Transforming Youth Serving Organizations to Support Healthy Youth Development: New Directions for Youth Development, Number 139 [1 ed.] 9781118825150, 9781118825167

Citation preview

139

Transforming Youth-Serving Organizations

Organizations are basic to youth development practice and programming. This is their home, their host, their context. Most youth work and youth programs in the United States exist within and because they receive care and support from their host organization. Scholarly attention on youth organizations—the structure, ethos, culture, social organization, and processes of these— are basic and necessary to fully support healthy youth development practices, programs, and opportunities. Without organizations, these would be homeless. To get more and better healthy youth development programs requires housing them in supportive organizations. Some organizations are fully or somewhat effective, in part because they have responded well to the young people they serve—that is, they have met the wants and needs of their everyday changing clients, as well as the bureaucratic and funding worlds in which they are enmeshed. It is necessary to know about and understand what makes a good organizational host and how such organizations can be made and sustained. This volume of New Directions for Youth Development is organized around the different organizational change efforts at one municipal youth-serving organization to better support healthy youth development systemwide. Each article describes the different strategies and tactics used to support organizational transformation.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

FROM THE EDITORS

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT fall

Theory Practice Research 2013

Transforming YouthServing Organizations to Support Healthy Youth Development Gil G. Noam Editor-in-Chief

Ross VeLure Roholt Michael Baizerman Sheetal Rana Kathy Korum

issue editors

View this journal online at wileyonlinelibrary.com

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT fall

Theory Practice Research 2013

Transforming Youth-Serving Organizations to Support Healthy Youth Development

Gil G. Noam Editor-in-Chief

Ross VeLure Roholt Michael Baizerman Sheetal Rana Kathy Korum

issue editors

Transforming Youth-Serving Organizations to Support Healthy Youth Development Ross VeLure Roholt, Michael Baizerman, Sheetal Rana, Kathy Korum (editors) New Directions for Youth Development, No. 139, Fall 2013 Gil G. Noam, Editor-in-Chief This is a peer-reviewed journal. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except as permitted under sections 107 and 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or authorization through the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923; (978) 750-8400; fax (978) 6468600. The copyright notice appearing at the bottom of the first page of an article in this journal indicates the copyright holder’s consent that copies may be made for personal or internal use, or for personal or internal use of specific clients, on the condition that the copier pay for copying beyond that permitted by law. This consent does not extend to other kinds of copying, such as copying for general distribution, for advertising or promotional purposes, for creating collective works, or for resale. Such permission requests and other permission inquiries should be addressed to the Permissions Department, c/o John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030; (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 7486008, www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Microfilm copies of issues and articles are available in 16mm and 35mm, as well as microfiche in 105mm, through University Microfilms Inc., 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346. New Directions for Youth Development is indexed in Academic Search (EBSCO), Academic Search Premier (EBSCO), Contents Pages in Education (T&F), Current Abstracts (EBSCO), Educational Research Abstracts Online (T&F), EMBASE/Excerpta Medica (Elsevier), ERIC Database (Education Resources Information Center), Index Medicus/ MEDLINE/PubMed (NLM), MEDLINE/PubMed (NLM), SoclNDEX (EBSCO), Sociology of Education Abstracts (T&F), and Studies on Women & Gender Abstracts (T&F). New Directions for Youth Development (ISSN 1533-8916, electronic ISSN 1537-5781) is part of the Jossey-Bass Psychology Series and is published quarterly by Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company, at Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Directions for Youth Development, Jossey-Bass, One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104-4594. Subscriptions for individuals cost $89.00 for U.S./Canada/Mexico; $113.00 international. For institutions, agencies, and libraries, $318.00 U.S.; $358.00 Canada/Mexico; $392.00 international. Electronic only: $89 for individuals all regions; $318.00 for institutions all regions. Print and electronic: $98 for individuals in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico; $122 for individuals for the rest of the world; $366.00 for institutions in the U.S.; $406.00 for institutions in Canada and Mexico; $440.00 for institutions for the rest of the world. Prices subject to change. Refer to the order form that appears at the back of most volumes of this journal. Editorial correspondence should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Gil G. Noam, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 115 Mill Street, Belmont, MA 02478. Cover photograph by © Christa Nicole/iStockphoto www.josseybass.com

Gil G. Noam, Editor-in-Chief Harvard University and McLean Hospital Editorial Board K. Anthony Appiah Princeton University Princeton, N.J.

Richard Lerner Tufts University Medford, Mass.

Dale A. Blyth University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minn.

Milbrey W. McLaughlin Stanford University Stanford, Calif.

Dante Cicchetti University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minn.

Pedro Noguera New York University New York, N.Y.

William Damon Stanford University Palo Alto, Calif. Goéry Delacoˆte At-Bristol Science Museum Bristol, England Felton Earls Harvard Medical School Boston, Mass. Jacquelynne S. Eccles University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Mich. Wolfgang Edelstein Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin, Germany Kurt Fischer Harvard Graduate School of Education Cambridge, Mass. Carol Gilligan New York University Law School New York, N.Y. Robert Granger W. T. Grant Foundation New York, N.Y. Ira Harkavy University of Philadelphia Philadelphia, Penn.

Fritz Oser University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland Karen Pittman The Forum for Youth Investment Washington, D.C. Jane Quinn The Children’s Aid Society New York, N.Y. Jean Rhodes University of Massachusetts, Boston Boston, Mass. Rainer Silbereisen University of Jena Jena, Germany Elizabeth Stage University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, Calif. Hans Steiner Stanford Medical School Stanford, Calif. Carola Suárez-Orozco New York University New York, N.Y.

Marcelo Suárez-Orozco Reed Larson New York University University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign New York, N.Y. Urbana-Champaign, Ill. Erin Cooney, Editorial Manager Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency (PEAR)

Contents Issue Editors’ Notes   1 Ross VeLure Roholt, Michael Baizerman, Sheetal Rana, Kathy Korum Executive Summary   5 Proem   9 Christopher B. Coleman Preface   11 Michael Hahm 1. Missing in the youth development literature: The organization as host, cage, and promise   13 Ross VeLure Roholt, Michael Baizerman, Sheetal Rana, Kathy Korum This article discusses how questions about organization change and development are directly connected to positive youth development efforts and how they provide a beginning research agenda on youth organizations.

2. From youth worker professional development to organizational change   27 Sheetal Rana with Briana Baumgardner, Ofir Germanic, Randy Graff, Kathy Korum, Megan Mueller, Steve Randall, Tim Simmons, Gina Stokes, Will Xiong, Karen Kolb Peterson This article describes an ongoing, innovative youth worker professional development, its underlying philosophies and ethos, and its accomplishments. Also included are challenges and barriers that this initiative faced and lessons learned from it.

3. Use of research for transforming youth agencies   59 Michael Baizerman, Emily Rence, Sean Johnson This article describes the collaborative research strategy used by Youth Studies, University of Minnesota faculty and students, and Saint Paul (municipal) Parks and Recreation over the past five years as part of the effort to enhance Saint Paul Parks and Recreation’s youth services and programs.

4. Youth advisory structures: Listening to young people to support quality youth services   79 Ross VeLure Roholt, Megan Mueller This article analyzes youth advisory structures, their formal structural arrangements, the process used by each, and the practice of working with young people using certain processes within different types of formal organizational structures.

5. Shaping partnerships by doing the work   101 Kathy Korum This article describes partnership approaches that encourage new ways of thinking about or working with other organizations that foster a space for negotiation and focus on meeting youth and community needs.

6. What can local foundations do to support youth service system change efforts?   115 Wokie Weah, Marcus Pope This article describes an organization’s experience of a collaborative approach to funding Saint Paul Parks and Recreation to help the agency continue and expand its innovations in youth work and to diffuse specific strategies into other recreation centers.

7. From lessons learned to emerging practices   121 Michael Baizerman, Ross VeLure Roholt, Kathy Korum, Sheetal Rana This article brings together all lessons learned over our six years of work with Saint Paul Parks and Recreation and suggests the scientific truths, that is, and practice utility of these.

Index   147

Issue Editors’ Notes of youth service organizations in the United States that have been responding to youth for more than a century. Included are schools, parks and recreation centers, communitybased organizations, national associations and organizations, various sports programs, medical and health services, and juvenile delinquency programs. Some organizations of each type are fully or somewhat effective, in part because they have responded well to the young people they serve—that is, they have met the wants and needs of their everyday changing clients, as well as the bureaucratic and funding worlds in which they are enmeshed. Others are far less successful, in part because they have not changed at all or appropriately. Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, a municipal agency in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with twenty-nine neighborhood recreation centers, is trying to professionalize its frontline recreation staff and their supervisors, and their managers. An ongoing five-year partnership with Youth Studies, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota has included weekly trainings with groups of staff, the insinuation of University of Minnesota Youth Studies students into local centers, programmatic and youth issues–focused research and evaluation projects, supporting youth advice giving within the recreation centers, and other strategies and tactics designed to make these local centers and full- and part-time staff more responsive to local youth and neighborhood wants and needs. This volume tells this story—these stories—from the viewpoints of young people, frontline staff, supervisors, managers, and the director of recreational services. We begin by reviewing the literature on organizational development and transformation. Youth organizations are most often the

THERE ARE MANY TYPES

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20063

1

2

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

host of youth development programming and practices. Surprisingly, these organizations do not feature prominently in the youth development literature. In other human service, business, nonprofit, and health literature, organizations are taken to be a worthy unit of analysis, mainly because of the influence and impact they have on practice and programs. This is true also for youth development. Organizations can serve as host, cage (holding onto outdated ideas and ineffective practice), and promise for youth programs and practices, and most programs and practices survive due to the care and nurturing of host organizations. The first article in this volume provides a brief review of this literature and advocates for youth organization to become a central focus in the youth development literature. The second through fifth articles describe four tactics and strategies we used to invite and support organizational transformation to support healthy youth development. The second article, by Sheetal Rana and colleagues, explores what began as a youth work professional development strategy and ended up as an organizational development and change strategy. It tells the story of the trainings from those who participated (assistant directors, recreation leaders, and community youth workers) and one of the evaluators of this initiative. In the third article, Michael Baizerman, Emily Rence, and Sean Johnson tell the story of how the partnership with the University of Minnesota expanded to include faculty-guided and student-supported community-based research and evaluation to support youth program development and improvement within Parks and Recreation. Ross VeLure Roholt and Megan Mueller begin the fourth article by exploring how youth advice structures can support high-quality youth programming and, by extension, improvements in organizational supports for quality youth programs. In the fifth article, Kathy Korum describes how partnerships with other organizations also supported ongoing adaptation and transformation of the organization to better address youth needs and wants, thereby supporting healthy youth development in communities through the city. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



ISSUE EDITORS’ NOTES

3

Much of this work cannot continue unless funders recognize its value and begin to support these efforts. Wokie Weah and Marcus Pope in the sixth article look at the work of a local youth-focused foundation, Youthprise, and how it came to notice and support this work. They describe the overall mission of the foundation and how they came to the decision to provide funding to deepen and expand the work systemwide. We conclude the volume in the seventh article by drawing together the lessons learned in each of the previous articles to suggest promising practices for organization change to support healthy youth development. This volume serves as both case studies of organizational change strategies and as a single case study of how we have worked to initiate and support organizational change in one municipal organization to foster healthy youth development practices and programs. We seek to invite others, practitioners and scholars, to consider the influence and impact of youth organizations on participating young people’s development. Do local youth-serving organizations serve as host, cage, or promise? How might they be transformed to better support the healthy development of the community’s young people? Ross VeLure Roholt Michael Baizerman Sheetal Rana Kathy Korum Issue Editors ross velure roholt is associate professor in the School of Social Work, Youth Studies, University of Minnesota. michael baizerman is professor in the School of Social Work, Youth Studies, University of Minnesota. sheetal rana is a recent graduate of the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota. kathy korum is the deputy director for the Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

Executive Summary

Chapter One: Missing in the youth development literature: The organization as host, cage, and promise Ross VeLure Roholt, Michael Baizerman, Sheetal Rana, Kathy Korum Good, high-quality youth development programs require effective youth organizations. While youth organizations are commonly understood as valuable and supportive of healthy youth development, attention and focus on youth organizations in both scholarship and practice are missing within the youth development field. The authors advocate for a more distinct and clearer focus on youth organizations to foster positive youth development.

Chapter Two: From youth worker professional development to organizational change Sheetal Rana with Briana Baumgardner, Ofir Germanic, Randy Graff, Kathy Korum, Megan Mueller, Steve Randall, Tim Simmons, Gina Stokes, Will Xiong, Karen Kolb Peterson An ongoing, innovative youth worker professional development is described in this article. This initiative began as youth worker professional development and then transcended to personal and organizational development. It grew from a moral response of Saint Paul Parks and Recreation staff and two faculty members of Youth NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20064

5

6

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Studies, University of Minnesota to offer higher-quality services to youth for their healthy development. Its underlying philosophies and ethos included building and sustaining meaningful relationships, cocreating a space for learning and change, becoming a reflecting practitioner, and community organizing. This professional development responded to the participants’ interests and needs or to local situations in that moment, that space, and the discussions, and took on different shapes at different times. There were many accomplishments of, challenges and barriers to, and lessons learned from this professional development.

Chapter Three: Use of research for transforming youth agencies Michael Baizerman, Emily Rence, Sean Johnson Current philosophy and practice urge, even require for funding, that programs be empirically based and grounded in empirically proven emerging, promising, or best practices. In most of the human services, including youth programs, services, and practices, this requirement is a goal as well as an ideal. Empirical research and evaluation can be used in many ways. This article describes how it can be used for problem construction, a sociopolitical process that intentionally transforms data into “problems,” the latter to mobilize and respond to the conditions documented in and by the data. This is the research strategy used primarily in an effort to transform a community youth service agency.

Chapter Four: Youth advisory structures: Listening to young people to support quality youth services Ross VeLure Roholt, Megan Mueller Creating structures to include young people’s opinions and advice has been recognized as important for high-quality youth programs new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

7

and services. Recent scholarship has begun to learn that most of these efforts are often symbolic rather than substantive. While continually advocated for, the practice is not widespread or well done. Using data from a statewide study of youth advisory structures and a case study of one advisory structure used within a municipal parks and recreation center, this article describes what both of these teach about creating substantive, meaningful, and useful youth advisory structure for program and organization development.

Chapter Five: Shaping partnerships by doing the work Kathy Korum Partnership as an ordinary, everyday way of doing business within Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) has often been limited to working with individuals, groups, or agencies through a contract, generally to provide fee-based programs or services. This approach does not encourage new ways of thinking about or working with other organizations on a common purpose or service. Other partnership approaches are necessary to bring innovation to this work. These must allow and foster space for joint negotiation, for ways to meet needs and wants of both organizations and their missions, and focus on meeting community needs.

Chapter Six: What can local foundations do to support youth service system change efforts? Wokie Weah, Marcus Pope Making sound decisions in funding youth-serving organizations can be greatly enhanced by implementing a comprehensive and inclusive learning process that embraces the perspectives of and input from a variety of stakeholders, including program staff and leadership, various community partners, and, most important, new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

8

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

the youth. Youthprise effectively applied this collaborative approach to its grant making in 2012 when it funded Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) to continue and expand its innovations in youth work and diffuse specific strategies into other recreation centers. For a new grant-making intermediary, this was an ideal opportunity to test its priorities with an organization that had a demonstrated commitment to working with young people who were severely marginalized by other youth-serving agencies. Youthprise’s relationship with P&R has yielded valuable insight that has informed its work as a grant maker and as an organization focused on systems change.

Chapter Seven: From lessons learned to emerging practices Michael Baizerman, Ross VeLure Roholt, Kathy Korum, Sheetal Rana Organizational development is based in part on knowledge development, both formal, scientifically proven and also nonscientific practice wisdom. This article brings together all of the lessons learned over our six years of work with Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, and suggests the practice utility of these.

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

Proem saint paul, minnesota, is one of the most livable cities in the United States. As mayor, I know this better than anyone else and spend much of my time advocating for Saint Paul wherever I go—and I never need to exaggerate. With local policies, programs, and services for children and youth in neighborhoods throughout the city and a comprehensive network to connect our residents to them, we have a lot to boast about. This network, called Sprockets, is the result of a long-term, intentional effort by community and civic supporters, local government, and school leaders to construct and sustain an integrated, citywide crossagency system of programs and services for children, youth, and families. Schools, libraries, community recreation centers, and community-based agencies are among the partners in this network, working to improve program quality, share data, and ultimately help youth develop the social, emotional, and academic skills they need to thrive. With more than twenty community recreation centers, the Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department is a long-standing provider of programs and services. Since 1906, the department has served the community through locally based recreation centers, initially serving nearby neighborhood residents. As is true in all cities, Saint Paul and its people have changed, and services that once fit our neighborhoods well no longer do so. A more diverse population has meant changing tastes, a proliferation of programs means competing activities, and better mobility means that residents, including youth, travel farther to communities that offer the programming they want. The result is a mismatch between local youth and available programs in some neighborhoods and a mismatch between the skill NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20065

9

10

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

sets of our employees and the needs of the local residents. It has become clear that Saint Paul needs to transform its services in libraries and recreation. We rose to that challenge. With the help of a long-term and effective partner, the University of Minnesota’s Youth Studies Program has helped Saint Paul transform recreation services to meet the current needs, interests, and preferences of Saint Paul residents, especially youth. Such transformations take trust, time, practical wisdom, subject matter expertise, and funds. Working together, Parks and Recreation and the University of Minnesota have eliminated cost as a factor. The focus now is on the long-term cooperative work reported in this volume, an effort that I believe will continue to yield impressive results. The partnership between the university and Saint Paul is now six years long and stronger than ever before. It is a testament to what we can achieve when we work together and serves as an example to communities across the country. The citywide focus on improving youth outcomes promoted by Sprockets and supported by Saint Paul Parks and Recreation and the Saint Paul Public Library is considered the way things are done here. This transformation began on my watch, and I am proud of it. As a result, this new way of doing things is now embedded in our city departments. No matter who leads the city after me, I trust that the City of Saint Paul, its department leaders and staff, will remain committed to collaborative partnerships that meet the needs of neighborhoods and have the success of youth at their core. Christopher B. Coleman Mayor, Saint Paul, Minnesota

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

Preface i write this preface with happiness, modesty, and pride in the work of my managerial and frontline staff whose story is told in this volume. It is they who, with my support, have brought clearer focus to and better practice in working directly with youth and indirectly in the community on their behalf. It is they who have made some of our community recreation centers inviting and alive and have brought these centers in closer working contact with nearby schools and libraries, as well as other youth-serving agencies. While not all of our centers have achieved this sustained transformation, the direction and means to do this are now in place and can be expanded. As director of the Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department, with its more than twenty community centers, supported by a complement of full-time and part-time workers along with college students and interns, I am keenly aware of my responsibility to serve the residents in our community, including youth, with quality, accessible, inclusive, and, of course, desired programs, services, and opportunities, and to do so at low to no cost whenever possible. In times of reduced budgets such as these, this is no simple task. It is achievable only through partnerships with local community services and organizations, businesses, colleges, and universities. We are fortunate to have one of the nation’s premier land grant universities nearby that is willing to work cooperatively with us to meet both its community service commitments and responsibilities and ours. The University of Minnesota, along with other local colleges and universities, has been a good partner and leader in the transformation of Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, providing regular, long-term professional development for our direct service recreNEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20066

11

12

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

ation workers in youth work practice skills, philosophy, and theory; to some supervisors and mobile managers; and to all those in the department who want to take part in this opportunity. Research by University of Minnesota students has also proved invaluable to internal discussions, policy development, program improvement, and other decision making. Overall this volume speaks to the priceless value of quality, long-term collegial and cooperative arrangements. It has transformed youth agencies, youth programs, youth workers, and everyday youth work practice to make all of this higher quality, consistent, omnipresent, and efficacious in meeting our public responsibility to provide safe, enjoyable, local, relevant, and quality public programs and services in our community recreation centers. Michael Hahm, CPRP Director, Saint Paul Parks and Recreation

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

1

Good, high-quality youth development programs require effective youth organizations. While youth organizations are commonly understood as valuable and supportive of healthy youth development, attention and focus on youth organizations in both scholarship and practice are missing within the youth development field. The authors advocate for a more distinct and clearer focus on youth organizations to foster positive youth development.

Missing in the youth development literature: The organization as host, cage, and promise Ross VeLure Roholt, Michael Baizerman, Sheetal Rana, Kathy Korum has a strong and clear focus on theory development and understanding high-quality programs, youth work and youth development practices, and organized activities to support positive youth development.1 Somewhat surprisingly, focus on youth organizations in positive youth development is largely ignored. Most of the recent scholarship is about programs, services, projects, and initiatives, not the host, that is, the agency or organization.2 In the human services, business, international development, and recreation, the study of organizations is prominent; in the youth development literature, these are on the back horizon at best. Organizations are basic to youth development practice and programming. This is their home, their host, their context. Most youth work and youth programs in the United States exist within and because they receive care and support from their host organi-

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT SCHOLARSHIP

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20067

13

14

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

zation. Youth organizations also work as cages: they keep certain youth work programming and youth practices viable long after their expiration date and block innovative and responsive practices from gaining the necessary support to flourish. It is important to give scholarly attention to youth organizations—their structure, ethos, culture, social organization, and processes—as hosts to youth-serving programs. Without organizations, these programs would be homeless. To get more and better healthy youth development programs requires housing them in supportive organizations. It is necessary to know about and understand what makes a good organizational host and how such organizations can be developed and sustained. Typically the organization is not the unit of analysis in the study of youth programs and youth development practice. They are a taken-for-granted, almost invisible context. At best, they are given a nod as necessary; occasionally they are blamed when programs do not work. Too often they are equated with the youth program or programming. We know very little about youth organizations’ social structure, culture, processes, connections to, and influence on them of local communities and government. The crucial question is how organizations, complex and ambiguous social structures, work as hosts and homes to youth development programming work.3 From the literature on organizations in sociology, business, human services, and recreation, it is clear that host organizations are implicated in the success or failure of youth development work. Focusing on organization as a primary actor in youth development gives rise to important questions about what organizational supports and legitimacy are necessary for effective youth development programs. Such questions are both scholarly and practical. To introduce these questions, we show that they emerge from everyday scenarios. Using scenarios allows us to raise questions that show the importance of organizations for youth development. These questions have a dual purpose: they show how questions about organization change and development are directly connected to positive youth development efforts, and they provide a new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



MISSING IN THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT LITERATURE

15

beginning research agenda on youth organizations. We conclude by summarizing and proposing one such research agenda.

Scenarios First scenario You are the head of a youth program at a large community-based city agency. The mayor has just pushed youth programming and services as priorities. How do you think about your organization and imagine what you will do to bring it into alignment with the mayor’s policies and priorities? Youth development professionals with even a little experience have probably encountered similar situations. After years of doing good work on the margins and in the shadows, you are pushed, even pulled, to center stage. Since your organization and programs exist in this mayoral, community, union, and public context, what you can do and how is in part connected to local customs, traditions, priorities, and politics. “Organizational theory and managerial wisdom tell us that for an organization to survive it must be compatible with its environment.”4 Among the questions that can arise immediately in this scenario are these: •  What is the purpose of making this issue a priority now? •  What is going on now in the community that is pushing young people as a priority concern or issue? •  What responses are appropriate and possible given our capacities, history, constituencies, unions, and other city and youthserving nonprofits? A common reaction can be disbelief: “We have been around long enough to know that this is just politics.” Another is frenzied action: “How do we capture the moment to move into this new space?” The scenario highlights how a municipal, communitybased organization is embedded within a community and a local new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

16

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

political environment.5 Thus, effective organizational change will depend on whether one can mobilize support from internal and external constituencies. At a minimum, this can be a moment of both opportunity and danger, depending on one’s multiple stakeholders: workers, union, parents, other municipal agencies, and, of course, the young people. These also are moments when non-youth-serving organizations consider how they too might begin to include youth programming and youth services in their larger catalogue of opportunities. After all, if it is a mayor’s priority, it may be necessary to their survival to become a supporter of youth services, programs, and youth work. At a minimum, it is likely to be an additional source of often badly needed funding to keep staff and organization doing what they have always done. For the director of a youth program with a long history in the city of supporting young people, this moment can be fraught with alarm, even frustration. At this moment, he or she can assess the organization as preparatory to planning how to steer the agency to support the mayor’s initiative. Organization assessment questions usually include at least these: •  What is our mission? •  Who is our customer? •  What does the customer value? •  What are our results? •  What is our plan?6 These simple questions can be difficult to answer. While the mayor’s new emphasis on youth may directly relate to the agency’s mission, disagreements between the youth agency and the mayor’s new focus may arise over whom the agency understands as its customers, what those customers value, what results are expected, and how these will be evaluated and understood. A leader of an organization must be a reader of the internal and external environments in political terms, in terms of organizational capacity, and the rest. For the larger field of youth development, these questions and the way organizational leadership and staff answer them reveal new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



MISSING IN THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT LITERATURE

17

much about the ethos, structure, and culture of the agency and its leaders and staff. Their responses provide answers to other more scholarly questions: •  What evidence (research, evaluation, folk, or practice wisdom) do youth organizations use to argue for and support their continued work? •  Are young people conceived of as customers, advice givers, program codesigners? •  Even if leaders and staff do not fully grasp what youth development is, do they conceptualize their work in a youth development frame, work in that orientation, talk in that language? •  What other concepts and languages (business, charity, political action) do they use to describe what they do with, for, or on the behalf of young people? Questions like these point to organizations and local social structures, cultures, intra- and interagency politics, and how youth-serving organizations understand, promote, and evaluate themselves. They do so in complex, overlapping environments within municipal government (in this scenario) and between that and nonprofit and for-profit organizations serving youth. This scenario was intended to make explicit quickly and easily that organizations matter intensely as hosts and homes to youth programs. In addition, no change in direction or priority is simple, quick, easily attained, or even necessarily long lasting. Second scenario You are the director of a small municipal organization that serves populations of a variety of ages, such as a municipal library. You have been given a large, long-term grant to improve healthy youth development throughout the library system. How do you make sense of your organization in the context of this grant and think through how you are going to bring about the promised changes? Starting with an organizational assessment is important, as the director must have clarity on both the will and capacity of staff to new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

