Aesthetic Literacy and the Voices of Youth: Creative Writing, Navigational Competence and Educational Practice

This article explores how creative writing can strengthen aesthetic literacy and navigational competence in upper-secondary education. Drawing on two published student anthologies from a Danish upper-secondary school (2024-2025), the article analyses essays on time and poems on paths as expressions of how young people navigate identity, uncertainty, and ethical orientation. It argues that creative writing enables adolescents to transform experience into symbolic form and to practise reflective judgement and imagination. The article also highlights implications for teacher education, suggesting that university programmes in languages, culture and literature should cultivate aesthetic and creative competences alongside academic skills.