Experiencing studying in a phenomenographic analysis of the utterances of young adults from Z-Generation

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the results of the analysis of indepth phenomenographic interviews conducted among young adults studying humanities and social sciences in the Polish educational system at universities. The authors conducted twenty interviews in 2022 and 2023 with people who are the next generation of students in their families about the experience of studying. The authors see the conceptualizations of this experience in terms of repre
sentatives of Generation Z in the following forms: (a) as entering the next stage in the formal education system leading to the acquisition of higher qualifications, (b) as a learning process leading to the acquisition of new knowledge and its deepening, (c) as a stage in life without parental care, (d) as entering the role of a student related to belonging to an institution such as a university, (e) as building relationships within and outside the university. The authors see the distinguished categories of description as a consequence of the popularization of the educational process and thus its naturalization in everyday life; the result of students’ in
ternal motivation resulting from cultural capital, resonating with the perception of acquiring knowledge as a developmental process; the result of a deficit in the
practice of social competences at earlier stages of school education; the consequence of civilizational and technological acceleration and the aftermath of the individual need to empower the learning process. The educational issues revealed in this way are a harbinger of further studies and interpretation of the results of this project, as befits phenomenography, in a cultural context.