Special issue: Youth work and social pedagogy
Introduction
The loss of a life is devastating – especially when harm is done by one young person to another, destroying at least two futures. Knife crime, though difficult to quantify precisely, has remained a persistent feature of UK media and policy discourse for over two decades. Data show that knife-enabled offences are most prevalent in areas such as the Metropolitan, West Midlands and Greater Manchester police force areas (Office for National Statistics, 2022). Young people are disproportionately affected: 39 per cent of those admitted to NHS hospitals in England for sharp object assaults are under 25 (NHS Digital, 2022). These incidents are often concentrated in specific neighbourhoods and are associated with social deprivation. One London trauma centre found that 71 per cent of all patients who were younger than 25 years and treated for stab wounds came from the most deprived fifth of home postcodes (Vulliamy et al., 2018), highlighting how structural inequalities shape the conditions in which youth violence occurs (Grimshaw and Ford, 2018; Silvestri et al., 2009).
In the past decade, cuts to welfare support, education and especially youth services have compounded these inequalities, despite growing recognition that youth work can play a vital role in reaching ‘hard to engage’ young people and reducing violence (APPG–Barnardos–Redthread, 2020). Yet dominant responses to knife crime have largely been punitive and individualised – prioritising surveillance, control and deterrence over support. Tools like stop and search or knife-crime prevention orders (KCPOs) have not only failed to significantly reduce knife-related harm but have in some cases reinforced alienation and distrust, particularly among minoritised youth (Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2021; Bradford and Tiratelli, 2019).
As an alternative, the public health approach, championed by initiatives such as the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, has gained traction by treating violence as a preventable phenomenon requiring multi-agency intervention (Brown, 2019; Centre for Social Justice, 2009, pp. 139–43; Squires et al., 2008, pp. 84–7). However, its effectiveness has been questioned, particularly where structural causes remain unaddressed. As evaluations suggest, it is often the background and social capital of practitioners – not the framework itself – that drives engagement (Grimshaw and Ford, 2018, p. 23).
Furthermore, critics argue that even the public health approach can inadvertently reproduce an individualising and medicalising lens. Current safeguarding systems often fail to acknowledge that young people can simultaneously be victims and perpetrators of harm (Lloyd and Firmin, 2020). Narrow framing and attributing fault to parents obscures broader social harms, such as systemic racism, poverty and exclusion (Hesketh, 2018, p. 22; Home Office UK, 2018).
Social pedagogy, by contrast, offers a more holistic and relational lens to address social issues through a broadly educative perspective. It considers not just individual behaviour but also the social, emotional and structural contexts within which that behaviour arises. This article builds on that premise, exploring knife carrying not as fixed deviance, but as a contextually situated attempt to cope, assert control and feel visible in a world that may render some young people unseen or powerless.
Research aims and questions
This article contributes to the special issue’s focus on the relationship between youth work and social pedagogy by considering knife carrying as a socio-educational concern. It seeks to answer the following questions:
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How can the concepts of mattering and Lebensbewältigung (literally, coping with life) help us better understand the psychosocial dynamics behind youth knife carrying?
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What are the limitations of current policy responses, and how might social pedagogy and youth work provide more effective alternatives?
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How can these concepts be translated into practice, especially through relational engagement with young people?
This article makes an original contribution to knowledge by combining two key concepts: mattering (Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2021) and Lebensbewältigung (Böhnisch and Schröer, 2016), which together offer a relational, practice-orientated approach to prevention. The below sections discuss these concepts in more detail, review dominant policy approaches and set out, via a small pilot study, how these theoretical underpinnings culminate in an extension of the PETAL hybrid model of social pedagogy and youth work (Williamson and Conroy, 2020), offering actionable insights for practitioners. The article concludes by considering how social pedagogy can contribute to a broader shift in how we understand and respond to youth who carry knives.
Conceptual frameworks
This section introduces the two conceptual frameworks: mattering and coping with life, which this article combines. While rooted in different intellectual traditions, both address core questions about agency, recognition and belonging. Each framework suggests that for young people to thrive, they must not only manage life’s pressures but also feel that their lives matter.
Emerging from North American social psychology, mattering focuses on the subjective sense of being seen, valued and significant to others. When young people feel invisible or irrelevant, it can erode their sense of self and contribute to harmful behaviours in an effort to reclaim visibility or control. Thus, loss of mattering and youth violence can be seen as young people responding to systemic marginalisation by seeking recognition in ways that reflect the limited options available to them (Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2022).
Lebensbewältigung, developed by Lothar Böhnisch within German social pedagogy, frames behaviour – including antisocial or violent acts – as attempts to manage the adverse psychosocial impacts of challenging life conditions. It connects subjective experience with structural context, offering practitioners a relational, developmental lens to understand and support young people.
