CHAPTER 4: Not “Anyone can do This Work”: Preparing Youth Workers in a Graduate School of Education

In the United States today, there is a growing conversation about how to effectively train and support the professional development of youth workers. Quinn (2012) has described the developing youth work field as a “patchwork of efforts” (p. 207) by national agencies, direct service programs, and higher education institutions trying to develop a cohesive but flexible set of standards, norms, and language for this work. Efforts to professionalize this workforce in the U.S. have primarily emerged from the afterschool and out-of-school time sector (Halpern, 2000; National Afterschool Association, 2009). However, because of the pressure on programs to conform to funder expectations and test-driven school culture, there is concern that professionalizing through the lens of afterschool will narrow the full potential and contributions of this work (Fusco, Lawrence, Matloff-Nieves, & Ramos, 2013; Pittman, 2004). However, at the heart of these debates there appears to be a unified desire for public legitimacy—that is, a recognition of youth workers’ common qualities and skillsets that will both guide practice and shift “the public perception that anyone can do this work” (Stone, Garza, & Borden, 2004, p. 4). We understand this call as entailing manifold desires, including (1) recognition from both within and outside the field of the body of knowledge and skills required to work with young people, (2) a move towards research-based practice rather than reliance on instincts alone, and (3) related public acknowledgment of the value and worth of this work, which includes financial remuneration.