18

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

bring about the promised changes. Because the organization’s mission is to work with people of all ages, implementing this grant on youth development may be complicated.7 How can the organization strengthen its support for healthy youth development without losing its larger, multigenerational service mission? Among the several necessary assessments, this scenario highlights management style: What will be most effective? Would this change best be met through a collaborative, consultative, directive, or coercive management style?8 This depends on the social structure and culture of the organization, staff capacity and willingness to work on this grant, and the types of likely resistance. In a collaborative management style, employees participate in major decisions and are involved in almost all of the change process. The youth development literature advocates this way of working with young people, so this may be the initial choice. But consider these questions: •  Do staff want to be involved with this and other decisions? •  Do staff have the time, energy, or capacity to work collaboratively? Is this my leadership style? •  Do we have experience working in this way? •  Do I have enough political time to work in this democratic way? •  What can I anticipate about this style that could deflect, railroad, block, or otherwise make this style the right or wrong choice? Answers to such questions can shape what management style to use. With a consultative management style, staff and employees have a more limited role, often reviewing and considering several proposals, with a management team making the final decision. In both directive and coercive styles, management maintains control of the decision-making process; with a coercive style, management may use threats and force for compliance. This brief description of management styles in organizational change processes raises additional questions: new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



MISSING IN THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT LITERATURE

19

•  What management style might be most appropriate given the organizational focus on youth development? •  Will this style be effective in bringing about the necessary changes in programs and practices, in this organization, within the designated time frame? •  Will one style produce short-term gains that will be lost in the long term? Here is the old dilemma on whether one should focus on means or ends or both. When might it be appropriate to use a management style that violates general youth development principles? What issues emerge if the management teams needs to use coercion to bring about a stronger commitment to healthy youth development? What are the longer-term consequences of different management styles used to bring about organizational changes supportive of healthy youth development? Regardless of management style used, the change process is likely to encounter resistance, or what Argyris called “organizational defenses”: “Organizational defense routines are actions or policies that prevent individuals or segments of the organization from experiencing embarrassment or threat.”9 These are the typical policies and processes of an organization that work to challenge change efforts, such as innovation or new direction. All work to keep the organization from developing the necessary learning culture to support organizational change.10 There are several perennial questions here: •  What change process can address these organizational defenses? •  Which change process is likely to build a more coherent, ongoing, and supportive organizational learning culture? •  Who must be included in the change process to keep organizational defenses at a minimum? These questions are also the focus of management gurus and often the first ones that organizational change and development external consultants ask.11 new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

20

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Third scenario You are a university-based consultant who has been invited by a large municipal recreation agency to help strengthen its youth programs and services. How do you go about trying to understand the organization and developing action hypotheses so that you can propose strategies and plans? Drawing from the consulting and evaluation literatures, we know that both consultants and advisors can have both advantages and disadvantages during organizational change efforts. 12 As an outsider, the external consultant is a stranger and can often notice what others take for granted. This can be enormously useful in organizational change work because it is these taken-for-granted ways of orienting to the work and doing the work that can become the focus of change efforts. An outsider can usually ask innocentsounding and yet important questions such as these: •  How come this is the way the program is organized? •  Is this typically how all decisions get made? •  Who is usually responsible for doing what? Why was this person tapped to do the work? •  What are the position titles in use, how are these filled, and how long have workers held each job? Outside consultants’ comments and suggestions can also quickly be discounted because they may be viewed as outsiders who do not know enough about the local situation. Many organizations and communities prioritize and value local community or practice wisdom developed through long-term local involvement. The outside consultant must tap into this organization, history, social structure, culture, politics, community base, and the rest. Here wisdom from the field of anthropology and sociology can suggest how to proceed: seek first to understand. Organizations are complex, dynamic, and open systems. 13 Understanding the whole of a large organization may be impossible. This does not mean that it will remain ineffable. Time spent in the organization begins to reveal how it works—how it interacts, new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



MISSING IN THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT LITERATURE

21

responds to, and is shaped by the larger surrounding environments; how it is socially structured; what methods typically are used to do its work; its culture; how space is physically structured, how decisions are made and by whom; and what conflicts are typical and expected.14 The literature on organizational development provides a large array of questions around these six conceptual ways of understanding organizations: 1.  Who are the major stakeholders in the community? 2.  What is the relationship between the organization and surrounding community members? 3.  What stories does the organization tell about its history and purpose? 4.  Who does what, when, and how? What work is understood as less relevant, and who typically does this work? 5.  Does the organization have an advisory group or board? If so, who belongs? 6.  How do visitors and participants use the space? What is located closest to the front door? What is hidden from general view? Outside consultants have to learn about the organization as they simultaneously help with organization change development. They come with a preferred theory, models, and strategies of change and may try to apply these to the organization. For example, is change conceptualized as incremental, linear, or continuous? Each of these leads to different ways of working. Increasingly, the idea that one can manage change, that it is a linear process, and that it can be planned and controlled is less supported by research.15 Instead, change is seen as “ongoing,” and “does not occur in a neat linear fashion, but is messy, murky, and complicated. It involves twists and loops, turns and returns, omissions and revisions, the foreseen and the unforeseen, and is marked by achievement of planned targets, failures, resistance, celebration, ambivalence, fatigue, conflict and political manoeuvring.”16 How one works depends on how these new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

22

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

questions are answered: Does one understand this work as organization change or organizational changing? Those who are doing organizational changing often create, implement, and evaluate a plan and its success or failure, and then they leave, their work completed. Those who understand their work as organizational changing know that their work is never done; their focus and effort are on creating lasting processes and structures to support questioning, evaluating, reflecting, learning, and redesigning as part of the ongoing way of being in that organization. Although there are volumes devoted to creating a learning organization,17 especially in the nonprofit literature, questions such as these remain: •  How can a learning culture be created and sustained in this organization? •  What are the barriers to creating and sustaining a culture of learning, and how can these be addressed continuously forever? •  What policies should be created to support learning as a normal and typical staff responsibility and role? •  Is a strategy of using policy correct for this organization now? A university faculty member who is hired and is treated as an outside consultant can emphasize his or her “outsiderness” rather than faculty status, and with that, his or her discipline, disciplinary models, biases, blindness, and inherent cross-cultural differences. Also only touched lightly are the structural elements and aspects of advice solicitation, giving, and consultancy, one form of advice structure.18 Crucial to all of this are cost, credentials and legitimacy, allocated time, consultant roles and responsibilities, and the many responsibilities of insiders and outsiders in each organizational change effort. Fourth scenario You are a community-based organization dissatisfied with the service of the municipal recreation and library services for youth. How do you proceed to influence what goes on in these services? new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



MISSING IN THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT LITERATURE

23

This scenario addresses how local outsiders have a read on organization and act toward it if they want changes in youth programming, staff, and priorities. Local groups know that organizations in effect host programs. Sometimes change in the fingers of an organization—its services—can be accomplished by working on the fingers; but sometimes change in the fingers has deeper sources and requires changes in other bodily systems. To change metaphors, sometimes one works on the mother ship, that is, the organization as such. This gets complicated because there are right and wrong ways, as well as related effective and ineffective ways for local residents to challenge a host organization over its programming and services. This is a perennial issue often made complex, unpleasant, and long term because of profound social and cultural differences in knowledge and style between community and organization. One aspect of this is how the community reads, understands, orients toward, and works with or against the organization. All of this can be seen when youth try to change a policy or practice they know in blunt terms or as a gloss. Efforts to change municipal services are political work in all its meanings of the word, and hence theories of organizational change must be joined to those of the politics of municipal organizations, and both to politics of municipal agency change. Here we simply name these domains.

Research agenda: Questions that will always remain Using four scenarios, we focused on issues basic to organizational change and development. We drew on the vast literature on organizations, organizational change and development, expertise, advice, consultation, and organizational management to show that organizations are omnipresent; however, they may not always be visible or named in efforts to address positive youth development by changing the organizational home of youth development programs, services, projects, initiatives, and hands-on youth work. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

24

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

We thus introduced themes on the organizational development literature and used scenarios to illustrate how this literature can be useful for understanding organization as a unit of analysis and focus of change. This review also posed questions that together provide a research agenda for the field of youth development on organizational change and transformation: 1.  Are there typical models of youth organizations, as there are in the human services? 2.  What are promising practices for ongoing organizational changing to support ongoing community-based healthy youth development? 3.  If organization improvement is ongoing and never ending, what are appropriate structures and processes for an organization’s legitimacy and to sustain organizational improvement? 4.  How might we begin to measure and evaluate organizational change to support healthy youth development? 5.  What are the best ways to fail at organizational development and change for community-based youth development? Notes   1.  For theory development, see: Silbereisen, R., & Lerner, R. (2007). Approaches to positive youth development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. For highquality programs, see: Hamilton, S., & Hamilton, M. A. (Eds.). (2004). The youth development handbook: Coming of age in American communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2002). Community programs to promote youth development. Washington, DC: Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. For youth work and youth development, see: Walker, J. (2003). The essential youth worker: Supports and opportunities for professional success. In F. Vallarruel, D. Perkins, L. Borden, & J. Keith (Eds.), Community youth development: Programs, policies and practices (pp. 373–393). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Yohalem, N. (2003). Adults who make a difference: Identifying the skills and characteristics of successful youth workers. In F. Vallarruel, D. Perkins, L. Borden, & J. Keith (Eds.), Community youth development: Programs, policies and practices (pp. 358–372). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. For organized activities, see: Mahoney, J., Larson, R., & Eccles, J. (Eds.). (2005). Organized activities as contexts of development. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.   2.  McLaughlin, M., Irby, M., & Langman, J. (1994). Urban sanctuaries: Neighborhood organizations in the lives and futures of inner-city youth. San Frannew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



MISSING IN THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT LITERATURE

25

cisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; McLaughlin, M. (2000). Community counts: How youth organizations matter for youth development. Washington, DC: Public Education Network.   3.  Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (2008). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership (4th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.   4.  Huber, G., & Glick, W. (1993). Organizational change and redesign. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. P. 7.   5.  Dawson, P. (2003). Reshaping change: A processual perspective. New York, NY: Routledge.   6.  Drucker, P., Collins, J., Kotler, P., Kouzes, J., Rodin, J., Rangan, V. K., & Hesselbein, F. (2008). The five most important questions you will ever ask about your organization. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.   7.  Ream, G., & Witt, P. (2004). Organizations serving all ages. In S. Hamilton & M. A. Hamilton (Eds.), The youth development handbook: Coming of age in American communities (pp. 51–76). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage   8.  Myers, P., Hulks, S., & Wiggins, L. (2012). Organizational change: Perspectives on theory and practice. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.   9.  Argyris, C. (1990). Overcoming organizational defenses: Facilitating organizational learning. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. P. 25. 10.  Gill, S. (2010). Developing a learning culture in nonprofit organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 11.  Compton, D. W., Baizerman, M., & VeLure Roholt, R. (2011). Managing evaluation: Responding to common problems with a 10-step process. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 25(2), 103–123. 12.  VeLure Roholt, R., & Baizerman, M. (2012). Being practical, being safe: Doing evaluations in contested spaces. Evaluation and Program Planning, 35(1), 206–217. 13.  Hasenfeld, Y. (2010). Human services as complex organizations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 14.  Hatch, M. J., & Cunliffe, A. (2010). Organization theory: Modern, symbolic, and postmodern perspectives (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 15.  Dawson. (2003). 16.  Dawson. (2003). P. 144. 17.  Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Currency; Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 18.  VeLure Roholt, R., & Baizerman, M. (Eds.). (2012). Evaluation advisory groups. New Directions for Evaluation, 136. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

ross velure roholt is associate professor in the School of Social Work, Youth Studies, University of Minnesota. michael baizerman is professor in the School of Social Work, Youth Studies, University of Minnesota. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

26

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

sheetal rana is a recent graduate of the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota. kathy korum is the deputy director for the Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department.

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

The accomplishments of the professional development that is the focus of this article were found at three interconnected levels: personal, professional, and organizational.

2 From youth worker professional development to organizational change Sheetal Rana with Briana Baumgardner, Ofir Germanic, Randy Graff, Kathy Korum, Megan Mueller, Steve Randall, Tim Simmons, Gina Stokes, Will Xiong, Karen Kolb Peterson this is a story of change—a positive change that started out as a youth worker professional development initiative and evolved to encompass personal and organizational development. It is the story of youth workers from Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R), other community members and students, and professional development facilitators from Youth Studies, University of Minnesota (UofM). This is a story of creating, enhancing, and sustaining meaningful spaces, services, and programs for young people and thus fostering healthy youth development at recreation centers and in communities. Embedded in all this are several lessons for conceptualizing, offering, and sustaining youth worker professional development initiatives. This change story began six years ago when P&R collaborated with UofM to offer its workers professional development training. The P&R is a municipal agency with twenty recreation centers NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20068

27

28

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

and more than one hundred full- and part-time employees. Although the recreation centers offer services to all age groups, a majority of the centers’ services are for children and youth from the neighborhoods. As a part of this professional development training, some youth workers from the P&R and two professors from UofM began meeting every week. These meetings did not have a rigid agenda. Rather, they responded to the participants’ interests and needs or local situations at that time; the space and discussions took on different shapes at different times. Sometimes those in the room seemed to be a group of friends hanging out, while at other times they looked like a family gathering, a therapy session, a university class, or a community organizing meeting. In these meetings, the participants talked about and reflected on their work, taught and learned youth work, and collectively worked to enhance youth work in the P&R. The accomplishments of this professional development were manifold and were at three levels: professional, personal, and organizational. This ongoing innovative youth worker professional development described here draws on the experiences of the participants, written notes from the meetings, and an evaluation. We start with a brief overview of the contexts of and for this work, followed by descriptions of the underlying philosophies and ethos of this professional development, its group structure, and phases in this ongoing process. We next look at the accomplishments of, challenges and barriers to, and lessons learned from this professional development. We conclude with a brief discussion on the replicability of this professional development model.

The contexts This professional development grew from a moral response to offer higher-quality P&R services to youth. A staff member from a community agency that collaborated with P&R identified the need to train P&R staff in youth work. This person was professionally and interpersonally situated to facilitate the connection between a new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

29

P&R manager and a UofM professor. Collectively they discussed this idea and conceptualized the training. And then the P&R manager worked with key people in her organization to create a space to offer ongoing professional development to frontline staff. What did youth work in P&R look like at that time six years ago? And why was there a need for youth work training? Professional development participants, the staff from the community agency, and the P&R manager talked about P&R frontline staff having limited youth work knowledge and skills. Those with expert skills neither framed nor named their work as “youth work.” They and their supervisors viewed their everyday work as the management of a recreation center, program delivery, and monitoring young people’s behaviors in a center. These were also emphasized in the workers’ supervision and performance evaluation. This meant that many workers were not trained in youth work, and training opportunities available to them were mostly short term (a half-day to two days) and focused on how to answer phone calls, do computer work, give CPR, and the like. This context in all its manifestations was consequential for engaging youth in P&R programs and services. P&R programs and services served relatively few young people and alienated many. Not many workers were highly skilled in inviting young people into the centers and engaging them meaningfully. On the contrary, young people were often “kicked out” of the centers by worker behavior and by how youth behaved. There was little effort to negotiate and cocreate with youth rules for the centers and their activities and programs. Difficult situations, such as youth fights, were not effectively and appropriately managed. Recreation centers consistently had low youth participation, and even fewer youth from certain population groups, like Hmong and Bhutanese refugees, came to the centers. It was clear to the P&R manager, the UofM professor, and the community agency staff member that short-term training focused on specific youth work skills would not on its own bring out widespread positive changes in how P&R worked. After many meetings, planning, and discussions between the P&R manager and new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

30

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

University of Minnesota faculty, it was decided that an ongoing, long-term, and participant-led training would be offered to P&R frontline workers and frontline supervisors.

Training philosophy and ethos She [a management-level staff] suggested that I [a youth worker] participate in a group that was about to start. She said that a professor from UofM is starting a youth development group. I didn’t have a clue of what the group was about. I went to the first meeting. That is where I met [the facilitator] for the first time. He asked us to introduce ourselves and to say what we were good at. I watched him listen to what other workers were saying. He was listening to what they were saying and analyzing it and saying it back to us. He was good. Then I spoke and he analyzed what I said. He described me. I was intrigued by all that. I didn’t know what we were going to get out of this. He was leading us to think what we wanted to do. He wanted us to be aware that we had a power to do something.

This was a worker’s recollection of his first professional development meeting. It reflects the philosophies and ethos embodied by the professional development facilitators. We describe these philosophies and ethos in some depth because they guide the professional development goals and approaches. Building and sustaining meaningful relationships with young people Mutually respectful relationships between the facilitators and participants and among participants themselves underpinned this professional development, reflecting youth work values. 1 The facilitators built relationships with each participant using various approaches in and outside the group meetings. In the meetings, they viewed and engaged all participants as equals. The participants were from different levels of the P&R hierarchy; from different socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds; and with different levels of youth work skills. But in the meetings, new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

31

they were a group of peers. And the differences between individual participants were talked about openly as a way to better understand each other. The facilitators often talked about themselves as being “outsiders” to the P&R, as being “white, university professors.” They invited and engaged the participants to teach them about their everyday lives and work in the P&R. In so doing, the groups discussed issues related to race and organizational hierarchy. They regularly asked the participants for feedback on professional development meetings. Outside the meetings, the facilitators met individual participants and when asked, helped them with specific work issues and offered guidance. They met the participants for lunch, invited them to teach at the university, and talked on the phone. Gradually the participants and facilitators became peers, colleagues, teachers, and supporters who helped them see and understand practice in different ways. The participants talked about their groups in this way: We talk and share openly in the group. The group chemistry is amazing. They are so open to sharing and learning. It is a privilege to be a part of this group. In a way, it is a “support group.” The group members are supportive of each other. There is no criticism of other’s work. The feedback given is constructive. I wish others from senior management were present in the group and were more supportive. The group provides space for having a conversation in a relational way with other people who are doing the same work. In a lot of ways, youth workers are isolated. We don’t always have people to share our work with. This group is that mechanism; it provides that kind of support. It’s a place that we can go to. It sounds simple but it’s not that simple.

Cocreating a space for learning and change The facilitators cocreated with participants a space for learning, teaching, and changing their workplace. Everyone in the group was seen as a teacher and a learner, regardless of their youth work skills and experiences or their position in P&R. The facilitators did not go into the meetings with a set curriculum. Instead, in each meeting, they asked participants what they wanted to learn and new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

32

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

what they could teach others in their group. They recognized and validated individual workers’ skills and expertise and invited the participants to teach. Everyone learned and taught in their groups (and, later, outside the groups). This was a new and engaging experience for many workers. Many had initially come to the meeting expecting to listen to a professor give a lecture. When they saw a professor asking them to teach and wanting to learn from them, they were intrigued and baffled. Some stepped back and observed the meetings a few times or even months until they grasped the notion of teaching others and cocreating a training curriculum. When they were ready, the workers drew on their skills and everyday work experiences to teach their group. This approach made learning more relevant and meaningful to the workers. It also encouraged them to come to these meetings regularly and actively engage in the learning process. Participants from the three groups described their experiences in the following way: It [professional development] was the total opposite to my expectation. [The facilitator] comes and says, “What do you guys want to do?” We were like, “Do we need lessons plans, what do you expect from us?” He was like, “Who said anything about expectations?” We looked at each other, and were like, “Is he a professor?” I went home and looked him up on the Internet. We were kind of stuck the first two weeks. We finally figured out that it’s not up to the facilitator, we need to figure out how to make our meetings work. It was hard to start without a structure. I’m kind of used to working with structures. There is no format, there’s lots of space. I’m used to being told what to do, not “let’s talk, let’s explore.” The facilitator allows us to be us. He knows how to honor us. He is a university professor, but he is our peer. He is always available to us and he respects us. He sets an example of how to do youth work. It is inspirational. People from the library, deputy director of Park and Rec., assistant directors, UofM students, former students—different people come to the meeting. We have a good mix. In the room, everybody is equal. Everyone new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

33

contributes. The facilitator helps people understand where they are. But he does not make them feel like they don’t know. He’ll say, “Let me tweak this a bit and say it another way.” We are also constantly challenging him. It is like a class, but really it is not. We don’t always accept what the “Professor” says. We say, “We don’t agree with you.” We have been doing this work a long time, so we bring in our experiences. And he encourages us to do that.

Being a reflective practitioner This training also adopted the philosophical underpinnings of reflective practice.2 The facilitators helped the participants become aware of and rethink their taken-for-granted professional knowledge and their worlds. They engaged the participants in systematic reflections about their everyday practice. Using phrases like, “Let me tweak this a bit,” “Let me put this in another way,” “Can I push you to think this way?” the facilitators invited and guided the participants to reflect on their practice. One of the strategies a facilitator used was to reach the meeting place about an hour before the meetings and observe the staff work with youth. Later in the meeting, he used his observations to help the workers reflect on their practice. For example, he would say, “Tell us about what how you talked to that little girl and her mom earlier.” This question was followed by several other questions like, “What was your body language?” “What about your eyes?” “What did you say?” “Why did you do what you did?” “What was it like to be you in that moment?” These reflections helped participants name, ask questions about, gather data from, and evaluate their own and others’ practice. In addition, the facilitators offered other resources and opportunities to engage the participants in reflecting on themselves and their work. They gave the participants books on youth and youth work. During discussions, they connected the workers’ everyday experiences to academic theories, concepts, and vocabularies. The facilitators invited the participants to teach in their classes at the university. They asked highly skilled workers to supervise interns from their university Youth Studies program. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

34

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

These interns constantly asked the workers questions about why they did what they did, increasing the workers’ spaces for reflection on their practice. The following is an example of a worker’s reflective practice: One time a kid cursed me. He was about fifteen years old. This was before the open gym. They [young people] were all outside the rec. I was telling them the gym isn’t open yet and to wait. He started cursing me. I replied, “Come on, I am not your friend. I am an adult, treat me with respect.” He replied, “No, you respect me.” I said, “Okay, I respect you.” He was angry and said, “Are you going to put your hands on me?” He was showing off to his friends. I took a deep breath. I lowered my shoulders, so that I don’t look like a bully. But he was still showing off. At that moment, I thought that if I respond like that kid, I would be wrong. I would lose my power to him. So I told him, “You gotta leave.” He did not leave the rec premises. After everyone started to walk to the gym, he also tried to walk in. I stopped him and said, “You can’t go in today because of how you behaved.” He didn’t go in but hung-out outside. After a few days, he came to apologize. I said I accepted his apology, but he still can’t come to the gym because he was disrespectful. I was making him understand that he has to be respectful to other people. I was not only teaching him but also his friends, who were observing all this. He accepted responsibility for his action, and now we are good.

As reflective practitioners, the workers became aware of their body, their actions, and how they spoke to young people. They experienced many ways of seeing, understanding, and making sense of themselves, young people, their everyday practice, and their world, and to name these.3 And they became lifelong learners.4 Community organizing Another ethos reflected in this professional development was of community organizing. In this context, community organizing included enhancing workers’ skills and knowledge to take actions to change or create policies and practices that promoted youth work in all research sites and at all levels of the P&R. Thus, the focus of this professional development was not only on the skills of new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

35

individual workers but also on changing the conditions or contexts in which they worked. Crucial to this was analyzing and addressing differences in power and privilege within group members and between workers and mid- and upper-level management. The facilitators themselves were aware of their own positions of power and privilege and worked to equalize this in the group while using this power outside the group to enhance youth work within P&R. For example, the approaches described to build relationships with the participants and to cocreate the training curriculum helped address the power differences between the facilitators and participants and between participants who were from different backgrounds. At the same time, the facilitators used their connections to upper-level management, mainly the P&R manager, to create spaces for workers to voice their individual and group concerns to her. This professional development helped workers experience and engage in another aspect of their practice: politics. The meetings were forums for workers to share their problems and also to plan actions to address these problems. The facilitators constantly asked them, “What do you want to do about this?” The group collectively planned for actions and implemented them. For example, one of the facilitators engaged the participants, mostly center directors, in organizational power mapping to help them better understand how people positioned at various levels influenced their everyday work, identify who could support them in their work, and strategize how to implement change. Another facilitator invited the P&R manager to a group meeting so that workers could directly voice their concerns to upper-level management. Thus, facilitators guided the participants in turning their “personal troubles” into “social problems.”5 This professional development was practical, experiential, academic, therapeutic, and action oriented. There was mutual respect and support in the groups. Together the groups cocreated their own learning curriculum. In each meeting, agenda items were emergent and free flowing. This work continued when this article new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

36

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

was being written, and its activities during and outside the meetings at this time can be divided into several phases. Professional development structure The structure of this professional development was flexible and responsive to the needs and interests of its participants, reflecting the philosophies and ethos described. Participation in this professional development was not mandatory, and it was offered in response to opportunities available and the workers’ interests. In the beginning, it was offered on the West Side service area of P&R, mainly because this was where the need for youth worker professional development was initially observed. P&R workers were invited to participate in this professional development and paid for their time. After a few meetings, the P&R manager and the professional development facilitators noticed that very few workers from this service area regularly and actively participated in the meetings. At the same time, an opportunity for professional development opened up on the East Side service area. This area was experiencing problems associated with youth gangs, which created a moral panic or concern among community members that youth violence was threatening the social values and interests.6 Also, the P&R, in collaboration with community agencies, was starting in this area the East Side Learning Collaborative (ESLC), which grew out of the mayor’s Second Shift Initiative, with a focus on afterschool learning. Funded by a state after-school grant, this community collaborative worked to build and strengthen the collective capacity of neighborhood organizations to offer learning opportunities for young people and to increase young people’s access to out-of-school-time learning programs. Part of this funding focus was professional development for workers connected to these programs, which allowed the P&R to support youth worker professional development on the East Side. This work continues today. Initially there were two professional development groups. In the first group were frontline youth workers, members of community organizations, and students from the University of Minnesota. A year later, the P&R manager joined this group. The second group new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

37

had recreation center directors and assistant directors and staff from other community agencies. Two University of Minnesota professors facilitated the group meetings—one in each group. In both groups, formed to complement each other, the focuses were youth work and youth worker supervision skills. Frontline supervisors thus created space and supported skilled youth workers to do good youth work. The two groups merged after three years. As members of the first group moved from developing their youth work skills to creating spaces for youth work in their agency, they saw the need to meet with frontline supervisors. They sought to help supervisors better understand and better coordinate with skilled youth workers to offer high-quality youth services. The P&R manager supported this strategy and to help start this asked that all center directors and assistant directors attend the professional development meetings. They came to the meetings, but dropped out after the period of mandatory participation, suggesting that they were not interested in learning and doing youth work, at least in this venue and in this way. A third professional development group formed at a P&R recreation center. At the time, this center was hosting a new art program cocreated for and by young people, housed at a recreation center, and funded by an external agency. The professor who facilitated the supervisor-level group was invited to help staff and young people develop this program. He facilitated weekly conversations with the recreation staff and youth on the vision and mission of the program, reaching out and inviting youth to come to the program, making it a safe and welcoming space for young artists, and the like. This work also focused on enhancing the youth worker professional development skills of P&R staff. In these groups, the P&R manager played a key role of a change agent. She supported their activities and efforts. Moreover, she used her professional and personal influences and abilities to promote youth work at different levels of P&R.7 She also gave space and flexibility to the facilitators to work on this innovative professional development. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

38

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Phases of the professional development groups The phases of professional development groups can be defined as broad patterns of activities and change processes.8 They show the learning and growth of participants, as well as the directions and strategies participants used, with guidance from the facilitators, to change their professional and organizational practices. These emergent phases were guided by the professional development philosophies and the ethos of the two facilitators. The diagnostic phase All three groups started out with a diagnostic phase. In this phase, the facilitators asked some basic questions: •  What are you good at? •  What can you teach? •  What do you want to do? •  What do you want to change in your work? •  How can I help you? These questions encouraged the participants to share with the group their everyday youth work stories, their self-identified skills and expertise, and support (or lack thereof) from their organization. This conversation helped the groups collaboratively identify their skills, work situations and issues, and skills they wanted to improve. This helped the facilitators assess individual participants’ learning interests and needs and the organizational contexts for youth work. The participants in each group talked about similar and unique problems and frustrations. In the youth worker group, P&R workers shared their anger, frustrations, sadness, and concerns that arose mainly from being marginalized in P&R and having to face barriers to doing good youth work. They talked about experiences with authoritative, top-down management that often told them what to do and how to work with young people. As frontline worknew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

39

ers, they had very little participation in the decision making in P&R and very little space to voice their concerns. They were generally not visible to upper-level management, and midlevel management mostly saw them in terms of their race. For example, African American youth workers with expert skills were seen as, and assigned to, work as “bouncers,” who disciplined youth and maintained safety at the centers. And when they did good youth work, they were seen as being good at working only with African American youth. Similar stories were told in the second group of frontline supervisors. They talked about “top-down” management who “told” them what to do and “scolded” them if things did not go as planned. They did not feel trusted and supported by their supervisors and upper-level management. Moreover, they received little training and supervision on how to supervise and support their staff. Similarly, the group at the recreation center working on a youth program talked about challenges in developing and implementing this youth-led program. They struggled to integrate this program in the recreation center work collaboratively. As the participants shared, reflected on, and analyzed their work frustrations, the group meetings also became like therapy sessions. The meetings provided space for the workers to vent. This was also a space where the participants felt respected and heard. Talking about their problems and frustrations also helped participants identify what they wanted to do to become good youth workers. A group member described her experience in this way: When I first joined the group, I was a very concrete person. I didn’t know what was going on. There were youth workers from P&R and from other agencies. We would meet and talk about our work. It did not seem like a real training. We first started by getting to know each other. We would ask questions about our work and share our frustrations. I felt that my voice was being heard. In P&R, we don’t really get trained to do our work. We take the test and if we pass, we move forward. So there was a lot about doing this work that I didn’t know. I enjoyed going to the group meetings. We had similar jobs and work experiences. We would help each other and grow. We would share our frustrations. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

40

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

We would break that down and get insights from others on how they would manage a situation. At P&R we are so “regimented,” we forget about youth work.