Together, these frameworks illuminate how violence can emerge from unmet needs for recognition and control. They offer a foundation for practice that replaces suspicion with empathy and punishment with meaningful support.
Mattering and the need for recognition
The concept of mattering, first introduced by Morris Rosenberg in the early 1980s, refers to an individual’s sense that they count, that they make a difference in the world (Rosenberg and McCullough, 1981). Originally grounded in symbolic interactionist theories of self-concept, mattering has since gained traction across multiple academic disciplines, including social psychology, community psychology, mental health and criminology (Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2021; Elliott et al., 2011; Prilleltensky, 2014). At its core, mattering is a subjective feeling – the sense that one is seen, valued and needed by others – and it has been found to protect against alienation and deviant behaviour (Virat et al., 2024).
Elliott et al. (2004) expanded the concept by identifying three interrelated facets: awareness (being noticed); importance (being cared for); and reliance (being depended on). These layers situate mattering in a socio-psychological framework, linking a person’s self-worth to their social environment, including family, school and community. While structural factors such as poverty, exclusion or community fragmentation do not directly determine mattering, they shape the contexts in which mattering is affirmed or denied.
Mattering is inherently relational, but also deeply personal. Its significance lies not in whether others objectively value someone, but whether the individual feels valued. This subjectivity makes it both a powerful lens and a challenging variable to measure. Community psychology scholars (Prilleltensky, 2014) frame mattering as comprising recognition (being respected and acknowledged) and efficacy (having an impact). Similarly, recent research (Flett, 2022, p. 19) has highlighted how the absence of mattering – or anti-mattering – can create a sense of invisibility or social nullification, sometimes leading to dark mattering behaviours aimed at forcing acknowledgement through negative means.
In criminological contexts, mattering offers an important bridge between psychosocial needs and external behaviour. Knife carrying, for example, is often understood in the literature as a reaction to victimisation or fear (Brennan and Moore, 2009; Harding, 2020; Haylock et al., 2020; Lemos, 2004; McVie, 2010; Silvestri et al., 2009; Squires, 2009), but it also reflects deeper psychological needs for visibility and agency. For some young people, a knife becomes the only reliable tool to assert status, control or self-worth – especially in environments where legitimate forms of recognition are scarce (Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2021; McAra and McVie, 2016).
Harding (2020) describes knife carrying as a form of agency that compensates for a lack of recognition, while King (2020) notes that some young men resort to violence to reclaim ‘status and respect’ (p. 39) they feel denied. Theories such as ‘street capital’ (Harding, 2020, p. 33) or ‘street codes’ (Traynor, 2016, p. 18) frame this behaviour as socially situated, but can miss the emotional underpinnings – the felt sense of insignificance that drives the need to matter.
This is echoed in Lewis’s (2017) case study of youth offenders, where crime is framed as a strategy for gaining attention or respect when traditional routes are blocked. The same logic underpins findings by Virat et al. (2024), whose survey of 428 French adolescents found that those with a low sense of societal mattering were more likely to report delinquent intentions. Feeling devalued by society was also associated with negative views of justice systems and affiliation with delinquent peers. This underscores a broader trajectory: when young people feel that society does not care about them, they are more likely to disengage from its norms.
Billingham and Irwin-Rogers (2021) expand this analysis to the British context, arguing that youth violence may be driven by a ‘terrifying abyss of insignificance’ (p. 1222). Through a social harm lens, they demonstrate how systemic inequalities – racism, exclusionary school policies, housing instability and more – create the conditions in which young people feel structurally devalued (Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2022). Their accounts reveal how interpersonal violence can emerge as desperate assertions of identity and worth.
The cumulative insight is clear: when young people feel they do not matter, some will seek recognition through harmful or violent behaviour. Conversely, those who feel valued by family, peers or school are more likely to find safer ways to navigate adversity; ‘if risk-taking behavior is a young person’s response to the negative feelings of failing to matter, then developing coping strategies that produce a positive source for mattering may well become a protective factor’ (Lewis, 2017, p. 1330). Mattering thus becomes not just a psychological construct but a socio-educational imperative.
While mattering helps identify why young people may carry knives, it does not fully explain how they manage the absence of significance – or how they can be supported to cope differently. This is where social pedagogy, and specifically Böhnisch’s concept of Lebensbewältigung, offers a crucial complement. The next section introduces this framework to consider how relational, social pedagogical practice can transform dark mattering into constructive pathways for agency, recognition and belonging.
Extending mattering through social pedagogy and Lebensbewältigung
The concept of Lebensbewältigung is an interdisciplinary approach developed in the 1980s to explore, explain and challenge maladaptive coping behaviours and strategies in the context of complex social circumstances, hardships and problems (Böhnisch and Schröer, 2016). It can serve as a basis for social pedagogical interventions or scientific enquiry to aid in developing healthier coping strategies. It engages with societal norms and integration, while critically challenging dominant structures to promote recognition and inclusion of marginalised individuals.
