Security and Safety Education from the Polish Context to Reinforce Social Education at a Time of Global Uncertainty

Abstract

This study advances the conceptual and practical scope of social education by integrating Security and Safety Education (SSE) categories into its theoretical foundation. We demonstrate that SSE encompasses multidimensional areas highly relevant to social education and offer a structured competence model to guide curriculum design. Using a mixed-methods approach, 2926 Web of Science publications were analysed through an NVivo Word Frequency Query to identify key domains associated with security and safety. The temporal scope of the corpus (2019–2021) provides a coherent analytical baseline, capturing intensified security and health-related discourse during the COVID-19 period while preceding geopolitical disruptions that could otherwise distort thematic patterns. The results show that security is associated with broad social and geopolitical issues, including food, political, economic, public, national, and international affairs, as well as health and information. In contrast, safety is mainly linked to transport-related concerns, although both domains converge in areas such as health, social, public, national, and information matters. These findings indicate that SSE encompasses multidimensional areas relevant to social education. To support curricular integration, we propose an eMEDIATOR-derived competence model that structures SSE content into measurable, outcomes-based components. Ultimately, this research provides actionable tools to elevate social education and promote active, informed citizenship in times of global uncertainty.

1. Introduction

Security and Safety Education (SSE) is a subject taught in Polish primary and secondary schools. Its importance increases during periods of rapid, unpredictable, and far-reaching social change, when education is expected not only to transmit knowledge but also to prepare learners to respond responsibly to instability and disruption [1,2]. In the Polish context, SSE now operates at the intersection of multiple pressures, including demographic change, migration, inequality, technological transformation, and political uncertainty. Such complexity places SSE within a broader interdisciplinary field linking education, sociology, psychology, and security and safety studies [3].

Social education offers an appropriate interpretive frame for SSE because it focuses on how individuals construct and enact understandings of social, political, and economic relations in democratic contexts [4]. From this perspective, SSE is not limited to hazard awareness or emergency response. It also concerns participation, responsibility, resilience, and the capacity to interpret social risks within everyday civic life. Such a framing assumes that human functioning depends on stable environments and civic interactions informed by understandings of past, present, and future actions [5]. It also requires inclusive and equitable quality education that enables a tolerant examination of multiple perspectives and diverse views [6,7]. Through these mechanisms, social education supports the common good [8] and strengthens both personal and collective development as well as professional background formation [9]. Positioning SSE within social education therefore provides both a conceptual expansion and a practical basis for curriculum development under conditions of contemporary uncertainty.

Two gaps motivate this study and correspond to the research questions. First, SSE domain frameworks are rarely connected to corpus-based evidence about which “security” and “safety” themes are dominant in recent social science scholarship, limiting the empirical basis for reconstructing thematic domains relevant to SSE (RQ1). Second, overlapping SSE taxonomies are seldom accompanied by explicit rules for assigning topics to domains and translating domains into curriculum-ready learning outcomes, constraining competence-based curriculum mapping (RQ2).

To our knowledge, no previous study has combined corpus-based reconstruction of security and safety domains with competence-based development of SSE within the framework of social education. Accordingly, the study pursues two aims: (1) to reconstruct dominant thematic domains in recent social science research on “security” and “safety” and interpret their relevance for SSE conceptualisation within social education; and (2) to operationalise SSE learning outcomes through a competence model representation that supports curriculum mapping within social education.

The study addresses these aims through a mixed-method design that combines conceptual analysis with corpus-based quantitative evidence. First, it reviews SSE at a conceptual level with attention to Poland’s historical awareness of security and safety issues, linguistic conceptualisation and expression, and the development of citizen education and academic research in Poland. Second, it conducts a quantitative content analysis of Web of Science publications from 2019 to 2021 (N = 2926) containing the terms “security” and “safety” within selected social science categories. Since the corpus represents social science scholarship rather than school-based SSE practice, the quantitative component reconstructs dominant thematic domains and interprets their relevance for SSE conceptualisation within social education. The 2019–2021 window was selected by design: it captures the COVID-19 period, when safety and health-related discourse intensified, while also providing a pre-escalation baseline prior to the major regional disruption after 2021. Third, the study applies an eMEDIATOR-derived competence model as an implementation-oriented representation layer that structures SSE learning outcomes into clear and comparable descriptors, thereby supporting curriculum mapping within social education. Rather than functioning as the main analytical engine, the model serves as an operational bridge between reconstructed thematic domains and curriculum design. AI can enable scalable workflows around such structured descriptors (e.g., tagging, cross-domain alignment, and consistency checks) [10,11].

