The corona pandemic and participatory governance: Responding to the vulnerabilities of secondary school students in Europe

Cato Janssen, Ivett Kover, Yiannis Kyratsis, Marleen Kop, Kees Boersma, Anne Lia Cremers

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Abstract

Adolescents in secondary schools have limited susceptibility to the SARS-COV-2 virus, but paradoxically are considered to be carrying the highest psychosocial burden during this pandemic. The aim of our European multi-country qualitative research was to investigate the COVID-19 crisis response in secondary schools and the role of national, regional, and local stakeholders in contributing to a participatory governance approach. We carried out 11 months of qualitative fieldwork, which included 90 respondents from the Netherlands, Ireland, and Finland for in-depth interviews and/or group discussions. Participant observation was conducted in four secondary schools to explore the interplay of day-to-day formal and informal practices of crisis governance. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of what efforts were made to facilitate participatory governance and where a bottom-up approach would have served useful in successfully implementing the COVID-19 mitigation strategies. Moreover, we show how these mitigation strategies have led to unintended consequences, such as students’ difficulties with isolation and associated mental health problems, and the struggles of socialization when returning to a physical school environment. Our findings highlight the importance of the school environment in the socio-emotional developments of adolescents. We introduce the TAPIC-R model to analyze good governance, advancing the existing TAPIC model with an emphasis on the role of resilience in shaping participatory governance. We argue this is urgently needed during crises to strengthen engagement of the community, including vulnerable groups and achieve positive outcomes within and across policy structures and action domains.

Original languageEnglish
Article number103608
Pages (from-to)1-18
Number of pages18
JournalInternational Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
Volume88
Early online date10 Mar 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
HERoS has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003606 .

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023

Funding

HERoS has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003606 .

FundersFunder number
Horizon 2020101003606
Horizon 2020

    Keywords

    • COVID-19
    • Crisis response
    • Participatory governance
    • Secondary schools
    • Vulnerability

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