Crises are characterised by an interweaving of external, real problem situations, their societal and individual perception, and a level of action (Bösch et al., 2020). Phenomena that present themselves in a crisis-like manner, such as climate change, social inequality, and global security risks, will significantly shape the future and also pose challenges for (civic) educational institutions (Abs, 2021). It seems inappropriate to view crises as isolated phenomena, as crisis phenomena can be interconnected: for instance, climate changes with political instability, migration, and conflict (Lawrence et al., 2024). Educational processes can contribute to developing an understanding of current and future challenges and support learners in developing the skills and knowledge needed to address these challenges.

In this context, according to Urry (2016), the future can be described as 'contested'. This description refers to the idea that different social groups have different visions and interests regarding the future, which often conflict with each other. Thus, it is recognized that the future is not simply an inevitable process, but a field where different social, political, economic, and cultural conceptions are in conflict. The extent to which adolescents have threatening expectations of the future, suggesting different social and political conceptions, is the subject of this contribution.

In adolescence, future perspectives are individually shaped under changing conditions. In the process of building a future orientation, future expectations interact with cognitive processes and emotions such as optimism, despair, fear, and anger (Nurmi, 2005). Against this background, willingness to participate politically also unfolds. In connection with the climate movement, hopeful optimism about a possible change in climate policy was observed (Cattell, 2021). A less optimistic view of the future was also described as a motivator for political participation: young people who felt that their concerns about climate change were not adequately addressed by national and international institutions participated, for example, in the international conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Kolleck & Schuster, 2022). Emotions further play a major role in explaining populistic and right-winged mobilization (Gerbaudo et al., 2023). Consequently, reactions to crisis perception can vary greatly. Both the characteristics of the content of the focused crisis and the knowledge and emotions of the adolescents might influence the formation of the response.

The perception of future threats is one variable examined by the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS; Schulz et al., 2023). In ICCS 2016, adolescents in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) were particularly sensitive to climate change as a global threat, more so than students from other European countries (Deimel & Buhl, 2017). Environmental pollution and terrorism were issues that concerned a large part of the youth in both NRW and the European comparison group, while armed conflicts were perceived as less threatening in 2016 compared to environmental issues. Initial analyses of ICCS 2022 show an expected change over time in threat perception (Birindiba Batista et al., 2024): in the shadow of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, war or armed conflicts are the issues that most adolescents in NRW describe as a 'large threat'. However, climate change and environmental pollution continue to play an unchanged significant role for them. Terrorism, however, has significantly receded as a threat scenario. The prioritization of perceived crisis phenomena has shifted in the light of external events.

This paper takes these findings as an opportunity and pursues three overarching research questions against the theoretical background of Urry's (2016) concept of contested futures:

1. What patterns of crisis perception do adolescents show?
2. What relationship do these patterns show to civic knowledge?
3. What relationship do they show to aspects of intended political participation?

To answer these questions, we analysed the representative subsample of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) from ICCS 2022 (Abs et al., 2024). ICCS is an international large scale assessment that asks how students in grade 8 are prepared to take on their role as active citizens in democratic societies. NRW, as the largest German federal state, represents an interesting case study due to its high economic and demographic variance. The sample includes 3,269 students in 145 schools, one class per school. We chose to analyse adolescents’ threat perception, the ICCS civic knowledge score and the scores of five scales related various dimensions of intended political participation. A Latent Class Analysis (LCA; Collins & Lanza, 2010) was conducted to answer the first question regarding adolescents’ crisis perception. To capture their future perspectives on threat scenarios, the students were asked to rate in how far they think certain global issues are a threat to the world’s future. The question had ad four-level response format: 'To a large extent' (1), 'To a moderate extent' (2), 'To a small extent' (3), 'Not at all' (4). For the Latent Class Analysis (LCA), the evaluations of the following six terms were selected for the themes of climate and environment, security, and economy: 'Climate change', 'Environmental pollution', 'War / armed conflicts', 'Terrorism', 'Poverty', and 'Global financial crises'. LCA offers a statistical model that estimates the probability of each individual belonging to a certain latent class. To answer the second and third questions, we correlated these assignment probabilities with the measures of civic knowledge and the five scaled scores related to intended political participation. The civic knowledge score depicts students’ conceptual civic knowledge. Higher scores indicate a higher probability of solving harder items correctly. To capture intended political participation, students were asked to evaluate how likely they would be to perform various acts of political participation in the future or as adults. Subsequently, five scale values were calculated for different dimensions intended political participation: electoral ('Participate in national elections'), institution-related ('Join a political party'), problem-oriented ('Participate in a peaceful demonstration'), environment-related ('Refuse to buy environmentally harmful products'), and civil disobedience ('Protest through a traffic blockade'). Higher scale values indicate a higher likelihood that the students on average have chosen a more agreeing response option.

The results show that adolescents can be classified into one of five latent classes based on their perception of threats: (1) security-conscious (17%), who exhibit a high conditional probability to rate war / armed conflicts as 'large threat', and often rate pollution as a 'moderate threat'; (2) environment- and climate-aware (33%), who have relatively high probabilities to rate climate change and pollution as 'large threats', compared to other presented issues; (3) moderate sceptics (9%), which tend to rate none of the presented issues as 'large threat'; (4) alarmed (40%), which tend to rate every of the issues as 'large threat'; and (5) unconcerned (1%), which have high probabilities to rate every of the issues to be no threat at all. Each of the five classes exhibits different patterns of correlation with political knowledge and intended political participation. The assignment probabilities of the security-conscious, moderate sceptics and unconcerned are negatively correlated (p < 0.05) with civic knowledge and the scales of intended electoral, problem-oriented and environment-related participation. The classification probability of the environment- and climate-aware, is positively correlated to civic knowledge and intended electoral participation. Lastly, students which were classified as alarmed had higher score on scales related to intended problem-oriented and environment-related participation, while showing no significant correlation to civic knowledge. Based on this, various pedagogical implications can be formulated. Educational approaches for Security-Conscious and Moderate Skeptics could question why these groups are less politically active despite their perception of threats and promote understanding of complex security threats. The focus for Environment and Climate-Conscious is on leveraging their understanding of complex political interrelations to reflect on their preferred forms of political participation. For the Alarmed, the understanding of global interconnections could be enhanced to develop a nuanced perception of threats. Their high willingness for extra-institutional activity could be a resource.

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