Session Information
23 SES 01 A, Accountability, (In)equality and Social Justice
Paper Session
Contribution
While the practice of youth work and informal education varies across Europe, there is a common tension between youth work for individual and social control (involving more structured interventions) and youth work for social change (characterised by a more open agenda, and group-based and/or empowerment approaches) (Coussée et al, 2009). This paper focuses in particular on the latter, exploring how informal approaches to young people's education and development have, in recent years, become the subject of a strong policy agenda focusing on the measurable impact of the work.
The youth impact agenda is characterised by a focus on pre-planned outcomes, quantitative data, and its conversion into potential financial savings. Reflecting developments in global education policy, this impact agenda is underpinned by the perceived need to 'prove' and monetise outcomes in a marketised system (Ball, 2012; Apple, 2013). This policy shift is notable for its use of relatively decentralised processes and networks (Ball & Junemann, 2012) – for example, in the UK, the Centre for Youth Impact (funded by the Government's Cabinet Office) involves youth organisations as ‘early adopters’ and engages young researchers. This policy-making process contrasts with earlier target-based accountability mechanisms in youth work in some countries, which were widely criticised by practitioners as top-down and bureaucratic (de St Croix, 2016).
Despite the somewhat inclusive tone of debate, however, the new impact agenda represents a significant challenge to youth work traditions of qualitative and participative evaluation, and is highly contentious in the field (Taylor, 2015). Outcomes-based approaches to accountability neglect - and potentially disrupt the potential for - outcomes that are emergent rather than prescribed, those that are collective rather than individual, and those that are difficult to ‘measure’ and ‘prove’ (Axford, 2015).
This paper builds on theoretical and empirical work in the sociology of education, particularly policy enactment (Maguire et al, 2015) and performativity (Ball, 2003; 2013), developing and extending these theories in a non-school context.It is important to make visible the ambiguous, subjective and emotional elements of the policy process; this means attending to celebratory, critical and ambivalent feelings around accountability mechanisms, rather than seeing contestations merely as impediments to the implementation of ‘more perfect accountability’ (O’Neill, 2002). The paper will discuss how local practices are affected by evaluation and monitoring procedures, in particular young people’s and practitioner's experiences and perceptions of youth work and its evaluation and monitoring, placing these local understandings in a global context of privatisation, performativity and the enterprising individual / organisation (Ball, 2012).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Apple, M. (2013) Can education change society? New York: Routledge. Ball, S. (2012) Global education inc.: New policy networks and the neoliberal imaginary, Abingdon: Routledge. Coussée, F., Van de Walle, T. & Williamson, H. (2009) 'The history of European youth work and its relevance for youth policy today', in G. Verschelden (ed) The history of youth work in Europe: Relevance for today's youth work policy, Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
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