“Capturing the magic”: Grassroots perspectives on evaluating open youth work

TY - JOUR

T1 - “Capturing the magic”

T2 - Grassroots perspectives on evaluating open youth work

AU - de St Croix, Tania

AU - Doherty, Louise

N1 - Funding Information: This article is based on research funded by the ESRC, reference ES/R004773/1. The authors would like to thank Sharon Gewirtz and Sorele Cohen for commenting on an earlier draft, PALYCW and Nancy Stephenson for supportive writing retreats, anonymous peer reviewers for useful feedback, and, most of all, our research participants and the many other youth workers, young people, evaluation practitioners and others who have informed this study, whether through our Advisory Group, feedback at events, or informal conversations. A partial dataset associated with this study (excluding fieldnotes and transcripts where consent was not provided or anonymity might be compromised) is available at UK Data Service Reshare to enable wider use of the data; see https://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/855316/ , doi: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-855316 . Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2022/12/8

Y1 - 2022/12/8

N2 - Youth work’s informal and youth-centred nature raises challenges for evaluation, challenges that are intensified by the growing dominance of measurement, market values and surveillance in the context of the neoliberal restructuring of youth services. This article builds on Griffiths’ (2012, Why Joy in Education Is an Issue for Socially Just Policies. Journal of Education Policy 27 (5): 655–670) philosophical argument for valuing the intrinsic contribution of education, thus conceptualising evaluation as encompassing more than measuring outcomes. It reports the findings of a three-year qualitative study in eight open youth work settings in England that investigated the perspectives of 143 young people, youth workers and policy makers on evaluation in youth work. While young people and youth workers had often participated in evaluations they found meaningful, some approaches to impact measurement were experienced as too formal, intrusive, insensitive and burdensome. The article argues that evaluation and accountability processes must be practice-informed, youth-centred, and anti-oppressive. It recommends the participatory and collaborative development of diverse methods and approaches to evaluation that ‘capture the magic’ of youth work while enabling further reflection and development of practice.

AB - Youth work’s informal and youth-centred nature raises challenges for evaluation, challenges that are intensified by the growing dominance of measurement, market values and surveillance in the context of the neoliberal restructuring of youth services. This article builds on Griffiths’ (2012, Why Joy in Education Is an Issue for Socially Just Policies. Journal of Education Policy 27 (5): 655–670) philosophical argument for valuing the intrinsic contribution of education, thus conceptualising evaluation as encompassing more than measuring outcomes. It reports the findings of a three-year qualitative study in eight open youth work settings in England that investigated the perspectives of 143 young people, youth workers and policy makers on evaluation in youth work. While young people and youth workers had often participated in evaluations they found meaningful, some approaches to impact measurement were experienced as too formal, intrusive, insensitive and burdensome. The article argues that evaluation and accountability processes must be practice-informed, youth-centred, and anti-oppressive. It recommends the participatory and collaborative development of diverse methods and approaches to evaluation that ‘capture the magic’ of youth work while enabling further reflection and development of practice.

KW - Evaluation

KW - Youth work

KW - Young People

KW - Accountability

KW - impact measurement

KW - anti-oppressive practice

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85144231815&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/13676261.2022.2150540

DO - 10.1080/13676261.2022.2150540

M3 - Article

SN - 1367-6261

JO - JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES

JF - JOURNAL OF YOUTH STUDIES

ER -