As a way to address their problems, the frontline workers voiced their frustrations and concern directly to the P&R manager. Initially when the facilitator suggested this, this group was hesitant. This was not a common practice, and the group did not know how the P&R manager would respond. When they agreed, the P&R manager came to the meeting. The following excerpts describe the manager’s experience of being in that meeting:9 After I joined the meeting, I found myself under siege for over an hour, fiercely lectured about an uncaring and disconnected administration, lack of recognition for skilled workers, and an overt unwillingness to make connections with young people who strayed from the cultural norm to which the department had catered to for more than a century. It was an unexpected upheaval of emotion. Decades of pent-up anger caromed across the table in my direction, expressed through voices loud and cracking as they spoke openly on behalf of themselves as workers and on behalf of the young people they represented. Raw and uncensored discontent and resentment was expressed as no other employee group had expressed it. They were tired of working in a system that banned teens from recreation centers in the name of safety and were worn out working in an organization with limited opportunities to try anything new.

This meeting was a moment of success for this group. The workers talked to an upper management staff who listened to them and responded to their concerns positively. This experience showed them the possibility that their work and work environment could change for the better and that there was a manager who supported them. For the group, this marked the beginning of a social action to change their organizational practices. The P&R manager eventually became part of this group. She participated in the meetings as a youth worker and “put on a manager’s hat” only when she was asked to make policy, administrative, or budget-related decisions. Toward the end of this phase, the three groups had started working on developing skills to offer and manage youth programs. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

41

Enhancing youth program skills In the second phase, which emerged from the diagnostic phase, all three groups focused on skills to develop, implement, and evaluate youth programs. This was based on the interests of the participants. The three groups worked on different youth programs. In each group, the participants identified the programs that they wanted to work on. The P&R manager supported this initiative and made a small fund available. The youth worker group worked on a mentor program. They cocreated this program with community members and youth. In this phase, young people and community members became part of this group and actively engaged in developing a mentor program, advising the group on what they wanted this program to be like. The facilitator helped by guiding in this progress and also taught technical skills, such as developing a logic model for the program. When the program was ready for implementation, youth and workers trained adults on mentoring youth and selected mentors for this program. They also evaluated the training. These activities increased workers’ understanding, knowledge, and experiences of cocreating, managing, and evaluating a youth program with young people. The second group addressed teen programs. They worked with the other facilitator to identify innovative teen programs and then visited agencies offering these programs and observed. In addition, they read and discussed books on youth work. The group members also used each other as resources. With guidance from the facilitator, they planned and organized a two-day training in which they trained each other on different aspects of their work. The participants noted that these activities increased their skills and understanding of collaborating with community agencies to better serve young people from the neighborhood. A participant noted: The recreation center I work in is in a low-income neighborhood. The facilitator pointed out the possibility of me collaborating with another group member who works at the church. It worked super well. The church helped us with the program, “Take Home Chef.” The kids paid 50 new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

42

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

cents for participation, and we got all the food in donation. The kids learned how to make food, and they felt good. The church was happy, and my colleagues and I felt great.

Being part of this group also helped the participants view their work as not just being technical and managerial in nature, but also as relationship based, as guiding and supporting frontline workers, and as directly and indirectly working with young people. The participants said that they learned about engaging youth and their staff in program development. One participant said: I learned the importance of training my staff. I have an open door for my staff. I don’t tell them what to do, I show them what to do. I teach them and engage them in this work. Youth leading their programs was new to me. The P&R has its own programs, and we just implement them without any input from youth and then wonder why youth do not participate in these programs. It’s adult-driven. I learned about engaging young people, going to the community to learn about who are in my community and what is going on. I learned to share power and responsibilities with my staff.

Toward the end of this phase, this group merged with the professional development group of frontline workers. The recreation center group worked on developing and offering the youth-led program. This was a new program, and staff and young people were facing challenges in developing it. One of the challenges was related to increasing youth participation. The facilitator helped the workers and young people find different ways of reaching out to youth and telling them about this space. They talked about the power of word-of-mouth marketing, as well as other outreach strategies. Another issue was related to identifying and offering specific youth programs. The facilitator guided the group in planning, organizing, and evaluating programs. In addition, the group focused on developing collaboration between staff and sharing resources between the recreation center and this program. A worker described the work of this professional development group in the following way: new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

43

When he [the facilitator] came to the group, we were struggling to develop programs. He was there to bounce off our ideas. He would come and ask about issues we had, talk about possible ways to manage the issue, and helped us handle issues in positive ways. With his help, we developed quarterly plans for classes. At that time, classes were loosely developed. With his help, we started planning classes. For example, our “Hip hop against homophobia” became a big hit. The facilitator gave us the idea of organizing this event every year. This became something associated to this program, something that youth looked forward to. We talked about how we are going to advertise, how we were greeting young people. We talked about how if we greeted young people and respected them, they would go and tell others about it and more youth would come. We talked about the power of the word of mouth. This way, other people advertised for us.

Over time, the workers gained better ideas, knowledge, and skills to work with youth, and more young people were participating in the programs and activities. The facilitator continued to visit every other week and supported the workers when needed. Organizing and social action The youth worker group, the longest running of the three, gradually moved on to organizing and social action to create youth work spaces and diffuse this work throughout P&R. This phase emerged out of an incident: the group was meeting at a recreation center when a gunshot was fired outside and youth workers rushed out to address the situation. This led to a group discussion about a lack of organizational policies for managing difficult situations. In the following meetings, the group worked on policy suggestions for managing such situations. Encouraged by this, the group prepared a table listing youth work skills and three levels of youth work expertise. They drafted the roles and responsibilities of community youth workers, a new position whose work was not tied to the recreation centers. The workers also categorized P&R recreation centers as difficult, medium, and easy to work in, based on the incidence of difficult situations in these centers, and matched these categories with youth worker skill sets. As the group analyzed these policy issues and new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

44

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

identified policy gaps, their work progressed to diffuse youth work in the P&R. By this time, youth work was being recognized systemwide as key to engaging young people in P&R services. However, many staff positioned at different levels of the organization continued not to value or apply youth work in their practice and not to support workers who were doing youth work. As a way to address this problem, group members invited recreation center directors and assistant directors to participate in their professional development meetings. The P&R manager supported this strategy and made it mandatory for recreation center directors and assistant directors to participate in the professional development meetings. This joint meeting also began with the questions, “What can you teach?” “What do you want to do?” and the others we have mentioned. The large group identified a need to address an ongoing problem of managing difficult situations during their open gym program. This group then developed a staff training manual for open gym. The manual required directors and assistant directors to participate in the training and commit to training their staff. In practice, this has not yet happened. Furthermore, the directors stopped coming to the meetings when they were no longer required to do so. Nevertheless, the group continued to diffuse youth work in midlevel management in other ways, such as presenting youth work in staff meetings. The group also diffused youth work at the frontline worker level. When P&R was hiring new recreation workers, the group, and particularly the P&R manager, used this opportunity to create a new process and set new standards of worker youth engagement and for hiring and training new workers. Unlike earlier practice, where recreation center directors selected and hired recreation workers, now a panel of youth, frontline workers, and management-level staff was engaged in the hiring. This panel interviewed, short-listed, and recommended candidates for appointment. In addition, P&R staff from the group offered an ongoing youth work training and mentorship to the new recrenew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

45

ation workers who worked in different centers. At the time of writing this article, this work continues, and there are plans to hire youth work trainers and find other ways to reach out to all staff— frontline, midlevel, and upper level—and engage them in learning about youth work. There is now a weekly meeting of workers from the professional development group who plan, implement, monitor, and evaluate this training. In summary, each of these phases of the three professional development groups was meaningful on its own and together contributed to a broader pattern of professional, personal, and organizational change.10 These phases were emergent and responsive to the participants’ wants, needs, and learning interests. And they were intentional in the sense that the facilitators suggested and guided the participants in those directions.

What was accomplished? The accomplishments of this professional development are found at three interconnected levels: personal, professional, and organizational. These levels can be visualized as concentric circles, with personal changes at the innermost and organizational changes at the outermost circle, and changes in one circle or level influence the other two. For example, changes in personal worldviews, values, and aspirations lead to changes in that person’s professional views and practices, while changes in staff’s professional practice of youth work can influence overall organizational productivity or response.11 Personal and professional development Because personal and professional developments are closely intertwined, we discuss them together. The participants described various changes in how they saw themselves, their work, and their organization. Professional development participants noted the following personal and professional changes in them: new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

46

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

1.  There were changes in their ways of thinking, seeing, and being in their world professionally and personally. Although many participants were doing youth work prior to participating in this professional development, they used to perceive their work in terms of their position in P&R and not as “youth work.” They were recreation leaders, recreation workers, or center directors. Some were not aware of “youth work” as a profession. With continued participation in the meetings, many began to frame their work as youth work and identified their professional selves as youth workers. In addition, they began to draw on youth work vocabulary to express what they did and why. 2.  Youth workers became more knowledgeable and skilled in approaching, inviting, and cocreating youth work spaces with young people. They were reflective practitioners, reflecting in action (when the situation was happening) and reflection-onaction (after the situation). They talked about being more conscious of their voice, tone, and body language. They became more skilled in managing difficult situations, such as youth fights or angry parents. 3.  There was a transition from doing building-centered to community-based work. Some workers were working more closely with schools, libraries, and neighbors. Workers also valued meaningful relationships with local communities. They emphasized greeting everyone who came to the centers and walking outside the building to talk to young people and community members. 4.  Workers were more conscious about working across different population groups and with boys and girls of all ages. They learned about who lived in the neighborhood and connected with different population groups to offer them services in their centers. They viewed race and ethnicity as important in terms of understanding the young people’s world, but workers knew or were willing to learn different cultures from young people. 5.  Workers became skilled in teaching youth work. They taught youth work to new workers and other workers as their supervisors and colleagues and as trainers and mentors. They new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

47

taught informally by modeling youth work and guiding workers when needed. They taught their colleagues in staff meetings and at their centers, and they taught students at the University of Minnesota. 6.  They organized and facilitated youth work training for community agencies. Some group members were invited by colleagues to help solve problems at their centers. 7.  Workers learned to read their professional world in relation to their organizational positions and organized to change practices in their organization. P&R was a hierarchical organization in which frontline staff did not have access to top-level management and communication was top down. This professional development increased workers’ direct access to upper-level management. They became skilled in conceptualizing and analyzing how politics worked in their organization and used that knowledge in strategizing to diffuse youth work practices systemwide. 8.  Engaging in these activities reduced youth workers’ stress and burnout. They used the group and individual group members to share their frustrations, for support, and for problem solving. Expert workers were seen less as “bouncers” and “building security personnel,” and their skills were recognized and appreciated in the group, in training, and in everyday work. More important, they experienced support by P&R managers to take on new youth work initiatives. Organizational development The participants described positive changes in the P&R. These changes were found at the level of individual recreation center, as well as across recreation centers. 1.  The participants set higher standards for youth work in P&R. Expert youth workers from the group invited and engaged young people meaningfully. They also supervised their workers to do so. There was an increase in the number of young people coming to the centers in which they worked. Young people, new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

48

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

both young men and women, from different backgrounds came to the centers and engaged in different programs and activities. Youth workers offered not just programs but also a safe space to hang out and cocreated activities with young people. For example, in one center, young people participated in painting a mural. 2.  They were more skilled in managing difficult situations at the centers. Workers negotiated with young people on appropriate behaviors at the centers. Young people came to see the center as their space and shared the responsibility of keeping it safe. They alerted the workers if something was about to happen. Fewer young people asked to leave the centers. In these centers, there were fewer to no youth incidents, such as graffiti, vandalism, stealing, fights, or shooting a firearm. 3.  Workers built more networks with community agencies. In some centers, workers were collaborating with schools, libraries, and police. 4.  Beginning-level changes were seen in worker hiring practices. In a recent recreation worker hiring, young people, frontline workers, and staff from community agencies worked together to hire competent youth workers. 5.  There was a beginning-level diffusion of youth work. The workers formed a separate training group comprising only P&R workers. This group provided ongoing, weekly training to new recreation workers. The group members also presented their youth work at all staff meetings and offered training to community agencies. They were supervising the youth work practice of other workers in their centers. 6.  The workers and their work were noticed in their organization. Youth work became a familiar term, although not many in the organization were skilled in it or outwardly wanted to learn it. Very small numbers of workers were committed to youth work, but this was gradually changing. When considering the entire P&R system, these changes were small and there was more work to be done. Nonetheless, these new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

49

gains were significant because there are now new ways of working with youth and new standards for youth work in the P&R. And the group members were prepared and willing to face the challenges and take this work forward. Challenges and barriers While there were accomplishments, there were also challenges and barriers. Broadly, there were two interconnected types of challenges and barriers. The first was related to engaging more and a wider group of workers in professional development. The second was diffusing youth work to all centers and at all levels of P&R. Engaging a wider group of workers.  In this professional development, relatively few P&R workers actively participated, and some came to a few meetings and then dropped out. There were several strategies used to invite P&R staff to the meetings. First, participation in these meetings was voluntary and open to all staff. The P&R manager helped workers get approval from their supervisors to participate in the meetings, and P&R staff were paid for time spent in these meetings. The group members also reached out to some workers and personally invited them to the meetings. Over the years, the size of the three groups fluctuated, with participants in the first group ranging from six to twenty-five, the second group from four to eight, and the third group around eight. This is not a large number considering that the P&R employed hundreds of full- and part-time staff. Despite the open invitation, some P&R staff viewed the group as a “secret group” and its members as the P&R manager’s “chosen ones.” They perceived the meetings as not being open to everyone. According to the participants, they perceived the group this way because they were not willing to commit to youth work, were afraid of doing something new, or did not want to do more than what was required by P&R. These actions were supported by a lack of youth work standards or accountability in P&R. The participants also noted some tension between the “chosen ones” and those who resisted this work, and some staff did not want to take a stand on this and therefore did not participate in the meeting. And new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

50

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

for a few, their family commitment and work schedules were barriers to attending the evening meetings. Despite this, the professional development continued to invite staff to the meetings. The P&R manager regularly sent out meeting invitations to P&R workers and supervisors. The group met at different recreation centers as a way to invite staff at those recreation centers to the meetings. Furthermore, the facilitators and group members engaged and worked with whomever came and were willing to learn youth work knowledge and practice skills. Diffusion of youth work in P&R.  Related to engaging a wider group of P&R staff was the challenge of diffusing youth work throughout the organization. After six years of youth worker professional development, many recreation center staff continued to do their work in their usual ways, including not greeting people when they walked in, working only inside the building and not out in the community, and setting and implementing rules rigidly. Many of these centers continued to have less youth participation. And many of these center staff did not want to engage in the professional development group, unlearn their ways of doing their work, and try new ways. There were active and passive pushbacks to youth work from many P&R staff, according to the participants. Based on their experiences, the participants noted several reasons for these pushbacks. First, there existed a culture of authority in P&R. This meant that the staff did not adopt new ways of seeing and doing their work unless they were firmly instructed to do so from the top and unless there were negative consequences for not doing youth work. Second, there were no standards for youth work in P&R, and workers were not held accountable for low youth participation in recreation centers. They were accountable for building management, offering programs, and monitoring youth behaviors. In addition, there were no rewards for doing good youth work. On the contrary, those doing youth work often had to justify their work to their supervisors. These practices allowed many staff to ignore or resist youth work or to regard it as something that would go away after a while. Many continued to new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

51

see differences, rather than similarities, between “recreation work” and “youth work.” All this suggests that the organizational structure and system continued to have the capacity to sabotage youth work within it. Although the group members actively strategized and looked for opportunities to teach and practice youth work, their sphere of influence remained limited. There was a risk that the accomplishments of this professional development could be reversed if the change leaders, particularly the P&R manager, left the agency. What could not be reversed were the personal and professional changes found in the workers who participated in this professional development.

Lessons learned In this section we provide lessons learned for developing and offering youth worker professional development. These lessons are based on evaluations, as well as on group members’ reflections on participating in various group activities: 1. Professional development can engage participants meaningfully and over the long term when the curriculum is not imposed on the participants and instead the participants are invited to cocreate their own learning agenda and curriculum.12 For example, this professional development lacked the rigidity of classic curriculum-based professional development, allowing the facilitators and participants to cocreate their own curriculum based on where they were at that moment, what they wanted to learn or teach, and how they wanted to do so. This and the open-ended duration of the professional development allowed the participants to learn about and embrace youth work values, explore and master different areas and aspects of youth work, and work on diffusing their values and work in their organization, taking for these as much time as necessary. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

52

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

2. Meaningful, engaging, and effective professional development emphasizes practice principles, philosophies, and an ethos of professional development and youth work practice. In this professional development, the agenda and activities were emergent, but there was intentionality in all of this. The meetings, activities, and actions were guided by philosophies and ethos, such as building relationships, cocreating learning space, and community organizing. The meetings reflected the practice principles of meeting the participants where they are, inviting anyone who shows up, meeting often and regularly, and the like. All these were key to inviting and engaging the participants for six years. 3. Professional development can facilitate building a community of practice in which participants engage in learning as doing, becoming, experiencing, and belonging.13 In this professional development, the facilitators connected the participants’ everyday practice with academic theories, concepts, and vocabulary and guided them to reflect on their practice, while also encouraging the group to cocreate a learning space that was respectful and supportive of others. Over time, the participants viewed and named their practice differently. They collectively explored ways of improving their practice and engaged in challenging conversations that stimulated professional and personal learning and growth and set new and higher standards for youth work in P&R. 4. Professional development that encompasses personal, professional, and organizational development focuses on individual workers and the organizational context. Here, the facilitators worked closely with the participants, cocreating and expanding opportunities for them to learn youth work skills, theories, and vocabulary while also strategizing to expand spaces and opportunities for the workers to practice and teach youth work. The facilitators played a key role in bridging the access of the frontline workers to upper-level management, specifically the P&R manager. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

53

5. Race and ethnic differences need to be accounted for and discussed openly. Race had consequences for how the workers were seen, as well as how they saw their world and did their work. These were openly shared and discussed in the professional development meetings. From the beginning, the facilitators framed their knowledge and understanding of youth work as coming from the perspectives of white males, university professors, and outsiders to P&R. This created a safe place for workers to talk about and collectively address some of the subtle organizational practices, such as assigning African American frontline workers to do building security work. Discussion on race, ethnic, and gender issues also helped the participants see and address issues related to reaching out to young people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. 6. Organizational change leaders at the top, as well as at the frontline, are crucial for organizationwide diffusion of learning and practice. For example, the P&R manager advocated for youth work at upper-level management and supported the workers in cocreating safety and space for them to practice and teach youth work. The P&R manager’s support also validated this professional development and motivated some workers to participate or continue to participate in the group meetings. Equally crucial was the leadership of the workers who were committed to increasing the quality of services for young people at P&R. These workers, with guidance from the facilitators, identified youth work policy and practice issues at P&R and worked with upper-level management to address them. 7. Change leaders need to be supported and guided to address resistance to organizational change. In P&R, not all staff embraced youth work values and practices, and some were barriers to their frontline staff doing youth work. Some saw youth work as unnecessary and assumed that this “new thing” would go way if they ignored it long enough. These responses new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

54

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

were discussed in the meetings, and the group, including the P&R manager, continually came up with different strategies to diffuse youth work in their organization. The facilitators and the P&R manager supported participants in this work. 8. Effective facilitators work in the meetings as well as outside the meetings with group members and others in their networks to help address the participants’ concerns and questions and strategize for change. Here, the facilitators worked with the participants in the meetings, and they also met the participants and others from the P&R outside the meetings to strategize on diffusing of youth work throughout the organization. 9. There are infinite possibilities for personal, professional, and organizational development. New ideas and strategies for learning and development continually evolve. Crucial here are resources and support to give continuity to growth and change. This professional development work was able to continue for six years partly because the facilitators were willing to commit their time to this work even when they were not getting monetary compensation for it and partly because the P&R manager continued to pay her staff’s salary for their time spent in group meetings and group activities. Also important to note here is that the facilitators and participants were able to keep up the momentum and continually come up with ideas for new ways of learning and new strategies to learn and diffuse their learning. 10. Trusting partnership between facilitators and upper-level staff of the host organization is necessary for a long-term, openended professional development. The P&R manager and University of Minnesota professors were committed to increasing opportunities and services for young people in the community, and they were willing and ready to try something different and to go outside the traditional boundaries of youth worker training. The P&R manager not only opened the door and invited the facilitators, but also understood the need to be flexible. She gave space to the facilitators to facilitate this new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

55

innovative professional development. The facilitators in turn coordinated, consulted, and collaborated with the P&R managers to implement the plans and strategies of the professional development groups. Was it worth the effort? This was over six years of work with a handful of P&R workers. But the number of workers does not tell much of the story. The real story is that it took six years to get to this place in the agency. The P&R has a civil service position that embodies youth work and is not building based. Citywide training is beginning on the basics of youth work facilitated by group members. The group members are being recognized as expert workers and were called on by colleagues for help with individual youth, with the absence of youth in their centers, on how to build better youth work programs, and the like. This group, without the facilitator, the P&R manager, and staff of other community organizations are now designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating training for new workers. Expert workers in the group are regularly consulted by management in their own agency, the police department, school principals, other community agencies, and the UofM for practical expertise in working with youth and because they can articulately and persuasively present their experiences and their views. After six years, dramatic changes are being made by the top agency administrators and all of this bodes well for the future of youth programs, services, and work within this P&R department. Some things just take longer to marinate.

Concluding thoughts: Can this be done elsewhere? We have described an innovative youth worker professional development model. The important questions here are: Can this be replicated? Or better done anywhere? And should it? The answers obviously are not conclusive. This is not formulaic, curriculum-driven professional development. What can be surely new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

56

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

drawn from this model are its ethos, philosophies, and principles of practice—how it is done. In addition, other necessary conditions must be taken into account when offering this model for professional development. This includes the expertise and commitment of the facilitators to offer this professional development and keep up the momentum for six years. Also important to note is the support and flexibility of the agency upper-level management to allow spaces for the facilitators to work in the way they did and allow their staff to participate in the meetings. Also important was the availability of financial resources to do this work and the willingness of the facilitators and the participants to continue this work in the absence of resources. Moreover, the lessons learned from this professional development can be used as a guide to create better conditions for and be prepared for challenges that may arise in this kind of professional development. Notes   1.  Smith, M. K. (2001). Relationship. In The encyclopedia of informal education. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/relationship.htm   2.  Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books.   3.  Baizerman, M. (1996). Youth work on the street: Community’s moral compact with its young people. Childhood, 3(2), 157–165.   4.  Schön. (1983).   5.  Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.   6.  Cohen, S. (2002). Folk devils and moral panics (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.   7.  Burke, W. W. (2008). A contemporary view of organization development. In T. G. Cummings (Ed.), Handbook of organization development (pp. 13–38). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.   8.  Poole, M. S., Van de Ven, A., Dooley, K., & Holmes, M. (2000). Studying processes of organizational change and development: Theory and methods. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.   9.  Korum, K. (forthcoming). Changing organizational culture is not always smooth sailing. Afterschool Matters. 10.  Poole et al. (2000). 11.  Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2009). Organizational development and change. St. Paul, MN: West. 12.  Schein, E. H. (2004). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

P ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

57

13.  Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

sheetal rana is a graduate of the School of Social Work at the University of Minnesota. briana baumgardner, ofir germanic, randy graff, kathy korum, megan mueller, steve randall, tim simmons, gina stokes, and will xiong are staff of the Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department. karen kolb peterson is a youth services manager at the Saint Paul Public Library.

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

This article looks at developing and using student research to learn about a municipal youth-serving agency willing to listen and learn.

