CLASES DE ACTAS

Students’ stated personal values in each of the three interviews were very similar at each stage. In her second interview, reflecting on her previous interviews’ answer, Cate said: ‘I

think my values are quite similar. I think there’s some stuff that I can pick out and think ‘I might word that differently’ or ‘I might say that differently’’, evidencing a more thoughtful and

reflexive response to her own values. Despite the similarity of value positions, it was students’ orientation to and ability to work with them that changed and developed over the course of the training.

When discussing their personal values, participants frequently framed them in relation to their work with young people: demonstrating the high levels of motivation their personal values provided for their work with young people; and the significant overlap in relation to the values they drew on in both their working and non-working lives.

In his first interview, Jamie discussed his desire to help unconfident young people ‘on the

fringes’ be included and to increase their confidence, without mentioning ‘empowerment’ – a

central value in youth work; yet in his second interview he drew on the language and framework of youth work to describe this personal value, evidencing the influence and overlap of personal and professional values in students’ thinking.

I mean empowering is a big one personally because, you know…. I hate seeing young people who don’t believe in themselves because I know I used to be like that and I know that can change. Jamie, Interview 2

This comment also highlights one of his personal ‘drivers’ for being in youth work: a ‘reparative impulse’ to undo some of the damage from one’s own or another’s life (Hoggett

et al, 2006:697-8; Banks & Gallagher, 2009:206), a motivation he mentioned on more than one occasion. In her second interview, Laura drew on central youth work values, presenting them as her own personal values:

trying to list all of them in one go is kind of hard. But yeah, I’ve already mentioned safety of young people, health of young people and wellbeing, I think, so that development of young people… having that environment to learn. Laura, Interview 2

This phenomenon occurred regularly throughout the interviews for all participants, for example, in this comment by Cate, where she described ‘love’ as a personal value and how she realised this value in her work with young people:

One of them is definitely love, just so that … I do love others in the work that I do and …. that the things I do are motivated by love. ….That’s something I value, trying to help young people to realise that who they are is really important and that they are loved by God by being who they are. Cate, Interview 2

The same was evident in reverse. As students began to understand more of the principles and practice of youth work, they began to think about their relationships and interactions with people in their non-work lives.

I guess I think it’s more healthy maybe even to let people ... not to try and control people because I’m not going to get it right and if I start trying to go, ‘Right, you should do things my way!’ then actually I’m going to mess up at some point and screw a few people up with me…. But … that’s hard because I think control can be …. like, I care about people so I express it through trying to control and it’s like no, I don’t need to do that. Laura, Interview 2

With these students it is possible to think of their choice of work in terms of a ‘vocation’, in the students’ choice of an occupation where they are able to live out their personal commitments and beliefs through their work (Banks, 2004:166-7; Banks & Gallagher, 2009:206), as noted and discussed further in the previous chapter.

7.3.2 Greater awareness, articulation, understanding and depth

Students demonstrated an increasing awareness of themselves, their values and ‘tendencies’ through the process of study and were generally able to articulate these more clearly in each subsequent interview. In her first interview, Laura opened her thoughts on her personal values with laughter, saying, ‘My own life, the values that I hold? That’s a hard question!’. In

her second interview, she described her previous answer as ‘clutching at straws a little bit, it’s

quite funny…. a bit like, ooh, what on earth does this mean?’ Her next attempt, in interview 2,

showed a little more awareness: ‘I think I would still in a way struggle to list … all my values

because I’m not that self-aware yet, I have to say. It’s coming ….’ (Laura, Interview 2). Here

Laura demonstrated her growing awareness through: her increased consciousness of being ‘not that self-aware yet’; and through her practice of learning to identify her values through her systematic reflection on her actions. The Johari window tool is useful here in understanding Laura’s developing self-awareness (Luft & Ingham, 1955; Luft 1984; Batsleer, 2008:39-44). The model recognises both the conscious and unconscious aspects of the self. The ‘window’ (see Figure 7.1) has four intersecting quadrants denoting: what is known and unknown to self; and what is known and unknown to others.

