NUPS Helsinki – youth work curriculum (2019–2020)

The aim of the research and development project is to create a curriculum for the City of Helsinki’s youth work, which has been influenced by different members of the working community and which will describe the common and shared basis for the City of Helsinki’s youth work. The target of the development is to produce a description of the basic policies of youth work carried out in Helsinki. The target of the action study is to participate in a working community change process and support it with research. The compilation of the curriculum is based on the experiences of the previous youth work curriculum project.

The actual curriculum will be created through cooperation between a researcher and employees engaged in practical work. In 2019 the target is to identify, following the principles of research based on practices, the working methods of the City of Helsinki’s youth work and to ensure that as many employees as possible participate in the NUPS curriculum project. Work will also be launched to describe working methods and to create an understanding of the different working methods that contain the same or similar methods and how the different working methods are connected. In the various stages of the process, the curriculum will be specified together through discussions, to ensure that the final result corresponds to the development targets defined at the start. In practice research, these steps are part of the study’s process and its key results. When the goal is to change the way things are done, developments in different stages actually form part of the results (cf. Kaukko & Kiilakoski 2018).