RESOURCES: Review - A record of the changing face of youth work

On the other hand, it was that crew who bravely established a serious journal of critical analysis of the broad youth field: something that, until that point, had been conspicuous by its absence.

And in the intervening years, as youth policy has become more developed and more contested, how much it has been needed. I have been a subscriber from day one and, while I would not profess to read every single page, the journal has been a sustaining source of learning, understanding, dissent, frustration and irritation. I hope it has had much the same effect on others.

The collection of old articles brought together in this volume is, inevitably, the editor's personal choice. Few of us would have wanted to be placed in that position and, had we been so, would no doubt have made a quite different selection. But this compilation does its job as well as any in positioning the idea of informal education (not a narrow conception of youth work) within the repertoire of the debate around youth policy, academe and cultural studies.