Two research questions guide the paper:

• RQ1. What dominant thematic domains characterise recent social science research on security and safety?
• RQ2. How can the application of a competence model contribute to SSE?

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 provides the study background by positioning SSE within social education in the Polish context and specifying the conceptual gaps that motivate RQ1–RQ2. Section 3 presents the methodological design, including the quantitative analysis and the competence model. Section 4 reports results, Section 5 discusses implications, and Section 6 concludes with contributions, limitations, and directions for future research.

2. Background of the Study

Section 2 positions SSE within social education, outlines the conceptual gaps motivating RQ1–RQ2, and summarises the Polish curricular and scholarly baseline used later for domain reconstruction and competence-based mapping.

Research linking social education with SSE remains limited and conceptually fragmented. Prior studies typically develop the conceptual framework of social education [12,13] or examine selected issues relevant to civic life and state security, such as social justice [12,14,15], tolerance [16], human rights education [17], and peacebuilding [18]. What remains largely absent is a coherent account of SSE as a structured domain framework embedded within social education. As a result, SSE-related content is often treated as a dispersed collection of themes rather than as an integrated set of domains that can be systematically linked to curricular aims and learning outcomes. Accordingly, the review focuses on conceptual foundations and Polish SSE frameworks that are directly used later for domain reconstruction and competence-based mapping, rather than attempting an exhaustive overview of all adjacent strands of literature.

Two gaps follow from this state of the literature. First, domain frameworks used in Polish SSE scholarship and practice are rarely connected to corpus-based evidence showing which themes dominate recent social science research on “security” and “safety”. Second, overlapping taxonomies are seldom accompanied by explicit criteria for assigning topics to particular domains, which reduces comparability across classifications and limits their usefulness for curriculum mapping. Taken together, these shortcomings suggest that existing approaches remain analytically valuable yet insufficiently integrated for evidence-based curricular operationalisation. Closing these gaps is directly relevant to RQ1, which concerns dominant thematic domains in recent social science research on security and safety, and it also establishes the conceptual basis for RQ2 by clarifying how such domains may be translated into competence-oriented educational structures.

Poland offers a relevant context for this positioning because its geographical location and historical experience have contributed to heightened social awareness of safety and security, reinforced under contemporary pressures, including EU migration debates, tensions between Russia and NATO, including the Russia–Ukraine war, and domestic polarisation intensified during the COVID-19 period. SSE is taught in Poland through various levels of formal education and is linked to civic, moral, patriotic, and defensive education aims; it addresses crisis situations, first aid training, and health education by combining an individual perspective (preventing threats to life, health, or personal safety) [19,20,21,22,23] with a social dimension (ensuring safe functioning of social groups such as family, local community, and the state) [24,25]. Poland therefore provides not only a national case but also a particularly instructive setting in which security and safety-related educational priorities are historically rooted and currently reactivated by contemporary social and geopolitical pressures.

Polish academic work provides several baseline SSE domain frameworks that largely overlap despite different labels, including Rudnicki’s “environmental”, “economic”, “military”, “political”, “psychosocial”, and “public” domains [26] later divisions of “political”, “military”, “public”, “psychosocial”, “economic”, and “ecological” security and safety [27,28] and Pieczywok’s “civic education”, “economic”, “legal”, “defence”, “pro-societal”, “health”, and “ecological” categories [29], alongside functional roles attributed to SSE such as “adaptational”, “corrective”, “socialisation”, “stimulating”, and “personality-creating” functions [30]. Although these frameworks converge around several recurring domains, they differ in terminology, granularity, and classificatory logic. Such variation makes them useful as a scholarly baseline, but not as a sufficiently transparent basis for direct curriculum mapping without further reconstruction. Taken together, these strands motivate an analytical strategy in which dominant domains in contemporary scholarship are first reconstructed (RQ1) and then interpreted for their conceptual fit with SSE categories used in education, providing a structured foundation for competence-based curriculum mapping (RQ2). In this sense, the Polish literature offers an important point of departure, but it does not by itself resolve the problem of domain consolidation and operational translation into learning outcomes.

