Resources: Review - Understanding youth - A valuable and coherenttext for any youth work student

Understanding youth - Edited by Mary Jane Kehily

Published: by The Open University and Sage Publications

Price: 21.99

ISBN 978-1-4129-3065-9

Understanding youth: perspectives, identities and practices (and its companion volume, Youth in Context: frameworks, settings and encounters) is a core text for students on the Open University third-year undergraduate module 'Youth: perspectives and practices'.

The concept of 'youth' is tackled pretty much from a sociological perspective, rather than from the more psychological/physiological concept of adolescence. I particularly liked the biographical approach to exploring young people's lives and the critiques of "resilience" and "individualisation" were both excellent.

The emphasis is very much on the "perspectives" and "identities" dimension through-out and the text will be of enormous value to any youth work or youth studies student. There was less focus on practice, although questions and activities are posed to help the student reflect on possible action. 'Practice' is considered from a broad perspective, rather than from a position of engagement with young people.