Informal Education in Youth Work – an Opportunity for a Youngster

The basis of my study is on youth work, and its informal educational methods. This is because of my 30 yearlong experience as youth worker as well my academic studies of youth work. I have been clarifying how the development of youth’s identity and moral reasoning can be nurtured using the methods of informal education in youth work.

During this late modern time, the period of adolescence has been lengthening. It has influence the whole idea of adolescence. When adult people are not interested in acting as adults, it cannot be of interest to young people to grow up to become adults. In the education and in the working life there are anyway expectations for the employees to have adult skills. The young people has special needs and we as educators have to be aware and able to understand and to support the process of developing identity and moral reasoning, ability for self-reflection. This will have an effect on the transmission from adulthood to working life. It is not a question of money, it is a question of educational competency.

My interest has been in the development of moral reasoning. My viewpoint is the ethics of care in the way of thinking by Carol Gilligan. How to reach adult competence in the field of moral reasoning. I have been looking for cases where it has shown that there might be some special influence on the development of moral reasoning. The main idea is to find nurturing methods to be used in youth work to work with young people in the transitions to working life.  The research data has been collected among Finnish students in higher education. It has been as a part of the Identity Horizon – A Cross Cultural Study (IHCCS) in Finland.