3 Use of research for transforming youth agencies Michael Baizerman, Emily Rence, Sean Johnson practice urge, even require for funding, that programs be empirically based and grounded in empirically proven emerging, promising, or best practices. This means, in effect, that funders require applicants to show how their funding proposal meets these tests, and that requires that intervention practices and strategies be studied using empirical social or behavioral science or evaluation methods. In most of the human services, including youth programs, services, and practices, this requirement is a goal as well as an ideal, one likely to be unmet for decades, with the possible exception of some classroom and informal educational approaches. Program planners and service-level staff and physicians can choose project and patient outcomes and then program activities and medical treatments said to be effective to achieve these particular outcomes. The model is highly rational and aesthetically pure. The question is whether it is true. CURRENT PHILOSOPHY AND

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20069

59

60

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Empirical research and evaluation can be used in other ways to transform youth services and youth service agencies.1 One way is to document agency practice and use this as part of a larger assessment of agency effectiveness. Related is the documentation of actual or potential service populations to learn their experiences and opinions about the agency and its programs and services and who is or is not offered these. Both of these strategies can be used for problem finding and problem identification. A third use of research can be to guide intentional organization change and development directed at transformation of a youth agency and its programs, services, and youth workers. A fourth use of research and evaluation can be explicitly for problem construction: a sociopolitical process that intentionally transforms data into “problems,” the latter to mobilize and respond to the conditions documented in and by the data. An example is that the absence of girls from a municipal community recreation center became more than the fact of their not attending; it became a “problem” “needing” to or requiring actions to change these facts. This is the research strategy we used primarily over the past five years in our effort to transform a community youth service agency, Saint Paul (municipal) Parks and Recreation (P&R).

The work Undergraduate students enrolled in the University of Minnesota’s Youth Studies program are required to take a four-credit course on research and evaluation. This is now a three-credit course after we added a two-credit course on evaluation. Beginning with these students and soon moving to inviting freshmen in college-level freshman seminars taught by Youth Studies faculty, and then moving to inviting students in other Youth Studies courses (e.g. organizations), students with faculty guidance completed nine studies of and at Saint Paul community recreation centers. Public agencies typically have limited to no public funds for program research, although they may have some for program evalnew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

61

uation, often in their planning budget. State and municipal government agencies typically use data from the federal government, such as the US Census, their sister planning agencies, university studies, and special reports by city council staff or state legislative and administrative bodies. These special studies are typically funded by one-time appropriations and done under contract with nonprofit local vendors. The bottom line for most municipal agencies nationwide, we suspect, is that their staff want appropriate, relevant data, but they have very few funds to contract for this and do the best they can using whatever data are around and available. As a result, both client head counts and word-of-mouth, anecdotes, history, and memory are the primary sources and types of data used for policy, program decisions, and evaluation. Our offer to Saint Paul P&R to do no-cost studies on topics of importance to them was, as expected in this reality and climate, well received.

The research process We have learned that there are more or less effective, and even ineffective, ways to use empirical and other research strategies and practices to contribute to other systematic efforts to transform youth services, youth-serving agencies, youth work, and youth workers. One result of our learning is a set of lessons learned and practiced. These are presented by the stages and phases of a normative empirical research process. Phase I: Prestudy Faculty begin the study months before the course meets, typically meeting more than once with youth agency leaders. They meet with upper management first, then possibly middle management, workers, and young clients or users of service. The purpose is to work out whether the agency wants student research; the types and examples of issues, problems, topics, and research questions they are interested in; a time frame; resources such as identity badges; new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

62

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

arranging when agency leader(s) will meet students in the research class; and the larger contexts (political, programmatic, personal) for a possible study and for the study issues presented. Over the course of four years, we now know what issues are likely to arise in these meetings and have developed guidelines and goals for the prestudy phase, around politics and opening the door. Politics •  All research is read as “political” by agencies.2 And “research” as such is a political process, a sociocognitive process of authority, power, and negotiation. •  Not all issues, topics, concerns, and questions can be studied because of the political contexts and dynamics of an agency (for example, how decisions are made about when a particular building will be closed, sold, or leased to another agency). Opening the door •  Agency leaders must invite students to do the study. •  Agency leaders must contextualize and explain the potential positive consequences of the study for young people, youth services, youth workers, and the youth agency. •  In effect, they must sell the practical utility of the study for positive change, at least to students in Youth Studies. The studies and their potential consequences must be seen by students as real and consequential for young people and the community. •  Agency leaders must open the door to student researchers by explaining the proposed study to agency middle management and then to others who work closer to youth—site supervisors and youth workers. Students want to be expected, even welcomed, when they arrive at the agency. This is true especially in centers and libraries in troubled neighborhoods, and in Minnesota, especially when it is dark and cold and the streets are deserted—but also when it is light, warm, and the streets filled with young people. About half of our Youth Studies students are European American, with the others Hmong, Hispanic, and African American. Typically students from the last three groups new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

63

used municipal youth services growing up far more than the European American students, many of whom are from suburbs and small towns in Minnesota and Wisconsin. •  Agency leaders must work to ensure that students are met by a designated person at the community site. This person is their guide and protector—a guide to meeting and interviewing and observing staff and young people and protector “just in case.” •  Almost all student work on a study is done by self-selecting small groups of three to seven students, with specific tasks given to those who will not work in a group or whose work, school, and family schedule make group work difficult. Virtual group work space does not mitigate this. Faculty and these students work out unique, relevant, and related projects, such as the mining of census and planning data, literature searches, report cover, textual art, and report editing. Phase II: Preparing for the study Students, even those in Youth Studies who have extensive experience doing direct youth work, including a semester internship, cannot be expected to know the researcher role. This must be taught and practiced and practiced. This work must include analysis and discussion of the differences and similarities between youth worker and youth researcher and the potential and particular strengths that a youth worker can bring to the researcher role. Typically, we use with the students classroom role plays, field pretests, debriefing, and discussion with faculty and, often, community youth workers. We bring in to talk to them police, former youth gang members, young people attending the youth agency, and students who grew up in a local neighborhood, whether or not they used the agency services then. This we call training and frame and present it as the real world, not school, for the study; the agency leader; the faculty, including their reputation and ability to do more studies; and the public university, with the state capital nearby. We make sure that the students understand that any missteps on their part likely will have real-world consequences. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

64

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Faculty or teaching and research assistants go to the field with students, often as a driver and as a presence. This works to cut down student absence and provides them some psychological and social security. On occasion, an agency manager or staff person has driven an agency van to take students to research sites. We allot four weeks for the students to complete their interviews and observations. This time frame allows faculty and students to build and sustain excitement for the fieldwork. Longer than this, and there is little time for data analysis, writing, and presentation. Less than this, and students have not designed and pretested their work and have not been adequately trained. Students tend to take poor interview notes and very good observation notes. Therefore, faculty and graduate students try to debrief students immediately after the fieldwork to offer them support and learn their impressions about the experience and the research: the youth, the questions, the adults, the place, “the scene,” and so on. These debriefings capture what is typically neither written nor brought to data analysis. We are aware that students live overscheduled lives (in their own and in faculty opinion) and want to get back to the dorms or home or to work as soon as possible, and this limits the time for debriefing. We have found that the cloud, Google, and other software are useful for creating virtual space for students to share data. Often, however, their initial enthusiasm is not sustained, and the use of these tools becomes irregular and troublesome because individuals and small groups cannot get their work done in a timely manner. Phase III: Data analysis Students typically have no knowledge or skill in how to do simple qualitative data analysis; at most they have abstract and highly academic knowledge about this. Here, surprisingly, students are at their most creative in the research process. In the course, about four weeks is devoted to data analysis. Given a talk lasting fifteen to thirty minutes on using data analysis to answer the research question and an invitation to figure out how to analyze their interviews and observations, they come up with fascinating and practinew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

65

cal approaches and methods. One semester, students used their mobile phones to take notes and then shared data between phones. Other semesters, students often choose to work in small groups and analyze the data together. As expected, during the design of the data analysis and the actual doing of it in small groups, different types of student leaders emerge and lead the larger class and their own groups, marginalizing faculty, who then become consultants and offer technical assistance and advice. This is a good moment because the students are in charge, running the show, and having fun. Occasionally they lose patience with their classmates, and the faculty presence is especially important at those moments. Students will help classmates do the small group work, and do so especially for those with a learning disability or with special talents, which they call on to be used for the benefit of the group. They have been in classes together for about two years and know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. And they incorporate their classmates and these talents well. These students, remember, will soon be youth workers. Phase IV: Write-up Students typically are not good writers, and group projects tend to be written by the best writer in the group. So it is with these research projects. Students talk, argue, and mostly negotiate over content and how to write or say it, and then most want to edit their group’s contribution. By then, the content is at least okay, and often good, as is the writing. I, with their permission, do a final editing of all of their work to give the report a single voice. They then critique this, and we negotiate a final revision. Students present the written document and an oral overview of major findings at a formal session with the agency leader held at the university and with guests, typically including other faculty and the school’s director. This works to solidify our undergraduate program’s standing in our professional school (social work), lets other faculty know that we are doing research and real work, and allows students to show what they have learned. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

66

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

When the class is for graduating seniors, it is all the more powerful, symbolically and substantively. Students work out a dress code (“professional casual” usually), presentation style, and the key points they want to make to the contractor (the agency leader). All of this is led by a student chosen by the class. The agency leader then takes over and questions students about their research findings, their other observations, and their experience. The agency brings snacks. Copies of the printed report are given out, and the agency makes a promise (commitment) to try to use the report for policy, program improvement, and decision making. Final thoughts on the research process Student research can transform a youth service agency, along with other long-term relationships and processes. The phases we used in our lessons learned suggest what can be done and how best to do it, at least in our context. Adaptations are necessary and can be accomplished without changing the ethos, approach, and substantive contribution that these studies can make, especially to datastarved and poor public agencies that cannot afford to contract for research. It remains to name practices that we typically do not do but should be considered in this sort of program. First is a deeper overview, if not training, in research ethics, such as offered by most universities. Second, following our program’s emphasis on youth civic engagement, greater involvement by community youth in the whole research process should be done, but time precludes this for us. Third is to give students more formal teaching about research methods. This subject, taught abstractly, is of little interest to students. When it is contextualized, however, it becomes relevant and interesting to them, a general point we know from experiential learning. Finally, it remains to suggest how the use of student research by agencies could become more consequential for accountability, policymaking, program improvement, programmatic conceptual clarity, and other decision making. Based on our experience, the active involvement and support of agency leaders is basic and crucial. In addition, the involvement of agency staff in providing context for new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

67

the study from their points of view, especially coupled with training students in how to observe and interview in their setting and helping them construct instruments with intelligibility and face validity, is crucial for students and for agency staff acceptance of the research as real and useful to them in their everyday work and for the improvement of their agency. The black hole in our experience is first-line supervisors of youth workers and middle management. To increase the likelihood of using research appropriately and regularly in their work, they too have to be involved in understanding how research might be useful to them (a research use mentality), along with practical training in translating research into hypotheses and then into action. They have to be invited to try something they might view as “academic” and unreal—university thinking and university practice—in their own work. The larger issue here is the anti-intellectualism coupled with an antiuniversity bias among some workers, supervisors, and managers, typically those who believe in the agency’s “old ways,” and who are seen by some of us change agents as “resisters.” The very language of research is alien to them, and the very words of evaluation are terrifying, especially when their funds, promotion, salary increases, and program survival are joined to “research and evaluation findings.” None of this is unique here, and these attitudes and actions serve to deflect, subvert, marginalize, and otherwise make less potent, even impotent, the use of substantive findings of particular studies for agency transformation. While we suggest that there will always be some (or many) who are antagonistic toward the use of university-based and student research for transforming their agency, it is reasonable to believe that cultural and social changes in agencies can be made so that research is seen as another contribution to better, more valid, more valued, and desired service. Our lessons learned may be site specific, with the uniqueness of our undergraduate Youth Studies program making possible much of what we do and our location in a graduate social work school, with its philosophy of communal service and a highly supportive new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

68

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

director making possible how we do it. Because we are in a land grant university with a long history and strong ethos of bringing research to the community (originally of farmers and homemakers) and using research for community betterment, we work in an environment highly supportive of our goals, approach, methods, and outcomes. Surely these contribute to doing the work as we do and thus to our lessons learned. On the other side of the coin, the youth agency environment here is good; the beginning workers are often graduates of our program, and long-term employees are often graduates of our university’s graduate programs. In general, there is the best of worlds here, and if field research to transform youth agencies cannot be done well here, it is likely to be much more difficult elsewhere. Lessons learned We address the lessons learned for the agency, the workers, the students, and the university generally: Research on agency change •  Can make a difference in efforts to change agencies •  Can help an agency with its accreditation •  Can be used to remind the agency that to stay in touch with its communities to be relevant programmatically and gain political legitimacy, it must pay attention to what the community wants, as well as to what the agency thinks the community needs (or what the agency usually does or offers) •  Can be used to used to facilitate community conversations and become a tool in developing and sustaining the community engagement necessary for effective service planning and delivery •  Can create windows on community realities •  Can invite reflection by agency staff and leaders at all levels about their mission, practices, structures, and processes •  Can open windows on agency problems, as seen by others •  Can provide just-in-time studies for agency situational decision making new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

69

•  Can provide studies at no to very low cost to agencies with few to no workers who know how to or want to do research, and can help them learn to use data in their everyday work, from policymaking to program development to understanding the actual activities of frontline workers •  Can provide data to agency to use to name or construct “problems” that need or demand response Workers •  Can help workers learn about who lives in the local area •  Can help workers enrich their knowledge and understanding of the people—their lives, their traditions, and their practices—and thus address how to better invite them into services to serve them respectfully, appropriately, and effectively •  Can document practices in local centers; individual worker strengths, limitations, and potential; as seen and assessed by others, including clients and customers, especially young people •  Can help workers use this feedback to change their own and other local centers’ everyday ways of seeing, doing, and evaluating their own practice •  Can help frontline workers learn how to ask better questions, more effectively, of young people •  Demystifies “research” and “evaluation,” “the University,” “students,” and everyday research language—for example, data, surveys, and the research ethos Students •  Can help students do consequential work in the community, in the process, romanticizing “school” and allowing it to become “learning” •  Can help students learn practical research methods, the kinds they are likely to use when beginning their careers The university •  Can help the university’s image in the community, especially important in a public agency new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

70

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

•  Can help the university meet its community service obligations •  Can create space for other faculty research, with lessened community resistance •  Brings young people into the spaces where other and mostly different young people live and play, opening a window on both for use by both In addition, there are more specific lessons learned for the role of the faculty in relation to the agency, students, and the research: Role of faculty with the agency •  Gives external authority legitimacy to findings •  Creates opportunities for wider distribution of findings •  Contextualizes for the agency in its study findings •  Suggests to the agency how this study could be used •  Provides scholarly frames—theories, constructs, concepts, models—to make sense of findings •  Proposes additional readings to understand findings as they are and on deeper levels •  Normalizes findings, when appropriate—for example, “Every agency ...” •  Works at reminding users of both positive and negative findings •  Offers outsider understandings to their insider understandings •  Suggests future studies to clarify, substantiate, disprove, and otherwise •  Helps with “repair,” hurt feelings, and findings read as negative •  Makes studies possible because of trust and relationships with the agency •  Makes the study at least minimally scientifically adequate while also as practical and useful as possible •  Keeps studies no cost, quick, usable, and focused primarily on agency concerns •  Being a sociopolitical and university-agency go-between, able and willing to talk with both and negotiate with both new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

71

Role of faculty with students •  Available for ongoing technical and practical assistance, consultation, and negotiation •  Supportive of practical research that does not meet textbook and classroom standards of scientific research •  Ongoing support of the importance and potential consequences of their studies •  Awareness that their practical research knowledge and skill could help them find a job and be able to contribute to employer and external evaluations Role of faculty in relation to their studies •  Keep them focused, free, timely, and practical or usable •  Keep them oriented to the agency and worker learning and change •  Keep clear the moral purpose of the studies as contributing to improved public services for all people in the city •  Ensure their readability for all clients and users

Emily’s role This section offers a first-person point of view by Emily Rence on her involvement in this research as both an undergraduate and a graduate student. I had two major sets of responsibilities as an informal teaching and research assistant over three and a half years: as the connection between the professor, Michael Baizerman, and the students, translating, interpreting, supporting, and facilitating the research process, from the initial decision on whether to do a research project to coaching students for the final classroom presentation. Along the way, the faculty member and I were coteaching. In addition, I was the major organizer of research field visits, as well as driver, crisis manager, and on-site supporter while students were doing new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

72

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

interviews with teenagers in different recreation centers around the city. It became clear that one person cannot easily and substantively manage twenty to thirty students in doing one or more research projects simultaneously, all requiring interviews with teenagers who are unavailable until around 5:00 on weekdays. My role required that I be available to students throughout the week; only rarely was I in touch with them on scheduled class days alone. This did take some juggling. In order to do my job well, I used a variety of skills that made the students feel more comfortable reaching out to me, a necessity given the short time frame for accomplishing such involved and consequential research. Two of the advantages that I brought to the group were that I too was an undergraduate, and later a graduate student, who had been in their spot just a couple of years before; in addition, I was able, and very willing, to meet them where they were at in terms of communication style. I was able to keep up with both Mike and the students; I showed them that not only could I banter with them easily but could do the same with Mike. This, in my experience, made Mike seem all the more approachable and the material discussed, no matter how abstract or challenging it might appear to them, seem a bit more within reach. I also made a point of creating spaces for the group to interact outside the classroom, which helped to build a vital sense of community and cohesiveness that ultimately helped students gain confidence in both their interviewing skills with youth at the recreation centers and with one another when it came time to critically analyze their work and what meaning it held for Saint Paul’s youth. These out-of-class communities existed both informally and formally in the form of “family dinners” and online group working sites, including Facebook and the lesser-known, but equally helpful, Wiggio. These “places” where students were invited and encouraged to meet outside class not only helped build a stronger sense of community but also served as places to compile data and collaboratively contribute to the research even when students, new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

73

whose schedules were unsurprisingly busy, were unable to meet in person to do so. I put a lot of work into making sure these undergraduates were able to walk away with new skill sets, a better understanding of the field of youth work, and the ability to build a research project from the ground up. I found that even when class sessions did not work well, it was completely worth the extra time and energy I put in, because next time the class sessions often worked quite well. Overall, the students finish the course with a sense of accomplishment and when they begin their first youth work job they can contribute immediately to agency conversations and to beginning research projects. A year later, this experience is one of the most defining moments in my career and one that I know has had ripple effects throughout the students we’ve taught. A number of students have returned in the past two years to train with me as a coteacher and as a research assistant, and continue the role I carried out for four years. Some of the students have returned to the recreation centers to put into action, with the help of the manager of the municipal program, some of the findings our research brought to light, especially the need for more programming for young women and Hmong youth; others have continued their educations in the field of youth work, inspired to do so by the fifteen weeks they spent in these classes. This continued cycle of interest and action is what keeps this research going. The students are involved in every step of the process and are invited back to contribute in increasing ways so that they, and their experience, continue to shape the process and, in the process, the quality of the findings.

Conclusion University student research guided by faculty can be a win-win for the agency (community, young people) and for the college or university. The low-cost and low-tech studies reported enhanced in new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

74

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

several ways both Parks and Recreation and the University of Minnesota as organizations and in the pursuit of their goals and work. To faculty, this type of research can be problematic because of its low academic status due to weak and limited research technical standards; nevertheless, in some academic fields and units, such work can have important public relations value. Given the pressures toward rigorous scholarship to earn faculty tenure, it may be that the work and such studies be done best by senior faculty whose positions are more secure and whose status is more protected, at least until and unless the faculty works in a unit, and professional and academic culture and politics that support community-based research by students. In this we have been fortunate.

Appendix: Sample of student studies Among the course studies were these: Spring 2011: “I Was Raised in this Gym”—a preliminary study of youth and staff in St. Paul Recreation Centers Fall 2011: “What Do Girls from Recreation Centers in St. Paul Think of Motherhood?”—a collection of interviews Fall 2011: “Perceptions”—a research project on how teens in St. Paul Recreation Centers believe the adults in their lives see them Fall 2011: “Youth and Media Literacy”—Students compiled youth images and used these in conversations with agency staff and participating young people to better understand how different youth images are understood and how they inform practice. The following section looks more closely at a few of the programs. Course examples Spring 2009: “What Does Success/Quality Look Like in Saint Paul?”  Also known as the Trainwreck Project, this response to Mayor Coleman’s Second-Shift Initiative was also, more fairly, new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

75

known as the springboard for diving deeper into the world of P&R as a set of sites where success and quality can be examined, supported, and improved. Visits to all recreation centers were attempted; in hindsight, this was too large an ambition, and it led to some problems, both practical (transportation, accessibility, time available to researchers) and in being able to come to a manageable set of recommendations. Spring 2011: “The Only Place I Feel Safe.”  This work resulted in a presentation to P&R upper management that went particularly well. The focus was on the Jimmy Lee and Arlington Recreation Centers. Jimmy Lee offered no programming for young women, and its staff tended to have fewer positive reviews from youth who attended. Arlington youth thought highly of the relationships that staff brought to the space, and this closeness showed in the interviews and the space itself (how researchers felt going there, the welcoming factor, and so on). Recruitment and retention of workers nevertheless emerged as issues for both of the centers. The report was intended to be twofold, but the second part wasn’t completed by the end of the term (the part where surveys were extended beyond the recreation center and into the community at large). The theme that the centers and the staff were not “safe spaces” was central in this study, with many insightful quotes from youth used to make this point clear. Issues with “problem” staff and concerns about which youth were being let in and around the centers were two topics that kept youth from coming to or returning to the center. Arlington youth referred to staff by names far more often than did Jimmy Lee youth. Another theme that showed itself and also reappeared in other studies was the lack of diverse young people using the facility. Asian and Latino/a youth were far outnumbered by African American youth, as were young women of all races. When these groups were there together, there was little mixing. Students in our Hmong Youth Work course undertook a study, “Where Are the Hmong Kids?”, to document why Hmong young men and women rarely used municipal community recreation facilities. The students, as in the other projects, clarified the new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

76

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

research question with the manager of the municipal recreation agency and then added their own questions. Interviews were done with Hmong teenagers in shopping malls, Hmong cultural events, and public libraries Hmong youth used to understand their recreation center use patterns. Interviews were done in both Hmong and English with members of the adult Hmong community and by some non-Hmong classmates. They found that Hmong teenagers rarely used these recreation centers because of parents’ and grandparents’ distrust of how safe the centers would be; intergroup tensions between Hmong youth and African American, Somali, and Karen (a common term in Minnesota for a major, new immigrant group to the state) youth; and practical issues such as transportation, center hours, and the sports promoted in the centers, which were not typical for Hmong teenagers. Another class took on a similar study, “Where Are the Girls?”, a question of interest to both the manager of the municipal program and the students. As before, they negotiated the primary research question and then added their own questions. They learned that with few exceptions, teenage girls came to the center for each other and for the guys and did so in relatively small numbers, with great variation across different centers and different seasons, depending on the sport the guys were playing. As a result of these and the other studies, efforts have been made to begin programs and services for both populations; there are now active weekly groups for Hmong youth and for girls, the latter in several recreation centers. The work is being done primarily by university undergraduates in Youth Studies, and it is expected that these early initiatives will be expanded and diffused across many more centers, using both students and newly trained and supported staff. Study Highlight: “I Was Raised in the Gym” This early study shows dramatically the value of our contribution to ongoing efforts to improve youth services in the city’s municipal recreation centers. Students examined the practices of staff and the experiences of young people at two centers. One was at an extennew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



USE OF RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMING YOUTH AGENCIES

77

sive building complex with multiple gyms, new equipment, an indoor water park, and a parking lot across from a large high school in the city. In contrast, the second was a small midcentury building with a small gym, a tiny meeting room, even smaller office, and two dismal toilets. In the larger complex, both young people and students found the staff distant, never recognizing them when they walked in the building, not knowing their names, and rarely reaching out to them. In contrast, at the other center, the staff knew the names of every young person who came in, knew their family relationships to other people there or who had been there, talked to every young person who came in, and was experienced by youth as available, present, nearby, and understanding of them and their life worlds. It was these young people who said the recreation center was like a home—safe, supervised, friendly and playful, and real. For many it was more likely an ideal home than the actual place they went to when they left the center later in the night. It was more about the relationships that existed there than the space itself, and those relationships transformed the somewhat dismal building into a space welcome and safe. Notes 1.  Eaton, J. W. (1962). Symbolic and substantive evaluative research. Administrative Science Quarterly, 421–442. 2.  Herndl, C. G., & Nahrwold, C. A. (2000). Research as social practice: A case study of research on technical and professional communication. Written Communication, 17, 258–296.

michael baizerman is professor in the School of Social Work, Youth Studies, University of Minnesota. emily rence was an undergraduate student in Youth Studies and then a student in the MEd in youth development leadership program at the University of Minnesota at the time of these studies. sean johnson is a graduate of the Youth Development Leadership Masters of Education Program, University of Minnesota. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

Involving young people in program design and decision making is a hallmark of high-quality youth development organizations. The use of formal youth advisory structures to support this work is presented and discussed.

4 Youth advisory structures: Listening to young people to support quality youth services Ross VeLure Roholt, Megan Mueller YOUNG PEOPLE CONTINUALLY give informal advice and feedback on youth programs and services they attend. Attendance is one such way of giving feedback in voluntary youth services and programs, participating for the first couple of weeks and then stopping. When asked why they don’t come anymore, they often say, “It’s boring,” or “I don’t like it.” In nonvoluntary programs, including everything from afterschool day care to juvenile justice, youth participants provide in similar ways feedback and advice on how to improve what is being done, although in this context their acts can be more visible since they cannot leave the setting. They stop participating in programs, may act in ways staff find disruptive, and often do not hesitate to tell others when they find something “boring,” “stupid,” or “unfair.” Most adult staff know that a good youth service and program is one young people freely use and do not complain about (much). NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20070

79

80

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Young people’s experience in programs and services has gained increased importance as funding for these has shifted to more grant-based funding and as external funders require ongoing evaluation of program outputs (attendance) and outcomes (what the young people learned or how they have changed). Now it is common and accepted practice to consult young people on program design and to include them in program decisions. This is one hallmark of quality youth services.1 One way to get this input is to develop and use youth advice structures. Recently these have been formalized and diffused throughout a variety of youth programs, organizations, and services in the United States and internationally. Our ongoing review of youth advisory structures in the United States has found multiple types of youth advisory structures, such as youth advisory groups, youth leadership committees, youth commissioners, and youth leadership councils. They are supported by a wide range of programs, organizations, agencies, and youth services. This work is significant because it shows a broad buy-in on this type of youth participation and youth engagement.2 Although review is often advocated for and now widely used, little attention in the United States has focused on understanding and describing what is being used, how these structures are organized and staffed, and how to support youth advice giving so it is consequential and substantive rather than tokenistic or symbolic. The study of youth advisory structures is of course the study of their formal structural arrangements, the process used by each, and the practice, or craft, of working with young people using certain processes within different types of formal organizational structures. In this article, we attend to each of these, using the term advisory structure to cover all of these. We begin by discussing the reasons these structures have grown in number over the past few decades and are now widespread. This brief review is followed by what we have learned in a statewide study of youth advisory structures. To deepen our exploration, we provide an in-depth case study of one type of youth advisory structure, a youth-led evaluation that had an impact on youth programnew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

81

ming in a large municipal youth service organization. We conclude by analyzing this case and using it and ongoing studies to propose lessons learned about how to support effective and useful youth advisory structures to influence program decision making and hands-on youth work practice.