Figure 7.1 The Johari Window

Known by you Unknown by you

Known

to

ot

her

s OPEN

known by both you and others

BLIND SPOT

unknown to you but known by others

Unknown to o

th

e

rs HIDDEN

known to you but not by others

UNKNOWN

by both you and others

In the same interview, Laura talked about a ‘light-bulb’ moment of self-recognition whilst reading:

It was saying how youth workers tend to be-, kind of want to be these rescuers by nature. And I remember reading it and thinking ‘Yeah, that’s me! I want to rescue everybody.’ Laura, Interview 2

Despite mentioning her struggle to list her personal values, Laura assessed her ability at this point as follows: ‘I think I see myself now as being much more able to articulate what my

personal values are’. As evidence of this she talked somewhat generically about how she felt

more able to articulate why she held particular values, rather than simply holding them because she felt she should:

I’d say people being equal, …. probably because…. people talk about equality all the time, so yes, ‘That should be something I value because it says in the Bible’, or something, whereas why equality is important … I obviously had some understanding [then], but not nowhere to the same extent that I see it now. Laura, Interview 2

This at least shows her understanding that values are committed to and held for considered reasons and not simply because one is told to (Banks & Gallagher, 2009:210), even if she was not fully able to articulate her reasoning at this stage.

By her third interview, Laura was readily able to answer this question:

It has been a lot of the thinking around … people’s freedom, the kind of things we did about in advocacy but again that came up in informal education …. lots of stuff to do with power and empowering people or them having power and does somebody else know what is best for them?, or do they know what is best for themselves? and how does that work? And just I think appreciating peoples autonomy maybe more. And yeah, their right to be heard and yes, just to think “Right, how can I help them learn rather than impose something on them”. Laura, Interview 3

This theme of empowerment, autonomy and allowing people choice, rather than the worker ‘imposing’ what they consider ‘is best for the young person’ was one that Laura wrestled with in a number of her interview answers, and as she answered, it was hard for her to talk about values without beginning to question and explore her views on them and how they were woven into her faith-informed worldview. She was not alone in this. Like Cate above, Jamie listed very similar values to his first interview, but went on to consider how he felt his understanding of them had developed:

I remember from the last interview that I said community and I know that hasn’t changed but I guess my understanding of it has as my understanding of a value has changed as well…... it’s something you … can’t force … upon people …. it needs to happen … intentionally …. the decisions that you make need to lead to the creation of that community or the formation of that community. Jamie, Interview 2

Tom believed he was ‘more self-aware’ (Interview 3) and both he and Cate showed a greater awareness of where they had ‘inherited’ their values from, values which they were drawing on in youth work settings:

I’ve learnt that in my life there’s a lot of values that I may hold from learning them from my parents and that even it can be painful but sometimes you have to evaluate those values and see if it’s something you want to build your life on. Cate, Interview 3

Cate’s frank admission was particularly interesting; not only was she able to identify the values she had learned from her upbringing, she was also able to go through what had been, for her, a ‘painful’ process of evaluating them and determining their role in her life going forward. She identified the significant place these values held both in her own development and in her faith-informed worldview – inherited from her parents, and something about which she cared deeply. She went on to talk about a process of discovering and ‘challenging’ ones values – ‘You don't always know what your values are and sometimes you need to

challenge your own values. I think that is something that has been massive in my development.’

(Cate, Interview 3), – all of which suggests she had learned to work with herself and her values in the same way a youth worker might work with a young person, to help recognise, name, explore, evaluate and develop their values. This was supported by Laura’s comment, ‘It’s still happening where, as an action happen[s], I sit down, look at it, pull it apart, and go,

‘Oh, in that situation I valued that’ (Laura, Interview 2). Here, Laura was clearly learning to

work with herself, to ‘uncover’, identify and understand her own values.

Journals played an important role in this process of enabling students to engage with, ‘question and interpret’ values and to ‘exercise critical reflection and reflexivity’ about the impact of their values on their own practice. This aspect of value development will be explored in more depth in the following chapter on how students used journals.