Tendencies show that integration of volunteering as a part of the public welfare model is progressively increasing. To ensure a certain level of quality in the welfare solutions NGOs in Denmark must meet specific requirements regarding e.g., organizing, management and documentation (La Cour, 2014). The NGO’s adaptation to these requirements affects the volunteer workers’ ability to carry out the welfare solutions while in direct contact with socioeconomically disadvantaged citizens. In the process of these adaptations the organizations offer a variety of training and educational opportunities that range from onboarding training to individual development plans (Sørensen et al., 2021). However, the lack of a uniform professional tradition stemming from a background in an educational field and thereby leaving clear cultural procedures to follow, causes difficulties in socializing into uniform praxis. In other words, the outcome of volunteer training can result in a less clear transfer of learning outputs from the learning process to the practical work.

Hence this thesis investigates a pragmatic method to construct and carry out a scenario-based learning activity that uses the learners’ own pre-existing knowledge and experiences to operationalize core values and expected articulated norms of actions.
The case organization in this scientific study is Kirkens Korshær and the delimited praxis of interest is defined by a local department that facilitates social activities and community targeting socioeconomically disadvantaged citizens with the expectation that they participate and engage themselves in the department community. This department has been anonymized and is called Stedet and the citizens that participate are called users. The main challenge described by the responsible volunteer coordinator revolves around a lack of initiative and including users in activities in general during the daily work. Despite having this problem presented to them the volunteers supposedly have not changed their course of action accordingly.

This thesis builds upon previously conducted research in the form of a study that took place in the fall/winter of 2022 at the same organization and department as a part of the 9th semester at this master’s study. This previous study suggests that the problem described concerning the volunteers’ ability to show the expected behavior can be solved by performing a scenario-based learning activity. To continue on the same track as the pre-study this thesis proceeds in the same pragmatic spirit and adds theoretic layers that address simulation and organizational knowledge creation. We aim to test scenario-based learning as a basis for communication that allows the learning participants to negotiate the rooted meanings in aforementioned values and norms of action based on observed or experienced actions.

The empirical foundation for this thesis is constituted by fieldwork which implies participant observation and gave us a necessary insight into the nuances in the daily field praxis. This allowed us to construct an authentic and recognizable scenario to test in collaboration with the volunteers at Stedet. To ensure a suitable didactical approach we used Hiim & Hippe’s didactic model (Hiim & Hippe, 2018) and expanded their groundwork with a simulation-related didactic.
Throughout a two-parted analysis we firstly focused on the preparation of the learning activity and secondly, on the data that documented the execution of the scenario activity. Findings show that there are different factors to attend to when facilitating a scenario-based activity for social volunteers. A facilitator must have an experience-based connection to the praxis to ensure adequate and authentic scenario descriptions though one must be aware of one’s own personal preferences and opinions and make sure they don’t affect the openminded dialog when suggestions are made. Another conclusion is that it is important to integrate reflection dedicated phases so the participants can build individual hypotheses to test out by acting or observing, making it possible to compare solutions in a facilitated dialog and negotiate how certain actions correspond to ditto articulated values and norms of action. Four values and norms of action were defined and connected to the actions in the scenario as a result of a creative and experimental process: Nærvær (pressence), omsorg (care), inklusion (inclusion) and initiativ (Initiative).