Understanding Symbolic Interactionism and Labelling Theory to Inform Youth Work Practice.
This article aims to support the challenge of unlocking funding bodies lack of understanding of youth work and informal education. In a supervision session recently, the discussion of the value of youth work to the youth worker and alternative understanding of 'what needs to be done' by the funding body as a tension was explored. This has led me to review how to enable an improved connection between the structure and agency discussion and hope that this is helpful to navigate and establish a balance whilst equally opening a reflective acknowledgement for both self as practitioner and youth work. I have space to offer professional supervision and if you want to discuss, please contact me so we can chat through what you require and how supervision can develop your leadership and practice.
When we refer to structures in youth work, we are often engaged in a critical debate regarding how society or societal structures influence and add constraints to young people lives. An important factor is the need to understand that although individuals make decisions, these decisions are constrained and shaped by structures such as class, ethnicity and gender as examples. In this macro analysis of society, we are highlighting the impact of the wider picture on young people as individuals and groups within their community.
Agency however as a feature of youth work is an opportunity for young people to create and shape their own lives and act with free will. The value of making choices and taking action and having choice is key to informal learning. In agency, we can observe and listen to the free will of individuals and groups and understand how they act on their space and place and how their reality is perceived in an interpretivist sense. We can also see and hear the extent that young people have the ability to act upon and shift social norms. Focusing on the small-scale interactions and experiences rather than structures.
This dichotomy, of how value is determined in a macro/micro clash of ideas is an often walked terrain of youth work and an open to interesting debate. In principle, we argue with structures and emphasise agency whilst the macrodynamics are a more dominant and elegantly repressive agent of control for young people. The value that the informal educator can see in the microtransactions that young people have in their lives and in the youth centre can be challenging to ‘sell’ in the funding world due to the change and compliance required by the structural agents with money to invest in the change we may not always agree with. The steps to change through micro to macro (agency to structural) development however is a valid way of representing the youth work we do and how to meet the structural aspirations of the funding body; thus asserting value in youth work methdologies to support wider aims and outcomes.
A significant part of the answer is using analysis of symbolic interactionism to highlight the benefits of social informal education in youth work by devising activity/projects that assert the importance that young people are not merely passive recipients of what society hands out and actions are not determined by social factors in isolation. The youth work projects are concerned with the interactions (however small scale on the surface) that take place between individuals, groups and with important meanings and interpretations that young people give to the actions they are involved in. As we live in a symbolic world where gestures have shared meanings, young people will naturally interpret the symbols in their social world and apply meaning to them, classify the value of things and learn from these interactions; this is the power and strength of social informal education.
The Youth Worker invests time in understanding young people’s interpretations to gain from the point of view and experiential nature of adolescence and open up dialogue to inform the debate and discussion to broaden views and ideas. It is important to remember that individuals meanings have a loci or context in which they function and can therefore shift by context and experience. As an example, consideration of the meanings attached to what is communicated by the way people present, the clothes they wear, the language used to represent feelings and meanings. Activity and project ideas to enable self concept and reflection are valuable here and the many micro interactions that occur constitute community, society and in constant creation and re-creation. This opposes the static view of society or structure as an solid entity that is in active control of the people within. If there is a balance in this paradigm, there is connection to structure and agency that will resonate with the funding body.
As a consideration in project/activity planning, youth work should also turn the reflective lens on itself self too… what impositions do we have that may limit microtransactions and therefore learning? Is there opportunity to map out the planned learning opportunities to enable agency and measurement of young people’s free will? Does the project/activity function to acknowledge emotions, motivations and intentions? As evaluative features of the work undertaken, breadth and scope can be enhanced.
The notion of labelling theory stems from symbolic interactionism as the process of understanding and applying meaning often requires words to understand and categorise. This can however create challenging, negative or false labels to individuals and groups and as an important note, can be heard by agents of social control such as the Police and legislative system and of course within communities. Labelling theory is perpetuated in binary examples (in group/out group) and can favour powerful norms and affect free will, rights and agency.
As a further example, the picture or image created (using a binary example) of Good Girl or Bad Girl labels elicit figurative and imaginative representations and can be an effective activity with young people to see what interpretations, meanings and in what context the views are observed and drawn from – the art of youth work at this point enables exploration and dialogue of the developing picture from pencil drawing to a more comprehensive and detailed understanding – again, this is the true value of dialogue and discourse in youth work.
As a process, the host of labelling categories young people, individuals and groups can be deemed as good/bad based upon context (formal education as an example). It can be challenging to break a label unless reduction in agency and sheer conformity is achieved. There is a focus too on subconscious labelling that can be transmitted through values laden professionals with regards to gender, class, ethnicity that are damaging. The important reflection for youth workers to review the labels we apply to our young people. This is a genuine conversation I have with colleagues that I provide supervision for, particularly when the work has become challenging and outside of the intention – discussing how the nature of achievement is owned and by who can be a useful reflective conversation.
We are privileged to be part of the micro interactions with young people and in our attempts to understand the experience of youth through the views of young people, we using symbolic interactionism, we can consider how conclusions (our own and others) have been determined or pre-conceived and how we can improve practice through ongoing reflection and activities and projects that can balance structure and agency with an analysis of the micro to macro benefits of youth work.
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