Re-Assembling Anti-Oppressive Practice (1): The Personal, the Political, the Professional

This essay offers a broken narrative concerning the early history of anti-oppressive practice as an approach in the U.K. to youth and community work and the struggles over this in the context of UK higher education between the 1960′s and the early 2000’s. Educating informal educators as youth and community workers in the UK has been a site of contestation. Aspects of a genealogy of that struggle are presented in ways which link publicly available histories with personal memories and narratives, through the use of a personal archive developed through collective memory work. These are chosen to illuminate the links between theory and practice: on the one hand, the conceptual field which has framed the education of youth and community workers, whose sources lie in the academic disciplines of education and sociology, and, on the other hand, the social movements which have formed the practice of informal educators. Six have been chosen: (1) The long 1968: challenging approaches to authority; (2) the group as a source of learning; (3) The personal and political: experiential learning from discontent; (4) Paolo Freire and Critical Praxis; (5) A critical break in social education and the reality of youth work spaces as defensive spaces; (6) New managerialism: ethics vs. paper trails. The approach taken, of linking memory work with present struggles, is argued to be a generative form for current critical and enlivening practice.

Pedagogies of Discomfort and Care: Balancing Critical Tensions in Delivering Gender-Related Violence Training to Youth Practitioners

This reflective paper explores the emotions, ethics, and challenges of facilitating training for youth practitioners to tackle gender-related violence (GRV). This paper draws on insights from a training intervention that emerged from an EU-funded feminist project (UK GAPWORK project), which sought to bring together approaches to tackle violence against women and girls with challenging heteronormativity and homophobia. Drawing on accounts from facilitators and participants, the aim of this paper is to identify tensions, opportunities and strategies in developing training to support critically engaged practice around sensitive topics such as GRV, and to consider the significance of working with discomfort within any such training intervention. We reflect on how discomfort presented within the training space and the challenges presented. This paper examines how Boler’s theoretical work on pedagogy of discomfort can be operationalised to think productively about designing and delivering training for informal educators on sensitive issues with ethical integrity.

Teacher-Student Reflections: A Critical Conversation about Values and Cultural Awareness in Community Development Work, and Implications for Teaching and Practice

This reflective, autoethnographic piece provides some insights into our involvement with a program that promotes a value-driven approach to community development work. As a ‘conversation’ between a lecturer and a graduate, or Educator of Informal Educators and Informal Educator, we discuss the process of teaching and learning about values within day-to-day community development practice. We emphasise that a value-driven approach enables informal educators to celebrate cultural diversity, which can be complex in community settings. As the educator of informal educators (Louise), I reflect on the need to explore and demonstrate what value-driven practice looks like in day-to-day practice within community work and not simply state that values are important. This was prompted by self-reflection and the realisation that my teaching failed to illuminate how to bring values to life in all aspects of community work to achieve anti-discriminatory, inclusive and empowering practice. As an informal educator (Matthew), I consider how community development theories and values translate into meaningful practice that celebrates cultural diversity. Reflections are influenced by theories from Paulo Freire, with a focus on his notion that ‘educators should respect the autonomy of the students and respect cultural identities’. An example of Freirean dialogue, the article discusses our critical consciousness through praxis as educator and informal educator. Acknowledging that we are never fully complete—we are always ‘becoming’—we hope the article will be of interest to both Educators of Informal Educators and Informal Educators alike.

The Education of Informal Educators

No undergraduate or postgraduate programmes currently exist for the professional education of informal educators. The authors outline the development of previous programmes and consider the emergence of informal education as a discrete concept. The article then highlights some key failings in the professional education of informal educators and outlines some changes in the orientation and content of programmes.

The Contested Terrain of Critical Pedagogy and Teaching Informal Education in Higher Education

This review explores how critical pedagogy, often cited by educators of informal educators as a key influence, actually informs teaching of informal educators in higher education and assesses its potential to do so. It explores the background to critical pedagogy, its principles, aims and approaches and examines its worldwide influence on the teaching of informal educators. The authors argue that critical pedagogy is crucial for the teaching of informal educators, enabling lecturer and practitioners to interrupt the hegemony of neo-liberal and neo-managerial thinking in their practice and in higher education, and re-orientate themselves and examine their positionality within their institutions. It will focus on practical examples of enabling critical pedagogy in the teaching of informal education in higher education institutions.