Lebensbewältigung was developed as a social pedagogical extension of Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) stress-and-coping theory. While Lazarus focused on individual responses to discrete stressors, Böhnisch broadened this to encompass how people navigate the broader, ongoing challenges of late-modern life. He defined Lebensbewältigung as the process by which individuals strive to remain agentic and manage life’s demands under conditions of stress, particularly within adverse socio-economic environments (Böhnisch and Schröer, 2016).
Central to this paradigm is the dual relationship between an individual’s coping perspective (subjektive Bewältigungsperspektive) and their life situation (Lebenslage) – the socio-economic and cultural context they inhabit. Böhnisch (2016) linked agency with structure, emphasising that coping strategies are not purely psychological but embedded in and constrained by external realities.
Lebensbewältigung extends coping from crisis management to an ongoing life task. In an era of individualisation and unstable trajectories in education, employment and relationships, Böhnisch argued that coping includes actively shaping one’s biography, not merely reacting to challenges. He described this as incorporating proactive aspects of agency – efforts to establish meaning and continuity in one’s life amid uncertainty (Böhnisch and Schröer, 2016).
The model also integrates psychodynamic and recognition theory. In his later work, Böhnisch drew on psychoanalytic thought to explore how unmet needs for self-worth and recognition generate inner conflict and psychological tension. Some individuals – particularly young people who face chronic devaluation or denial of their authentic selves and lack other resources to regulate this tension – may resort to maladaptive coping strategies such as withdrawal or aggression (Böhnisch, 2020). Informed by Winnicott’s (2016) idea of the ‘antisocial tendency’, Böhnisch saw these behaviours not merely as deviant but as expressions of frustrated needs for attachment, recognition and agency. He framed such behaviours as attempts to reclaim power or relieve inner helplessness, especially when legitimate avenues for significance are blocked. Furthermore, incorporating Honneth’s recognition theory (Mark, 2015), Böhnisch treated lack of social acknowledgement (Anerkennung) as a stressor and source of identity disruption, linking internal dynamics of coping to the relational and structural environments that shape them.
Over time, Lebensbewältigung has become a core paradigm in German social pedagogy and social work for research purposes and by practitioners. For researchers and practitioners, it operates across three analytical levels:
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personal-psychodynamic level: understanding emotions, self-esteem and individual coping behaviours
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relational-intermediate level: grasping dynamics within families, peer groups and communities, including police relationships within communities
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socio-structural level: considering economic conditions, cultural expectations and social policies.
These dimensions are separated only for analytical purposes. The framework explains how social issues like youth violence, addiction or family breakdown often represent the collapse of healthy coping under multiple, layered pressures. For practitioners, the theory offers a relational and structural lens for strengthening coping capacities – not just through psychological support but by challenging social barriers and fostering inclusion.
Ultimately, Lebensbewältigung reflects an interdisciplinary approach: rooted in stress psychology but expanded by critical sociology and recognition theory. It views human behaviour as a dynamic coping response shaped by both inner needs and external constraints. This makes it especially valuable for interpreting complex youth behaviours not as pathologies, but as meaning-making efforts in the face of adversity.
Combining the conceptual frameworks: mattering and Lebensbewältigung
Mattering and Lebensbewältigung are complementary in important ways. The former addresses the psychological need to feel valued and seen; the latter focuses on how people manage life under complex pressures and how practitioners can support healthy coping. Böhnisch links the coping process not only to structural conditions but also to disturbances in self-worth. His view that social pedagogy must enhance recognition and social inclusion aligns with the idea that people cope more effectively when they feel they matter. In practice, this means practitioners must respond not just to behavioural symptoms but to the deeper question: does this young person feel valued, visible and significant? While mattering highlights what is missing (a sense of significance), Lebensbewältigung reveals how people attempt to cope with that absence, and how practitioners can intervene. Together, these two concepts offer a practical, socially conscious framework for supporting youth, particularly those involved in violence.
Lebensbewältigung, rooted in European social theory and practice, is influenced by psychoanalytic and critical social traditions and addresses how individuals cope with societal demands. Mattering, grounded in North American social psychology, explores how individuals perceive their significance in relationships and society. Though from different intellectual traditions, these concepts intersect meaningfully in socio-educational practice. Mattering can be translated into German only through phrases as the feeling of being important to others, the feeling of playing a role in the lives of others, the feeling of being seen and needed. In German social pedagogy, these are echoed in concepts such as Anerkennung (recognition), Zugehörigkeit (belonging) and Selbstwert (self-worth). Lebensbewältigung treats deficits in recognition and belonging as sources of psychosocial stress – suggesting that mattering, while not always explicitly named, is implicitly present within its framework.
