What is community work?

What is community work? How has it developed in the UK? What is it’s current state? We review thinking and practice in the field of community work, and question the direction it is currently taking. contents: introduction · the emergence of community work · the gulbenkian report: community work and social change · the community …

Developing youth work: Informal education, mutual aid and popular practice

Developing Youth Work (1988) was an attempt to construct a coherent and distinctive understanding of youth work. It looked to informal education and association (mutual aid) as the core of the work, and argued that the youth service was in terminal decline. We publish the complete book. Contents preface introduction chapter 1: enter youth workers …

Developing youth work: Preface

This book began life in 1982 as an attempt to construct a coherent and distinctive understanding of youth work. While it would be nice to claim that the thinking reported in these pages has matured and developed through constant reflection over the intervening years, the truth is that it has had a stuttering existence, competing …

Developing youth work: Introduction

So much of what is said about youth work either seeks to conceal or is the product of lazy or rhetorical thinking. The ahistorical, apolitical and anti-intellectual attitude of many in this area has meant that practice is peculiarly prone to influence by moral panics, fads and fashions. As such, the work is further threatened …

Developing youth work: Chapter 1 – Enter youth workers

contents: introduction · little ladies at home · the making of modern leisure · threats from within and without · psychology – the final piece of the jigsaw · the new provision · there will be drill · ennobling their class · bourgeois youth work · further reading and references This chapter has a strong focus …

Developing youth work: Chapter 2 – The making of popular youth work

In this, the second chapter of Developing Youth Work, Mark Smith explores the emergence of working class and more community-based forms of youth work. In particular he looks at the development of work within chapels and other associations in the nineteenth century, and the development of practice in the 1930s and 1940s. contents:  introduction · …

Developing youth work: Chapter 3 – Definition, tradition and change in youth work

In this the third chapter of Developing Youth Work, Mark Smith explores the clusters of key ideas that appear to inform the ways in which youth workers see their tasks. Six broad bodies of customs, thoughts and practices are identified – and the power of tradition explored. contents: introduction · traditions in youth work · …

Developing youth work: Chapter 4 – The demise of the youth service?

In chapter 4 of developing youth work Mark Smith explores the situation facing youth work and the youth service in the late 1980s. He argues that the youth service will whither away, but that youth work in different forms will develop, but not necessarily grow. contents: introduction · growing inequality and a new social condition …

Developing youth work: Chapter 5 – Beyond social education

This chapter (5) from Developing Youth Work (1988) explores the notion of social education – and how it came into usage in the British youth work tradition. Mark Smith argues that there are particular problems around the personalist orientation that it involves, and the extent to which the idea of selfhood involved is ethnocentric. He …

Developing youth work: Chapter 6 – Good purpose

Here Mark Smith, in chapter 6 of Developing Youth Work, explores what might lie at the heart of youth work. He underlines the educational nature of the work. He also returns to notions of human well-being and suggests that educators are concerned with enlarging people’s appreciation of it, and developing their ability to act. Smith …

Developing youth work: Chapter 7 – Informal education

In Chapter 7 of Developing Youth Work (1988) Mark Smith argues for the rehabilitation of the notion of informal education. He critiques dominant, administrative definitions and instead looks to process. contents: introduction · informal education and its alternatives · what is informal education? · critical dialogue · informal education and problems with curriculum · in …

Developing youth work: Chapter 8 – Developing popular practice

In chapter 8 of Developing Youth Work (1988) Mark K. Smith explores the possibilities of popular practice. He sets out some of the elements that will need to be attended to if work that looks to mutual aid, conversation and informal education are to be realized. contents: introduction · the potential of popular practice · …

Developing youth work: Bibliography

The complete bibliography for Mark Smith (1988) Developing Youth Work Abercrombie, A. and Turner, B.S. (1982). ‘The Dominant Ideology Thesis’, in Giddens, A. and Held, D. (eds). Classes, Power and Conflict. London, Macmillan. Adams, R. (1988). ‘Finding a way in. Youth workers and juvenile justice’, in Jeffs. T. and Smith, M. (eds). Welfare and Youth …

William Godwin on education

William Godwin (1802) William Godwin on education: ‘Refer them to reading, to conversation, to meditation; but teach them neither creeds nor catechisms, either moral or political.’ contents: introduction · life · anarchism · education · references · links · how to cite this piece William Godwin (1756 – 1836) was the first writer ‘to give …

N. F. S. Grundtvig, folk high schools and popular education

N. F. S. Grundtvig, folk high schools and popular education. Nikolai Frederick Grundtvig (1783-1872) was a prolific writer contributing major works in theology, education, literature, politics, and history. He was also a poet and hymn-writer. Outside Denmark he is probably best known for his contribution to educational thought and practice, and to social reform – …

William Lovett and education

William Lovett and education. Sharing something of a similar political tradition to Robert Owen – but coming a different social position – William Lovett – has a significant place in the development of ideas around schooling and lifelong learning. ontents: introduction · education and politics · schools for the people · further reading and references …

Popular education

Popular education. An introduction to practice plus an annotated booklist. There is no one definition of popular education in the South American context. It is usually associated with political movements and is aimed at groups of people excluded from full participation in the political process. Hernadez (1985, quoted by Hamilton and Cunnigham 1989: 443) describes …

Social education – the evolution of an idea

Social education – the evolution of an idea. What is social education and how has it evolved as a practice and as a theory? We explore the emergence of social pedagogy and the different strands of thinking that developed in Britain and the USA. contents: introduction · ·  conclusion · further reading and references · …