Youth Work Process, Product and Practice analyses the central concerns in youth work today, detailing the essential elements of youth work practice and providing an authentic theoretical framework.

Placing the role of the curriculum and the idea of practice as a process at the centre of youth work, this accessible textbook explores important aspects of practice such as choice, participation, empowerment, relationships, group work and experiential learning. It also explains how the idea of curriculum can be used to communicate, legitimate and develop youth work practice. The revised third edition has been updated throughout and provides new chapters on the concept of youth for youth work, the theories of informal and social education, and critical pedagogy. It also contains up-to-date analysis of the policy climate, including the development of the National Curriculum in England, a critique of measurability and how this this undermines a process-based approach and the curriculum developments in Finland and Sweden.

This textbook is essential reading for students of youth and community work, as well as practising youth workers, youth work managers, policy makers and anyone who wants to understand the process of youth work.

Jon Ord was a youth worker for many years and is now Professor of Youth Work at Plymouth Marjon University, where he teaches on the youth and community work programmes and leads an MA in Social Policy. He is the author of a number of books and articles on the theory and practice of youth work.