Mattering offers a missing language within social pedagogy and Lebensbewältigung, especially useful when interpreting behaviours like youth violence. When combined, the two concepts offer a richer foundation for understanding how and why young people cope in the ways they do and how practitioners can support them to learn healthy strategies.
One core difference remains: mattering research focuses on individual outcomes and relationships, whereas Lebensbewältigung straddles personal agency and social structure with a normative goal of improving societal conditions. However, both concepts converge in practice. For example, Billingham and Irwin-Rogers (2022) link youth violence to a breakdown in societal mattering and call for attention to structural harms. Adding Lebensbewältigung shows how young people might respond to that breakdown – seeking dark mattering through gang affiliation, knife carrying or other forms of visible resistance when positive recognition is blocked.
This perspective is especially useful for practitioners. It shifts focus from short-term solutions towards long-term relational work: helping young people build healthier forms of agency, recognition and self-efficacy within the constraints of their environment. Lebensbewältigung maps the personal, relational and structural zones that shape coping. Mattering identifies the emotional core; Lebensbewältigung suggests where and how to respond.
Bringing the two together helps practitioners and policymakers move beyond behavioural management, towards socially situated interventions grounded in dignity, recognition and human connection.
The policy–practice gap
Integrating a social pedagogical lens into the analysis of UK knife crime policy reveals critical shortcomings in dominant approaches and offers more constructive, humanising alternatives for practice. Rather than interpreting youth knife carrying as individual deviance or moral failure, a social pedagogy perspective inspired by Böhnisch’s Lebensbewältigung paradigm understands such behaviour as an attempt to assert agency and meet unmet needs in contexts where young people feel marginalised, unsafe or invisible. This reframing challenges the legitimacy of punitive responses and urges a shift towards supportive, relationship-based interventions rooted in young peoples lived realities.
Current policy tools such as stop and search, zero-tolerance approaches and KCPOs reflect a reactive and disciplinary paradigm that prioritises control over understanding. These measures often suppress rather than address the underlying causes of youth behaviour. Zero-tolerance policies, for instance, are ineffective in changing attitudes towards knife carrying and may even exacerbate exclusion and resistance (Clement, 2010; Ginwright et al., 2005; King, 2020; Palasinski and Riggs, 2012). Stop-and-search practices, disproportionately targeting minoritised youth, erode trust in authorities and reinforce feelings of alienation (Bradford and Tiratelli, 2019; Shiner et al., 2018). KCPOs extend this punitive logic by restricting young people’s freedoms, even in the absence of a conviction, deepening disconnection from peers and society (Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2021).
These approaches are shaped by an underlying image of the person and perceive young people as threats to be managed rather than as people needing care. Muncie and Goldson highlight how youth justice policy oscillates between viewing young people as either vulnerable innocents or dangerous deviants (Muncie and Goldson, 2009). This ambiguity attempts to legitimise punitive measures even when behaviour is rooted in trauma, exclusion or unmet psychosocial needs (Brown, 2015). A social pedagogical perspective insists behaviour must be understood in context – not as pathology, but as coping.
Punitive models are not only ethically problematic but functionally counterproductive (Clement, 2010; Ginwright et al., 2005; Palasinski and Riggs, 2012). They fail to offer young people constructive alternatives to harmful behaviours and undermine the trust-based relationships essential for prevention. Coercive responses disrupt the very foundations – trust, recognition and empowerment – on which effective youth engagement depends. Instead of criminalising coping behaviours, policy should seek to understand and redirect them by investing in strengths-based, relationship-centred support.
Social pedagogy offers an alternative image of the child: not as a problem, an inherent threat or the product of dysfunctional families, but as an active agent capable of growth when provided with meaningful relationships, participation and support. Influenced by thinkers such as Pestalozzi and Montessori, social pedagogy recognises that development occurs through secure attachments and opportunities to contribute. This orientation, often captured in the concept of Haltung, demands that practitioners approach young people with empathy, respect and a willingness to listen (Eichsteller and Holthoff, 2011).
Bringing mattering and Lebensbewältigung into policy analysis invites a paradigm shift. Instead of asking how to punish or deter, the key questions become: What is this young person trying to cope with? What unmet need is driving this behaviour? What relational, educational or social support could help them cope differently? This framework does not deny accountability, but repositions it within a context of care, development and empowerment.
