Training+the+wizards+-+Engaged+scholarship+as+a+model+for+youth+worker+professional+development+(Ross)

**Training the wizards: Engaged scholarship as a model for youth worker professional development** Laurie Ross, Assistant Professor, Clark University [lross@clarku.edu]



**Keywords:** Youth workers, professional development, community-engaged scholarship

**Track:** Community outcomes and impact

**Format:** Research paper

**Date & time:** Friday 3:20-4:30 **Location:** Salon 1

**Summary:** Some scholars refer to youth workers as “wizards” because they succeed where most have failed with urban youth. Yet, U.S. youth workers receive little formal training. This research was conducted in a course at Clark University (Worcester, MA) with eleven experienced youth workers and eleven traditional college students. We identified five common youth work dilemmas including challenges in developing relationships with youth; maintaining high standards and accountability while remaining sensitive to the realities of youth’s lives; influencing structural drivers of youth problems such as gang violence; addressing youth risk behavior, rule breaking, and illegal activities; and balancing their professional work with their personal lives.

We then created a professional development framework that synthesized both a competency focus (Akiva, 2005; Astroth, Garza, & Taylor, 2004; Vance, 2010) and a dilemma-based approach (Larson & Walker, 2010) to address these types of youth work issues. This four-part framework guides youth workers’ 1) construction of youth problems to integrate formal knowledge and more contextual understanding, 2) translation of his/her construction of the problem into a plan for action, 3) implementation of the plan, and 4) reflection on the extent to which the plan resolved the problem. We demonstrated the effectiveness of this framework for both sets of students via a case study approach. Youth workers expressed feeling validated upon discovering that there is an emerging academic field devoted to their profession and that their knowledge is advancing that field. The Clark students valued the opportunity to engage directly with professionals and learned more about the practice of youth work and the functioning of non-profit organizations than they could have in a class or even in a service-learning placement. Overall, this research demonstrates a unique but replicable form of community-engaged scholarship that advances a scholarly field, practitioner education, and the university’s role in community transformation.

**Research:** Akiva, T. (2005). Turning training into results: The New Youth Program Quality Assessment. //High/Scope ReSource, Fall/Winter//, 21-24.

Astroth, K., Garza, P., Taylor, B. (2004). Getting down to business: Defining competencies for entry-level youth workers. //New Directions for Youth Development, 104,// 25-37.

Larson, R. and Walker, K. (2010). Dilemmas of practice: Challenges to program quality encountered by youth program leaders. //American Journal of Community Psychology, 45//, 338–349.

Vance, F. (2010). A comparative analysis of competency frameworks for youth workers in the out- of-school time field//.// //Child Youth Care Forum, 39//(6): 421-441.

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