Learning and teaching to care for young people

ABSTRACT

“What is youth work, and what are the best ways to teach someone to be a high quality youth worker?” This is a thorny and contested question that many scholars (Emslie, 2013; Fusco & Baizerman, 2013; Magnuson & Baldwin, 2014; Starr, Yohalem & Gannett, 2009; Walker & Larsen, 2012) and directors of higher education programs in youth work (VanderVen, 2015) have been asking as youth work has emerged as a field of higher education study in the U.S. and other countries. Although there are many positions within the professionalization debate, most agree about the importance of better defining a knowledge base that describes youth work (Emslie, 2013). This base includes defining both content knowledge and context-dependent practices. For instance, Walker & Gran (2010) distinguish between competencies, which are discrete skills and content knowledge, and competence, which is the practice of knowing how to apply multiple skills and knowledge in particular situations and contexts. She writes that competence, “... is the knack for doing youth work skillfully, gracefully; for doing the right thing at the right time...While most of us know it when we see it, as a field we don't have a very reliable way of identifying it, let alone intentionally producing it” (p. 3). In this article, I name and describe one youth work practice, caring for, towards developing reliable ways that youth work professionals can engage and develop competence in learning and teaching to care for young people.

KEYWORDS:

• care
• discourse
• professional development programs
• youth workers

Notes

1 All names of places and people are pseudonyms.

2 This study is limited in understanding the ways the young people interpreted caring interactions. I did not ask the students how they experienced or interpreted caring for interactions.

3 In previous studies (McKamey, 2011a, 2011b), I have called this discourse caring for. In this article, I am calling this concept caring towards to avoid confusion with the different ways Tronto (1989) and Noddings (1992) each talk about caring for. In addition, I see caring towards as one of many expressions of caring for.

4 Although students rarely brought up race in their journals, they did discuss race in group discussions.