How can the Values and Ethics of Youth Work be Shared among Practitioners and with the Society? – A Challenge for the ‘Story Practice’ in Japan

ABSTRACT

This study attempted to answer the question of how to share the values and ethics of youth work among practitioners and with policymakers, funders, and society. Although social interest in youth support in Japan has been on rise recently due to the increase number of difficulties surrounding young people, the ‘ethics and values’ in practice and in the field can be driven by the neoliberal social and political trends present in our society. This study presents a way to resist and counter the penetration of neoliberal practical ethics and organisational management through the process of visualising, sharing and legitimising the ‘practical ethics and values’ embedded in the fields where youth work has been developed with young people. This is the research-based practice of ‘practitioners collectively telling, writing, sharing, and communicating the stories of practice’.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth work
• values
• ethics
• storytelling
• documentation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The subject of this paper is the area of what is called ‘youth support’ in Japan. It is a generic term that encompasses a wide range of activities, including social assistance, employment support, learning support etc., although it also includes activities that correspond to youth work. The Act on the Promotion of Support for the Development of Children and Young Persons (2010) and the Basic Act on Children and Young Persons (2023) were enacted as legal systems related to youth support, but they do not define youth support or youth work.

2 This system, which delegates the management and operation of 'public facilities' to a wide range of organisations, including private sectors, was introduced in 2003.

3 Storytelling by In Defence of Youth Work.

https://indefenceofyouthwork.com/tag/story-telling/ (Retrieved 25th June 2023).

4 ‘About’ page in the website of In Defence of Youth Work https://indefenceofyouthwork.com/about/ (Retrieved 25th June 2023)

5 STWS will ‘clarify for themselves and their immediate colleagues what is distinctive about their practice as youth workers and how this has value for young people. We hope too that・・・it will help them communicate these messages more effectively to policy-makers, funders and other key decision-makers’. In the top page of ‘the Story-telling in youth work’ https://story-tellinginyouthwork.com/ (Retrieved 25th June 2023).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) under grant numbers 24330222, 16H03772, and 20H01636.

Notes on contributors

Maki Hiratsuka

Maki Hiratsuka Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hosei University, M.A. (Education, University of Tokyo, 1986) She specialises in pedagogy and has researched on youth transition in late modernity, youth work in Europe, and youth support work in Japan. For more than ten years, she has led a research group consisting of practitioners and researchers; this group has developed the research-based practices introduced in this paper. As a collective result of the group, she edited ‘Youth Support work as Youth Work’, (Otsuki Publishing, 2023).

Miki Hara

Miki Hara Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, University of Shiga Prefecture. Ph.D. (Education, Tokyo Metropolitan University, 2019) She specialises in pedagogy and youth support work. She has been researching support for withdrawn young people while working as a part-time worker/volunteer worker at youth support organisations for around 15 years. She is the author of ‘Hikikomori in Overlooked Poverty Households: Rethinking Youth Support’ (Otsuki Publishing, 2022)

Kisshou Minamide

Kisshou Minamide Associate Professor, Faculty of Regional Studies, Gifu University, M.A. (Education, Tokyo Metropolitan University, 2006). He specialises in pedagogy and has conducted multifaceted research on the development of youth support work since the 2000s. In addition to his research, he has managed an organisation that connects practitioners in the field of youth support work throughout Japan (Japan Youth and youth workers Cooperation Forum). He is the co-author of ‘Youth Support Work: Past and Future’ (Kamogawa Publishing, 2016)

Fumiyuki Nakatsuka

Fumiyuki Nakatsuka Youth Worker, Certified Public Psychologist. B.A. (Social Sciences, Hosei University, 1995). He is a director of the Educational Support Centre of the NIRE (NPO). This organisation is based in Tokyo Shinagawa and was established in 2005 to support vulnerable children and youth. He has also been a project manager at the open access youth centre, ‘Shinagawa Child & Youth Free Space’, since 2016. Together with young people, and in collaboration with the local community, he helps create a prosperous society.

Sachie Oka

Sachie Oka Professor, Faculty of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyushu University, Ph.D. (Education, Hokkaido University, 2020). She specialises in adult and community education. She has explored and educational environment that develops a community from a cultural perspective. She has also researched the development of educational personnel to support the environment. She is the author of ‘Exploring the Understanding of Social Education Subject Using the ‘Irrationality’ Perspective: A Successor and a Poet, on the Two ABE Yae’, (Japanese Journal of Adult and Community Education, Volume 59, 2023)

Emi Otsu

Emi Otsu Graduate School of Education, Hokkaido University. Master’s degree (Education, Hokkaido University, 2018). She. specialises in adult and community education. She has researched how young people create autonomous spaces, focusing on lobby spaces in youth centres. She is the author of ‘Exploratory Participation in the Youth Centre: Focusing on the Lobby Space’, (Bulletin of Faculty of Education, Hokkaido University, Volume 137(2020), pp. 113–136).

Misako Yokoe

Misako Yokoe Director of South Youth Activity Centre of the Kyoto City Youth Service Association. M.A. (Applied Human Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, 2012). She started her career as a youth worker in 1992. She is experienced in supporting outdoor activities and volunteer training and has been working with local teenagers at an open-access youth centre. Her encounters with at-risk young people, including delinquents, led her to work with them to address sexual health issues. She now focuses on youth centre management, including training youth workers in the field