What it means
Youth work practice is complex and dynamic. It can include challenging situations that are layered, dealing with multiple considerations and changing circumstances. For example, youth may get off track, cross a line or butt heads. Factors from youths’ families and culture to organizational policies need to be considered. Dilemmas require youth workers to make decisions about how to respond to difficult moments.
Why it matters
Youth program quality is shaped, in part, by how program staff understand and respond to these challenging incidents. Creating quality within the daily tumble of events in youth settings requires practitioner expertise. For the situations that arise in daily practice, and how staff respond, can be turning points -- good or bad -- in youths' experience of the setting.
What effective practice looks like
In these situations, there is no formula or manual that tells the youth worker what to do. Even the most experienced youth workers encounter situations that require them to balance competing goals and demands with the needs of youth.
One study compared the considerations and strategies that expert versus novice youth workers use in appraising and responding to dilemmas of practice. Similar to the literature on expertise in other fields, expert responses reflected more complex, multi-dimensional understandings of the issues and generated more creative, flexible solutions. Novice responses reflected a more declarative understanding of the issues and generated less nuanced solutions. Each situation is unique, of course, and leaders respond with strategies tailored to the distinct circumstances. However, two general features characterized how expert youth workers responded to dilemmas:
- Youth-centered responses. These responses reflect a commitment to keep youth and their developmental needs and interests at the center. They involved engaging youth, turning dilemmas into opportunities for youths’ development, incorporating youth into the solutions as decision-makers and leaders, and advocating for youth
- Address multiple considerations. These responses reflect a complex, multi-dimensional understanding of issues and perspectives. They consider, for example, how to challenge yet support youth, accommodate individuals’ interests and needs with those of the group, and ensure a quality product without compromising the learning process.
Tips for program staff
- Youth workers need professional development that prepares them for the complex reality of everyday youth work practice. This includes opportunities to consider the diverse range of situations encountered in practice, to deliberate the appropriateness of different types of responses, and to practice crafting responses that facilitate young people’s positive development.
- Take time to pause and reflect and not react in haste. This helps staff be more explicit about underlying values and assumptions and more intentional about goals and actions.
- Use dilemmas as teachable moments. Youth workers serve as trusted mentors who model navigating challenges for the young people in their programs. \
- Build in staff meeting time to raise and discuss dilemmas that arise. Practitioners learn from participating in reflective spaces where they can articulate, examine and discuss the dilemmas of daily practice with peers.
- Advancing Youth Work: Current Trends, Critical Questions
- Dealing with Moms and Dads: Family Dilemmas Encountered by Youth Program Leaders
- Dilemmas of Practice: Challenges to Program Quality Encountered by Youth Program Leaders
- How Staff of Youth Programs Respond to Culture-Related Incidents: Nonengagement Versus Going “Full-Right-In”
- Practitioner expertise: Creating quality within the daily tumble of events in youth settings
- The Changing Landscape of Youth Work: Theory and Practice for an Evolving Field
- Youth Worker Reasoning about Dilemmas Encountered in Practice: Expert-Novice Differences
- Why Trust Matters: How Confidence in Leaders Transforms What Adolescents Gain From Youth Programs
Reviewed in 2023