Youth Work in Schools

The current formulation of European Union youth policy is not sufficient for a full understanding of what distinguishes youth work from other services or educational practice for young people. Youth work in Europe has a diverse range of fields, goals, and methods of intervention. Such diversification is considered one of the strengths of youth work, inasmuch as it is associated with its ability to adapt to the variety of problems it faces. Such flexibility is, however, likely to generate vagueness in terms of the knowledge of the special contribution expected from youth work and its execution. As a contribution to lead evaluation research to produce empirical evidence about the key-features of youth work, a theoretical framework is presented in this paper that help to identify the peculiar expected outcomes of youth work as well as those mechanisms able to generate them. Specifically, this paper focused on the ability of youth work to affect a more equal distribution of personal development opportunities for the young outside the formal education. For this purpose, sociological theories on non-formal education, educational inequalities and youth participation have been intertwined with psychological research on transition from adolescence to adulthood and with the theory of educational accompaniment in social pedagogy.

2010

The purpose of the present research was to evaluate the specific functioning of centre-based youth work. This research specifically tried to identify those characteristics of youth work that lead it to affecting a more equal distribution of development opportunities for young people in the field of non-formal and informal education. To this end, an interdisciplinary theoretical framework was constructed through a combination of sociological, psychological and pedagogical theories. A first perspective regarded participation conceived as an opportunity for young people to exercise decision-making power and to play a role in the implementation of youth centres. In particular, a series of studies stemmed from the choice of a case of public programme in Italy aiming to involve young people both in terms of design and management of new youth centres. Subsequent studies aimed to focus on the internal dynamics of youth participation in operative youth centres, as well as on the association between youth participation and team empowerment. A survey of youth centres was carried out in England and in Italy, with the national samples built using a snowball method. Furthermore, case studies of youth centres in England were selected with the aim of exploring good practice with regard to both the participation of young people and the strategies of sustainable development of the centre. A second theoretical perspective led the research to evaluate how youth centres operate as an appropriate setting for planning and carrying out interventions in non-formal education. Specifically, a quasi-experimental evaluation design was adopted in order to analyse the mechanisms through which the interplay between non formal education and informal learning may influence the strengthening of personal agency. On the whole, valuable contribution can be drawn from the theoretical and empirical studies carried out in this research in terms of how to develop youth policies that acknowledge centre-based youth work as a setting for non-formal education and an opportunity for youth participation. In particular, the evaluation studies carried out in this research have helped develop policy building tools that policy makers and youth centres can use in order to learn how an intervention produces specific effects through a series of intermediate mechanism. This research has helped in developing several such tools with the specific intent of understanding how youth centres could become agents of social equality through the provision of opportunities for participation and learning.

Commonwealth Youth and Development

There are many youth workers who continue to design their interventions without any theoretical basis, despite a long history of youth work as a field of practice. The aim of this article is to present selected ideologies and theoretical frameworks underpinning youth work practice. These ideologies and theories, although predominantly borrowed from other disciplines, provide insight on how youth work should be practised.Based on a thorough literature review, the authors have selected different theories and ideologies that youth workers, like other professionals, are expected to know, understand and to adapt to youth work practice. These theories are important and would serve as theoretical frameworks on which youth work interventions will be based and, thereby, provide youth workers with the means to predict and analyse the situations of young people from different viewpoints to enable the development of different strategies to address relevant problems.The article concludes that th...

Aims and methods of the study The central objective of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of youth work with vulnerable young people — primarily between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. Four complementary methods were adopted: a survey of secondary school pupils, a series of focus group interviews with young people with experience of youth work, and individual interviews with particularly vulnerable young people and with key service providers. There was also a workshop session for providers and others to comment on the validity of the findings and to discuss evaluation strategies. The research focused on youth work activities in six geographical areas of Scotland where for different reasons, a significant proportion of young people might be seen as vulnerable. In broad terms three areas were characterised by urban deprivation and three by rural poverty and/or isolation. The researchers argued that in these areas young people are vulnerable to a series of risks and were...

2016

2016

The contribution of the youth in the development of the local communities has been a well preserved asset all over the world’s nations. However, the support given to this category of people and the potential of them has, and sometimes still is, not exploited to the maximum. Youth work is an old profession but the professionalization is yet a new concept, under continuous construction, in order to meet the rapid development of the youth in such a way that the youth workers can constantly be the pillars the youth can lie on and which can support and promote the impactful work the youth are conducting. In this context the present article aims to highlight both theoretical and practical aspects of youth work by presenting the development of the profession and by illustrating impactful activities of youth in their communities as best practice examples.

SCHOLE: A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education, 2005

Community Development, 2017

2011

Youth Studies Australia, 1997

This paper aims to establish some core understandings of the practice of youth work and some of the ethical considerations that follow. The conception of power, and the nature of the power relationship between young poeple and workers is explored, along with the often conflicting expectations that come from funding bodies, communities, management and other professionals. We also discuss the contribution that understanding youth work as a profession might make to practice, as well as some of the difficulties.

2014

Despite years of experience and development, youth work in the UK remains a profession that is misunderstood, under-appreciated and lacks recognition. There has always been uncertainty around the professional definition or articulation of the role of a youth worker. Not only is there a societal lack of understanding about the role but there is also an intrinsic lack of ability to explain the role by those actually undertaking it. Often when social landscapes shift, so too do our attitudes and values, suggesting that perhaps we must acknowledge that the role of the youth worker might also change. Questions need to be asked as to whether Youth and Community Work can make effective enough shifts to survive or whether rebranding and repackaging is required.