Jaunų suaugusiųjų mokymosi savanorystėje patirtys
Abstract
The aim of doctoral Thesis was to investigate and describe the phenomenon of young adults
learning in volunteering by listening and analyzing the experience of the research participants.
In the research was chosen for Interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology (Smith
et al., 2009) and for investigation was implementes semistructured interview. The research
data revealed the process of learning in volunteering, according to the experience of the research
participants. The learning process is experienced by volunteers in trustfull relationship
with the Other when relation becomes a part of the „I - Thou” dialogue. Trustfull relationship
volunteers created with a freely chosen authority, that makes even the most difficult experiences
in volunteering understandable and meaningful. Because of trustfull relationship, young
adults were able to help the Other constantly and at the same time to survive the existential
crises. Without authority and without trustfull and recognition based relationship, learning in volunteering becomes impossible and help loses its meaning. In the absence of a trustful, recognition
based relationship with a the chosen authority - pushed into the experience of meaningless
existence, which, for the young adult, remained as an incomprehensible experience. The
experience of the research participants revealed isolation experience in volunteering, which
was accuring by being different and stranger. The experience of isolation has led young adults
to a meeting with themselves or towards exclusion as an essential experience of volunteering.
On the one hand, isolation experience served to bring the idealized image of volunteering
closer to the reality through poverty, illness, disability, and so on. On the other hand, isolation
of a volunteer without trustfull and recognition based relationship closed volunteers in the
long-term exclusion. Learning from volunteering is fulfilled deliberately and unconsciously,
while trying/or not trying to give a meaning to the experience. The perspective of learning
from volunteering opens up through a paradigm of learning from experience, holistic learning,
transformative learning, and perceptual learning. Research participants deliberately and/
or unconsciously experienced learning in volunteering, that led them to a multi-faceted and
multi-layered understanding of themselves, of the Other and of the world.