Informal education as freedom – re-considering youth and community work through a capabilities approach

Howard, F ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8493-5721, Louise Livingstone, S and Talbot, S, 2020. Informal education as freedom – re-considering youth and community work through a capabilities approach. Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory, 11 (3). ISSN 1359-1983

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Abstract

This article seeks to take a new approach to valuing youth and community work in an attempt to cut across deficit modelling. We engage with Sen and Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993) as a way of acknowledging an assets-based position on young people and a human development approach to community development. Firstly we describe a student-led research project undertaken across three settings within a new youth and community provision based in the north-west of England. We explore the utility of the Capabilities Approach, and in particular the concept of ‘functionings’ as a theory for change that emphasises informal education, critical pedagogy and social justice. We argue that youth and community work offers an expansion of capabilities which affords the education of a particular set of values, and enables a variety of beneficial functionings. Therefore, the Capabilities Approach can serve as a framework for the future evaluation of this work.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory
Creators:	Howard, F., Louise Livingstone, S. and Talbot, S.
Publisher:	Institute of Education, Community and Society, University of Edinburgh
Date:	17 December 2020
Volume:	11
Number:	3
ISSN:	1359-1983
Identifiers:	Number Type 1396489 Other
Rights:	This is an Open Access journal. All material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence, unless otherwise stated. Please read our Open Access, Copyright and Permissions policies for more information.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	16 Apr 2021 14:47
Last Modified:	31 May 2021 15:04
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/42712

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