Becoming Citizens: Deepening the Craft of Youth Civic Engagement

• NCJ Number: 222090
• Journal: Child and Youth Services Volume: 29 Issue: 3/4 Dated: 2007 Pages: 1-182
• Author(s): Ross VeLure Roholt; R.W. Hildreth; Michael Baizerman
• Date Published: 2007
• Length: 182 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Overview Text
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study used different perspectives with regard to youth civic engagement (practitioners, youth workers, teachers, administrators, and parents) to examine and discuss youth civic engagement.

Abstract

Civic youth work is proposed as a new craft orientation for preparing young people for living-citizenship and for working on issues and policies supporting their everyday involvement in school, community, job site, and spiritual place. This text introduces and outlines the craft orientation and ethos, major skills/modes of being and doing, and the civic youth work process. This text addresses two primary audiences: youth workers (teachers, child and youth care workers, counselors, social workers, clergy), and scholars of youth civic engagement (youth work and youth studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, cultural studies, women’s studies, queer studies, etc.). Some of the chapters are theoretical for more scholarly reading, while others are concrete for day-to-day practitioners. This book approaches the issues of youth civic engagement with an orientation to what scholars call praxis--joining of knowing to doing in concrete in specific situations. Chapters 1-4 represent the study of three different youth civic engagement initiatives: Public Achievement (PA), Youth in Government (YIG), and Youth Science Center (YSC) from three different perspectives – official literature, and youth and adult participants. Chapter 5 discusses the role of program evaluation in understanding these programs. Chapter 6 summarizes chapters 2-5. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 discuss the three programs (PA, YIG, and YSC, respectively) from three different perspectives: educational theory, political theory, and theories of youth and vocation. Chapter 10 summarizes the theoretical chapters 7-9. Chapter 11 offers a new perspective on youth civic engagement called civic youth work, and proposes civic youth work as a new craft orientation in the family of child and youth care, education, social work, recreation, and other relevant semi-to-full professions. Tables, references