Youth advisory structures as a response and contributor The adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has led much recent effort internationally to create, maintain, and sustain youth advisory structures. 3 Even in the United States, where the convention has not been ratified, the language of youth rights has diffused throughout youth programming and within youth work training and education. These structures are said to support youth development in part by improving program and practice quality and by giving young people opportunities to develop their public work and citizen skills.4 The focus of an advisory structure can also be on empowering young people rather than simply consulting with them. When this is done, their potential to support the members’ youth development increases substantially. Youth advisory structures have been associated with supporting youth development outcomes for both participating and other youth in the United States and internationally.5 In addition, many of the models of youth advisory structures—youth participatory evaluation and research, civic action projects, and youth organizing—have been found to support participants’ healthy youth development.6 Through participating in these structures, young people learn valuable skills, gain knowledge, and develop a more positive self-identity.7 It has quickly become conventional wisdom that effective quality youth programs include listening to and including the ideas and opinions of young people in program planning and implementation.8 These ideas have been reinforced with the Youth Program Quality Assessment tool developed by the David P. Weikart Center and used widely in the several types of programs in the United new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

82

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

States.9 Engagement is one of the seven domains included in their assessment tool, and “programs that score high in engagement and interaction appear most able to influence positive youth development outcomes.”10 While the assessment tool focuses primarily on youth activities in programs, involving young people in program decision making and advice giving correlates to the creation of programs that are responsive to local youth needs and wants, that is, to higher-quality programs for local youth. This rationale for supporting youth advisory structures is most likely to be used in the United States.11 •  In countries where the UNCRC has been adopted, youth advisory structures are promoted most often as a way to support youth rights. Articles 12 to 15 of the convention directly advocate for what has come to be called “youth-led programatic efforts.” Youth advisory groups are one example of this larger field of practice. These UNCRC articles articulate the rights of young people: Article 12: Express their views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child. •  Article 13: Have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice. •  Article 14: Freedom of thought, conscience and religion. •  Article 15: Right to association. While these rights have been codified in the UNCRC, they have not always and everywhere been implemented, or to the same degree, with the same competence and consistency, and ethos. And when they have supported more structures and opportunities for young people to give opinions on matters that affect them, these efforts have rarely produced noticeable changes in program or policy.12 Percy-Smith argues this is often because youth participanew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

83

tion remains focused on consultation rather than creating an “active process of involvement in learning and change.”13 We wanted to better understand these structures in the United States and undertook a study guided by two research questions: 1.  What are the models and practices that organizations and groups use for involving youth in documentation, research, and evaluation about their lives and experiences and their assessment of programs and services? 2.  What must programs and services know and do in order to carry out the effective involvement of young people? Three studies were done. The first was a 2012 field study of six youth advisory structures (YAS) in five US cities. A second field study of eighteen YAS, with a modification of that instrument, was done in Minnesota the next year. The third was also done in Minnesota using participatory action research methodology. First study An exploratory study of youth advisory structures was conducted in 2012 under contract with Youthprise Foundation in Minnesota. The focus was on gaining a beginning-level understanding of the different structures of advice giving. A purposive sampling procedure was used, and sites were selected from a number of cities in the East and Midwest. A final report was completed based on the collected data for Youthprise.14 Second study This was a qualitative field study of eighteen youth advisory structures in Minnesota. The goal was to gain a rich description of the aims, member recruitment, ethos, structure, and strategy of each site and to begin to clarify both commonalities and differences among sites. Using purposive sampling, YASs were selected from urban, suburban, and rural sites across the state.15 Sites were also selected based on their stated purpose and on the type of entity the new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

84

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

advice was given to: youth program, organization, municipal government, community coalition, or state agency or department or its unit. Youth advisory group participants, both young people and adult facilitators, were interviewed using a semistructured guide. Small group interviews with young people ranged from forty-five to seventy-five minutes, while adult staff were interviewed individually for approximately forty-five to sixty minutes. Most interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. Interviews were thematically analyzed.16 Third study The third study used a participatory action research methodology.17 The two authors cofacilitated a youth advisory group in one parks and recreation youth program, called the CANVAS. This youth-led arts center located within a traditional parks and recreation building is co-managed by a youth leadership team. This team included twelve young people between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. Over eight months, the two facilitators met weekly with young people to design and complete an evaluation of youth art programming. This study showed how to support youth advice giving in this one organization and how to use this to learn how to do this process and practice.

Youth advisory groups: A brief description Organizations varied in the philosophical underpinning of their YAS. Some supported a more or less shared decision-making model, while others relied on a more adult-directed or staffdirected ethos. All supported a participatory ethos, including robust and involved conversations between adults and young people. Many went beyond this to include shared decision making with young people, where youth learned about issues, conducted research, and brought information back to the group. What would be done by whom was always up for negotiation. The other organew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

85

nizations had more defined and clearer roles for adults and young people. Roger Hart’s ladder of youth participation provides a useful conceptual framework to understand this. 18 This ladder includes both nonparticipatory practices (decoration, manipulation, and tokenization) and participatory structures (assigned but informed, consulted and informed, adult-initiated shared decision making, child-initiated and directed decision making, and childinitiated shared decision making). The Minnesota youth advisory groups (YAGs) are used to meet several aims and goals, including to “build awareness,” “build capacity,” “support programs,” facilitate civic action, create forums for youth voice, and provide job training. These aims focused on supporting both members’ development (e.g., capacity and awareness building, youth voice) and organization development and change and, more broadly, enhancing community development (e.g., program support and civic action). The host organizations wanted to provide an opportunity for young people to use their talents, experience, and insight to develop as individuals and as citizens. Their experiences and insights were also valuable to support organizational development through better programmatic offerings, including creating a more youth-friendly program and advocating for a particular learning methodology. Finally, YAS also supported community change. The group often supported young people to work on their own pressing programmatic and community issues, concerns, and problems, such as responding to community and personal violence and creating a more youth-friendly and youth-supportive city. Recruitment and membership for these YAGs were intentional, designed to fit the agency’s purpose and constituencies and what they wanted from the YAS. For example, organizations working on community development recruited and selected from all community residents, while organizations wanting an advisory structure for their own program development sought out young people who had been program participants. Other examples are organizations that were geographically or population based, recruiting and selecting on that basis. In general, there was new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

86

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

variation among the YAS, with some recruiting widely and others selectively, and with some choosing almost every applicant and others highly selective. Most of the Minnesota organizations supported an active and involved YAS rather than used these short term or episodically. The structures created supported young people’s extended involvement; the process and practice helped this with ongoing, frequent, regular, and even intensive interaction among members and between members and staff. Most host organizations also encouraged and permitted youth to be involved over several years, offering increased responsibility to those who were more experienced in their second and third years. Most YASs met weekly or more often. Among those meeting less frequently, both adult staff and youth participants found that infrequent meetings were sufficient for them to make progress and meet their goals. All organizations included planning for action and action itself as strategies but often for very different ends, including program improvement and awareness raising, community development and community organizing, and policy research and recommendation. Most organizations explicitly described the YAS as representative—speaking on behalf of the community’s young people or advocating on behalf of the concerns of youth. More than half of the YASs were directly involved in creating community change, with some provided with an issue to solve and other groups choosing which issues they found most pressing. Very few groups had formal ties to governmental decision making. Some were involved in writing proposals for the mayor or others, although this did not appear to increase the likelihood of government action on their ideas.

Youth advice structures: Symbolic or substantive? Reading across the Minnesota and US sites and incorporating the literature on youth participation, youth consultation, and youth on advisory and consultation groups led to the emergence of three new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

87

models of youth advice-giving: symbolic, blended, and substantive. 19 The symbolic is drawn mainly from the literature and describes YASs that seem to be decorative, manipulative, and tokenistic.20 Symbolic YASs often scale down or abandon an overall goal (e.g., youth participation and youth involvement in decision making) but retain the overall means (e.g., consulting with young people on decisions that affect them). These structures claim to be supporting youth involvement and youth participation, but rarely do young people’s opinions or informed positions influence what is done and how. They may have a voice, but they are in effect powerless when assessed against the criterion of what they have accomplished. Blended and substantive models were also found. While most youth advice-giving practice has been found to be less successful and predominantly symbolic, or, at best, blended, substantive models found in Minnesota show that communities and organizations are able to support authentic and meaningful youth advice giving.21 What makes a YAS meaningful depends on both what it does and how. Bringing together the literature and our findings, we propose six questions as a beginning way to distinguish symbolic, blended, and substantive models of youth advice giving: 1.  Do young people have a voice on issues that matter to them and on policies and programs that affect them? 2.  Are young people prepared on how to be effective YAS members? 3.  Are young people’s opinions and informed positions used to create better policies, programs, events, activities, services, or plans? 4.  Do young people have the time and space to be viable and true members, are they supported in meeting with each other, and do they have input into what happens, how, and when? Do they meet who matters and those they need to in order to make change happen? 5.  Do young people have multiple ways of expressing their opinions, or is expression limited to normative, adult ways? new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

88

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

6.  Are they provided with the necessary information to be included on all technical issues and grounds? (e.g., did not know the process of how to get something done in the organization.) Voice Youth voice is the sine qua non of a YAS. Even examples of symbolic youth advice giving provide space for young people to voice their opinions on matters that affect them. What distinguishes the symbolic from the blended model is whether this space is used (and used appropriately). Most YASs in this study went beyond simply listening to young people and worked to create ways for their opinions to shape policy, a program, or the community—for example: “We all discuss. We all share, talk, arguing it out. We always eventually work it out and come up with some decision. We always try to merge it somehow and come up with an outlet. I feel like there is equal decision influence occurring.” At its best, YAS is not just talk; instead youth words inform action. Moving toward the use of expressed ideas Many of the structures found effective ways to move from talk to action. Young people and adults describe their experience as focused on both forming ideas and opinions and acting on what they learn. Many organizations want the advisory group to name issues affecting young people in the community and then to work on these—for example, “Every year we work on two or three community areas. We were working with a videographer with teens riding the bus and teen etiquette on the bus. We were thinking of putting some print ads on the bus too. We are meeting with them to see if that helps them change their mind about lowering their fare.” Preparation and training Most sites included extensive preparation and training to young people, either on entry or throughout their tenure, so that they were able to do their work and provide informed advice. In addinew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

89

tion, most provided young people personal development opportunities to become better prepared using a wide variety of relevant skills, including public speaking, action planning, public relations, and grant writing and other civic skills. Taken together, organizations provided young people with the necessary skills and information to participate effectively in the group. Modes of expression Some of the sites created creative and inclusive opportunities that allowed more and more young people with diverse experiences and backgrounds to offer advice in their own ways, such as with art, poetry, and open mics—for example, “We try to bring people together by hosting open mics once a month. We all agreed on this together. I don’t remember who decided but I think we all each put a little into it and agreed that these are the main issues.” An openness to accept and honor these forms of expression as appropriate and legitimate may have allowed a greater diversity of young people to provide advice and to do so on issues that mattered to them.

Third research study: Process and practice This brief sketch of YAS from an ongoing study in Minnesota shows that the YAS as an idea and structure has been diffused, and for several reasons, including an agency providing opportunities for healthy youth development through training for and membership on a YAS. Symbolic, substantive, and blended YAS types were found, as there have been in other US and international studies. Six questions were proposed to distinguish among these three types. All of this and the two studies were used to get at a brief and surface view of YAS philosophy/ethos and structure, with even less on process and practice. The third study, which we look at in more depth in this section, gets more at how a youth advice process can work. It is a short case study of an evaluation/research project undertaken for Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R). new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

90

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

How to work with a youth advisory group is little discussed in the literature, while there is more on working with adult members and with the group as such.22 YAS practice and process are essentially “good youth work,” with an added dose of political sensitivity and skill, regardless of the subject the YAS is working on or the type of organization it is advising. After all, advice solicitation and advice giving are far more that the passing of information.23 We use our work as a case study: one of us is a youth worker and the other university faculty, with broad and deep knowledge of youth studies, and with extensive US and international youth work experience. Over the past several years, P&R has expanded youth arts programming across its system. In 2011 and 2012, a state-sponsored grant funded the integration of arts programming into P&R’s intensive no-school-day and after-school program by supporting teaching artists to create and facilitate art programming in eighteen community recreation centers and at a teen art program, the Canvas. The grant specifically funded programs that “provided opportunities for lifelong learners to acquire knowledge and understanding of and skills in the arts.” The group managing the grant wanted to learn about the impact of these funds on art programming in these centers and asked a local university faculty member with several years of experience working with P&R on improving arts programming to design and conduct an evaluation of this grant-sponsored work. A youth participatory evaluation design was decided in part because Canvas already supported a youth leadership council (CYLC). Because the CYLC is responsible for identifying what arts programs and events to offer at the Canvas and to promote and plan the events, it seemed a reasonable fit and choice. The group was formally asked whether they wanted to take on this evaluation. The CYLC met weekly to focus on their programmatic responsibilities, as well as to explore art and arts-related professions. This is a group of high school students, formed by P&R, that provides leadership on art programming and art events at the Canvas. CYLC meetings were organized chaos, a balance of each person’s new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

91

energy after the school day. The group also has definite energy, making it important for all to work at keeping the room loose and open but also safe and respectful. More than anything else, CYLC is a group of young people excited to make their ideas public. Allowing fair airtime for everyone is crucial, for often the best ideas emerged out of impromptu conversations. It is this group that the faculty approached. The process The faculty proposed the project to CYLC during a busy meeting, and the proposal was squeezed in at the very end of the meeting. In hindsight, the CYLC youth worker/facilitator gave an overly formal introduction: “This is Professor Ross from the University of Minnesota. He wants to talk to us all about an opportunity to do research ...” The faculty was thrown by this formal introduction yet explained the opportunity. After listening, the group was neutral: it offered no outspoken opponents and little vocal support. One young person spoke about the incredible opportunity of the project and how CYLC could have a real impact on programs in Saint Paul. Her ability to connect doing the study to having a citywide impact was enough to interest the rest of the group. They decided to invite the faculty back to continue the discussion. At the next week’s meeting, more time was set aside to discuss the evaluation project. The faculty began by offering, “Let’s start over.” He explained that P&R had been given a grant to support youth art programming, and part of the grant paid for an evaluation to figure out what was being taught and how well, in the opinion of young people. He asked the group to tell why art is important to them. All had rich and detailed stories about how art was both a personal interest and something that mattered deeply to their own person and development. Their stories had a lot to do with feeling lost and how art helped them work through this. Many told how they had used writing or drawing as a way to manage depression and their selfesteem. One said that she was constantly in trouble with her dad because her grades were consistently poor. She hated school and new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

92

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

did not care about her grades until she found theater and “spoken word.” She connected to these, and her grades went up. At home, her dad let her stay out late on school nights to go to spoken word slams. What was striking was that everyone had a story, a very personal story, about how art had touched them—their sense of identity and their interests. The stories were powerful and sparked everyone’s interest in the evaluation. The group seemed acutely aware that this evaluation could increase opportunities for more youth to have an art-based transformative experience, as they had. At the third meeting, the group discussed what elements of an art experience contributed to a positive learning experience and what elements were specific to teaching art. They came up with guiding questions for the first field observations. While the young people had concern that these may not be the right things to look for and that as a group, we may have missed something, the faculty noted that questions could and likely would change as the project developed. He suggested that the group field-test their questions. These observation-guiding questions were approved by the group managing the grant. Once they were approved, CYLC decided to use the upcoming winter school break for the field test. They worked on the logistics of getting to their field observation sites and how to be comfortable doing so. Evaluation funding was used to buy bus passes. To address their safety concerns, field observation would be done in teams of one youth and one adult. Youth were given a stipend for each completed observation, which served as both an incentive to finish the observations and recognition for their hard work. The group discussed and decided what they had to bring along with them—pens, pencils, markers, paper, notebooks, and other art supplies—so that each could take notes in whatever form worked best for them. The observations were the project’s pilot test. Four youth observers, all of whom had experienced arts programming, both good and bad, visited three sites. Some had attended P&R Center programming when younger, and others had not. Overall there was surprise within the group about the programs themselves and to what degree the four guiding questions helped them get at what new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

93

to look at. The observations also helped the CYLC youth worker gauge their skill level and develop training. At the first CYLC meeting after winter break, there was rich discussion about what they had observed. Many examples of program elements were given in great detail, pointing out the actions of the teaching artists, engagement of the participants, and the physical space used for the art activity. Throughout the conversations, the faculty rapidly typed up their comments. The group then created six program elements for the second part of their observation guide—planning, the integrity of art, sharing art, accessibility, staff engagement, and flexibility—and they created a scale from Below Average to Above Average. Over the next few meetings, they used their observations to anchor these with examples. With their observation tool developed, field-tested, and redesigned, the CYLC members collected data. Within four weeks, they observed teaching artists at each of seventeen of the eighteen after-school programs at least once, and in many cases twice, despite minor scheduling glitches and a few lost youth. Each program’s evaluation included one to four observers (one adult observer very few times) taking notes on their observation guides. Many first wrote down “evidence” under the four guiding questions and then used the scoring rubric. Following each observation, the small group discussed what they noticed and completed a summary observation, combining all of their scores and the data. Each week the group reported at the CYLC meetings about their observations and addressed emergent issues. They made modest changes to the observation tool throughout the process, implementing a scale of 1 to 10 within each of the six program elements and creating space on the tool to write notes on the teaching artist and building staff. When the observations were complete, CYLC used their meetings over several weeks to review their data and draw conclusions, a daunting process with fourteen people. They started the analysis by discussing what they had learned during their observation. Emerged themes were written down to test whether they were strong themes. The youth worker or faculty would ask the group new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

94

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

to consider both what evidence they had to support this theme and what they observed that would challenge it. For example, a few mentioned a concern about adhering to safety measures. The group provided examples from their observations of when certain safety protocols were not followed and discussed situations that they observed when these protocols were followed. All of this formed the evaluation final report on youth art programs in P&R. The group decided to highlight areas of success, with the hope that the report would encourage more programs to model good examples of what they saw as art programming. The hope was to boost morale rather than point staff at what had to be improved. The final report included analysis of several themes and provided observations on what they saw as exemplary and also below average. CYLC played a unique role in facilitating this evaluation within P&R. They were given permission to critique programs from a youth viewpoint. Approaching the evaluation with this lens, the group noticed and made recommendations that adults and unprepared youth likely would not have noticed or recommended. All of the youth had a deep commitment to art and to art instruction and brought their experience, wisdom, and passion to their observations and data analyses. Without their contributions, the evaluation would have been significantly different, surely less grounded, less potent, and, we presume, less consequential. Because youth did the work, the report is their voice. Discussion This third study was an evaluation done with young people—a study of both whether and how this strategy could be done in this context and an opportunity to practice working with a youth advisory group. The large literature supporting youth doing evaluations was confirmed, and support by site and senior managers within P&R opened space and kept it open for the work, showing that in a large municipal recreation system, local authority and power can make the unusual, unlikely, and unfamiliar doable, at least for a while and at least for an evaluation, and at least on arts new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

95

programming.24 A good study was done, and the young people learned and felt good. Nevertheless, it remains to ask the same questions as earlier: Did anyone use the findings? Appropriately? For what? With what consequences? Beyond these are questions about process and practice. Did the involvement of young people change the classic research and evaluation process? If so, is this traceable to their youth as such (the fact that they are young people), their youthhood (the patterned way that their everyday experience is structured by political, social, cultural, neighborhood, family, and peer interactions), or their ignorance about how to do research? In addition, what roles did each facilitator take? To what extent is this a story of youth work as much as a story of youth engagement and research by and about young people? At what sites were good, adequate, and poor youth work practiced?

Lessons learned Drawing from these studies on YAS, we offer six lessons for creating and sustaining YAGs. All focus on how to make youth advisory structures more substantive and less symbolic, so that young people have a good experience, learn new skills, and are supported in their own healthy development and that their advice is thoughtful, supportable, and used. Note what is missing: how to make such groups more effective in having their voice used. That is for another time, when more data are in. Lesson 1: Shift from opinion giving to informed idea Most of the time, YASs are asked to provide opportunity for young people to “have their say,” but rarely do they have much impact on program, practice, or policy. In our studies, a more robust and likely effective advisory structure is judged by youth experiences and programmatic consequences. It is one that does not ask young people only for their opinions. Opinions and lived experiences are the beginning, not the outcome of a high-quality advisory strucnew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

96

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

ture and process. Their input provides initial focus and topics for exploration. As we have learned, good structures invite and support young people to both name issues that they have encountered and see elsewhere in the world and also to work more deeply to understand these. This is in contrast to the United Kingdom, where the disappointing results of youth consultation efforts have been documented.25 There are numerous approaches now widely available for adaptation that support small groups of young people working on understanding the daily issues they encounter and how to respond to these in meaningful and consequential ways. Our case study describes one such approach, youth participatory evaluation. 26 Other equally meaningful approaches have been or are beginning to be described and studied, including youth participatory research and civic youth work.27 What these approaches all have in common is a focus on acknowledging and respecting young people’s everyday lived experiences and using these to more deeply understand issues young people experience and the consequences of these issues on the lives of young people, others, and the community. Lesson 2: Focus on giving advice and work to ensure that advice gets used When the UNCRC was adopted, attention focused on how to support young people’s participatory rights. Initial concern was on ensuring that they had a voice that was used and was heard. Now scholars have learned that this is not enough.28 Increasingly, scholars and practitioners have shifted their attention to supporting both youth voice and ways young people’s informed ideas to change current policy, programs, and practices can be heard.29 Lessons on how to increase the appropriate use of what young people have learned may also come from evaluation studies, which Patton and others have focused on for decades.30 Lesson 3: Authentic youth advisory structures meet a moral test Youth advisory structures can be symbolic and ritualistic: young people are asked to go through the motions so others can appear new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

97

to be listening, that is, go through their motions. Other structures are substantive and authentic. Authenticity meets a moral test: it is meaningful, inclusive, just, equitable, and safe. These moral principles relate to what we know is good, ethical youth work.31 These remain absent in many youth advisory structures and approaches. Lesson 4: Young people deserve a place at the table in addition to doing the work Even with emphasis on advice giving, most youth advisory structures keep young people isolated and separated from directly participating in relevant power structures. Even when young people have the opportunity to sit at the table, it often remains symbolic, either because it is simply decoration or because others at the table have not been given the necessary training to listen and hear what young people are saying.32 Too often we expect young people to receive the necessary training so that they present information in appropriate, that is, adult, ways. Increasingly, this is seen as a violation of the purpose and ethos of youth participation and youth advice giving. What is being called for is more effort focused on adults to develop the capacity to better listen to and respond appropriately to young people. Lesson 5: Reinvention of support structures Parks and recreation programs across the country have typically invited community members to support services and programs. Booster clubs and community leadership groups have been around for decades. These studies show how youth advisory structures can fulfill a similar role. Youth advisory structures provide “good advice” and help to better align parks and recreation programming with youth needs and wants.

A final note As VeLure Roholt and Baizerman show, advice is just that: advice only.33 The requester and recipient decide whether to use it. This new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

98

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

makes the question of why advice is or is not used more complex. Are the right questions being asked of the right people? Notes   1.  Delgado, M. (2002). New frontiers for youth development in the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Columbia University Press; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2002). Community programs to promote youth development. Washington, DC: Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth; Eccles, J., & Gootman, J. (Eds.). Board on Children, Youth, and Families, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; Hamilton, S., & Hamilton, M. A. (2003). The youth development handbook: Coming of age in American communities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.   2.  On youth participation: Driskell, D. (2002). Creating better cities with children and youth: A manual for participation. London, England: Earthscan; Hart, R. (1997). Children’s participation: The theory and practice of involving youth citizens in community development and environmental care. New York, NY: UNICEF. On youth engagement: Taft, J., & Gordon, H. (2013). Youth activists, youth councils, and constrained democracy. Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice, 8(1), 87–100; Matthews, H., & Limb, M. (2003). Another white elephant? Youth councils as democratic structures. Space and Polity, 7(2), 173–192.   3.  Matthews, H., & Limb, M. (1999). Defining an agenda for the geography of children: Review and prospect. Progress in Human Geography, 23(1), 61–90; Percy-Smith, B. (2010). Councils, consultation, and community: Rethinking the spaces for children and young people’s participation. Children’s Geographies, 8(2), 107–122.   4.  Boyte, H., & Skelton, N. (1997). The legacy of public work: Educating for citizenship. Educational Leadership, 54(5), 12–17; VeLure Roholt, R., Baizerman, M., & Hildreth, R. W. (2013). Civic youth work: Cocreating democratic youth spaces. Chicago, IL: Lyceum Books.   5.  Ishii, A. (2008). Youth advisory groups: New allies in the World Bank’s work. Washington, DC: World Bank.   6.  Checkoway, B., & Richards-Schuster, K. (2003). Youth participation in community evaluation research. American Journal of Evaluation, 24(1), 21–33; VeLure Roholt, R., Hildreth, R. W., & Baizerman, M. (2009). Becoming citizens: Deepening the craft of youth civic engagement. New York, NY: Routledge; Delgado, M., & Staples, L. (2008). Youth-led community organizing: Theory and action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.   7.  Bergsma, L. (2004). Empowerment education: The link between media literacy and healthy promotion. American Behavioral Scientist, 48(2), 152–164; Finn, J., & Checkoway, B. (1998). Young people as competent community builders: A challenge to social work. Social Work, 43(4), 335–345; Smith, A. (2002). Interpreting and supporting participation rights: Contributions from sociocultural theory. The international Journal of Children’s Rights, 10(1), 78–88. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



YOUTH ADVISORY STRUCTURES

99

  8.  McLaughlin, M. (2000). Community counts: How youth organizations matter for youth development. Washington, DC: Public Education Network; Quinn, J. (1999). Where need meets opportunity: Youth development programs for early teens. Future of Children, 9(2), 96–116.   9.  Smith, C., Akiva, T., Sugar, S. A., Lo, Y. J., Frank, K. A., Peck, S. C., ... Devaney, T. (2012). Continuous quality improvement in afterschool settings: Impact findings from the Youth Program Quality Intervention study. Washington, DC: Forum for Youth Investment. 10.  Yohalem, N., Wilson-Ahlstrom, A., Fischer, S., & Shinn, M. (2009). Measuring youth program quality: A guide to assessment tools (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Forum for Youth Investment. 11.  Mokwena, S. (2003). Youth participation: Taking the idea to the next level. A challenge to youth ministers. Commonwealth Youth and Development, 1(2), 87–107. 12.  Matthews, H. (2001). Citizenship, youth councils, and young people’s participation. Journal of Youth Studies, 4(3), 299–317; Percy-Smith. (2010). 13.  Percy-Smith. (2010). 14.  Sheth, P., VeLure Roholt, R., Jacobson, K., & Baizerman, M. (2012). Youth advice giving: Models and practices for effective youth involvement. Minneapolis, MN: Youthprise Foundation. 15.  Verhoeven. (2011). Doing research: The hows and whys of applied research. Chicago, IL: Lyceum Books. 16.  van Manen, M. (1997). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy (2nd ed.). London, Canada: Althouse Press. 17.  Cammarota, J., & Fine, M. (2008). Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion. New York, NY: Routledge. 18.  Hart, R. (1992). Children’s participation: From tokenism to citizenship. Florence, Italy: UNICEF ICDC. 19.  On youth participation: Frank, K. (2006). The potential of youth participation in planning. Journal of Planning Literature, 20(4), 351–371; Hart. (1992); Hill, M., Davis, J., Prout, A., & Tisdall, K. (2004). Moving the participation agenda forward. Children and Society, 18(2), 77–96; Mullahey, R., Susskind, Y., & Checkoway, B. (1999). Youth participation in community planning. Washington, DC: American Planning Association. On youth consultation: Seigel, S. (2006). Engaging youth to build safer communities: A report of the CSIS post-conflict reconstruction project. Washington, DC: CSIS Press. On youth advisory and consultative groups: Percy-Smith. (2010); Richards-Schuster, K., & Checkoway, B. (2010). Youth participation in public policy at the local level: New lessons from Michigan municipalities. National Civic Review, 98(4), 26–30; Zeldin, S., McDaniel, A., Topitzes, D., & Calvert, M. (2000). Youth in decision-making: A study on the impacts of youth on adults and organizations. Washington, DC: Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development. 20.  Hart. (1992). 21.  For example, Percy-Smith. (2010). 22.  VeLure Roholt et al. (2013). 23.  VeLure Roholt, R., & Baizerman, M. (Eds.). (2012). Evaluation advisory groups. New Directions for Evaluation, no. 136. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

100

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

24.  Checkoway & Richards-Schuster. (2003); Sabo, K. F. (2008). Youth participatory evaluation: Strategies for engaging young people. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 25.  Percy-Smith. (2010). 26.  Checkoway & Richards-Schuster. (2003); Sabo. (2008). 27.  Cammarota & Fine. (2008); VeLure Roholt et al. (2013). 28.  Matthews, H., & Limb, M. (1998). The right to say: The development of youth councils/forums within the UK. Area, 30(1), 66–78; Percy-Smith. (2010). 29.  Richards-Schuster & Checkoway. (2010); Matthews & Limb. (2003). 30.  Patton, M. Q. (2008). Utilization-focused evaluation (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 31.  Sercombe, H. (2010). Youth work ethics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 32.  Hart. (1992). 33.  VeLure Roholt & Baizerman. (2012).

ross velure roholt is associate professor in the School of Social Work, Youth Studies, University of Minnesota. megan mueller is a community youth worker, Saint Paul Parks and Recreation.

