Respect for values and activity of upper secondary school students under conditions of limited participation in society
Abstract
The research study conducted with 172 students from heterogeneous classes of four Prague upper secondary schools aimed to determine their value-based attitudes towards participation in a democratic society. The basic parameters of this participation, which were tracked in the classes with the help of a questionnaire, included: respect for others, personal autonomy and uniqueness, activity, relationship with authorities and relationship with persons with disabilities.
Another parameter tracked was cohesion, i.e. the extent to which views were shared in the given class. This value was calculated from vectorial variables, responses of individual students, and was meaningful in terms of the degree of uniform or similar attunement.
The questionnaire survey was conducted online at times when Czech society was fighting the Covid 19 pandemic. These times helped us to formulate the basic question of the research: whether young people aged 16-18 can 'function' under conditions of substantial restriction of social life while retaining common notions of what autonomy and personal freedom are.