Sessional Monitoring forms (Youth Work related) and Learning Logs

Sessional Monitoring forms
Oxfordshire County Council Youth Service (now renamed Youth Support Services implying that young people need support i.e. focussing on their dependence rather than their independence - the very opposite of Youth Work) introduced Sessional Monitoring Forms about 5 years ago.

These are forms which the Youth Worker in a Youth Club was supposed to complete at the end of each session outlining what had been achieved in that one session. The most obvious idiocy with these forms is that it takes a 100% reductionist view of youth work - it supposes that a series of discrete session based objectives some how sum up the value of youth work. As most youth workers will tell you the most rewarding part of youth work may not be the one-off achievement in a single session but rather the slow intangible improvement in a relationship over a number of weeks. Oxfordshire County Council appears unaware of this.

Today I notice in a job advert for a youth worker post in this County Council that a new twist has taken place with sessional monitoring forms - the youth worker is to fill them in with the young person. (One reason for this may be to undermine one strategy that youth workers were possibly resorting to to avoid the feeling of acting as a monitor - that is involving the young people in completing the forms). When it comes as an official policy I would suggest this is very awry. The adult world and the world of children are separate and different. Part of the skill of youth work is being able to remain in the (responsible?) adult world while relating with empathy to children and young people who are not yet adults. I'm surprised (well, not really) that the County Youth Service is trying to get children to fill these forms in. It is a form of self-monitoring. If I were a young person and I'd gone into a youth club to play a game of pool (for example) I'd feel pretty humiliated to be asked to fill in a form evaluating my personal and social development. Another example of the children are laboratory animals way of thinking. It would, apart from anything else, take the fun away. It would not surprise me if the County Council explained this as empowering young people - but getting children prematurely involved in the adult world (in this case of beaurocratic targets) is commonly known as child abuse.



Learning Logs
Oxfordshire County Council asks tutors in the Community Education section to fill in a 'Learning Log' for every student in their class after every session. On a personal note this is precisely why the main author of this web site stopped working for them. The 'learning log' was supposed to be a record of what the student had learned in that session. The problem is this: the council has already selected the teacher after an interview process and after examining their credentials etc; the council can come in and inspect the lesson at any time; and the student's work can be reviewed at the end of the course along with any exam or certificate outcomes. So - why 'learning logs' as well? Do these have a pedagological function? Do the course managers read them and then come back to the teacher perhaps after a few weeks with some suggestions for improving their teaching? I doubt it. No - the function of 'learning logs' is a political one. It is a largely symbolic way of attacking the autonomous and spontaneous relationship which may develop between student and teacher and which underpins good teaching. The council wants to see everything that went on between student and teacher - as if to check that the official curriuclum is being followed. It is like having set up the situation of community learning the county council is suddenly afraid because it knows at some level that teaching and learning in a community setting is potentially politically liberating. So it quickly covers that by 'learning logs' which symbolically make sure the teacher is doing nothing spontaneous or free. Since 'learning logs' symbolically repudiate the actual autonomy of the student-teacher relationship the council inadvertantly ensures that no learning can take place.

The problem is - community education is politcally liberating. This is in its nature. The Council wants to have the learning without the political emanicpation - which isn't possible.

YRUK will be pursuing these issues - of excessive monitoring in youth work and community education and would welcome contributions to a forthcomming paper on these issues. Please in the first instance to discuss your contribution.


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