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

The fact the two agencies initially express a desire to work together in partnership does not mean the partnership will take shape or function well.

5 Shaping partnerships by doing the work Kathy Korum and Recreation Department (P&R) is a large municipal agency with more than twenty recreation centers and hundreds of full-time and even more part-time employees working to provide recreation activities that interest the young people it wants to serve. In some neighborhoods, there has long been a mismatch between local youth and available programs or services, with suboptimum service. In other neighborhoods, the skills and interests of the workers do not match the wants of local young people for particular programs and services. Grounded in a traditional approach to programming, with centralized “programmers” generally determining available activities at each site for potential participants, the agency struggles over whether and how to best serve some groups of youth. “Secret shopper” visits and field studies by University of Minnesota Youth Studies students over the past four years have revealed that many of the recreation centers are not serving many young people at all, especially teens. At the same time, there are workers at some sites in Saint Paul providing services for young people in ways that set them far apart from their colleagues. These

THE SAINT PAUL PARKS

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20071

101

102

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

workers recognize that the purpose of their work is to make connections with youth and ultimately to provide activities and experiences that are meaningful and consequential for them. What these workers have discovered is that through partnerships with other agencies and with the youth themselves, there is potential for effective and meaningful engagement directly with young people and with others on their behalf. Partnership as an ordinary, everyday way of doing business within P&R has often been limited to working with individuals, groups, or agencies through a contract, generally to provide feebased programs or services. While these programs have produced income and met the needs and wants of some young people and families, they have neither helped P&R reach all youth nor contributed to a culture of programmatic creativity or innovation. In fact, this partnership model is based only on contracted arrangements to teach particular classes, such as creative movement for children, beginning tap or ballet, art for preschoolers, and science and computer courses, each of which cost between thirty-five and seventy dollars for three to six sessions. This approach does not encourage new ways of thinking about or working with other organizations on a common purpose or service. Venturing in a new direction or engaging in a work practice different from what is normative, that is, what organizational culture and politics allow, brings risk. To try something new may be seen as being “radical.” Nevertheless, other approaches are necessary if we are to bring innovation to our work. These must allow and foster space for joint negotiation and for ways to meet the needs and wants of both organizations and their missions, and they must focus on meeting community needs. This is what we have tried to do and now tell about what we have done, continue to do so, and how. Here I tell the story of what and how P&R thought about and proceeded to develop new partnership models. We experimented, and I give examples of what worked and why. I also present examples of partnerships that have worked less well or not at all and analyze these. Finally, I summarize lessons learned in our P&R partnership work. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



SHAPING PARTNERSHIPS BY DOING THE WORK

103

Partnerships that work The partnership between P&R and Saint Paul Public Library (SPPL) is two years old. Although it seems a natural fit, P&R and SPPL had worked independently for one hundred years as narcissistic, self-involved organizations. By design, governmental systems are meant to function independently, keeping checks and balances in place and formalizing the divisions of responsibility and authority among agencies. Although originally intended to keep any one unit of government from doing too much harm, our fragmented government also puts serious obstacles in the way of public servants who want to get things done by working across agency boundaries.1 This separation and fragmentation make collaborative work difficult, which is increasingly necessary to meet citizen wants and needs. P&R sought to work with SPPL because resources were scarce and both agencies were looking for more ways to connect young people to SPPL reading programs. P&R began by adding SPPL activities, such as storytime and magic and puppet shows at select recreation sites, during the summer, and four libraries served summer meals to youth, which P&R had been doing for more than a decade. These arrangements were made at the management level, but success was dependent on local site commitments and the relationship between a single recreation worker and a corresponding counterpart at the library. Commitments by workers in both agencies to effective communication, community outreach, and staffing each individual program were inconsistent, however. In addition, the limited ability of frontline workers and site supervisors to negotiate or commit agency resources was problematic. The result was that programs were successful at a few, but not all, sites. This partnership entered a new phase when the deputy directors of both agencies decided to collaborate and received a planning grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a new teen space at a soon-to-be-built communitybased facility that would house both a library and a recreation center. The focus of the partnership in this phase was on building new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

104

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

strong and sustained relationships. Trust, respect, and a sense of the self-interest of the other created the foundation for this relationship and, ultimately, the foundation for the partnership.2 Based on this relationship and others that were developed and nurtured, the bond between the two agencies was firmly established, and space for conversations was opened and sustained. In addition to our commitments to the relationship, we both agreed to be responsible for finding and assessing the physical, ideational, and dialogical spaces within which the emergent work could happen. Generally I see myself as P&R’s agent and my library colleague as the library’s agent. When we are together in our work, the agencies talk and it is no longer my work or her work; rather, it is our work. New language and new meaning in and of the work continue to evolve in both agencies and between us as actors, as does a culture that is somewhat independent of the structure, society, and culture of either: a new entity was born and develops. When workers recognize problems in old approaches and gain experience in new organizational practices and behavior, major changes are possible, and “when these changes produce positive results, cultural change usually follows.”3 That is, do the work differently and support for it will likely follow. Our joint work on serving young people has led to transformations in professional development for workers and in both agencies to strategic planning; both are leading to organizational models that are more responsive and adaptable to our changing community of patrons, clients, and kids. Two more examples of our partnership are seen in the Createch mobile computer labs and the Library After Dark program. The Createch program provides mobile technology labs at three libraries and one recreation site. SPPL leads on the program and has purchased the equipment. Young people are the workers, and they are trained by the Science Museum of Minnesota and paid through the Youth Job Corps (YJC), a youth employment program funded by the state and managed by P&R. Seen as a structure for access to digital technology for youth, the Createch programs are taught by young people to young people. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



SHAPING PARTNERSHIPS BY DOING THE WORK

105

Library After Dark, a program for teens at two library sites that begins after the branch closes for the day to the general public, started in January 2013. Teens now have a safe and free neighborhood space for social activities, including dancing, board games, and movies with friends, and increased opportunities to access technology and digital learning. The program is supported by youth workers from both P&R and SPPL and takes advantage of a community asset that would otherwise be unused. Without an agency leader supporting this collaborative work, the Library After Dark program might have existed for a short time and as a standalone partnership between two frontline workers from two municipal agencies. However, when agency leaders began their involvement, it became a program of both and hence was supported in several ways. Having the work between P&R and the SPPL led by the deputy directors of each department and supported by the department directors has proved to be important for decision making and the committing of agency resources. It has also been crucial in ensuring support and space for creative supervisors and frontline workers to try new programs and approaches to working with young people. As Mattessich, Murray-Close, and Monsey note:4 Successful collaboration groups recognize multiple layers of staff in each of the partner organizations and create mechanisms to involve them. Linking leaders may not be sufficient to sustain a major collaboration. Integrating the efforts throughout all the members’ systems builds stronger ties and increases the likelihood of success.

In our case, this new and continuing partnership has helped us and both our agencies expand programs and services for youth in ways that are meaningful to them. It has resulted in a more integrated service approach, has attracted attention from library and park systems across the country, as well as from funders, and has created positive activity in the community that is easily noticed and supported politically. A third example of success is our long-term partnership with the Youth Studies program in the University of Minnesota’s School of new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

106

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Social Work, which has supported the professional development of our staff for about six years. In that space, we have quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, sharpened the skills of gifted youth workers and discovered the less obvious talents of others. While this development among a relatively small group of workers has challenged a system that for decades struggled to welcome and invite all young people as participants and contributors, this partnership in particular, more than any other, has helped us advance youth work in P&R and supported us in our work with colleagues in the library system. The partnership with the university has also made students available to both P&R and libraries to conduct practical field studies that have yielded data invaluable to internal discussions, program improvement and other decision making, and designing, implementing, and providing services to young people (see the third article in this volume). Our work with the University of Minnesota began after discussions with a university professor and a P&R manager. Supported by the P&R manager, the work began with university faculty and frontline P&R workers. While a few involved workers realized individual benefits from the work through weekly professional development discussions with Youth Studies faculty and students, visits to university classrooms to speak about personal and work experiences, and access to visiting youth workers from agencies across the country and across the world, it was support by agency leadership that created space for the work to continue. Otherwise there was no chance to expand what was being done and make progress on the full integration of quality youth work practices into P&R. When I became involved, first as the recreation services manager and now deputy director, this professional development for youth workers continued in partnership with the university. The group of participating workers has grown, and the work that had taken place quietly and seemingly hidden from the rest of the agency has become very visible and is now moving into other parts of the organization. In addition, the director of the Youth Studies program and I regularly consult and negotiate with one another regarding issues, progress, projects, and policy. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



107

SHAPING PARTNERSHIPS BY DOING THE WORK

Why these partnerships worked Successful partnerships that open a door and reveal possibilities to begin joint work on issues of mutual interest and concern have proven to be effective in enhancing youth services and youth work. These qualities account for the success of these dyadic agency partnerships: •  Top-level leadership was committed and involved. •  The partnership began with relationships, not activities or programs. •  Relationships provided the foundation for the work, negotiation the mechanism for defining the work. •  The work was no longer my work or their work; it became our work. •  Risk taking by each was supported by both and their employers. •  The new culture created as a result of the partnership was accepted by both agencies. •  Each partner agency publicly recognizes its value for the other and publicly recognizes the partnership. •  Each partner, in both public and political circles, acknowledges that the partnership can advance the common work more effectively than could either of the agencies individually.

Partnerships do not always work The fact that two agencies initially express a desire to work together in partnership does not always mean that the resulting partnership will function well. In Saint Paul, the culture and traditions of the Saint Paul Public School District (SPPS) have allowed some collaboration on youth work with individual teachers, coaches, athletic directors, or within specific programs such as Community Education, but overall, it has been challenging to partner with the system as a whole. This is in part due to its vast new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd .

108

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

and complex organizational structure, but also due (in some cases) to irreconcilable competing priorities. Similarly, our youth work efforts with the Saint Paul Police Department (SPPD) have tested all but the most determined among us. With both P&R and SPPD wanting to reduce violence in our neighborhoods, the P&R approach was to invite young people banished from recreation centers in the name of safety back into our buildings, whereas SPPD wanted to increase enforcement efforts. The completely divergent missions and approaches to the work clashed in both subtle and overt ways, creating tension between the two departments. We were confident that engaging these youth in activities that interested them, along with providing access to skilled youth workers who would be available consistently and long term as caring adults, would make a difference in how the young people saw themselves and how the community began to see them. SPPD was not quite as sure. Collaboration in small ways, most often related to a grant program specific to police agencies, was clearly worth pursuing. However, it was, and still is, difficult to integrate new ideas into this established control and enforcement-based system because P&R is a prevention system primarily. There is now enough trust with some within SPPD to advance youth work practices and improve the relationship between our respective agencies. With SPPS and SPPD, it became a search for individuals who would help us do the work. While this approach has led to some success, it is more difficult to sustain partnerships of this type because of differences in ethos, purpose, and practices, especially if the individuals have limited positional authority to commit resources or direct staff. Working with community-based agencies to serve young people can present another set of tests for a partnership model. While community-based agencies often provide specialized opportunities such as digital and media arts, graphic design, music, dance, or theater programs, it is also frequently the case that due to varying levels of time-limited grant support, the work comes and goes or the leadership comes and goes. In times of reduced funding, the landscape for community-based organizations tends to be more new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



SHAPING PARTNERSHIPS BY DOING THE WORK

109

volatile and politically different than for municipal agencies. For example, an arts organization that provides programs in one neighborhood of St. Paul has had multiple changes in leadership over the past five years. Relationship building is difficult, in fact nearly impossible, under these conditions. In addition, a portion of their funding comes through direct connections to an elected official, and this forces the partnership to continue, even though its success and effectiveness as a partnership are questionable. Ultimately much time is spent on fixing partnership problems rather than advancing the work that either partner sees as important and is really to be evaluated based on its impact on the community’s youth. In these examples, the doors to potential partnerships were opened, but multiple factors contributed to their history of limited or sporadic success: •  Top-level management in the partner agencies expressed some commitment but were not directly involved. •  Relationships have been developed between individual workers in each agency who want to advance the work, but these relationships generally do not include agency leaders. •  Relationships between individuals in varying levels in the organization lead to less space for negotiations to define the common work. •  It remains our work and their work. It is somewhat beneficial to the community but seen as owned by each and not held in common. •  There is limited support for risk taking. •  No new culture has been created from a partnership accepted by both agencies. •  Public recognition for the other partner and for the partnership do not necessarily or consistently fit, move, and support the work. •  Partners do not always acknowledge that the partnership can advance the work more effectively than can either of the agencies working alone. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

110

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

If a partnership shows the potential for significant community impact or is otherwise seen as critical to continue, all of these issues must be addressed for an authentic, sustainable, and mutually beneficial partnership.

Lessons learned These are the lessons learned that we believe are valuable to others: •  Partnerships tend to develop a culture of their own that occasionally clashes with the cultures in each partner agency. This is more problematic if issues affect public safety. The higher the issue is on a moral panic scale, the more complex the partnership becomes, requiring significant work from partner agencies, often with conflicting missions. This was especially true for us in our work with the police department. As an enforcement agency, SPPD continues to be unsure about our intentions to bring street and gang-affiliated youth back into recreation centers. It remains difficult to integrate new ideas into this established, enforcement-based system. We were certain that reconnecting with these youth and inviting their participation in activities that interested them would ease neighborhood tension. Although there were individuals in both agencies who expressed a commitment to working together to address the issue of youth violence in neighborhoods, it has taken nearly six years for the agencies to use similar language to talk about how to work more effectively with certain groups of young people. •  We learned that in order for any work to begin, partnerships have to be recognized as spaces of negotiation. If individual agents from the partner organizations do not have the authority, are not willing, are not skilled, or do not see the value of negotiating, joint work is difficult. When partnerships become spaces of negotiation, real work begins. The school district, for example, has decided what its partnership model will be. Their formal partnership agreement new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



SHAPING PARTNERSHIPS BY DOING THE WORK

111

is the only portal of entry for an organization that wishes to be recognized as an official partner of the district. While this makes sense for obvious managerial and legal reasons, such as trying to administer agreements with several hundred agencies, SPPS is primarily interested in partners that support academic achievement in ways it has defined. There is limited opportunity for discussion, particularly with partners skilled in youth work practices. They need to be able to convey that while their programs are grounded in something other than their take on academic rigor, these too have the possibility to foster success and learning for young people. They do this by using social skills–building activities and restoring hope through effective and successful learning that connects with the interests of the young person. Youth work practices are not (publicly) honored and valued by SPPS as an agency. It has generally limited partnership discussions with us to provide for their students’ out-of-school-time programs as part of a citywide network. We prefer to partner in the service of the whole child and youth, not only their student role. •  Partnerships create new meanings in the collective work and can provide resources when work is not going so well within one’s own organization. As youth work continued to be challenged within P&R, my colleagues at SPPL helped expand opportunities for youth. The Library After Dark program, our collaborative work on the Read Brave initiative related to respect, an expanded mobile technology program for teens (Createch), and regular meetings with a group of library employees who have identified themselves as youth workers were all going on when there was limited progress on youth work in my own organization. •  Partnerships created between individuals at lower positional levels in organizations require synaptic connections with leaders who can create and keep open space for the partnership to flourish and be sustained. Without these connections, organizational barriers will eventually become insurmountable for the frontline workers because of their limited control over staff schedules and agency resources. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

112

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

•  Partnerships have a life cycle. It takes a lot of time and effort to create and work at sustaining them. Developing and maintaining trust, assessing the space within which you do and could work, negotiating priorities, and committing and agreeing on resources require skilled negotiation. Nurturing the relationships that support a partnership may require monthly or even weekly meetings. Partnerships need to be continually assessed and decisions about when to let a partnership go or when to close the partnership have to be made. To assess the efficacy of a partnership consider asking these questions: •  Has the partnership gone beyond the two people who initially thought it important and useful? •  What would the political fallout be if this partnership ended? •  Who makes a difference to this partnership? •  Even if the partnership seems to be struggling, does continuing it give you bargaining power within your own agency? •  Is the partnership on life support? Is it brain dead? If you answered no to all but the last question, then you may want to consider making a strategic decision to close the partnership. If you answered yes to any of the first four questions, begin paying more attention to the partnership and nurturing the relationships that support it. If you answered yes to three or more of the first four questions, the partnership deserves your time and support to keep it vital, meaningful, and thriving for you, your agency, and always in the service of more effective youth services for all young people.

Conclusion Our experience has taught us that strong partnerships can be extremely gratifying for self, agency, and youth; can deliver results unattainable by either or any other partner; and always can transform partner agencies from the perspective of better youth services. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



SHAPING PARTNERSHIPS BY DOING THE WORK

113

There are, of course, difficulties with this practice. In most interagency partnerships, the potential for conflict is always present. Avoiding conflict requires attention to a number of things that may be relevant as you begin your work. Start with the notion that just as in youth work itself, a strong partnership will require a commitment to developing and nurturing relationships, and these relationships should include agency leaders. Partners bring each agency (they are its agents) and authority to commit the organization. Who is at the table and where the work is positioned matters in a partnership. Commitment at a high enough level in each of the partner organizations is important to ensure that the agency partnership begins, continues, and thrives in the service of youth, that is, beyond the individual person and each agency. Also essential is a commitment to trusting and comfortable relationships that seek common ground to support the work and the workers. This takes time and an openness to share power and an ongoing willingness and ability to negotiate. These are not common in many agencies, and certainly not in local government. Authentic partnerships benefit the collective and the individual organizations and thus the community that all serve. Finally, when working beyond the current agency culture and boundaries, there is a risk, and this means that someone has to transcend the ordinary ways of doing the work, however “radical” this may be viewed as. This takes existential courage. Someone must be willing to go beyond organizational boundaries as an internal and external “foreign affairs officer” of sorts. This is true even when partnerships are limited to collaborative work among a few individuals, as with the schools and the police department. And it is true too when working across any agency borders with the university, the library, and other agencies. Where partnerships succeed and thrive, the work eventually becomes embedded within the partner agencies and is no longer foreign to either. A partnership has become a mundane, institutionalized practice—normal, typical, and ordinary and just another way work is done here. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

114

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Notes 1.  Linden, R. M. (2002). Working across boundaries: Making collaboration work in government and nonprofit organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2.  Linden. (2002). 3.  Linden. (2002). P. 226. 4.  Mattessich, P. W., Murray-Close, M., & Monsey, B. R. (2001). Collaboration—What makes it work. St. Paul, MN: Fieldstone Alliance. P. 19.

kathy korum is the deputy director for the Saint Paul Parks and Recreation Department.

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

6

This article looks at an ideal opportunity for Youthprise, a new grant-making intermediary, to test its priorities with an organization that had a demonstrated commitment to working with young people who were severely marginalized by other youthserving agencies.

What can local foundations do to support youth service system change efforts? Wokie Weah, Marcus Pope making sound decisions in funding youth-serving organizations can be greatly enhanced by implementing a comprehensive and inclusive learning process that embraces the perspectives of and input from a variety of stakeholders. Key stakeholders can include program staff and leadership, various community partners, and, most important, the youth whom we endeavor to serve. This collaborative approach to funding decisions lessens the probability that decisions will be made in a vacuum and increases the likelihood that funded programs will be aligned with the funder’s mission and priorities. Youthprise effectively applied this approach to its grant making in 2012 when it funded Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) to continue and expand its innovations in youth work and diffuse specific strategies into other recreation centers. We were especially interested in its Youth in Transition program, a creative undertaking that started as a grassroots effort by staff of the P&R’S NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20072

115

116

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Dayton’s Bluff Recreation Center and has evolved into an effective vehicle to reach some of the community’s most underengaged youth. Youthprise’s investment was used to employ youth and young adults. Funds also supported systematic training aimed at developing the skills of youth workers involved in Youth in Transition and a broader group of recreation and library staff also employed by the City of Saint Paul. For Youthprise, a new grantmaking intermediary, this was an ideal opportunity to test our priorities with an organization that had a demonstrated commitment to working with young people who were severely marginalized by other youth-serving agencies. Youthprise was established in 2010 by the McKnight Foundation with an overall mission to champion learning beyond the classroom so all Minnesota youth thrive. Although grant making is an essential part of Youthprise’s plan to achieve its mission, we employ a unique and comprehensive design that seamlessly integrates additional strategies, such as capacity building, policy advocacy, research and evaluation, and working collaboratively with youth and other stakeholders, to strengthen systems aimed at engaging and serving youth. Our board of directors includes individuals ranging in age from sixteen to eighty-two years, and we seek to integrate young people throughout all levels of operation. Youthprise places a strong emphasis on reaching what we call “opportunity youth,” a subset of at-risk youth who are the “underserved among the underserved.” Although opportunity youth can come from any racial or ethnic group, they are disproportionately male, from communities of color, and between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four. In some circles, opportunity youth are not attractive to funders or service providers, a predicament that keeps them outside the perimeter and severely limits their access to opportunities that could potentially neutralize risk factors and maximize their strengths and ability to benefit society. The Youth in Transition program is a perfect illustration of courageous leadership going against the grain to support youth who are often neglected. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



LOCAL FOUNDATIONS’ SUPPORT OF CHANGE EFFORTS

117

Youth in Transition was launched in an area that is home to many opportunity youth, particularly those who have experienced some level of involvement with the juvenile justice system. Through the efforts of a staff whose commitment extends beyond time and money, paired with the application of innovative strategies, the Youth in Transition program has become a champion in the community for transforming the lives of youth who might otherwise be on an ill-fated trajectory to poor outcomes and dependence on costly punitive alternatives, such as the juvenile justice system.

Evaluation process In order to learn more about the work, we regularly met with P&R staff, youth, and academic and community partners who were affiliated with the work. This included formal and informal one-onone and group meetings with youth workers, youth participants, and P&R leadership. Youthprise also enlisted the assistance of a young person on staff who grew up in the Dayton’s Bluff community, who provided an insider’s perspective that proved invaluable in substantiating the validity of program components. We evaluated P&R’s work using a participatory approach. We talked with young people, listened to program staff and leadership, and involved outside stakeholders (university faculty, college students, P&R staff, librarians, school district employees, and others) in an intentional effort to ensure a broad range of perspectives and input in our due diligence process. In addition, we observed and participated in professional development and training sessions and conducted a site visit to a training session that involved several Youthprise staff—both youth and adults. An important part of this process was engaging Youthprise’s young adult staff and youth interns to identify how Youth in Transition’s goals aligned with the mission of Youthprise, particularly in the area of building citywide systems to support out-ofschool-time and nonformal learning. Involving youth in the new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

118

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

process from both Youthprise and the community greatly informed the process by validating program goals and strategies, as these youth brought much-needed insight to the decision-making process.

Identified program strengths A key outcome of P&R’s collaborative process of doing work created a paradigm shift among a range of stakeholders concerning how they thought about engaging youth who were traditionally removed from programs and services and were not generally considered worthy of an investment. The process also produced a better understanding across disciplines of how workers in different professions are connected and the importance of building cohesive systems that facilitate collaboration from various stakeholders to reach common goals pursuant to engaging youth. This is clearly illustrated through a statement made by a librarian during a training session. In communicating the value of cross-training with P&R and the Youth in Transition team, she stated that she now realizes that “librarians are just recreation workers without tennis shoes.” Her statement exemplifies the effectiveness of their shared learning and cross-disciplinary collaboration training model. Through this comprehensive process of visiting with and learning from various stakeholders, we were able to identify specific strengths of the Youth in Transition program that were in concert with Youthprise’s priorities, which influenced our decision to fund the project. First, the program was directed by strong leadership who welcomed and embraced the wisdom and ideas of its seasoned youth workers and ensured that mechanisms were in place to promote the free flow of ideas from program participants. Authentically incorporating the perspectives of youth is a cornerstone of Youthprise’s philosophy on youth engagement. Another strength was the courage and ability of P&R staff to engage disconnected youth (some with a history of gang affiliation) in leadership opportunities. Clearly this strategy was transformative for the youth new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



LOCAL FOUNDATIONS’ SUPPORT OF CHANGE EFFORTS

119

themselves and resulted in a positive shift in their self-perceptions. The strategy has also led to shifts in the community’s perception of young people as well, including the police. This practice of fostering an environment that positions youth as assets is also a foundational tenet of our work. Furthermore, the project has developed and sustained strong partnerships with youth, the community, local college students, and various other partners, such as libraries, local businesses, and educational institutions, including the University of Minnesota’s Youth Studies Program. In exploring these relationships, it was evident that the program was well respected by both the grassroots community and grass-top stakeholders alike. Indeed, P&R’s Youth in Transition’s collaborative approach aligns closely with our goal to build systems that are characterized by high stakeholder involvement, community coordination, collaboration, and youth engagement.

