Engaging 'disengaged' Aboriginal youth: policy, practice and success in youth development programs
Creators: name: Alexiou, Helen
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2015
Subjects: Indigenous
youth work
youth development
policy
practice
aspirations

description: This thesis contributes to the limited research available within the field of Aboriginal education and policy specific to work with Indigenous youth. The statistical ‘gaps’ between Indigenous and non- Indigenous Australians in regards to engagement in education and the attainment of qualifications, as well as in involvement in part-time or full-time employment, have been well documented. It is these statistical gaps that inform current policy thinking on the nature of the ‘Aboriginal education problem’, and what needs to be fixed. However, this policy approach is dominated by aggregate statistics and generalised discourse and tends to view the ‘Aboriginal education problem’ as representative of all Indigenous youth. Youth development programs have been a popular model for addressing the ‘Aboriginal education problem’ and have enjoyed years of positive and uncritical reflection on their approach. This research explores the compatibility of this current policy approach with the actuality of the social, local and historical contexts that many of the Indigenous youth come from, and argues that it is poorly related to the reality of the lives of many youths who attend these programs. From a policy perspective understanding the value of the current policy approach is important because program success or failure, and consequently refunding, may be based on flawed indicators of success, particularly today when these indicators are driven by neoliberal processes and objectives. In practice the kinds of indicators chosen affect the delivery of youth work by confining the youth workers to unrealistic models of delivery and notions of success that easily lead to both young people and youth workers being defined as failing. This thesis draws on data collected over 18 months of anthropological fieldwork with NGOs, corporate organisations, schools, Aboriginal organisations and young Aboriginal people, by following one national government-funded youth and career development program. The evidence challenges the assumption that Indigenous youth necessarily have limited aspirations when it comes to education and employment or even a limited acceptance of the reasoning behind schooling, even in the case of youth from remote regions. I outline how the need of policy makers to demonstrate value, efficiency, effectiveness and accountability, imposes an increasingly hierarchical system in the delivery of youth work, creating a divide between managers and their staff. Consequently organisations are becoming less responsive to the voices of those who work in the organisation, as well as to the young people they aim to serve. I explore the consequences of this reshaping of the youth work environment on the youth workers themselves and on their professional and personal identity as Aboriginal. I demonstrate how the discourse of the ‘disengaged young person’ and the popular operation of youth work within a functional model reshapes a youth work environment traditionally established to critique conventional approaches. I end with an assessment of whether the youth program at the heart of this study was a success.