Abstract
In this chapter I reconsider the role of educators (informal youth workers and formal teachers). I claim this role has shifted from objective provider of cognitive knowledge forms to that of facilitator of the conditions in which knowledge is co-constructed for the production of the self-narrative. A role that must enable the students’ narratives to remain dynamic and unwritten rather than foreclosing them with fixed outcomes. I subsequently explore the roles of peers, family and educators as relational referents within these processes and argue that knowledge and its use in terms of sustaining the students’ self-narratives had to also be co-constructed within the context of these referents in order to make it meaningful beyond the school gates. Thus extending my role into the family contexts.
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Notes
- 1.
I use the word ‘offering’ youth work and hence this alternative programme was based on students’ voluntary participation.
- 2.
This process not suggesting a return to the students’ origins and starting all over again because they could never return to their origins. Neither could the past be exactly replicated to act as a current starting point. Relationships, perceptions and language being in flux, alter with every opportunity taken to create a new beginning. Rather, I use the term genesis in the context of relationships that are significant to the production of each student’s self-narrative and current perception of the self within which there is common ground with their language.
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Edwards, S. (2018). Beyond the School Gates: Re-thinking the Role of Teachers and Informal Educators. In: Re-Engaging Young People with Education . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98201-4_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98201-4_8
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