3: Supporting Positive Youth Development for Youth Workers: A Proleptic Process of Becoming

Little is known about how youth workers, especially those who are themselves youth (ages 18–24), are supported in positive youth development (PYD) processes. Here, we examine the experiences and identity development of youth workers as they engaged in on-the-job learning and reflected on their career goals and identities in education, science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) fields, and beyond. We conceptualize their identity development as a proleptic process, in which expected and imagined futures shape present activities. We look at a youth work development program called STEAMbassadors that prepares Black, Latinx/e, Indigenous and Asian college students from underserved communities to work with youth from those communities. We examine whether and how the program provides youth workers with more equitable access to identity development by conceptualizing equity as freedom of movement in a learning ecosystem and examining how program infrastructure affords freedom of movement and makes identity resources available. Our thematic analysis draws on interviews and reflection sessions with three youth workers over three summers, demonstrating access to different identity resources and types of freedom of movement afforded by the program. Our findings have implications for understanding and designing for identity development as part of PYD.