the Portuguese Catholic University.

Helena Vilaça, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto.

Elisabete Ferreira, Assistant Professor at FPCEUP

Teresa Medina, Assistant Professor at FPCEUP

ABSTRACT:

This thesis focuses on the experience of participation in groups of Catholic youth and seeks to understand its implications from the perspective of Catholic religious youth cultures and the educational processes that result from participation. It takes as its starting point a perspective of education as a socialization process that takes place throughout life in the various contexts in which individuals are embedded, and which gives originality to each individual's life. As a result, youth cultures and different ways of being young are understood as the result of educational processes that influence each other in a dialectical logic. To explore the formative and cultural dimensions of youth, we developed a mixed-methods study using young people participating in the groups, their animators, and diocesan and national youth ministry leaders as interlocutors. Participant observation was conducted in the national youth ministry team, two surveys were conducted (one with youth groups and the other with young people participating in WYD in Krakow), interviews (young participants in WYD, spiritual animators/counselors of youth groups, and leaders at the diocesan and national levels), and focus groups with young people participating in Catholic youth groups. The results show that there are different emphases and ways of thinking about youth ministry at both the national and local levels, and in recent years there has been a preference at the national level for a pastoral approach that focuses on national and international activities such as World Youth Day. This event is not only remarkable and relevant for the young people who participate, but also as a means for the Catholic Church to address the impact of modernity on the lives of societies and to negotiate with mainstream cultures. From the survey, it was found that participants in Catholic youth groups have a wide range of characteristics and youth practices that bring them closer to their peers, but that they differ in terms of religious practice, showing that they also have religious identities in circulation. An in-depth study of 13 youth groups revealed that each group has its own ways of functioning and organizing, but they can be categorized into three models of autonomy: claimed, ascribed, and attenuated, with different implications for formation and learning, as well as cultural production and reproduction. The existence of Catholic religious youth cultures emerges from this research pointing to commonalities and specificities with global youth cultures.