In addition to these domain-level considerations, a clearer conceptual grounding is needed regarding how competence and related constructs are understood in the literature. Existing models conceptualise competence in divergent ways, contributing to persistent ambiguity: the KSA model [31] treats attitudes as motivational dispositions, whereas the Computing Curricula 2020 framework replaces attitudes with behavioural “dispositions” [32], and performance-oriented approaches define competence as the integration of knowledge, skill, and observable performance [33]. Standardisation efforts also vary, from data-model-focused specifications such as IEEE 1484.20.1 to hierarchical, learning-outcome-centred structures such as InLOC [34], while domain-specific frameworks including the e-CF, EQF, SWEBOK, and PMBOK further illustrate the diversity of conceptualisations across fields. These divergences underscore the need for a coherent conceptual basis for the competence model used in this study.

Despite the diversity of existing competence models, the literature reveals structural limitations that hinder their applicability. Their conceptual heterogeneity leads to inconsistent definitions of competence and to a lack of clarity regarding the contexts in which they can be applied. As a result, current models offer limited support for mapping SSE domains to curriculum-ready learning outcomes and for ensuring coherence across educational levels. To address these deficiencies, this study proposes a harmonised competence model that integrates dispersed elements from prior approaches, facilitating the alignment of SSE domains with curriculum design.

3. Materials and Methods

To identify potential areas for the development of social education, a quantitative content analysis of previously published research relevant to SSE was conducted. The study aimed to support the further conceptual development of the SSE framework by synthesising recent research with existing taxonomies in order to identify dominant thematic domains. They were subsequently interpreted in relation to social education curriculum strands and broader socioeconomic development needs. The analysis was based on records retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, which includes major citation indexes that cover the social sciences, humanities, and related interdisciplinary fields. The dataset was analysed using a Word Frequency Query (WFQ) implemented in NVivo 12 Plus software, a mixed methods data analysis tool for text mining. The study was conducted in September 2021.

The search was conducted using the keywords “security” and “safety” in two separate queries. In both cases, the results were refined by publication years (2019–2021) and language (automatic selection). The “security” query was refined by Web of Science categories: “social issues”, “social work”, and “social sciences interdisciplinary”. The sampling frame was designed to capture recent social science research on security and safety as conceptual source domains for SSE, rather than literature explicitly labelled as curricular or educational. The identified thematic domains were subsequently interpreted in relation to relevant social education curriculum strands, allowing alignment between empirical mapping and educational objectives. The study deliberately adopts a focused, theory-informed lexical approach that combines word-frequency results with relational mapping to support qualitative interpretation. A total of 1487 records for “security” were identified. The “safety” query was refined using the “social sciences interdisciplinary”, which yielded 1439 records. Using social science-related categories to retrieve publications provided a more precise analytical context for further exploration. Each result dataset—encompassing titles, keywords, and abstracts—was exported and subjected to further analyses with NVivo WFQ. In addition to frequency counts, NVivo was used to generate networks of conceptual links based on term co-occurrence within the same titles, abstracts, or keywords across the dataset. To enhance interpretability, relational networks were constructed only for the most frequent terms identified in the WFQ, and links were visualised when co-occurrence exceeded a minimum threshold of repeated joint appearance within the corpus.

