Reconstruction of Participation: Some implications to Social Studies Education from a Comparative Study on Youth Participation of Sweden and Japan

This research attempts to reconstruct youth participation in postmodern context and tries to extract some implications from the comparative study of Sweden and Japan to social studies education. The beginning of paper provides a brief summary of the definition of youth participation and theories of youth participation such as Roger Hart’s ladder of participation with a critical view with the poststructuralist viewpoint. The second part of the paper will showcase findings of an empirical study conducted by Morozumi (2017) that examined how youth participation policy and practice had evolved in the historical development of youth policy in Sweden and Japan. With these findings, the conclusion part drew insights to social studies education in regard to youth participation. Setting influence as a purpose of participation, introducing resource perspective for youth participation and acknowledging fluidity and diversity of participation are suggested as an implication of the study concluded from overall research