Billingham and Irwin-Rogers (2022) argue that youth violence is a socially produced harm, and that restoring a sense of mattering is central to prevention. Böhnisch’s Lebensbewältigung reinforces this by showing how the absence of mattering translates into harmful coping behaviours. Together, these frameworks offer a comprehensive vision for change: addressing youth violence requires transforming the social conditions and personal capacities that shape how young people navigate life. Practitioners and policymakers must collaborate to reduce structural harms, affirm that every young person matters and support non-violent ways of asserting agency. This may not only be a strategy for addressing issues that ‘predictably breed violence’ (Billingham and Irwin-Rogers, 2022, p. 15), but a pathway to affirming youth as valued members of society.
There is thus a wide gap between dominant punitive responses to knife crime and the principles of relational youth work. While policy focuses on surveillance and discipline, youth workers and educators grounded in social pedagogy build trust and respond to young people’s needs through authentic relationships. These divergent approaches reflect fundamentally different views of the child: one rooted in suspicion and control, the other in potential and partnership. This disconnect requires a renewed focus on youth work’s relational strengths and an exploration of how social pedagogy can deepen, systematise and scale these foundations.
Youth work and social pedagogy: shared terrain
Following the critique of dominant policy responses to knife crime, this section turns to more constructive foundations: youth work and social pedagogy. The gap between punitive youth justice policy and relationship-based practice highlights the need to foreground what youth work already does well and explore how social pedagogy can extend and deepen that work. Both offer practitioners a relational, values-driven way of responding to young people – especially those affected by violence and marginalisation – not as problems to fix, but as young people with unmet needs and untapped potential.
Youth work and social pedagogy share core values such as participation, informality and education through relationships (Hatton, 2018; Slovenko and Thompson, 2016). Both traditions emphasise trust-building, criticality, creativity and working with young people’s lived experience. In practice, youth workers are recognised as uniquely placed to connect with those labelled hard to engage, a vital asset for efforts to reduce knife carrying (APPG–Barnardos–Redthread, 2020).
Seal and Harris (2016), in their Touch project, illustrate how youth work can address violence across physical, psychological, material and structural domains. They stress that the ethos and attitude of the worker matter as much as the content of intervention. Youth work relationships offer recognition, consistency and alternative narratives – essential for supporting young people to desist from violence. Though their work resonates strongly with social pedagogy, the link is made only in passing, despite drawing on shared traditions such as constructive challenge rooted in German-speaking pedagogical practice.
Social pedagogy contributes a deeper philosophical foundation for how we view young people, professional roles and systemic change. Central to this is the image of the child as an active agent, not a passive recipient. This stance shapes both interventions and policy, and is captured in the concept of Haltung: a practitioner’s values and orientation embodied in everyday actions (Eichsteller and Holthoff, 2011).
As outlined earlier, young people may carry knives for reasons ranging from fear to status-seeking, and the underlying drivers may be the need to feel safe or significant. Coercive responses do little to shift these attitudes and may deepen mistrust or alienation (Clement, 2010; King, 2020, p. 202). In contrast, youth work offers a relationship-based pathway to behavioural change and opportunity (APPG–Barnardos–Redthread, 2020). Grimshaw and Ford (2018) stress that interventions that ignore structural issues fail to create lasting impact and may entrench punitive tendencies in youth justice.
In this context, the combined frameworks of mattering and Lebensbewältigung offer distinct value. They enable practitioners to reframe challenging behaviour not simply as defiance, but as a response to unmet needs and denied recognition. In some contexts, particularly where distrust of authority is reinforced by group dynamics, acts of defiance may be directed towards figures such as police or institutional staff. Even then, such behaviour can be understood as an attempt to reclaim agency and assert self-worth when other pathways to recognition are perceived as unattainable. Instead of asking how to control behaviour, the practitioner asks: What is this young person trying to communicate? What might help them express it differently; that is, in a way that is more socially acceptable and not destructive?
This reframing has direct implications for practice. It encourages professionals to interpret disruption, withdrawal or aggression as bids for recognition. A teacher might see a student’s defiance as a request to be noticed. A youth worker might use group work or creative projects to affirm a young person’s contributions and identity. These everyday acts build a sense of mattering and provide the foundation to recognise alternative ways to cope and connect.
Moreover, the practitioner becomes not just a service provider, but an advocate embedded in wider systems. Mattering and Lebensbewältigung both call for attention to the structural constraints young people face – for example, poverty, racism, exclusion – and position the practitioner as someone who must challenge those conditions, not just help individuals adapt to them.
This perspective also disrupts dominant what works discourses that prioritise measurable outcomes and programmatic fidelity. Instead, it highlights who works: the practitioner’s relational competence and ethical presence. Trust, care and consistency – not just technique – are key drivers of change (Williamson and Conroy, 2020), particularly for young people who distrust institutions.
A hybrid model combining youth work with social pedagogy – particularly through the concepts of mattering and Lebensbewältigung – offers a meaningful way to strengthen responses to youth violence. The hybrid model of youth work and social pedagogy, PETAL (participation, education, transition, advocacy, love) provides a practical structure to explore how this can be done (Williamson and Conroy, 2020). It will be revisited to reflect insights from the pilot study.