Lessons learned Youthprise’s relationship with P&R has yielded valuable insight that has informed our work as a grant maker and as an organization focused on systems change. The following points summarize the key lessons learned: •  Systems transformation requires synergy among those working at the grassroots and grass-tops level. •  We must recognize and affirm the capacity of seasoned youth workers, youth, and community representatives who are steeped in the everyday reality of the target population. •  Spending time just hanging out with prospective grantees can facilitate learning, help funders assess program openness to observation, and augment collecting other relevant data about the organization—its ethos, practices, and practice. •  Including youth (and adults) in the review and due diligence process who have lived in the neighborhoods or attended programs you seek to fund will add much needed perspective. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

120

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

•  Seeking to identify individuals and teams whose interest in the work is more vocational than fiscal is extremely beneficial. It is not about the money! •  Having the courage to think creatively, engage untraditional partners, and take risks is a key ingredient for system transformation. •  Engaging youth in the program design and implementation is more than just the “in” thing to do. It helps fine-tune practice and facilitates more positive outcomes. wokie weah is the president of Youthprise. marcus pope is director of strategic initiatives and outreach at Youthprise.

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

7

Organizational development is based in part on knowledge development, both formal, scientifically proven and also nonscientific practice wisdom. This article brings together all of the lessons learned over our six years of work with Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, and suggests the practice utility of these.

From lessons learned to emerging practices Michael Baizerman, Ross VeLure Roholt, Kathy Korum, Sheetal Rana In short, the American community—cities, towns, and corporate entities enjoying local self-government—is today falling far short of meeting the needs of its young people. The situation calls for organized local action, not in a few scattered cities and towns, but in a very substantial proportion of all American communities. American Youth Commission (1939)

there is some consensus emerging across disciplines and professions in the definitions of the lay term best practices and promising practices, but there is no standard definition or fully acceptable methodology for proving that a practice is one or the other. The concepts in this field are still fluid, with new terms and distinctions presented and contested. Among the terms now used are emerging practices, research-validated and field-tested best practices, and, of course, lessons learned.1 NEW DIRECTIONS FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT, NO. 139, FALL 2013 © WILEY PERIODICALS, INC. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/yd.20073

121

122

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

That all of this debate is not simply semantic is made clear by Ashcroft alone and with colleagues who provide epistemological grounds for accepting and challenging this knowledge-buildingto-action strategy, based, for them, on testable propositional medical knowledge.2 These epistemological and methodological concerns are relevant to all of the practices that comprise community-based healthy youth development. 3 We set these aside for a minute and begin with lessons learned over our six years of work, examine each, and decide which meets the tests to be treated as a best, promising, or emergent practice and which remains in the epistemological and empirical status of a (lowly) lesson learned. What have we learned over the past six years about how organization change to support healthy youth development can be initiated, accomplished, and sustained? What are “emerging practices,” “promising practice,” “best practices,” and “lessons learned”? What are generalizations, principles and guiding aphorisms, and metaphors? How best to present these? Our initial answer is as aphorisms or as Asian fortune cookie fillers: short one-line truths with no elaboration. Why this? Because we have been doing the work long enough to know that almost every positive change is contingent and in effect temporary, and that to grasp what this means requires learning how to contextualize the work over and over again over time. Over time, what seemed solid could melt, what seemed loose can tighten, and each and both could reverse, and more than once. This is our reality of positive organization changing to support healthy youth development. We sequence time as work initiated, accomplished, and sustained because over time, much of what we intentionally initiated was achieved, but then P&R youth work as a practice regressed, slipped, or was again poor, intermittent, immoral, unethical, or simply lousy. Obviously if we worked at P&R for a shorter time, we might have left with a longer list of accomplishments and a longer list of which of these were sustained. That this is not the case is a direct consequence of being involved over a long period of time and watching how a moment becomes a week, then longer. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

123

Over that time, organizations are continuously changing somewhat and unevenly across and down structure and practice because of sociopolitical and economic changes in their near to far environments, including their interorganizational networks. This may be true more for public agencies, those funded with public funds, such as the municipal P&R and Saint Paul Library. Not least among these external factors are municipal and state elections, changes in political leadership, public budgets, youth moral panics, constantly shifting youth policy priorities, issues of public governance, citizen politics, and the like. Often, to some P&R insiders and outsiders, although differently to each, nothing at P&R seems to change. Yet much changes constantly within P&R and between and among it and other municipal voluntary youth agencies and community groups. In effect, P&R is like a pot always boiling somewhere—among managers, staff, and their relationship; between leaders and managers; between neighborhood groups and local centers; between city council members, neighborhood groups, and local centers; and so on. It is in part a matter of perspective. Although none of this is unusual, it all is real and consequential for the work, for individuals, and for how they understand, make sense of, and explain what they tried to do, how they did the work, what they think and can demonstrate worked, and how they explain this. All of this includes disciplines and analytical frames, methods, language, and the like. While this is not ethnography, we all have learned that frames, methods, and language shape the experienced reality; reporting it rhetorically is surely not living it, as war reporters have always taught. Bringing these introductory points together into a lesson, we have learned the difficulties, the ease, the transitory wins and losses, and the never-ending work needed to transform a municipal youth agency’s structure, programs and services, youth workers and youth work to sustained, quality, ethical, inclusive, just, and participatory positive youth development. Most of the lessons learned do not fully meet a test for treatment as an emerging practice: “Continually incorporates lessons new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

124

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

learned, feedback, and analysis to lead toward improvement or positive outcomes.”4 If we use these public health and other human services methodologies, our efforts fail here on incorporating lessons learned and pushing toward positive outcomes. We did continually work with front-line and management staff over multiple years and provided lessons learned, feedback, and analysis, but mostly these were not incorporated into the work nor did many staff think about and begin to work toward improvement and positive outcomes. Tradition and organization culture was typically strong enough to prevent and when implemented dismantle any program or practice innovation and improvement. If we use epistemological criteria, we again fail because we do not meet the test of empirical evidence to substantiate propositional action.5 However, if we argue that the type of knowledge that guides our practice is not yet at the stage of development where such propositions are widely known or used, then it is reasonable to not hold us to that standard and instead hold us to another. What other standard? Our contribution to knowledge development is at an early stage: the doing of practice, the naming of that practice, and the mining and excavation of the practice for possible generalizations. It is these that can move work like ours toward emerging and promising practices. From practice comes lessons learned, then other generalizations, then principles, and then it moves toward emerging practice. Lessons learned is the first level of generalization from the concrete, particular, and unique practice step, and principle moves a step toward a more universal proposition, with propositional practice knowledge (Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1.  Ideal-type degree of evidence continuum

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

125

Other useful knowledge: Practice wisdom, rules of thumb, folk wisdom, craft knowledge, and more Practitioners at all levels and in all work areas of an organization come to have a variety of types of knowledge that complement, supplement, and even subvert the formal or official knowledge. Rules of thumb, mother’s wit, and aphorisms are three types, and practice wisdom is a fourth. It is “knowing how things work around here” and “knowing how to get things done.” It is often what older, more experienced workers know about and know how to do. This is not a softer knowledge; although it likely is not scientifically confirmed, it is how much of the world works. In fact, it may not be recognized, accepted, legitimized, or studied for what it is: knowledge about “the way this world works and the ways of making stuff happen, around here, now.” In our group’s collective history of over one hundred years of practice experience in working to improve youth services through organizational changing, each of us has a more or less coherent practice philosophy and practice wisdom tested every day on the frontlines of agency managing work, direct youth work, or technical assistance and consulting with youth agencies and programs. Among other useful knowledge, almost none of which has been subjected to rigorous empirical testing and hence does not meet criteria as a formal practice and a practice empirically assessed, are: •  Common (sense) knowledge •  Tacit knowledge •  Mother’s wit •  Cookbook knowledge •  Recipe knowledge •  Horse sense •  Nuts-and-bolts knowledge •  Everyday knowledge All are in a normative science netherland, yet are animated all the time and have to meet reality tests each time. Expert practice new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

126

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Figure 7.2.  Confidence continuum

in everyday life means knowing these too. At best, these can fit within a paradigm at phronetic science and practice, where the scientifically true and the technically correct are joined in the morally good and ethically right. Figure 7.2 shows graphically these types of knowledge and forms of practice knowing.6 Using this knowledge frame, we offer four examples of lessons learned: •  Include part-time workers. Part-time workers, especially when they hold other jobs, can bring a comparative perspective to their work, often enriching documentation, analysis, discussion, and the envisioning of possible futures. They are often differently invested in the agency and its practices and procedures, and this gives them a different perspective from that of full-time employees. Their personal motivation for their work may differ too from full-time workers, again contributing to alternate views. •  Recruit and organize based on vocational call. Those called to the work or the job likely have a qualitatively different commitment to both than do those for whom the work and the job are more than “just a job,” a paycheck. Those vocationally called may be new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

127

the strongest and best advocates for quality and meaningful work and job, and may be more willing to work toward those processes and goals. •  Learn local mundane ways. Constantly invite workers who are close to the youth they serve and to others in their own community and in the nearby areas to tell about the everyday lives, interests, wants, and needs of these young people. Use these to invite young people to cocreate agency response to them. •  Ask to be taught. Constantly check in, ask, and invite local communities to teach agency staff about the neighborhood, school, street, places of worship, and the rest. In this way, staff can truly say they know the community—its people, their everyday lives— and that this knowledge is regularly and systematically used in policy, planning, services, and evaluation. Workers and agencies must be sensitive to the proximate social environmental and responsive to it and local populations. Next we look article by article at lessons learned over our six years of work changing P&R to better foster the healthy development of young people through more effective organizational programs and services.

Lessons learned assessed Here we assess each of the lessons learned set out in articles 2 through 6. We have confidence in the following as principles of practice. From article 2 •  Professional development can engage participants meaningfully and over the long term when the curriculum is not imposed on the participants and instead, the participants are invited to cocreate their own learning agenda and curriculum. This is certainly practice wisdom, a type of no-scientific, practitioner knowledge, in several fields.7 •  Meaningful, engaging, and effective professional development em­ phasize practice principles, philosophies, and an ethos of professional new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

128

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

development and youth work practice. In an organization in which a particular profession has no tradition, professional development is best when both the manifest and hidden curricula provide conceptual language that can be used for the development or enhancement of a personal professional identity, along with the substance of that profession’s particular gaze, stance, craft orientation, knowledge practices, and skills.8 •  Professional development can facilitate in building a community of practice, where the participants engage in learning as doing, becoming, experience, and belonging. In organizations in which a particular profession has no tradition and workers in that tradition have no or few colleagues and where the work is a space wherein several types of practices can contribute, a community of practice can emerge.9 When emergent professional development can create opportunities for exploring and then joining personal development to professional development, both can feed organizational change and development. •  Race and ethnic differences need to be accounted for and discussed openly. Race had consequences for how the workers were seen, as well as how they saw their world and did their work. In the context of a multiracial and multicultural agency staff working with the same or different clients, youth patrons, citizens, and community, race and ethnicity are omnipresent topics, always with the potential of becoming issues or problems. These must be engaged. The test of whether the professional development process is working is the experience and perceived safety, if not comfort, workers have in facing these realities in themselves, colleagues, and those whom they do and should serve. This is a moral principle of practice, whether or not it meets other empirical tests. This also meets the test of practitioner authority.10 •  Organizational change leaders at the top, as well as at the frontline, are crucial for organizationwide diffusion of learning and practice. It is propositional knowledge that changes in an entire organization, and its elements—its structure, social organization, culture, and practice—can happen and be sustained only when there is buy-in from workers at all organizational levels, from frontline new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

129

to executive. This meets several practitioner tests of confidence, including rule of thumb, practice wisdom, and common knowledge. •  Change leaders need to be continually supported and guided to address resistance to organizational change. Organizations, through staff using social, cultural, and political means, can resist changes in all of these, as well as in who is (or is not) served, how, and the like. Organizations are said to have defenses, as do individuals, and one group’s positive change obviously can be another group’s awful idea. Resistance is a reasonable response (although we prefer ongoing dialogue and negotiation). Those advocating for change must be supported (practice wisdom) in engaging resistance and guided in how to continue to do this with minimal negative consequences for the idea, staff, and young people. It is aphoristic, likely a priori knowledge, and also propositional knowledge that organization change is always practiced as a process–changing the work from organizational change to organization changing; it is never finished. So too is resistance typically not a one-time event or reaction; it is ongoing as practice wisdom and propositional knowledge edge toward emerging practices. •  Effective facilitators work in the meetings as well as outside the meetings with group members and others in their networks to help address the participants’ concerns and questions and to strategize for change. There are always more that two games going on when changing a public nonprofit organization to enhance community youth development: the visible and the other. Meetings are the public space, and a good meeting typically follows lots of out-of-sight work with individuals on group topics, life itself, and their life (practice wisdom). In a political frame, what happens in the meeting should not surprise the change(ing) activist, while in a dialogical frame, much should be emergent and true to the moment. One always works in the moment, and there is always a history to that moment that the activist can work to shape. Work with individuals between meetings provides data to the activist, maintains continuity of topic, keeps the other in front of new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

130

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

oneself, allows for lobbying, and the like. All of this is practition­ er knowledge and emerging practice knowledge. •  There are infinite possibilities for personal, professional, and organizational development. New ideas and strategies for learning and development continually evolve. There is effective practice using a professionally developed curriculum, and there is effective practice when curriculum is cocreated with participants. These differences are based on different pedagogies that themselves are grounded in different philosophies of education and learning and, in turn, on different philosophical, educational, and political anthropologies. Best practice for youth practitioners is to follow John Dewey and “begin where the child/person is,” but at base that is a value as much as a strategy. In a community-based municipal agency serving youth, it is aphoristic that the activist/ facilitators of professional development want to show their conception of youth work and how it should be practiced by doing so with the professional development group. Experienced leaders of professional development groups can link almost any topic to central themes or issues the group has been working on. Remember (practice wisdom) that one can read anything a group member says as data, a teaching, a door opened to trying. •  A trusting partnership between facilitators and upper-level staff of the host organization is necessary for a long-term, open-ended professional development. Every hour of professional development group costs one to three hours of outside work with group members (proposition). Crucial are relationships with upper-level agency manage­ ment and leadership because they too must legitimize the work if it is to succeed (proposition), and it is they who must join in the challenge brought by “resistance” and organizational defense. From article 3 Research can be useful in changing organizations. This is aphoristic and true. Crucial is the negotiated political and programmatic contract between faculty and agency, beginning with the agency’s practice wisdom and its research question. Crucial too is partnernew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

131

ship and commitment with upper to middle management to develop, implement, and use the study in the service of youth development and relationships with frontline staff that made data collection possible, safe, effective, and efficient. It is important for students to meet and be taught by both upper and middle management and hands-on youth workers so as to experience this enterprise as real and consequential for youth, themselves, and for the agency. This summary of lessons learned is all on this level of practice wisdom and is best practice (practitioner authority). •  Life takes three to five times longer than it takes when doing this work in this way. Student field research on real community and agency issues and problems can be seductive to students in that field of practice. It is commonsensical and true that the real seduces. •  Teaching this course is like facilitating a youth group. Students are youth (even when they are students) and faculty can teach as a youth worker, modeling youth work, teaching, and youthworker-as-researcher. It is commonsensical and practice wisdom and good practice. •  Field research for a municipal agency can be win-win-win-win-win. Most like it when everyone wins, but some do not. Anti-intellectualism, and antiuniversity, and anti–youth work feelings and comments continue to be made, especially when research findings were used for P&R policy, program, worker, and recreation center assessment, and training. Sometimes, some in the real world punch back! Most, however, took their win and wanted to play together again. From article 4 •  Shift from opinion giving to informed idea. Practice wisdom directs that hands-on youth work with young people in a frame of healthy youth development always has a moral good joined to the technical right knowledge and skill. The moral interpretive is to be open, direct, clear, transparent, just, equitable, inclusive, and safe. Pedagogically informed, hands-on direct practice with youth moves from the less to the more complex and from the new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

132

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

easy to the more difficult. Opinions are easier to state for most (practice wisdom) than are informed ideas shaped by knowledge analysis, reflection, discussion, and expression. Moving from opinion to informed idea is to parallel individual developmental processes with a group of youth and is wise, if not best, practice. •  Focus on giving advice, and work to ensure that advice gets used. Advice is (not) solicited, (not) responded to, and is (not) used.11 This is the advice structure.12 Advice might not be used for a variety of reasons, including because it is “faulty, poor, wrong” or the decision maker simply has other ideas and prefers those. On the individual level, it is aphoristic that offering (un)solicited advice has embedded in it the hope of use; youth, especially youth on advisory groups, like all the rest of us, want their ideas to be used, to count, and to make a difference. Collectively, as an advisory group, they want the same (commonsense knowledge). The continued involvement of some of them is contingent on whether they believe that they have been heard and what they said mattered, that is, had value and consequence. This is what keeps them involved to enhance their citizen work.13 In every way (except for quantitative data), this is a promising practice. •  Authentic youth advisory structures meet a moral test. Direct youth work is real work—when it is true and consequential for youth and worker—when the space is safe, inclusive, just, and the like. It is authentic when it is done in good faith, with every effort made to ensure it is meaningful and consequential for youth, worker, and others and is done ethically. There is a moral test in all youth work, here too, and that is common knowledge and practice wisdom. How this is done is the nuts-and-bolts knowledge of youth work expertise. •  Young people deserve a place at the table in addition to doing the work. To solicit peer opinions and ideas, to research, analyze, and reflect, to formulate one’s opinions and construct informed ideas is work and is a practice, and to do so as a group member is citizen work.14 Citizen (public) work on a formal advisory group should earn the group or its representatives a place at the table new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

133

when meaningful and consequential issues are discussed and decided. This is a moral test joined to a political test, with both joined to a best moral practice. From article 5 •  Partnerships tend to develop a culture of their own that occasionally clashes with the cultures in each partner agency. This is more problematic if issues affect public safety. The higher the issue is on a moral panic scale, the more complex the partnership becomes, requiring significant work from partner agencies, often with conflicting missions. This is commonsense knowledge and practice wisdom, with consequences in the shorter to longer term: this can be positive, in part because it is new, fresh, and innovative, say, and for that may be negative because these may not be what some want their agency or series or styles to be. It is important to remember this obvious point and work to keep the definition of the situation usable for positive change in how the partnership’s participating agencies and the partnership itself work to lead to communitybased healthy youth development through better, more responsive, more present and accessible, higher-quality, effective services, programs, and youth work. •  We learned that in order for any work to begin, partnerships have to be recognized as spaces of negotiation. If individual agents from the partner organizations do not have the authority, are not willing, are not skilled, or do not see the value of negotiating, joint work is difficult. Organization change in our view is organization changing and ongoing. The same is true for negotiation, which for us is (ongoing) negotiating, whether dialogical, political, or other mode and style. This is a priori so in our frame, and is an unsubstantiated best practice, making it a principle of good practice that edges close to an emerging practice. To management consultants and gurus, this is a best practice.15 The idea of space in this context of youth work is used well by VeLure Roholt and Baizerman in their work on youth engagement and civic youth work.16 •  Partnerships create new meanings in the collective work and can provide resources when work is not going so well within one’s own organinew directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

134

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

zation. It is true by definition that a partnership as a new space is likely a new meaning world and also potentially a world of different resources. It can be a place of respite and sustenance, and it could be less a space or a place than a way of being or working differently: this can rejuvenate. This is practice wisdom, mother’s wit, and several more forms of normative knowledge about “how the world really works.” This is less a principle or a practice than a truism. •  Partnerships created between individuals at lower positional levels in organizations require synaptic connections with leaders who can create and keep open space for the partnership to flourish and be sustained. •  Partnerships require senior management level buy-in, legitimacy, and active support to help ensure their shorter- to longerterm viability and utility for the joint work on behalf of youth and for what is gained by each participatory organization. This is practice wisdom and likely a promising to best practice in public administration and human services management, as well as in business. •  Partnerships have a life cycle. It takes a lot of time and effort to create and work at sustaining them. Developing and maintaining trust, assessing the space within which you do and could work, negotiating priorities, and committing and agreeing on resources require skilled negotiation. Things begin and end and over time may show a literal or metaphoric life cycle. Reading a partnership in this poetic frame can encourage active attentiveness to life phases and developmental stages, reminding parties that the new, organized relationship of partnership, like other life forms, needs different attention, sustenance, and action at different times. It is practice wisdom that parties must attend continuously and work at the sustentation of their common space regularly, differently at times, and endlessly. From article 6 •  Systems transformation requires synergy among those working on the grassroots and grass-tops levels. It is aphoristic, practice wisdom, and likely an as-yet-unproven promising practice that ongoing new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

135

organizational changing requires alliances and coalitions and other power arrangements, between and among organizational change interests inside, outside, and between these groupings. This is likely increasingly true the more formal, large, and complex the organization, possibly too the older it is, and even more likely the more its work is decentralized into community-based offices and services. These later notions can be framed propositionally, and we suspect, will prove to be promising practices. •  Do not discount the value of seasoned youth workers—regardless of their professional credentials—who are steeped in the everyday reality of the target population. “Old-timers” embody organizational history and often its practices, and with enough distance, they can be necessary and helpful informants about the social structure, practices, and cultural meanings of the organization. As survivors of the place, they are well placed to tell stories about it, including about the politics—the ways that decisions are made, power and authority and its (mis)uses, and the like. This may be true also for these workers’ grasp of “the street”—where programs and services touch the road. At best, they know how those in the agency are trying to reach their everyday lives and the meanings they give to these ways of living.17 Using and working with these people is good research, good politics, and surely practice wisdom. It is wise practice that likely could rise to the level of principle or even to emerging practice. •  Hang out with prospective grantees in order to learn, assess their openness to observation, and collect other relevant data about the organization—its ethos, practices, and practice. It is best practice to know as much as necessary and more about a potential grantee. Words sent by them about themselves are insufficient. Needed is the smell and feel of the place—your take on it, what pulls you out of your chair, or hits you between your eyes. Such data are best collected through field observation, one form of which is hanging out. This is surely a best practice too, however difficult to substantiate. •  Include youth (and adults) in the review and due diligence process who have lived experience in the neighborhoods or programs you seek to new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

136

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

fund. Youth-oriented service programs should include young people in providing and evaluating the work. Youth program funders should also include young people in setting funding priorities and selecting what programs to fund, and in evaluating the funded work. Especially for community-based work, having young informants is smart—a principle, an emerging practice, and a moral practice. •  Seek to identify individuals and teams whose interest in the work is more vocational than fiscal. It is not about the money! Those who are called to the work are likely to have a different commitment to it than those who seem to be there primarily for the check. This is practice wisdom. It may be that these are the workers who convince the funder; at minimum, seek them out and listen to them. While they may not be disinterested informants or especially passionate, they may have somewhat purer motives and may more likely speak truth to power. This is a wobbly generalization, but practice wisdom suggests trying this. •  Having the courage to think creatively, engage untraditional partners, and take risks are key ingredients for system transformation. This is well-known aphoristic knowledge, and true for all practical purposes. System transformation or, as we prefer, transforming, is helped at different times by the traditional and at other times by the unique, possibly the exotic, and surely by outlier ideas and practices. It helps to get stuff unstuck and to move in an unanticipated direction. This one is hard to prove and worth considering on practice authority.

Extracting the potentially useful: Reading for borrowing and adapting research and practice for use? It is not self-evident how to read research and use it in one’s own work. There are guides to this and commonsense and practice wisdom too, but the process and the practice are not simple, and none of these gets fully at the complexities or the practical. Here we sketch some of both as tentative guides to the process and the new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

137

practice. Our position is a radical, nonpositivist one; it is a view far beyond the margins and one that is useful. Use is a basic word. It is found in American usage as user, useful, or useless. A study can also be usable and may have for a particular decision or other use, usability, useableness, and usably. Presumably these conditions can be assessed for a study’s utility. Or this usage is a reification—an abstraction treated as a concrete particular, which it is not. Playing with utility, the core term is utile, and from this root come utilizable, utilize(r), and utilization. All of these words imply that the study (or its findings) has something to offer and can be helpful and practical (and not theoretical). These imply that the study can be applied and is relevant. All of these are statuses of the study or of the person who will take the study and use it. Or better, they will read the study, find or make sense of it in a practical context of relevance, and transform the study (its findings and data) into advice—policy ideas or directions or suggestions or recommendations for programmatic or other action. Much of this on use is presented as if it were self-evident, as if the metaphor, “What do the data say?” can be extended to include both “what the data suggest or recommend” and “how this advice should or must be put into action” to bring about programmatic and social betterment. It is as if this process of moving from data to change in the material world is more than self-evident; it does itself. That is, there is no sentient agent present who is doing this work. Rather, this transformative work must be carried out by an actor; it is an expertise.