The query was performed using exact matches, with a minimum word length of four characters. Generic academic terms and non-thematic words were excluded to prevent inflation of frequencies unrelated to substantive content. The stop-word list comprised both generic academic terms (e.g., “data”, “article”, “analysis”) and selected domain-level terms (e.g., “security”) whose high frequency would otherwise obscure differentiation between thematic domains. The selection of stop words was informed by Rudnicki’s categorisation of SSE, which guided the exclusion of analytically non-discriminatory terms. While the theory-informed filtering increased conceptual focus, it may have constrained the emergence of alternative, non-aligned thematic framings, which may be considered a methodological limitation of the study. The stop-word list used in the analysis is provided in Appendix A.

The analytical procedure followed a sequential structure. First, the WFQ was applied to identify the most frequent lexical items in the corpus. Second, these terms were interpreted through co-occurrence networks to reconstruct broader thematic domains within security and safety research. Finally, the identified domains were interpreted in relation to SSE curricula and operationalised through the competence model in order to examine how these domains could be represented within structured educational competences.

Competence integrates knowledge and skills to achieve proficiency [35]. Skills (know-how) refer to practical abilities acquired through practice, while knowledge (know-that) denotes the understanding of facts and ideas [35]. To identify the core competences relevant to SSE, we applied a competence model developed within the Erasmus+ project titled Ecosystem for European Education Mobility as a Service: Model with Portal Demo (eMEDIATOR) (https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/es/projects/search/details/2021-1-LV01-KA220-HED-000027571, accessed on 17 March 2026), which encompasses various educational fields and supports the configuration of study programmes across different universities. The competence model is based on the harmonisation of IEEE 1484.20.1 and CWA 16655-1 standards using the HFramework [36], a protocol designed to integrate heterogeneous competence frameworks [37,38]. After applying the HFramework, specific metadata were identified to represent competences.

As shown in

Table 1. Competence model.

Mandatory/ Optional	Attributes Layer 1	Attributes Layer 2
Mandatory elements	▪ Competence identifier
	▪ Title or name
	▪ Description
Optional elements	▪ Definitions, specified in much the same way as in CWA 16655-1 standard, to define a competence from a set of sub-competences
	▪ Implicit metadata	Extra identifier(s)
		Abbreviations
		Date of creation
		Date of modification
		Validation start date
		Validation end date
		Date of issue
		Author
		Topics
		Credits
		Level
		Version
	▪ Explicit metadata	Section where other metadata can be added from an external model

, the competence model consists of mandatory and optional elements organised into two layers. The first layer includes core descriptors such as competence identifiers, titles or names, descriptions, definitions, and implicit and explicit metadata. The second layer contains supplementary information, including abbreviations, date of creation and modification, author, and topics. When applied to the SSE context, the proposed model facilitates the systematic sharing and assessment of SSE-related content, supports a quantifiable and outcome-oriented approach to learning, and promotes coherence across SSE competence domains.

To illustrate the practical application of the model, several fully worked competence examples were developed, including identifiers, descriptions, sub-competences, and metadata. They show how the model can be implemented in educational settings and how individual competences can be translated into observable learning outcomes. The extended examples are available as Supplementary Material S1 in Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/19354020 (archived on 31 March 2026).

The mapping from semantic domains to competence descriptors was carried out through an interpretative analysis aimed at identifying conceptual correspondences between domains and curriculum-level outcomes. Each domain was linked to curriculum-level outcomes when a clear correspondence could be established. When ambiguities arose, the proposed mappings were reviewed collectively by the authors to maintain coherence. This procedure ensured consistency in the translation of semantic domains into competence descriptors.

A validation exercise was also carried out to assess the practical relevance of the competence model. This exercise was conceived as a preliminary usability check aiming to assess whether the model was understandable, usable, and perceived as relevant by higher-education practitioners. It involved a simple usage scenario supported by worked examples, which were prepared by one of the authors, and the participation of ten higher-education teachers, who attended a detailed explanation of the model, reviewed the examples, and provided feedback. Their views were collected through a short survey based on the Method Evaluation Model (MEM), which examines perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude towards use, and intention to use. Participants also provided qualitative comments on the model’s clarity and applicability. Given its preliminary nature, the procedure offered initial insights into how the model is perceived by practitioners, which can inform future refinements and application of the model. The results of this exercise are presented in the Results section.

