Building a shared understanding of roles and terminology between teachers and youth workers

"Alongside schools, youth work improves the wellbeing, readiness to learn and educational outcomes of children and young people”.

PEF National Operational Guidance, 2023

A learning resource developed by YouthLink Scotland and Education Scotland to support structured professional dialogue between teachers and youth workers/community learning and development (CLD) practitioners to build a greater shared understanding of roles, responsibilities and approaches.

Effective partnerships between schools and youth work providers can support improved outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, including approaches to improving school attendance and engagement.

Teachers and youth workers and teachers often work with the same children and young people but don’t always fully understand each other’s aims and approaches. A whole system approach is more important than ever to support children and young people’s health and wellbeing, engagement and attainment, particularly for those most affected by poverty and inequalities and the continuing impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.

First published in 2022, this resource has been updated in 2024 to reflect what we know about the current needs of children and young people, and to encourage educators to recognise the value of youth work and school partnerships in building positive approaches to school attendance and engagement.

How to use this resource

Lost in Translation is intended to support youth workers and teachers to further strengthen collaboration by:

• Building a shared understanding of roles and terminology.
• Sharing and learning from practice.

It introduces two group activities which encourage professional dialogue between teachers and youth workers. Each activity includes suggested challenge questions, and links to additional resources. An accompanying PowerPoint presentation provides additional support materials to guide these discussions. A Glossary provides a useful 'at a glance' summary of commonly used terms in formal education and youth work.

Next steps

The following questions might help education practitioners to continue their collaborative conversations:

1. Is there anything we might do differently, as a result of using this resource?
2. In what ways can we continue to build effective and trusted youth work and school partnerships?
3. How effectively do we jointly plan and evaluate our partnerships?
4. How are our youth work and school partnerships supporting our vision for attendance and engagement?
5. How can we ensure that young people’s voices are representative, heard and valued in our partnerships?
6. What further shared professional learning with teachers and youth workers be useful to strengthen our partnerships?