Social Pedagogy and Working with Children and Young People

Working with Young People offers a new outlook on social, cultural, and educational work with young people. It utlizes the perspective of social pedagogy--a theoretical and practical perspective that has been developing in continental Europe over the last 150 years--in placing young people at the center of socio-educational work and giving value to their decisions and actions. The text supports youths' process of personal construction within the framework of the community in which they live. The book is organized into three large blocks of chapters. The introduction aims to prepare readers for the social pedagogy approach to work with young people. It briefly outlines its current situation in the world and, relate it to the main professions in which it is embodied in different socio-cultural contexts: social pedagogy, social education, and social work. The first block presents the framework and socio-pedagogical, theoretical, and practical parameters in which work with young people takes place in Europe and Latin America. The second block of chapters deals with youth policies and the training and professionalization of educators and those who work with young people. The last block focuses on some socio-educational practices with young people that include youth justice, social inclusion process, youth participation in digital life or transition to adult life. The book is based on a wide perspective of young people from cultural diversity. "It is common to refer to the dynamism and vitality of young people as a source of change, creation, and innovation, but they are often also considered a problem that we do not know how to respond to. Young people can make adults feel uncomfortable because they are neither children who can be told what to do nor adults to be treated as equals. From the perspective of adults, their status is socially and culturally ambiguous"-- Provided by publisher