Methodological Limitations

This study has several methodological limitations that should be acknowledged. First, the lexical approach based on word-frequency analysis and co-occurrence patterns may overlook contextual nuances and semantic relationships that would be visible in full-text qualitative analysis. Second, the dataset relies exclusively on the Web of Science database, which may exclude relevant publications that are not indexed in this source and are therefore not included in the analysis. Finally, the analysis focuses on publications from the 2019–2021 period. Although the selected timeframe captures recent developments in security discourse during a period of global disruption, the results may not fully reflect developments that occurred after 2021.

4. Results

The methods described in the previous section were applied, and the resulting findings are presented below. To facilitate interpretation, the results have been organised according to the research questions. Figure 1 illustrates the analytical workflow implemented in the study, providing a visual summary of the four stages: (1) dataset identification and filtering; (2) dataset construction; (3) lexical and relational analysis using WFQ and co-occurrence networks; and (4) the interpretation and mapping of thematic domains (RQ1) alongside the application of the competence model (RQ2).

RQ 1. What dominant thematic domains characterise recent social science research on security and safety?

For the “security” query, the WFQ identified a set of the most frequent terms.

Table 2. WFQ for security.

Word	Count	Weighted Percentage (%)
Social	1558	0.98
Food	884	0.55
Policy	620	0.39
Economic	521	0.33
State	481	0.30
Health	471	0.29
Public	436	0.27
National	427	0.27
Information	416	0.26
International	335	0.21

presents these terms, their counts, and the weighted percentage. The results indicate that the thematic scope of security research is broad and interdisciplinary. The three dominant thematic categories emerging from the security literature concern “social” (0.98%), “food” (0.55%), and “policy-related” (0.39%) issues. The remaining concepts were: “economic”, “state”, “health”, “public”, “national”, “information”, and “international”. To further explore the relationship between these domains, a relational analysis was performed with NVivo. As shown in Figure 2, the ten most frequent keywords form a relational network based on their co-occurrence within the analysed texts. The concepts “social”, “food”, “policy”, and “economic” are densely interconnected. This pattern indicates that security-related research frequently addresses systemic and governance-oriented issues embedded in “social” organisation, public “policy”, and structural conditions rather than as a set of isolated threats. The central position of the “social” category and its links to “economy”, “policy”, and “food-related” terms suggest that contemporary social science research on security frequently addresses interdependencies across multiple societal domains.

“Safety” was also explored using the same criteria as the security dataset. The most frequent terms identified were (ranked by frequency): “crash” (0.72%), “driving” (0.62%), “traffic” (0.59%), then “vehicle”, “health”, “social”, “management”, “national”, “information”, and “public” (

Table 3. WFQ for safety.

Word	Count	Weighted Percentage (%)
Crash	1373	0.72
Driving	1192	0.62
Traffic	1126	0.59
Vehicle	889	0.46
Health	643	0.33
Social	476	0.25
Management	396	0.21
National	394	0.21
Information	387	0.20
Public	369	0.19

). The results show that the term “safety” is mostly connected with transport-related contexts, although terms such as “health” and “social” indicate broader thematic connections. Figure 3 shows that the co-occurrence network is strongly centred on transportation-related terms.

The analysis of 1487 records concerning “security” revealed that the area of interest concerns various global issues, such as “society”, “policy”, “state”, “food”, and “health”, while the analysis of 1439 records concerning “safety” revealed more specific and monothematic references to “transport”. However, common concepts appeared in both queries: “health”, “social”, “public”, “national”, and “information”. It is worth noticing that the concept of “social” appeared in both queries (0.98% in “security”) and (0.25% in “safety”). This pattern suggests that social science research addresses both security and safety topics, although the security corpus reflects a broader thematic distribution than the safety corpus. Taken together, the results suggest a distinction between systemic, policy-oriented framings of security and the more narrowly institutionalised framing of safety, with overlapping social and public dimensions.

RQ2. How can the application of a competence model contribute to SSE?

