Broadbent, Robyn ORCID: 0000-0001-8131-0227 (2021) Living, Learning and Building Professional Youth Work Practice. Research Report. Youth Workers Australia.

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the importance of theoretical frameworks of youth work practice that are evidenced based and explores the relationship of the ‘lived experience’ (of both workers and young people) to those frameworks. The lived experience is understood in the context that any social action must begin with the social actors and their own concepts, categories and experience (Fay 2003). It will be argued that without an evidenced based framework of youth work practice workers are destined to use their own ‘lived experience’, and/or the lived experiences of the young people they work with, as the singular guiding principle for practice. Effective youth work practice requires practitioners to maintain the tension between the lived and learnt experience, to makes sense of the experience in the broader context of a theoretical framework that can translate the lived experience into policy, advocacy and change.

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