Handbook : Unit informationEdith Cowan University

School: Arts and Humanities

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

• Unit Title

  Youth Issues

• Unit Code

  YWK1220

• Year

  2017

• Enrolment Period

  1

• Version

  2

• Credit Points

  15

• Full Year Unit

  N

• Mode of Delivery

  On Campus
  Online

• Unit Coordinator

  Ms Orietta Marie SIMONS

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Description

This unit will cover a range of youth issues which have implications for young people's well being and their transition to adulthood. Topics may include leisure; spirituality; friendships; relationships with parents, partners and peers; youth suicide; anorexia and other eating or body-control disorders; youth homelessness; crime; drug use and alcohol usage; family violence and breakdown; youth poverty; employment; housing and homelessness; education and the labour market. Major policy approaches to these questions will be analysed and students will be introduced to a range of youth field responses addressing these questions.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

1. Explain how sociological perspectives can be useful in understanding young people (for example, concepts such like the social construction of youth, and the idea of a moral panic).
2. Discuss various difficulties that some young people face during the transitions from childhood to adulthood.
3. Demonstrate information literacy by differentiating between reliable and unreliable sources of information about young people.
4. Select and accurately present to others, relevant and up to date sociological information about a youth issue (including written information and simple numerical data) to interrogate common myths about young people.
5. Demonstrate appropriate collaboration in learning activities and an understanding of the boundary between beneficial peer collaboration and plagiarism.

Unit Content

1. An introduction to a sociological perspective on youth
2. How to find high quality research on youth issues and use this to evaluate commonly held beliefs about young people
3. Myths about young people and media reporting.
4. Politics and youth issues and how moral panics about young people arise.
5. Different theoretical frameworks for understanding well-being, medical, psychological, social and spiritual discourses including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives.
6. Introduction to learning at university. Topics may include family violence and family breakdown, physical and mental health, body image, anorexia and other eating or body-control disorders, sexual relationships, relationships with parents and peers, youth homelessness, difficulties with education, training and employment, youth wages, income support, and youth poverty.

Additional Learning Experience Information

Lectures and tutorial groups. Students participate in group projects, simulations, case studies, peer learning and group discussions. Students will be introduced to the role of University Learning Advisors and Library Skills workshops.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant Board of Examiners.

Core Reading(s)

• Wyn, J. (1998). Becoming adult in the 2000s : new transitions and new careers. Family Matters, 68(winter), 6–12.
• White, R., & Wynn, J. (2012). Youth and society: Exploring the social dynamics of youth experience (3rd ed.). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

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