A set of competences was purposively selected from SSE syllabi in order to illustrate the range of competence areas represented in the model and to examine their structured representation (syllabi and competences are available as Supplementary Material S2 in Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/19354020, archived on 31 March 2026). The selected competences addressed health, safety, and education-related domains. In summary, the competences range from the ability to recognise and respond to emergency situations, such as first aid and the use of defibrillators, to promoting core values such as generosity and patriotism. They also emphasise the integration of pedagogical methods to support learning and foster a proactive attitude to safety. Competences on environmental risk analysis and the contextualisation of socio-political conditions have also been considered. The content was arranged and structured with the competence model.

The model’s description of competences facilitates the identification of essential knowledge and skills that students are expected to acquire in the SSE area. With the use of this form of information display, educators can also compare concepts covered in various curricula and identify recurring themes and areas of emphasis in the lectures. Educators can also obtain a better understanding of the relationships between different knowledge and skill areas within the SSE domain. Thus, efforts can be made to ensure that curricula are thorough and well-rounded, encompassing all major facets of SSE. The model’s ease of use for collaboration and communication between educators and experts in the field of SSE is key. This approach makes it possible for several stakeholders—such as educators, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners—to collaborate more successfully when debating and comprehending competences (Figure 4). Detailed worked examples of several competences presented in the figure mentioned above are provided as Supplementary Material S1 in Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/19354020 (archived on 31 March 2026) to support their application in educational practice.

Regarding the validation exercise conducted to assess its practical relevance, the competence model was positively received by the ten participating higher education teachers. In six survey items, at least seven respondents expressed agreement, indicating favourable perceptions of its usefulness and ease of use. Participants also reported a positive attitude towards applying the model and expressed willingness to use it in a test scenario, including through the demo portal developed within the eMEDIATOR project. These results provide preliminary support for the model’s applicability in educational practice and can be consulted online as Supplementary Material S3 in Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/records/19354020 (archived on 31 March 2026).

Taken together, the application of the competence model highlights the multidimensional structure of SSE and reveals how operational skills (e.g., emergency response), normative values, and contextual risk awareness are integrated within curricula rather than treated as isolated learning outcomes. This structured representation also points to areas of emphasis and potential imbalance across curricula, thereby providing an analytical basis for comparison and the future refinement of SSE programmes.

5. Discussion

This study advances existing SSE scholarship by empirically grounding educational frameworks in recent social science research and operationalising them through a structured competence model. The domains identified in the previous section and their interrelations were organised into a structured analytical framework. As shown in Figure 4, the competence model provides concrete examples of how SSE-related domains can be translated into structured competence descriptors that can support curriculum development and educational practice. Hence, the proposed model can serve as a practical input for AI-supported analysis, assessment, and curriculum design in SSE.

5.1. Theoretical Contributions

The study provides a theoretical basis for redefining how security is taught by integrating contemporary social transformations into established pedagogical models.

5.2. Expansion of the SSE Conceptual Framework

The primary theoretical contribution is the refinement of the SSE framework. This study builds upon the security and safety categories proposed by Rudnicki in 1994: “economic”, “environmental”, “military”, “political”, “public”, and “psychological”. This study then integrates additional topics elicited from the WFQ: “health” (including “clinical safety”), “international relations”, and “information security”.

This integration reconceptualizes the distinction between “security” and “safety”. The security categories of “economic”, “political”, and “international” address global, systemic issues. This enriches the scope of social education, which refers to understandings of social, political, and economic relations [4]. Conversely, the safety categories of “environmental” and “health” shift the theoretical focus toward the design of immediate environments that foster human growth, namely infrastructure, transport, and architecture.

5.3. The Competence Model as a Theoretical Tool

Beyond expanding the SSE categories themselves, the introduction of a competence model offers a structured, outcomes-based analytical tool. As illustrated in Figure 4, the model translates abstract educational goals into specific, measurable competences, facilitating improved talent management and enabling the theoretical application of AI-supported analysis in educational settings [39].

5.4. Pedagogical Implications

The theoretical shifts above necessitate a transformation in teaching practice, moving away from knowledge-based, exam-driven curricula toward reflective and transformative citizenship education.