Preliminary insights from a pilot study: methodology and findings
This pilot from the first author’s PhD research aimed to explore how young people experience mattering, disrespect and safety, how these experiences may relate to coping strategies and how knife carrying may be situated within it. The study also tested research tools aligned with a social pedagogical framework.
Study context and methodology
The pilot study took place at an alternative provision school in north-west London. The deputy headteacher suggested five students to take part in the research, based on concerns about involvement in knife carrying. Ultimately, three participated in the programme (pseudonyms): Yusuf (15, originally from Iraq, with limited English), Callum (13) and Malik (13). The five-session programme used a participatory, child-centred methodology aligned with social pedagogical principles. Sessions combined creative exercises, structured discussions and embodied activities to explore experiences of mattering, disrespect, safety and coping. The findings below draw on transcribed voice-recordings and field notes collected by the first author and taken immediately after the sessions. While the study was conducted as a five-week pilot, the analysis adopts an ethnographic sensibility, using thick description and reflexive interpretation to explore how meanings were produced and negotiated within the school setting. To reflect this approach, the findings are written in the first author’s voice.
Findings: relational practice in action
The first session aimed at getting to know each other. We played a game where we threw a ball, and whoever caught it had to share something about themselves. Callum rarely made eye contact with me throughout the first session (and subsequent ones), and whenever it was his turn to speak during the ball game, he would simply say ‘drugs’. After a while, Malik asked, ‘What drugs?’ and Callum replied, ‘Vape, brownies – only three weeks ago.’ Malik responded, ‘You didn’t. You’re a chicken,’ while Yusuf asked, ‘Does your mum not say anything?’ Callum shrugged and said, ‘My mum knows. She doesn’t care.’
Mostly Malik threw the ball to me, asking questions like what is my favourite colour. Before that, I had already shared some personal details about myself – my family and the fact I live on a narrowboat. I had chosen to share those things deliberately, hoping to create a space for more meaningful conversation and build relationships. After I mentioned something about my dad, Malik responded by saying his dad was in prison.
Engagement fluctuated across the middle sessions. Tasks that asked the boys to map important relationships were met with resistance, diversion and humour. On reflection, these moments suggested that such activities may have felt exposing or unsafe, particularly where relationships with adults were fragile or inconsistent.
Malik, who was talkative during the third session, talked about teachers that he experienced as nice fired ‘for bullshit reasons’. When I asked what made one of those teachers ‘nice’, Malik said, ‘He was just understanding, innit?’ I flipped the question and asked what made a bad teacher. ‘One that doesn’t listen, doesn’t understand and makes a load of shit up.’
I asked what teachers could do differently. Malik’s reply was clear and cynical:
Teachers are teachers. Some of them are pricks, some of them are fine. They’re not gonna change. Like, why would they change for one student? I don’t know. Teachers are teachers. Some teachers, you can tell from their face – they just don’t give two f***s what you do. And some teachers – you can tell – they actually care, innit.
Emerging from an activity, I asked how it would feel if someone came at him in a threatening way in the street to reflect on real-life reactions. Malik shared an incident from another school where he had been shouted at by a sports teacher. ‘He was spitting everywhere, so I shouted back.’ When I asked what the consequence was, he said, ‘Isolation. Which was unfair. Cause he literally shouted in my face.’
We then shifted the conversation to what they might do in a similar situation on the street. Malik said he’d get physical. When I asked why he couldn’t just walk away, he answered, ‘I wouldn’t let someone violate me and then walk away like a d******d’. I asked if they knew any other ways of dealing with being disrespected. Malik simply said, ‘Nah’.
Much of this session was wrapped in laughter and deflection, but the undercurrents were clear: distrust, past harm and a sense that respect from adults – when it exists – is rare and precarious. It aligns with the literature on how violence, especially in response to disrespect, can become an ingrained coping strategy.
At the end of the fourth session, Yusuf and I had a long one-to-one conversation about safety and feeling unsafe. He spoke openly about getting into conflict with others and about having been stabbed. Before he left, he said, ‘We’re going to miss you when you leave because you’re so nice’.
Session 5 focused on reflection and feedback. Beforehand, a teaching assistant told me that it had taken him two months to build a relationship with Malik, and that I had ‘picked the most difficult people to work with’. The labelling struck a cord with me. I hadn’t experienced them as particularly difficult and had attributed disengagement to other reasons.
During the session, Malik said he thought the sessions were ‘fun’, which I found hard to believe given some of the disengagement. When I expressed this, he backtracked slightly and said, ‘It was alright’. We spoke about trust. Malik replied that he doesn’t trust anyone – then revised that to say, ‘I trust only a few people, that’s it. And the rest? Nah. Plus, even if I knew you for a few months, I still wouldn’t trust you.’ I asked what it takes for someone to earn his trust. ‘You just have to be there, innit. For a long time. Yeah.’
