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

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.