Photo Credit: © Can Stock Photo / prometeus
No matter what our place is on the political spectrum, if we live and work in the United States, we exist in a world of facts, and “alternative facts.” Having worked with young people for the better part of the last 25 years, I’m used to some alternative facts when it comes to who did or said what. As an educator and researcher, I hold firm beliefs about what is fact, what is assumed but not “provable,” and what is opinion. Given the current times, a discussion of how we know what we know, and more importantly how it guides our work with youth, may be of benefit to a number of readers.
Science And Youth Work
Not everyone who chooses to work with young people is compelled to subject themselves to the time, expense, and series of painfully slow gains that define graduate school. And that’s probably a good thing for the youth we serve. We don’t, in fact, need to have participated in advanced studies to be effective evaluators and consumers of research and accepted theories of child and youth development.
As a field, youth work is not as affected by the latest development or discovery as many other industries. Much of what we do resembles what has been going on in park and rec departments for many years. That said, there have been new developments that should (and do) impact how and what we do with young people. For example, the recent work on repetitive brain injury has changed how we expose children to football. More globally, studies on the underlying causes and effects of childhood obesity have shifted focus in some programs to healthy eating and lifestyle choices. Both of these examples have been informed by significant scientific evidence and the resulting agreement among scholars who shared their findings.