5.5. Transforming Classroom Practice and Curriculum

Insight into the new categories explains connections between SSE and social education in the context of teaching practice and curriculum.

Table 4. Domains of security and safety juxtaposed with areas of study under social education.

Category of SSE	Understanding of the Category	Supporting Literature from Web of Science Categories Related to the Social Context (Areas of Study Under Social Education)
Environmental	Education aimed at shaping the harmonious coexistence of people with nature, and attitudes and behaviour in a situation of environmental threats.	Environmental, ecological education [40]. Climate change education [41]
Economic	Educational measures aimed at increasing financial and economic awareness within society.	Economic education [42,43].
Military and defence education	Education aimed at preserving the independence of the nation/state and protecting people from the consequences of conflicts.	Military social work [44,45].
Political	Education focusing on shaping the political culture and attitudes toward political threats.	Developing political efficacy [46].
Psychosocial	Education shaping society’s psychological resilience toward hardship and threats. Safety and security aspects of psychology and sociology to understand and manage human performance.	Moral education [47,48]. Existential education, well-being [49].
Public	Education focusing on maintaining public order. This includes shaping citizens’ legal awareness and attitudes toward threats. It also ensures the protection of citizens, people in their territory, organisations, and institutions against threats.	Civic Education, citizenship education [50,51,52,53]. Human rights education [17]. Peace education [54]. Civil rights [55]. Social justice [15].
Information	Education on social competences is the ability to create and convey constructive messages, alongisde education on systems in terms of their requirements: confidentiality, integrity, availability, and reliability.	Communication education, digital citizenship [56].
International	This category is related to international relations and cultural awareness.	Global education [57]. Multicultural education [58,59].
Health	Providing a safe, secure, and welcoming environment, proper behaviour in crisis situations.	Health education [60], crisis education [61]. Transport education [62].

shows how the identified security and safety domains correspond to established areas of study within social education.

Education must shape attitudes toward environmental threats and climate change [40,41]). Simultaneously, economic education should increase financial awareness [42,43] to tackle inequalities that violate the sense of security. Pedagogy must address the psychological resilience needed for hardship [63,64], conflicts of values [65,66] and moral education [47,48]. This includes existential education and well-being [49]. Health SSE must teach proper behaviour in crisis situations [67], first aid [61], transport education [62], and health literacy—a critical issue highlighted by COVID-19 [60,68]. The social aspects of military defence should also be taught [44,45], along with cultural awareness to foster international operations [69].

5.6. Digital Competences and Citizenship

Information SSE requires pedagogies that go beyond technical skills to include digital citizenship [56]. Educators must teach students to navigate infospheres and use social media responsibly to shape values [70,71]. These are vital in creating a safe ecosystem for public administration [72] and can be leveraged for warning procedures in cases of emergencies [73]. Health promotion via social media is also a pedagogical opportunity [74]. Crucially, the effective implementation of this framework is contingent upon the educator’s proficiency with technology. The model emphasises the importance of digital competences for educators [75,76]. A structured approach to these competences enhances the teaching of complex concepts [77]. It also aligns with student perspectives [78], supporting personalised learning [79] and cross-cutting skills demanded in the work environment [80,81].

5.7. Transparency and Agency

A competence model using SSE makes it possible to organise course information in a more schematic and structured way. A course syllabus is a convention used for making the contents of courses known, and it establishes a learning agreement between the learner and the institution. Competences listed in a syllabus enable learners to make informed decisions about the scope of training before enrolment.

Increased transparency and the explicit inclusion of competences in a syllabus can be a tool for employee enrichment, to the benefit of both the employee and the employer organisation. If organisations can identify core competences required for a given job, the employee can then pursue those objectives clearly. Similarly, if a training path does not achieve the desired outcomes, the employee/learner and/or their organisation can make adjustments in advance.

5.8. Policy Implications

From a systemic perspective, the findings suggest that incorporating SSE into national and regional regulations is essential for addressing political ignorance and declining civic participation.