Afterwards, a teacher came in and asked how the group work had gone. He said he’d noticed a positive effect – Malik seemed less angry, more in control and better at communicating. I was surprised at the speed of change, which the teacher attributed to our work, given the disengagement in parts and asked what else could have contributed. He mentioned that Malik had also been doing outdoor activities and boxing, which he enjoyed.
The teacher then added that Callum doesn’t trust anyone either and that he’s in London on his own after being moved away from his family. Another teacher joined the conversation and said Malik is actually very sensitive to others. He gave an example: if Malik is told off by a teacher and that behaviour is reported to the headteacher, Malik sees it as a betrayal of trust – even if the teacher’s intention was to help or support him.
In another one-to-one reflective conversation with Yusuf, we talked about the last time he was stabbed and why he thought young people carry knives. He mentioned that some even bring knives to school. He described a moment when he had gone to another student’s jacket to get a vape and found a knife inside. He made it clear that he didn’t want to be associated with that kind of thing, that he already had ‘enough problems with the police’ and mentioned needing to go to the station. Rather than carry a knife, he said, he’d use his fists. ‘Knives just get you into trouble.’
When I asked him how he had found the group sessions, he said he liked them. He explained that he often feels angry but that talking to me helped calm him down. At one point, we paused the conversation so he could go to the toilet. As he walked down the stairs, I overheard one of his teachers call out, ‘You look happy today,’ and Yusuf replied, ‘Had a good session’.
Reflections on the pilot
This pilot study, while modest in scale, offered a powerful window into how young people navigate environments where trust is precarious, respect is conditional and adult relationships often feel unsafe. The boys’ expressions of anger, bravado, humour and withdrawal can be understood not simply as disruptive behaviours but as coping strategies – forms of Lebensbewältigung – in response to feeling overlooked, excluded or devalued. Moments of connection – whether in sharing personal stories, offering help when clearing the room after a session or naming who ‘actually listens’ – revealed how fragile yet vital the experience of mattering is. These insights underscore the value of relational, reflective practice and support the paper’s argument: that integrating social pedagogical concepts into youth work, particularly in the context of violence and marginalisation, can reframe behaviour as a search for recognition – and help us respond with care rather than control. Youth workers or social pedagogues, especially when positioned within alternative school settings, may be particularly well placed to build the long-term, trusting relationships needed to gently challenge some of these coping strategies and help young people discover safer, non-violent ways to navigate their world, so long as they are free to build these relationships rather than acting as controlling agents and ‘behaviour police’ in schools.
A hybrid framework for prevention
The ideas discussed in this paper converge in the hybrid model grounded in both youth work and social pedagogy: the PETAL framework developed by Conroy and Williamson. It includes the concepts of participation, education, transition, advocacy and love (Williamson and Conroy, 2020). The following explores how the framework can be put into practice against the background of knife carrying and youth violence by including mattering and Lebensbewältigung.
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Participation: A rights-based and relational approach to participation positions young people not as problems to be fixed, but as co-creators of solutions – even when they are involved in harmful behaviour. Bringing in mattering and Lebensbewältigung allows practitioners to understand that such behaviours often reflect unmet needs for safety, respect and agency. As shown in the pilot, what is labelled as ‘deviance’ often masks a young person’s attempt to matter in a world that overlooks them. Practitioners who shift the question from ‘What’s wrong with you?’ to ‘What are you coping with?’ can respond more empathetically. Participation becomes a space for young people to reclaim visibility, and for professionals to demonstrate Haltung – practising with care, curiosity and shared responsibility.
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Education: The PETAL model’s claim that ‘education is everything’ is brought to life through Lebensbewältigung. Education here is not about formal instruction but about supporting young people to find new, healthier ways to navigate stress, conflict and exclusion. The young people in the pilot acted out to assert themselves in environments where they felt powerless. Through a mattering-informed pedagogy, education becomes an opportunity to reflect, reframe and experiment with alternative, non-violent ways of coping. This is slow, relational work grounded in trust, and in the belief that all young people can grow.
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Transition: Lebensbewältigung is inherently a theory of transitions – supporting young people through shifting life situations (Lebenslagen) and helping them manage the stress that comes with change. Whether returning to mainstream school or facing court involvement, transitions often magnify insecurity. Embedding mattering helps practitioners stay alert to how easily young people can feel discarded or invisible during such times. It also equips them to offer consistent, relational support that makes visible the young person’s significance, particularly when they themselves may feel lost.