The process of use We think it is self-evident that using research, evaluation, or a program narrative is an intentional process of transforming for use elements or aspects or ideas or conceptions or approaches or methods and then using these for program improvement, for example. We think of this process in this way. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

138

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Begin with an actor who does or does not have a specific issue at hand or problem at hand he must respond to. Think of this actor as socially, organizationally, or programmatically embedded, and of these as giving context to the problem or issue requiring some engagement (i.e., prevention or solution). If the actor has a specific issue at hand, then he may choose to read the study in a use situation—a phenomenological situation and stance in which his reading of the study is framed by his need, want, or purpose at hand. This is in contrast to another actor who is not in a use situation and is reading for other purposes: employment, general learning, or looking at a colleague’s work, for example. These are two different and obvious reading stances. It is here that use begins: with a purpose in hand. The actor with a purpose in hand becomes a reader with a purpose: to find something to help him think about, understand, or do something about the issue. It is this (and these) that give form to his work and other actions and in a phenomenological sense structure his consciousness: what he looks for to read, how he reads, what sense he makes of what he is reading, and how he moves from a printed page or computer screen to action in the material or virtual world. In practical terms, the actor with a purpose in hand has a mental set—a frame within which he approaches the text or study in order to use it. The problem or issue can work to set a relevance frame for the reader who is searching for help for his problem or issue. This frame may be relatively open, closed, or narrow in relation to the problem or issue to be engaged. That is, the reader can more or less openly scan the evaluation report for insight or fact that he can read as advice for dealing with his problem or issue. This can be done with self-awareness or not, as a more or less conscious process within a frame of more or less intentionality. All of this is real, is manipulatable, and is teachable. Where in a research report or other text do readers look for actionable advice? Normatively, they are directed to the sections called “findings,” “conclusions,” and “recommendations” if they are reading research. By convention, this is where the new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

139

researcher-writer puts what she thinks are the study findings along with her conclusions and recommendations. But this is a narrow search. The reader looking for inspiration, understanding, advice, and data could find these anywhere in the geography and topography of the study and report. The reader looking for where the researcher-writer puts her advice goes to those sections. The reader who is the one with a concrete, particular, specific, and unique problem can choose to scan the whole report so as to stimulate his expertise and choose not to be bound by the researcher-writer. It is a type of expertise to be inspired, stimulated, brought to new awareness by what one reads; it is an aesthetic, phenomenological process, a creative act. This act is typically written about in the evaluation literature in flat prose, as if the reader only has to go to the correct section of the evaluation report, take or excavate the findings, or then simply and without complications apply them, that is, put these into practice (i.e., into the world), and then “things will get better.” We all know that this process does not work in that way, even abstractly. Ceteris paribus means “all things being equal.” Are they ever? The reader of a research report is a hermeneutic worker, a meaning giver and hence a transformer who takes what he sees in the report and, by giving it meaning for possible use, brings it new and different relevance in meaning and purpose and brings it to a place of possible use. That space is at first imaginative, a mental geography, a place of “What if?” and “Could it?” and “If I tried?” This is a space for rehearsal, for mentally trying out, for imagining use and utility, and for testing fit. This making-sense work by the reader-practitioner who wants to make things better is difficult because he must choose relevance frames within which to interpret, make sense of, transform, and give meaning to what he reads. Reader-practitioners have different stores and stocks of relevant knowledge at hand: theories, work experiences, similar work situations and moments, and the like. These can be drawn to make sense and assess the potential of the research report for their problem or issue. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

140

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Also implicated in this use situation is the aesthetic and literal form of the material, that is, the research report, with its words and numbers. Different reader-practitioners read, interpret, and transform some types of text more easily than others. Page layout matters, as does writing style, even paragraphing, and surely tables and charts. There are guides in the United States for preparing a research report, and these are sensitive to what makes it easier for readers to comprehend. The best focus on the usability of the report, while here our attention is on the reader-practitioner reading for (non)purposive use: assessing the text versus selfreflective reading and transforming for use. Surely both are necessary.

Action hypothesis So far, all of this work is mental; it is the worker-practitioners reading, thinking about and thinking how to more or less consciously and more or less intentionally. It is their “thinking how to” that brings us closer to the world. The bridge to there from the reader-practitioner’s mind is an action hypothesis—a hunch or more formal statement that some content from the evaluation report might be useful, helpful, or suggestive of what he could or should do because it could make a difference to his problem. The reader-practitioner can frame the action hypothesis in a logic model or plan. From these, he must imagine and then figure out how to transform it into action by deciding who must do what to whom and how (and why) in order to make it likely that the problem can be engaged effectively, and then to evaluate this—first with a process evaluation and then with an outcome evaluation, for example. This brief description of a Weberian ideal type of process fits within any model of research, evaluation, and program narrative use we know because none of those focus on the existential, phenomenological, cognitive, and hermeneutical processes of use. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

141

Change agent roles In this and the following section on language, we offer nonpropositional knowledge and learning from our six years of work at Saint Paul Parks and Recreation. These are presented to stimulate reflection on the practice of changing organizations to foster healthy youth development and as an invitation to study and work about ways of thinking, doing, and talking. The voluminous literature on social and organization change, more than 1 million articles, presents multiple change models using a variety of terms to name the change agent, both insider, outsider, and partnerships between both. Here we clarify roles they play in the six-year effort to enhance the amount, kind, and quality of community-based youth services and youth work at P&R: •  Explicator. Included here is clarifier, that is, making visible in phenomenological and other ways and suggesting analyses and connections between practices, realities, and ideas. •  Translator. Included here is a multicultural stance to name, interpret, and suggest meanings across organizations, cultures, ideas, and practices, crossing language worlds and life ways. •  Instigator. Included here is gentle to stronger provocation to encourage examination, analysis, dialogue, and other practices using the role of marginal and outsider. •  Connoisseur. Included here is legitimizing value, making distinctions, and arguing for the best-quality work. •  Curator. Included here is encouraging and facilitating the valuing of the ordinary, the exotic, the different, and the invisible so as to understand these.18

Useful constructs and concepts for self and group reflection Over the years, each of us in reflection on our work and together in different combinations has developed a vocabulary of ideas and terms that prove useful: new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

142

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Discursive spaces. Places to talk and spaces within which to explore, analyze, plan, and organize are crucial when these are not elements or practices or structures within an organization. Empathic gaze. A way of looking and seeing in which those who seem to be “idiots” or bad can be given the benefit of the doubt; a political or moral way of perceiving and sense making. Imaginary landscapes. Invitation to imagine how things could be different is crucial and can be done within or outside normative and newly formed discursive spaces. Imagining ideals, the possibilities, and the likely is more than thinking, talking about this, and acting on it; it can be transformative for the individual, small group, and organization when the landscapes become new meanings and these are discussed. Organizational change is also change in what is meaningful and valued. Incompletability/incomplete. Incapable of being completed, as in organizations change—hence, organization changing. Models of organization. It is crucial for individuals who want to or do change their agency to make explicit their individual and collective models of organizational structure, practices, and processes and to subject these to discussion, analysis, and planning. Organizational metaphors are useful for this.19 Multicultural. Here, a worker who either is or gets what it is to be from worlds different from his or her own: neighborhoods, cultures, families, and the rest. The best youth work knows that multiple youth and adult worlds are polylingual and use all types of knowing to make worlds work for young people. Mystery. Contrasting mystery to problem, the former is not amenable solely to rational, analytical understanding. Mystery, consciously created and used, can give partial legitimacy to how the work of changing an agency is perceived and understood. And at times, it is a fine and useful way to name what is (or is not) going on in the organization or to categorize others’ decisions. Negotiation. This is the belief that most of life with others can be negotiated and that negotiating is a core skill in organizational new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

143

work and youth work. It works well as a world stance, an orientation to the ongoing work of making youth agencies better at meeting youth where they are. Organization set. This scholarly idea reminds us that each organization and each unit within is usually part of a larger, organizationally interactive whole. Indeed it may be in other agencies and groups. Almost always there are others on the horizon. Polylingual. The ability to know and possibly to speak several languages, such as one’s agency, the “street,” one’s profession, and the languages of other agencies and other professions and occupations. It includes the ways youth talk: idiomatically with friends, parent talk, school talk, and the rest. The best youth workers are polylingual, and it is this in part that facilitates their gaining entry to multiple worlds (agency, city management, school, nonprofit, street, basketball court, etc.), ideally in the service of young people. Portraiture. Everything is a picture, and it itself can be a narrative— a story about what is, what could be, and even how what came to be. It is a way of summarizing and generalizing that can facilitate telling. Street savvy. This reminds us that the “street” can be anywhere and anyplace: an office, a recreation center, an agency. Knowing what is going on, knowing one’s way around, and knowing how to know and who to know, and what and how to use all of this is “savvy.” Sufficient time. Working to change a large, highly formalized bureaucracy, especially a public agency, takes lots of time (except when there are budget cuts and similar crises)—time for individuals to become group members, trust one another, trust outsiders (facilitators, consultants, technical advisors), and create the possibility of outsiders to be marginals, and thus arguably more effective with a group working at organizational revitalization or change. The obvious practical point is that most outsiders will not hang around long, whether new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

144

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

for pay or not, and most organizations do not want them around that long because they become “almost workers,” almost “part of the family/organization.” Time is a crucial basic element in every promising practice, and must be understood, analyzed, and used as such. Words. In this last section are words, which we found useful in imagining, analyzing, reflecting, and doing the ongoing work of changing a municipal recreation agency from unintentional to intentional work doing community-based, healthy youth development.

Conclusion This article is read best in sequence, last, because it uses the earlier articles to tease out from lessons learned those that met the test for emerging, promising, or best practices: none fully meets the test for emerging practice. This does not mean that these lessons are without merit or utility in everyday practice. It could mean that there are not enough of the correct types of data to pass a particular test; it may also mean that the test itself is inappropriate for this type of practice experience and data and that other more appropriate tests should be used or developed. There are methodological and deeper epistemological issues here, and these are not for us here. These deeper and valid issues aside, we are left with work that is increasingly effective. Saint Paul Parks and Recreation at the highest managerial level is now publicly committed to quality youth work in all its centers and by its staff. As we know, that sentence, which is true, is deceptively simple and its subject the locus of extensive thought and debate in a highly contested space: quality youth work. All of these topics are practical and consequential in everyday practice to enhance healthy development in community-based organizations, public and nonprofit. All address us as practitioners and scholars, as citizens, parents, and youth. How we respond will define who we are. new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd



FROM LESSONS LEARNED TO EMERGING PRACTICES

145

Notes   1.  Learning For Action. (2011). Defining levels of evidence: Evidence-based practices, promising practices, and emerging practices. Retrieved from http:// www.napavintners.com/account/anv_grants/2012_Level_of_Evidence_ Matrix.pdf; Wikipedia. (2013). Best practice. Retrieved from http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_practice; Compassion Capital Fund. (n.d.). Identifying and promoting promising practices. Retrieved from http://www.acf .hhs.gov/programs/ocs/resource/identifying-and-promoting-effective -practices-0   2.  Ashcroft, R. E. (2004). Current epistemological problems in evidence based medicine. Journal of Medical Ethics, 30(2), 131–135; Djulbegovic, B., Guyatt, G. H., & Ashcroft, R. E. (2009). Epistemologic inquiries in evidencebased medicine. Cancer Control, 16(2), 158–168.   3.  Emerging, promising, and best practices definitions. Retrieved from http:// chfs.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/49670601-F568–4962–974F-8B76A1D771D3/0/ Emerging_Promising_Best_Practices.pdf; Bretschneider, S., Marc-Aurele, F. J., & Wu, J. (2005). “Best practices” research: A methodological guide for the perplexed. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 15(2), 307–323; Compassion Capital Fund. (n.d.); Gambrill, E. (1999). Evidence-based practice: An alternative to authority-based practice. Families in Society, 80, 341– 350; Hinojosa, J. (2013). The evidence-based paradox. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 67(2), e18–e23; Learning for Action. (2011). Martin, M. R. (2010). Epistemology: Beginner’s guide. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; Wikipedia. (2013).   4.  Association of Maternal and Child Health Program. (n.d.). Best practice categories and criteria. Retrieved from http://www.amchp.org/programsandtopics/BestPractices/Pages/BestPracticeTerms.aspx   5.  Ashcroft, R. E. (2004). Current epistemological problems in evidence based medicine. Journal of Medical Ethics, 30(2), 131–135; Djulbegovic et al. (2009).   6.  Van Manen, M. (1977). Linking ways of knowing with ways of being practical. Curriculum Inquiry, 6(3), 205–228.   7.  VeLure Roholt, R., & Baizerman, M. L. (Eds.). (2012). Evaluation advisory groups. New Directions for Evaluation, no. 136. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass; Schein, E. H. (2004). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.   8.  VeLure Roholt & Baizerman. (2012).   9.  Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 10.  Rehman, L. A. (2002). Recognizing the significance of culture and ethnicity: Exploring hidden assumptions of homogeneity. Leisure Sciences, 24(1), 43–57. 11.  VeLure Roholt & Baizerman. (2012). 12.  VeLure Roholt & Baizerman. (2012). 13.  VeLure Roholt & Baizerman. (2012). 14.  VeLure Roholt & Baizerman. (2012). new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

146

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

15.  Compton, D. W., Baizerman, M., & VeLure Roholt, R. (2011). Managing evaluation: Responding to common problems with a 10-step process. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 25(2), 103–123. 16.  VeLure Roholt & Baizerman. (2012). 17.  Anderson, R., & Cissna, K. N. (n.d.). Martin Buber: Bearing witness to an experience. Retrieved from http://communication.usf.edu/faculty/cissna/ Anderson-Cissna.pdf 18.  O’Neill, P. (2012). The culture of curating and the curating of culture(s). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; McEvilley, T. (1992). Art & otherness: Crisis in cultural identity. New York, NY: McPherson. 19.  Morgan, G. (2006). Images of organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

michael baizerman is professor in the School of Social Work, Youth Studies, University of Minnesota. ross velure roholt is associate professor in the School of Social Work, Youth Studies, University of Minnesota. kathy korum is the deputy director for Saint Paul Parks and Recreation. sheetal rana is a recent graduate of the School of Social Work, University of Minnesota.

new directions for youth development • DOI: 10.1002/yd

Index Action hypothesis, 140 American Youth Commission, 121 Baizerman, M., 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 13, 25, 59, 71, 77, 97, 121, 133, 146 Baumgardner, B., 5, 27, 57 Blended youth advisory structure model: description of, 87–88; youth voice in a, 88 CANVAS study: on CYLC (youth leadership council) support of program structure, 90–94; participatory action research methodology used in, 84 Ceteris paribus (“all things being equal”), 139 Change leaders: dealing with political aspects of change, 62–63; examining the process of using research & evaluation for change by, 137–140; organizational change as beginning with, 128–129; organizational support of, 53–54, 129; roles taken by, 141. See also Leadership; Youth agency change; Youth workers Coleman, C. B., 10 Community: encourage youth workers to learn from the local, 127; training youth workers to interact with and organize, 34–36, 43–45 Community Education program, 107 Community organizing: organizing and social action phase of learning, 43–45; training youth workers in skills for, 34–36 Confidence continuum, 126fig Connoisseur role, 141 Createch mobile computer labs, 104, 111 Curator role, 141 CYLC (youth leadership council), 90–94



David P. Weikart Center, 81 Dewey, J., 130 Discursive spaces, 142 East Side Learning Collaborative (ESLC), 36 Empathic gaze, 142 Explicator role, 141 Facilitators: to address concerns about youth agency change, 129–130; building partnership between upper-level staff and, 130; reflective practitioner training to become, 33–34 Faculty (Youth Studies Program): P&R transformation research role of, 70–71; public agency research & evaluation role of, 70; technical and practical assistance provided to students by, 71. See also Students (Youth Studies Program) Foundations: examining how Youthprise supports agency change, 115–119; lessons learned about agency change support by, 119–120, 134–136 Germanic, O., 5, 27, 57 Graff, R., 5, 27, 57 Grantees. See Foundations Group reflection constructs, 141–144 Hahm, M., 12 Imaginary landscapes, 142 Incompletability/incomplete construct, 142 Instigator role, 141 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLA), 103–104 Johnson, S., 2, 6, 59, 77

147

148

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Knowledge development: confidence continuum on forms of practice knowing and, 126fig; examining the process of practice in use and, 137–140; extracting potentially useful research & evaluation for, 136–137; ideal-type degree of evidence continuum of, 124fig; types of useful, 125–126. See also Lessons learned Korum, K., 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 13, 26, 27, 57, 101, 114, 121, 146 Leadership: building partnership between facilitators and, 130; how partnerships help build relationships between staff and, 134. See also Change leaders Lessons learned: on agency change through research & evaluation, 68–71, 130–131; from examining Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) partnerships, 110–112, 133–134; moving toward emerging practices from, 121–125; on youth agency change research, 68–71, 130–131; on youth agency structures for listening to youth, 95–97, 131–133; from youth worker development experience, 51–55, 127–130; about Youthprise’s grant making and change work, 119–120, 134–136. See also Knowledge development; Practice in use Lessons learned examples: ask to be taught, 127; including part-time workers, 126; learn local mundane ways, 127; recruit and organize based on vocational call, 126–127 Library After Dark program, 104, 105, 111 Listening to youth: creating youth advisory structure for, 79–98; lessons learned on, 95–97, 131–133 Mattessich, P. W., 105 Minnesota youth advisory groups (YAGs): aims and goals of the, 85; assessment of structures used by the, 86; lessons learned for creating and sustaining, 95–97; ongoing

study on youth advisory structure of, 83–84, 89–95; recruitment and membership of these, 85–86 Minnesota youth advisory groups (YAGs) study: description of ongoing, 83–84; process and practice of the, 89–90 Mission: typical organization assessment questions on, 16; youth organization scenario on defining, 15–18 Models of organization, 142 Monsey, B. R., 105 Mueller, M., 2, 5, 6, 27, 57, 79, 100 Multicultural construct, 142 Murray-Close, M., 105 Mystery construct, 142 Negotiation: construct of, 142–143; partnerships as spaces of, 110–111, 133 “Opportunity” youth, 116 Organization set, 143 Organizational change. See Youth agency change Organizations. See Youth agencies Part-time youth workers, 126 Partnerships: culture developed during course of, 110, 133; examining Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R), 101–110; lessons learned from, 110–122, 133–134; life cycle of, 134; as spaces of negotiation, 110–111, 133 Peterson, K. K., 5, 27, 57 Polylingual construct, 143 Pope, M., 3, 7, 115, 120 Portraiture construct, 143 Practice in use: action hypothesis for bridging research and, 140; confidence continuum on forms of knowing and, 126fig; examining the process of developing, 137–140; extracting potentially useful research & evaluation for, 136–137; ideal-type degree of evidence continuum for, 124fig; types of useful knowledge development for, 125–126. See also Lessons learned; Reflective practitioners

Practitioner authority test, 128 Professional development. See Youth worker development Race/ethnic differences, 128 Rana, S., 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 26, 27, 57, 121, 146 Randall, S., 5, 27, 57 Read Brave initiative, 111 Reflective practitioners: action hypothesis used by, 140; change agent roles taken by, 141; constructs and concepts useful for the, 141–144; creating a space for learning and change, 31–33; training to facilitate becoming a, 33–34. See also Practice in use Rence, E., 2, 6, 59, 71–73, 77 Research & evaluation: action hypothesis for bridging practice in use and, 140; conclusions and recommendations on, 73–74; examining the process of using for change, 137–140; first-person perspective by Emily Rence on, 71–73; lessons learned on agency change, 68–71, 130–131; limited funds of public agencies for, 60–61; process and phases of, 61–68; sample of student studies on, 74–77; suggestions for extracting potentially useful, 136–137; Youth Studies program required course on, 60 Saint Paul (Minnesota), 9 Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R): CYLC (youth leadership council) implemented at, 90–94; development of new partnership models by, 102–113; examining the youth programs of the, 1, 2, 5–6, 7–8; improving youth outcomes commitment by, 10; need and efforts to transform services of, 9–10, 11–12; origins and description of, 9, 11; “secret shopper” visits and field studies on, 101–102; study on youth advisory structure used by, 89–95; Youth Studies’ research and evaluation on transforming, 60–77, 130–131;

INDEX

149

Youthprise’s evaluation of Youth in Transition program of, 115–116, 117–119 Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) partnerships: examining process of developing new, 102; factors contributing to limited or sporadic success of, 107–110; lessons learned from examining, 110–112, 133– 134; overview of existing successful, 103–106; of Saint Paul Police Department (SPPD) for youth violence reduction, 108–109, 110, 111; success factors of existing, 107; Youth Studies Program’s longtime relationship with P&R, 105–106 Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) staff training: accomplishments and outcomes of, 45–51; examining Youth Studies’ role in, 10, 27–28; lessons learned from experience of, 51–55, 127–130; phases of the professional development groups during the, 38–45; professional development contexts of, 28–30; training philosophy and ethos of the, 30–37 Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) training philosophy: being a reflective practitioner, 33–34; building and sustaining meaningful relationships with youth, 30–31; cocreating a space for learning and change, 31–33; community organizing, 34–36; training philosophy and ethos of P&R’s, 30–37 Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) transformation: Youth Studies’ collaboration on P&R staff training for, 10, 27–56; Youth Studies’ research & evaluation studies on, 60–77 Saint Paul Parks and Recreation youth advisory structure: process of studies conducted on the, 91–94; short case study of, 89–91; study on evaluation done with young people, 94–95 Saint Paul Police Department (SPPD), 108–109, 110

150

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

Saint Paul Public Library (SPPL): improving youth outcomes commitment by, 10; Library After Dark program supported by, 104, 105, 111; partnership between P&R and, 103, 104, 105 Saint Paul Public School District (SPPS), 107, 111 Science Museum of Minnesota, 104 Self-reflection constructs, 141–144 Simmons, T., 5, 27, 57 Staff members. See Youth workers Stokes, G., 5, 27, 57 Street savvy construct, 143 Students (Youth Studies Program): P&R transformation research findings on, 69; research & evaluation course required for Youth Studies program, 60; sample research & evaluation studies by, 74–77; “secret shopper” visits and field studies on P&R by, 101–102. See also Faculty (Youth Studies Program) Substantive youth advisory structure model, 87–88 Sufficient time construct, 143–144 Symbolic youth advisory structure model: description of, 86–87; youth voice in a, 88 “Take Home Chef” program, 41–42 Translator role, 141 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), 81, 82 University of Minnesota: examining P&R’s collaboration with, 10; faculty of, 70–71; research & evaluation on youth organization change conducted at, 60–77, 130–131. See also Youth Studies, School of Social Work (University of Minnesota) VeLure Roholt, R., 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 13, 25, 79, 97, 100, 121, 133, 146 Vocational calls, 126–127 Weah, W., 3, 7, 115, 120 Words as construct, 144 Xiong, W., 5, 27, 57

Youth: building and sustaining meaningful relationships with, 30–31; encouraging youth workers to learn local mundane ways of, 127; P&R partnership with SPPD for reducing violence among, 108–109; youth advisory structure for listening to, 79–98, 131–133; Youthprise’s emphasis on “opportunity,” 116 Youth advisory groups: brief description of, 84–86; ongoing review of structures of, 80–98; services of, 79–80 Youth advisory structure (YAS): CYLC (youth leadership council) used to promote and plan the, 90–94; description of review process of, 80–81; examined as a response and contributor, 81–83; models of, 86–88; modes of expression used in, 89; moral test for, 132; moving toward the use of expressed ideas in, 88; studies conducted on, 83–84, 89–95; youth preparation and training services included in, 88–89; youth voice as sine qua non of a, 88 Youth advisory structure (YAS) models: blended, 87–88; substantive model of, 87–88; symbolic, 86–87, 88 Youth advisory structure (YAS) studies: for CANVAS program, 84, 90–94; lessons learning for creating and sustaining YAGs, 95–97; ongoing on Minnesota youth advisory groups (YAGs), 83–84, 85–86; for Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R), 89–95; for Youthprise Foundation, 3, 83 Youth agencies: cage function of, 14; community organizing work by, 34–36, 43–45; current philosophy on best practices for, 59; examining the development and transformation of, 1–3; four scenarios on, 15–24; host function of, 13–14; limited public funds for research by public agency, 60–61; race/ethnic differences of staff of, 128; traditionally ignored in scholarship, 14; training staff

to create space for learning and change, 31–33; youth worker training impact on development of, 47–49 Youth agency change: as beginning at the top, 128–129; creating a space for learning and, 31–33; using effective facilitators to address concerns about, 129–130; empirical research & evaluation to help with, 60–77, 130–131; examining P&R’s staff training for, 10, 27–56; examining the process of using research & evaluation for, 137–140; lessons learned on how local foundations can support, 119–120, 134–136; organizational support of change leaders for, 53–54, 129; phases of the professional development groups for, 38–45; training philosophy and ethos for driving, 30–37; Youth Studies’ research studies on P&R’s, 60–77; youth worker development to promote, 51–55, 127–130; Youthprise’s support of, 115–120, 134–136. See also Change leaders Youth agency change research: data analysis during the, 64–65; final thoughts on the process of, 66–68; first-person perspective by Emily Rence on, 71–73; lessons learned from the, 68–71, 130–131; political aspects of the, 62–63; preparing for the study, 63–64; prestudy phase of, 61–62; sample of student studies on, 74–77; writing up findings, 65–66 Youth agency consulting scenario, 20–22 Youth development literature: benefits of asking questions on organizations in, 14–15; scenario approach to, 15–24; traditional focus of, 13 Youth development scholarship: organizations as traditionally taken for granted in, 14; questions on organization as primary actor explored in, 14–15; research agenda and questions used for, 23–24; research agenda for

INDEX

151

scenario, 23–24; scenarios used for, 15–23; strong focus on theory development by, 13 Youth Job Corps (YJC), 104 Youth Program Quality Assessment tool, 81 Youth services scenario, 22–23 Youth Studies Program (University of Minnesota): improving youth outcomes commitment by, 10; longtime partnership between P&R and, 105–106; P&R “secret shopper” visits and field studies on P&R by students of the, 101–102; P&R youth worker development collaboration by, 10, 27–56; partnership between Youth in Transition program (P&R) and, 119; research on transforming Saint Paul Parks and Recreation (P&R) by, 60–77 Youth Studies, School of Social Work (University of Minnesota): weekly training on youth projects by, 1. See also University of Minnesota Youth Studies/P&R staff training collaboration: examining the process and outcomes of, 10, 27–28; lessons learned from the, 51–55, 127–130; outcomes of the, 45–51; phases of the professional development groups, 38–45; philosophy and ethos of the, 30–37; professional development context of the, 28–30 Youth in Transition program (P&R): description of, 115–116; identifying the strengths of the, 118–119; “opportunity” youth focus of the, 116; partnership between Youth Studies and, 119; Youthprise’s participatory approach to evaluating, 117–118 Youth voice, 88 Youth worker development: accomplishments and outcomes of, 45–49; challenges and barriers to, 49–51; examining Youth Studies’ role in P&R’s, 10, 27–28; lessons learned from experience of, 51–55, 127–130; phases of the professional development groups

152

TRANSFORMING YOUTH-SERVING ORGANIZATIONS

during the, 38–45; professional development contexts of, 28–30; training philosophy and ethos of P&R’s, 30–37. See also Youth workers Youth worker development phases: diagnostic, 38–40; enhancing youth program skills, 41–43; organizing and social action, 43–45 Youth worker training philosophy/ ethos: being a reflective practitioner, 33–34; building and sustaining meaningful relationships with youth, 30–31; cocreating a space for learning and change, 31–33; community organizing, 34–36; professional development structure design, 36–37 Youth workers: group development phases of, 38–45; how partnerships help build relationships of, 134; learning from local community members, 127; learning lessons

from part-time, 126; learning local mundane ways, 127; P&R transformation research findings on, 69; philosophy and ethos of training, 30–34; race/ethnic differences of, 128; recruiting and organizing based on vocational calls of, 126–127; value of “oldtimers” or seasoned, 135. See also Change leaders; Youth worker development Youthprise (foundation): emphasis on reaching “opportunity youth,” 116; examining the work being done at, 3; exploratory study of youth advisory structure of, 83; funding approach taken by, 115; funding and evaluating P&R’s Youth in Transition program, 115–116, 117–119; lessons learned about grant making/systems change work by, 119–120, 134–136; origins and focus of, 116