Educating Informal Educators on Issues of Race and Inequality: Raising Critical Consciousness, Identifying Challenges, and Implementing Change in a Youth and Community Work Programme

The debate regarding institutional racism and White privilege within higher education (HE) remains prevalent, and higher education institutions (HEIs) are not exempt from the racial equality debate. Youth and Community Work is underpinned by anti-oppressive practice, highlighting a need to educate informal educators on the structural underpinnings of Race and inequlaity, so that they can be challenged in practice to bring about social change. For Youth and Community Workers, this is primarily done through informal education and critical pedagogy. The research aimed to unearth race inequality within the Youth and Community Work programme at Wrexham Glyndŵr University (WGU). Critical reflection methodology was used to deconstruct departmental processes of recruitment, learning and assessment, student voice, and support. Research data was analysed using thematic analysis, determining three themes: critical consciousness, challenge, and change. These are discussed within the framework of Critical Race Theory and critical pedagogy. The research concludes that oppression, and therefore inequality, occurs in the Youth and Community Work programme. Further reading of issues reported in HEIs across the United Kingdom shows that more analysis and deconstruction is needed through CRT. Educating informal educators on issues of race and inequality to raise critical consciousness is one way this can be achieved.

“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.

Assembling aliens to explore the Solar System

<p><strong>Assembling aliens to explore the Solar System</strong></p> <p>After analysing the school curricula until 7th grade (13 years old), we concluded that, at least in Portugal, there is a limited coverage of astronomy subjects. This situation is also often accompanied by limited training of primary and medium school teachers and limited availability of resources in their mother tongues, as language can also be a barrier for the use of existing resources. In addition, some astronomy concepts require a level of abstract thinking that might be discouraging for some children. The end result is that some children will have a low interest in astronomy, not only because of their personal preferences but as a consequence of low exposure to the subject or a negative perception towards it. To address this situation, the Science Communication Group of Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) developed a board game about the Solar System, aimed at children from 6 to 12 years old, and adapted to both formal and informal educational contexts. This project, “Help your Alien – A Solar System Game”, was funded in 2019 by the Europlanet Society through its Public Engagement Funding Scheme.</p> <p><strong>Why a board game?</strong></p> <p>By opting for a board game instead of a digital platform, we made the conscious decision of valuing the power of storytelling and social interaction as engaging and focus-promoting learning strategies, unlike the information and stimuli overload sometimes present in digital environments. Another choice made to make the game as appealing and relatable to our target public as possible was to start with a more familiar perspective, biology, as children of this age group will certainly be familiar with “animals” and their characteristics. We made a leap forward towards astrobiology, and created imaginary aliens somehow adapted to their planets and moons. While trying to assemble these imaginary creatures, in a 3-piece puzzle, the game players have to gather information about different objects of the Solar System and discover the home planet of their assembled aliens.  Another reason for creating a board game was the possibility of reaching different publics, in particular those perhaps not immediately interested in astronomy. With “ET – A Solar System Adventure”, we hope to engage children but also their families (parents, grandparents, siblings…), just for the sake of playing, while exposing them to knowledge about the Solar System.</p> <p><strong>Development of the game</strong></p> <p>The game was developed in a collaborative creative process by members of the Science Communication Group and researchers in Planetary Sciences of the IA, combining knowledge in science communication and different publics with scientific knowledge. Even though the game mechanics was inspired in already existing and well-tested games, the whole process of creating this game involved many challenges, from defining the level of complexity while keeping the game engaging, to the adventure of “creating” aliens somehow physiologically adapted to different planets and moons of the Solar System. Mistakes were made and the team had to adapt to the unexpected challenging situation of a pandemic. This resulted in many lessons learned that we hope to share with the community. The game is now at its final stages of production, with the prototype being converted into a polished version with professional illustration and design. A “Print and Play” version in Portuguese and English will soon be made available online on our website. Physical copies will also be produced depending on funding.</p> <p>In our presentation, we will present our game, as well as the premises and goals behind it, its development process, the challenges found along the way, the lessons learned and some strategies to cope with the “new normality” imposed by Covid-19, while advancing the project. We hope the presentation of “ET – A Solar System Adventure” in the EPSC2021 will help to promote this tool for planetary science education among formal and informal educators and to find international collaborations for the translation and local promotion of the game, as well as additional funding for the production of physical copies in different languages.</p>

Friends as Informal Educators: The Role of Peer Relationships in Promotion of Sexual Health Services among College Students

This ethnographic study of one United States university’s sexual health resources explores the role of peer relationships in sexual health promotion to understand how these relationships shaped students’ interactions with campus sexual health resources. Through analysis of seventeen semi-structured interviews with students, five policy interviews with providers and university personnel, and participant-observation of peer health educator training, the authors examine how trust in peer relationships can serve as a form of social capital to influence sexual health information sharing. The article introduces the term “peer administrator” to describe student actors who sit at the intersection of friend and official resource and explores the importance of these mentoring relationships for sexual health promotion. The analysis also considers how more individualistic models of public health promotion limit the impact of peer relationships and concludes with a discussion of how universities might imagine new forms of sexual health promotion among students.