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Advocacy: Young people in conflict with systems are often unable or unwilling to speak for themselves. The practitioner’s role, then, is to amplify their voice until they regain enough safety and confidence to do so. The mattering and Lebensbewältigung frameworks give professionals the basis to challenge deficit-based narratives and advocate for systemic responses grounded in understanding rather than punishment. It also offers a way to help other professionals reframe behaviour not as pathology but as communication – an invitation to listen.
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Love: In the PETAL model, love is professional and political – a consistent, caring presence that affirms a young person’s value. In the pilot study, this surfaced in comments from young people about which adults ‘actually care’. Malik’s recognition of an ‘understanding’ teacher as ‘nice’ and his distrust of those who ‘don’t listen’ point to the emotional stakes in every relationship. Practitioners who embody a Haltung grounded in love help create the conditions for trust, growth and non-violent coping. Love, in this context, is a commitment to stay, to believe in the young person and to show that they matter.
Together, PETAL and the Lebensbewältigung/mattering framework offer a coherent, relational practice model to respond to youth violence – not by controlling behaviour, but by understanding it and working through it with young people, side by side.
Conclusion
This article has explored how combining the psychological and relational insights of mattering with the social pedagogical concept of Lebensbewältigung offers a powerful lens for understanding and responding to youth violence – particularly knife carrying – not simply as a threat or risk, but as a form of coping. Where mattering highlights the social and emotional dimensions of recognition, belonging and visibility, Lebensbewältigung foregrounds agency – the young person actively managing life’s challenges, often in response to hostile or unstable conditions. Both concepts are concerned with identity, resilience and the conditions under which young people feel that they count. Recognition, in this synthesis, becomes a critical resource: for healthy development, for self-worth and for finding non-violent alternatives to conflict or despair.
The pilot study showed that challenging behaviours are often underpinned by unmet needs for respect, presence and emotional safety. When young people feel invisible or disregarded by adults, institutions or their communities, they may assert control or status through behaviours that appear deviant but are, in fact, rooted in psychosocial stress. A mattering-informed reading of these behaviours allows practitioners and policymakers to move beyond ineffective punitive responses – such as stop-and-search or exclusionary practices – towards relationship-based interventions that respond to the needs behind the behaviour. In this way, integrating mattering and Lebensbewältigung offers a more just and effective alternative to control-orientated strategies. Instead of diagnosing young people as problems to be fixed, it encourages socio-educationalists to see their actions as signals of distress and attempts to regain a sense of mattering.
This framework also makes a broader contribution to the relationship between youth work and social pedagogy. Youth work’s relational, informal ethos is well placed to meet young people where they are, without judgement. Social pedagogy adds conceptual tools – like Lebensbewältigung – to help practitioners understand behaviour in context and reflect on their own Haltung. Together, they offer a hybrid model that combines critical reflection with everyday presence and emotional attunement. While youth work in the UK has often developed in practice-led, informal contexts, and social pedagogy remains a relatively underused professional framework, their integration fills a conceptual and practical gap – particularly at a time when frontline workers are navigating growing complexity in young people’s lives. Youth workers or social pedagogues, especially when situated in alternative provision or community settings, may be uniquely positioned to build the long-term, trusting relationships needed to support young people in developing more constructive, non-violent coping strategies – rooted not in fear of punishment, but in feeling seen, heard and valued.
By engaging with policy, practice and theory, this article contributes to a paradigm shift: from youth violence as a problem to be controlled, to youth experience as a voice to be heard. It calls on socio-educationalists to listen differently – not just for risk, but for the desire to matter. This shift has implications for how we talk about youth, how we intervene and how we structure systems around them. In a policy context that often pathologises or criminalises, this article reclaims relationship, recognition and resilience as the heart of both prevention and justice. Integrating social pedagogy and youth work offers not only a relationally grounded alternative to punitive approaches but a framework capable of responding to both individual and structural conditions.
Future research might explore the relevance of mattering and Lebensbewältigung across the life course, beyond adolescence and the criminal justice frame – furthering the idea that both mattering and coping with life are lifelong human endeavours.
Funding
The PhD research on which the article is based is self-funded and enabled by a student loan.
Acknowledgements
Heartfelt thanks to all those who facilitated introductions to the pilot study site and who enabled conversations with students. Particularly, I would like to thank the young people who participated in the workshops.
Declarations and conflicts of interest
Research ethics statement
The authors declare that research ethics approval for this article was provided by the Institute of Education – UCL ethics board.
Consent for publication statement
The authors declare that research participants’ informed consent to publication of findings – including photos, videos and any personal or identifiable information – was secured prior to publication.
Conflicts of interest statement
Claire Cameron is current co-editor-in-chief for this journal. All efforts to sufficiently anonymise the authors during peer review of this article have been made. The authors declare no further conflicts with this article.
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