According to ‘Directgov National Careers Service:
“The community learning and development industry is part of the lifelong learning
sector, represented by Lifelong Learning UK Sector Skills Council, which also includes:
further education; higher education; libraries, archives and information services; and
work?based learning.”
Using relevant theory, analyse your own practice in relation to the above

Module Content

Introduction: This module is focused on development of professional judgement and

political perspective within the youth and community work profession. The ideas,

theory and standpoints included are deployed as much needed examples of critique of a

practice and policy. As such, the module is concerned with subjecting the current

practice paradigm (and by implication practitioners), associated ideas and what passes

as theory, to positive critical analysis.

The module has been designed to help those in the field generate new and more

relevant practice theory; it looks to provide a basis, a launching pad for individual

practitioners, via their professional judgement, to alter perceptions and delivery

routines of services.

Unit 1: The State, change and compliance – the social function of youth

work. This unit will explore the use of the idea of change in the promotion of

compliance via State/professional alliance. The notion of the State will be examined in

order that students might better understand the character of the relationship that exists

between the professional youth worker and the State objectives for the learning and

development of young people.

Unit 2: Education, conviviality, dilemmas and possibilities. The unit will

consider the potential to move away from categorization of clients to a consciousness of

the potential individuals and groups have to use situations to develop and educate

themselves. The future and potential for dialectical relations, together with the

questioning of the practice of informal education and its appropriateness as a youth

work tool, will be a constant throughout the unit.

Unit 3: The paradox of community – community as a site of learning. This

unit will look at the development of youth & community work and how the professional

operating in the community, as we might be familiar with today, evolved as a profession

with national recognition and a broadly acknowledged practice repertoire. This will

provide a notion of the place and meaning of professional activity in the local social

setting, which includes community education, community action, informal education

and youth and community work.

Unit 4: Collectiveness and connectiveness. Race and ethnicity. This unit will

look at the nature and character of ‘community’ and how it manifests itself. It will

question the adequacy of theoretical/academic models to help us understand the

‘relatedness’ of community and groups.

Students will explore the concepts of race, ethnicity and culture, while questioning the

relevance of these forms of categorisation and ask why and how they are sustained and

used. The unit will examine ethnicity as a form of identity, and how and why it affects,

shapes, and defines the direction of youth work practice.

Unit 5: Informal education and surveillance – the modification of old

dogmas. This unit will examine the consequences of and question community based

workers being increasingly deployed as an adjunct to the growing surveillance culture

focused on youth. At the same time, it will consider how youth workers feel this role to

be quite alien to their practice, morality and sense of professional ethics.