Research
Researchers examine challenges facing youth in transitional societies
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By Stephanie Koons
ollege of Education researchers, bolstered by support from Penn State Global Programs, have collaborated with an international group of scholars and academics to study the challenges and contexts facing youth from rural communities in countries with legacies of socialism undergoing social, political and economic transition.
for Penn State Global Programs, who earned a doctorate in education theory and policy with a dual title in comparative and international education from the College of Education in 2017; and Annie Maselli, a doctoral candidate in EPS. “Youth face many uncertainties among these ‘crossroads’ as they journey toward adulthood, encountering the effects of political transitions, COVID-19, climate change, the rise of populism and right-wing nationalism,” said Maselli.
“One of the challenges with these transitions in general is how they create new kinds of spatial inequalities between “While all of these factors influence urban and rural places,” said Kai Schafft, youth transitions, they’re not felt equally director of the Center on Rural Education across the rural-urban continuum — with Kai Schafft and Communities and professor of compounding costs for rural people, education and rural sociology in the schools and their communities.” Department of Education Policy Studies (EPS). “What Working on the project brought Horvatek back to does this mean for young people, and especially in the his roots. Having originally come to Penn State from context of divergent opportunity structures and rural Croatia in 2010 on a Humphrey Fellowship, she said depopulation?” the book didn’t provide much evidence that conditions The research project took root several years ago in rural areas had substantially improved in the past shortly after Schafft returned from Central European decade. University’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Budapest, Hungary, when he was a visiting Fulbright She referred to a “bipolar development of Croatia” fellow. Returning to Penn State, he learned about an in which urban areas are prospering economically while institutional arrangement between Penn State and the the “hinterlands are left behind.” She said hundreds of University of Split in Croatia. schools have been under threat of closure in rural areas in recent years, as they failed to enroll new students, With funding for a pilot project from Penn State leading to community disintegration. Global Connections, Schafft and Sanja Stanic, professor of sociology at the University of Split, surveyed about 500 high school students in three different rural spaces in Central Croatia. Eventually, the project was expanded into a book deal, and the co-editors identified contributors who wrote chapters on a range of national contexts including Serbia, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Russia and Vietnam.
“I definitely hope that our policy-makers in education are really starting to think about what is the role of rural schools in not only development of rural areas in Croatia but Croatia in general,” Horvatek said.
“During the work on the project, we expanded our collaboration to include colleagues from universities from other countries,” said Stanic. “In this way, we have created a network of scientists who share research interests and who, with their contributions, have significantly contributed to the issues discussed in our book, which is already being praised in Croatia.”
The researchers said they are energized by the opportunities that have resulted from the book. In February, Schafft and Maselli were asked by one of the book’s Russian contributors to present their work at an invited plenary presentation at a conference held at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Schafft is in talks about continuing this line of research in Romania and would like to continue the collaboration with the University of Split.
Schafft’s co-editors on the book, “Rural Youth at the Crossroads: Transitional Societies in Central Europe and Beyond," are Stanic; Renata Horvatek, international internships and research abroad adviser
“It was an incredible privilege for us to be exposed to these scholars and these issues in different parts of the world,” said Schafft. “Hopefully, this is just the beginning of these collaborations.” Penn State Education
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