We are delighted to share some great reading materials for youth workers that have been published over the last couple of weeks. First up: the third issue of the International Journal of Open Youth Work, edited amongst others by our steering group member Pauline Grace. This excellent journal aims to:

… privilege the narrative of youth work practice, methodology and reality. It is a peer-reviewed journal providing research and practice-based investigation, provocative discussion, and analysis on issues affecting youth work globally. The Journal aims to present youth work issues and research in a way that is accessible and reader-friendly, but which retains scholarly integrity.

The Journal is built on the concept of co-writing, which means that we are taking seriously the notion of practice informed by theory and theory based on practice. This, we argue, is mutually beneficial to the development of both theory and practice within the field.

The latest issue is attached here as a pdf: 190912-third-edition-med-cover. This particular issue was guest edited by John Ord of Marjon University in Plymouth, and many of the articles relate to the 2018 Transformative Youth Work conference. We’d love to cover responses or commentary on how these articles connect with IDYW concerns, so let us know if you have anything to say, whether you are one of the authors or an interested reader.

• Evaluating Young People’s Engagement and Participation
  in Creating Public Identities by Kalbir Shukra with Malcolm Ball and Katy Brown
• Transformative Youth Work in Local Government Youth Services by  Trudi Cooper, Miriam Brooker, Debbie McCabe, Peter Madden and Orietta Simons
• Code-switching in Open Youth Work: Approaching Bilingualism in Communities of Practice by Michael Schlauch and Gaia Palmisano
• Youth Work in Light of Public Health Policy by Hedda Hakvåg and Amund Røhr Heggelund
• A case study of a transformational experience? The impact of a European study visit on youth workers’ professional development and professional
  practice by Lyn Boyd and Dr. Glynn Jones
• What the European co-operation teach us about the nature of tools used in evaluation of open (international) youth work by Anu Gretschel and Antti Korhonen
• From critical reflective practice to the pedagogical practitioner: becoming a youth worker in late modernity, by Mike Seal
• Young Leaders as a role model for youth at risk and youth policy. A study on individual effects of a pedagogical training programme in disadvantaged
  neighbourhoods in the Netherlands by Annelieke van Dijk MSc and Drs. Jaap Noorda

We were pleased to see many friends of IDYW amongst the authors: our steering group member Malcolm Ball is a co-author of an article on the evaluation of a long-running youth participation and democracy programme in London (the Lewisham Young Mayor programme), while the article by Anu Gretschel and Antti Korhonen includes discussion of the IDYW storytelling workshop technique as a method of evaluation!

Meanwhile, over on Youth and Policy, our steering group member Bernard Davies continues his series of living histories with an article ‘Breaching the Social Contract‘ arguing that current policy and structural inequalities are creating a new youth precariat within a structurally unequal society. Bernard rounds up the evidence as pointing to…

a pretty gloomy conclusion: that current government approaches and initiatives will not only do little to relieve the pressures as evidenced in this post on young people and on the services working with them. They could even make them worse.

Plenty to keep us all going if we need a break from reading about Brexit – find a comfy chair, make a cuppa and get reading!