What kind of youth work do we want to see evolve?

More than 20 years ago, a short article was written that sought to connect thinking about youth work to broader sociological theory and prevailing ideas about learning and education. Called Models of YouthWork, it made the very plausible proposition that the ways in which we thought about society would affect the type of youth work we sought to establish and support. This is hardly an argument to elicit shock and awe, but it is worth revisiting and reviewing.

In short, classic functionalist views of society produce a youth work based on youth workers as role models and processes that endeavour to ensure young people fit into the prevailing order of things. More interpretive paradigms of society lead to youth work that is concerned with the personal development of young people. There is a modicum of participation, in order that young people cultivate a sense of responsibility and obligation to their wider community.

More radical humanistic perspectives tend to suggest a youth work premised upon a critical social education, enabling young people to become more conscious of their (often subordinate and marginalised) position in society and supporting young people in their actions of resistance for change. Young people are full participants in this process.

At the far end of sociological analysis - what the writers call the radical structuralist paradigm - young people revert, paradoxically, to being fodder for the wider political agenda, this time not for societal continuity, as in the functionalist paradigm, but for radical social change. Youth work is about promoting the active involvement of young people, but only for a preset social transformation agenda.

Model three is the one routinely favoured by a majority of youth workers. It is the one that was elaborated during the 1980s by the Centre for Social Action at De Montfort University.

One of the protagonists then was Mark Harrison, who has recently published a renewed advocacy for this approach. In two open access publications (www.socialaction.info) on the ideas and outcomes, and the practice of social action, he argues that its distinctive approach now finds favour across the political spectrum, with the left continuing to see it as oppressed people challenging the state but the right seeing dependant people taking personal responsibility for their circumstances.

Indeed, it is very strange to find the radical thinking of Paolo Freire (stock reading for youth and community work students) and Saul Alinsky (a pioneer of community organising in the US and the author of Rules for Radicals) being aligned with discussions of what constitutes the Big Society.

Social action is about participation, co-production, collaboration, dialogue, mutuality and reciprocity. It places the practitioner in the role of facilitator, discovering what kinds of issues young people want addressed and, critically, exploring why such issues are paramount and prominent. Only then are strategies and tactics for addressing them explored and practical action put into play. At a time when government has been very successful in individualising fault (just think of the "strivers and skivers" rhetoric) and rebutting any structural explanations, a social action methodology enables young people to become more aware of their shared predicaments; it is a way, says Harrison, of "breaking out of self-blame".

The social action approach is hardly the most radical youth work agenda, but it is still dramatically different from the increasingly functionalist approaches that now appear, in terms of public resourcing, to be the only show in town (if not in the colleges providing initial youth work training). To paraphrase the famous dictum of John F Kennedy, we now seem concerned only about what young people can do for us, not what we can do for, and with, them.

There are, of course, enclaves of radical youth work and still proponents, from the sidelines, of a "critical social education approach". But the space for the "why" question, in between "what" the issue is and "how" it might be addressed - the central tenet of a social action youth work approach - has been steadily squeezed.

Next April, under the Belgian chairmanship of the Council of Europe, there will be a second European Youth Work Convention. Hopefully, it will provide some space for considering not just the future of youth work, but what kind of youth work we want it to be.

Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of South Wales.