Quote of the Day

Vygotskian learning, increasingly applied to child and youth care practice (Stremmel, 1993), extends the notion of alert, “capable” teachers (workers) actively engaging students (youth) by emphasizing the collaborative, social nature of learning. Workers and youth enter a partnership in which the worker strives to make learning (both content and process) meaningful and relevant to the youth’s background, present needs, and future prospects, while the youth endeavours to bring relevance and applicability of the learning to his or her life through such activities as questioning, informing, linking, and making positive choices. In this way, the youth increasingly assumes responsibility for his or her own learning needs, incorporating the knowledge of others into his or her own knowledge and becoming a form of self-teacher as a participatory learner. The worker, also inherently a learner, “leads development by bridging what the child already knows and what he or she is capable of knowing with sensitive assistance” (Stremmel, 1993, p. 334) to where the learner is “... able to exhibit the new behavior or understanding with less assistance” (Au & Kawakami, 1991, p. 282).

This shift from learning being externally regulated to internally regulated occurs as a dynamic, mutual relationship that promotes the learner (youth) to become ever more self-directed in applying knowledge and self-understanding in his or her life. Thus, it is a parallel, collaborative learning process that holds ultimate value to both worker and youth. As Egan (1994) remarks, “Helping is at a minimum a two-person team effort in which helpers need to do their part and clients, theirs,” and in which the desired goal is "helping clients tap their own resources” (p. 10), in keeping with the saying, “a student repays a teacher poorly if one remains only a student."

… Defining one’s own learning needs, and one’s receptivity to gain from the helping interventions of others, is the beginning of increased self-regulation, investment, and competence in the lives of many youth. The readiness and responsiveness of workers to facilitate insightful, informed and purposive opportunities for youth to explore, select, and incorporate meaningful learning and healthy attachment in their lives furthers and helps sustain this essential process of personal development. As youth workers, we need to remain keen to possibilities for connection and learning, strategic in our interventions, and willing to use our “selves” as therapeutic agents for change and growth.

— MICHAEL FITZGERALD
Fitzgerald, M. D. (1995) On-the-spot counselling with residential youth: Opportunities for therapeutic intervention. Journal of Child and Youth Care, Vol.10 No.4, pp.9–17