PARTES

Inviting reflection on the answers they gave in earlier interviews revealed an ability to engage critically with their earlier positions, drawing further reflections about their orientation to values. Laura demonstrated this with a critique of her earlier answers to this question:

I had remembered I had said ‘principles’ the first time. So yes I mean I think that is still a valid way to define values. But ‘principles’ sounds very formal and quite strong and I guess part of me feels, not that values aren’t strong, but there is maybe more emotional engagement with values. ‘Principles’ is, I don't know, almost like something that is in your head […] whereas ‘values’, actually this is what I care about and what is precious to me. Laura, Interview 3

Students cited learning to question and explore themselves and their actions in relation to the aims of youth work as an important part in the process of developing their understanding of values. Laura mentioned ‘case studies’ as a method that had helped her in this process:

It starts off with case studies and then you start looking at yourself. And I think that’s been, yeah, just made it really clear, well you don’t just do things because that’s the way it should be done. There’s a reason why you do things. And that’s, yeah, that reason kind of comes from the principles of values that you hold. Laura, Interview 2

As a result of such exploration and discussion, students became more enquiring of themselves and their views, more able to recognise and work with complexity, and more open to and less judgmental of others.

I definitely think it’s come from the questioning ….. and in the past sort of few months there have certainly been lectures […] and encounters with young people that have very much sort of challenged me and challenged my beliefs and […] that actually challenging has definitely sort of made my views sort of … some of them are the same but they’re a lot more malleable and there’s a lot more of a grey area than there was before, not everything’s so black and white. Tom, Interview 2

Students talked about being ‘more aware’ of their values and considered it was important to know their own values through reflecting on their actions and challenging themselves. Cate described the conscious process required to ‘uncover’ unconsciously-held value positions, saying: ‘Sometimes there will be values in our life that we don’t necessarily … we can’t see them

This idea was echoed in interview 3, where students discussed in more depth how they had become aware that reflection on their actions revealed to them some underlying values of which they were previously unaware – and described how they were then able to evaluate and think critically about those ‘unconscious’ value positions.

Sometimes I think the actions I take and my values don't always seem to match up and you are sat there going “Oh, do I value something different to what I thought?” So maybe there is kind of those ‘conscious’ values that you think ‘Yes, I’ll sign up to that, yes, I believe that, I agree with that.’ But then when you actually look in practice you don't always think or, yeah you react to maybe something deeper or something slightly more subconscious values. Laura, Interview 3

Laura was not alone in demonstrating an awareness that her actions did not always match her ‘espoused’ values – the values she was aware of, which she ‘believed and agreed with’. This echoes the work of Argyris & Schön (1974) on the difference between what people say they will do in a given situation, what they refer to as an ‘espoused theory of action’ and what people actually do in that situation, what they refer to as ‘theory-in-use’. This awareness of a dis-connect between espoused values and values-in-use was an important development in students’ understanding and in their ability to work professionally with value issues. Samuel talked of the discomfort he felt through this process:

sometimes my values may have been challenged and dealing with that feeling uncomfortable and questioning why do I feel uncomfortable and kind of saying well it is okay to feel uncomfortable because that is what life is about. Samuel, Interview 3

Workers in the social care professions need to be able to recognise and acknowledge when their ‘values-in-use’ do not match their ‘espoused values’, especially when one’s espoused values are those appropriate to professional practice and one’s values-in-action reveal an inappropriate stance. This is often not a comfortable position to be in, yet it is vital that youth workers are able to work with this ‘gap’ to understand how and why what is espoused and what is enacted are not consonant.

7.3

Personal Values

The development of participants’ personal values can almost be likened to peeling an onion – successively revisiting similar values, each time at a deeper level, and laying aside more ‘peripheral’ personal values in favour of fewer, more deeply held ‘core’ values. It seems students underwent this process in an attempt to make sense of working with professional values whilst also retaining a sense of holding onto and working from their most important personal values in complex and diverse situations.