5.9. Civic Engagement and Social Cohesion

Political SSE serves as a crucial policy tool to prevent government repression and systemic human rights violations by fostering political efficacy [46]. Political SSE can be a valuable instrument to counter contemporary political ignorance [82,83]) and the failure of schools to promote critical reflection [13].

Public SSE can be integrated into a more prominent position within the cultural milieu in order to cultivate essential social values. These social values include: civics and citizenship; [50,51,52,53], civil rights [55], human rights [17], social justice [15], and community concern [84]. These can all build towards the broader aims of social cohesion, augmented by peace education [54] and civic engagement [12].

5.10. Systemic Stability and Global Integration

International SSE policies are critical for managing demographic diversity and migration [50]. Educational policy must create inclusive spaces [18,85,86] that promote global citizenship [57,87] and multicultural education [58,59,88]. This approach fosters understanding of ethnic perspectives [89] and global interconnectedness [90], contributing to peace [91] and social cohesion [92].

Ultimately, these policies align with the global effort for sustainable development [93] national safety [94]. The model facilitates a unified understanding of these themes [95] and addresses the critique that current curricula de-emphasise transformative citizenship [96].

6. Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research Directions

6.1. Conclusions

This study aimed to enhance the theory and practice of social education by incorporating the categories of SSE. Literature analysis and mixed-methods research findings indicated that SSE is a powerful, interdisciplinary area for consideration that may be of particular significance to social education. Two dominant categories emerge: security and safety.

First, the category of security captures the various aspects of social education elicited by the WFQ: “food”, “political”, “economic”, “public” or “national”, “international affairs”, “health”, and “information security”. These global issues, as main topics of interest in the social sciences, indicate further directions in thinking about social education [4]. It means that social education should focus on creating an active and aware citizen who can make a significant impact on solving today’s global problems.

Second, the category of safety similarly captures the multiple elements needed to design a safe environment, such as infrastructure, transport, and architecture. Also included are social groups that may hinder or promote human growth and health. In addition to safe spaces, social pedagogical analyses can be applied to environmental psychology in education, which is related to the design of spaces that are conducive to growth and well-being. Similarly, this can equally be applied to limiting accidents or social disturbances resulting from poorly designed spaces.

The categories of SSE, “environmental”, “economic”, “military (defence)”, “political”, “psychosocial”, “public”, “information”, “international”, and “health”, form both the scope and goals of SSE. They also complement social pedagogical theory and practice. Viewed from a pre-crisis perspective, the identified categories of SSE highlight foundational dimensions that continue to inform social pedagogical theory and practice in contexts of subsequent uncertainty.

6.2. Limitations and Future Research Directions

The global and regional events surrounding this study present both limitations and opportunities for future scholarship. The analysis of the study was based on Web of Science publications from 2019 to 2021. This period was marked by key historical events, namely the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine conflict that began on February 24, 2022. Similarly, the advent of AI in subsequent years has had a profound impact on society, creating a further period bounding of this work.

A strength of this research is that it effectively captures data for the time prior to the Russia–Ukraine conflict, as data collection after 2021 would have been disproportionately affected by this conflict near Poland’s border. An opportunity, however, arises for future researchers to conduct a similar study after this Russia–Ukraine conflict is resolved. Similarly, insights from the COVID-19 pandemic can also be captured. This can be especially valuable as the pandemic interacted with multiple aspects of the SSE. Lastly, future researchers can take advantage of innovations in AI to apply this study’s SSE model at greater scale. Future investigators, for example, could integrate this model into an organisation’s information system, allowing for greater insights into an individual’s progression along competences. The advent of AI will allow future researchers to expand the scope of their projects through computational efficiencies and the ability to capture and process more data. In addition, while the current study focused on the ten most frequent WFQ terms to identify dominant thematic domains, future research could adopt more granular lexical analyses or advanced network-based approaches to enhance analytical depth and address the coarseness of the methodology.

The distinct categories of SSE, “environmental”, “economic”, “military (defence)”, “political”, “psychosocial”, “public”, “information”, “international”, and “health”, complement contemporary social pedagogical theory and practice. The identified categories of SSE highlight foundational dimensions that continue to inform the evolving contexts of a turbulent world.