Ansvar och vägval : blivande och erfarna socialpedagogers föreställningar om ungdomar med sociala problem

Sammanfattning: The topic of this study is representations of young people judged as having social problems. More specifically, it is about representations held by social pedagogues in training and at work. A total of 19 people have been interviewed. Also, a study of the daily press contributes to an understanding of extant representations. The articles have been selected from two Swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet. Given that the study is focused on representations in the sense of formations of meaning and configurations of experience, a qualitative approach was implied. Through analyses and interpretations of news articles and interviews, it was possible to identify some more profound representations of youth with social problems. There are indications that these conceptions can be looked upon as social representations. Sometimes one can distinguish certain relations to ideas from previous epochs. Partly inspired by the work of others, I term these social representations: the young as an object for rescue, the unspoiled child, the dynamic adolescent, the injured young person and the evil young person. The representation of the evil young person was only observable in a few cases in the newspaper study. All terms should be looked upon as images and not as descriptions of living people. Also, these representations should not be seen as exclusive categories into which individuals can be sorted. The prospective social pedagogues in different stages of their education as well as the professionals showed interesting variations regarding their views on youth with social problems. The concept socially shared perspective has proven to be fruitful for understanding these variations, which can be understood in relation to three prerequisites. The first concerns the accessibility of a repertoire of representations for the prospective as well as professional social pedagogues during different stages of their education and professional life. The second prerequisite deals with their personal experiences achieved during practice and work. The third prerequisite concerns specific problems they have encountered during the various stages.