Idealistic Assertions or Realistic Possibilities in Community and Youth Work Education

Community and youth work (CYW) practice has been articulated as striving towards a more socially just and equal society and is theorised as a catalyst for social change that seeks to overcome power differentials. Yet, despite these claims, there is limited empirical evidence to inform knowledge about the extent to which ‘equality work’ is featured and practiced in CYW programmes in higher education. This article draws on perspectives from current and former CYW students in the UK which routinely claim critical pedagogy as the bedrock of professionally approved degree programmes. Utilising a survey approach, our aim was to examine the experiences of students to find out if teaching, learning and assessment practices in professionally approved CYW programmes can be argued as helping students to articulate practice as emancipatory. The findings indicate that there was coherence and a strong understanding of core theories that confirmed CYW programmes as helping students to articulate emancipatory practice. In relation to teaching and learning, programmes were not as aligned with critical pedagogy, inclining more towards traditional and formal methods than alternative or informal methods. Finally, an imbalance between the persistent use of standardised assessment methods over more flexible and creative assessments suggested a reluctance to seek, or develop, more emancipatory sustainable assessment alternatives. The article concludes by arguing that informal education and, specifically, CYW programmes are well-placed to drive institutional and social change forward.

“It’s Like Being Back in GCSE Art”—Engaging with Music, Film-Making and Boardgames. Creative Pedagogies within Youth Work Education

Creative pedagogies within youth work practice are well established. Practitioners working with young people are often called upon to utilise their own personal and professional ‘toolboxes’, as a way of supporting ‘Creative Arts Youth Work’. However, within Higher Education (HE), creative methods for teaching and learning within the university context are often overlooked. The problem posed by this article is: how can HE ‘catch-up’ with more advanced pedagogies in the field of practice? Despite a recent focus on the personalisation of learning within HE, how can arts-based pedagogies, including digital storytelling, be drawn upon to enhance the learning experience? This article reports on three areas of pedagogical innovation engaged with by students undertaking the Youth Studies degree at Nottingham Trent University. Three experimental initiatives are explored, which assisted in educating informal educators, through creative learning techniques. Engaging with music, film-making and boardgames are given as examples of creative pedagogy, reporting on both my own practical experience in organising these activities and student feedback. Results showed that the symbiosis of creative pedagogies with relational and experiential learning, key tenets of youth work practice, offered expressive and authentic conditions for learning that are based upon student’s experiences. Therefore, there is much to learn from youth work courses within HE, not only in terms of engaging and encouraging students through creativity, but also setting the scene for the future of creative youth work practice.

Experiential Teaching and Learning in Child and Youth Care Work:

The Graduate Diploma in Youth Work is in its fifth year at Concordia University in Montreal. In a department committed to experiential teaching and the training of practitioners, a large focus of the program is to immerse students in experiences that prepare them for engaging in reflexive and theoretically informed approaches to practice. The purpose of this article will be to illustrate our program model through four learning activities that are representative of our unique approach to youth worker education. An additional focus will be the ways in which our model and these activities align with the Association for Child and Youth Care Practice competencies. A model of integrative youth work education was developed in 2015 by Ranahan, Blanchet-Cohen and Mann-Feder to form the basis for an advanced Graduate Diploma in youth work in Montreal, Quebec (Concordia University, n.d.). The purpose of this article is to share four structured experiential learning activities that illustrate this model. Prior to describing the activities, an overview of our approach to integrative youth work will be provided, along with a discussion of how it aligns with the competencies for practice developed by the Association for Child and Youth Care Practice (ACYCP) (Association for Child and Youth Care Practice, 2010).