Group Process and Arrangement of Activities - Coursework Example

School: Topic: GROUPWORK IN CONTEXT Lecturer: Background The issue of youth transition is one that continuesto gain a lot of public interest today. Renewed interest in the issue of youth transition arises as several young people complete school but risks not being absorbed into mainstream working population (Bynner & Parsons, 2002). There are several factors that have led to increases in the number of young people failing to be gainfully employed even after successful completion of school. According to Courtney and Dworsky (2006) one of the most critical issues that confront the youth in attaining successful transition is the absence of skills based training as part of the educational system, which make the youth gain employability status. The notion behind this assertion is that it is one thing for a person to be said to have successful completed an educational course and another thing for the person to be said to have gained employability skills (Massinga & Pecora, 2004). That is, it not everyone who has successfully completed an educational course that is employable. To be employable, Arnett (2000) posits that there are special skills that people are expected to exhibit in addition to any area of learning they did in school. The possession of such skills commonly referred to as life skills is what differentiates one graduate who easily goes through a recruitment process and gets a job and another who would go through the same recruitment process but will be denied a job. With the situation noted above confronting the youth, Becker, Huselid & Ulrich (2001) observed that the labour market today remains more competitive than it was some years back. The competitiveness on the labour market arise because companies continue to face high intensity of competitive rivalry, making them require a highly skilled, motivated, ready, and experienced workforce that can help them achieve the goal of strategic competition (Kotter, 1996). For the young person therefore, there is a renewed expectation to transit from school into the working world in a more mature and prepared manner. It is not surprising that Allen and Williams (2012) even opined that youth transition programmes and interventions that are aimed at equipping young people with life skills is necessary even after graduates successfully get their first employments. This is because such life skills will ensure that the newly employed are able to retain their positions as well as quickly rise through the ranks to be promoted on time. What is more, giving young people life skills will ensure that they are able to successfully balance work life with personal life so that they can become good managers of their lives without having to depend on others after they start working. In real sense therefore, the need to provide young people with life styles is something that is important and relevant for all the youth in ensuring that they successfully transit into adult life. Identified Problem According to Yin (2009), as far as educational research is concerned, interventions are necessary when a problem has been identified within a research setting and the researcher aims to solve the problem through combined effort with the people affected by the problem. It is for this reason that it is necessary to clearly define or identify the problem that the study will be seeking to address or solve with the use of the intervention which will be identified later in the study. Based on the background given above, it has been observed that there are several fresh graduates who are not well transited into adult life to live independently. The difficulty to live independently arises as a result of a number of factors. In the first place, most of these young people have lived with their parent their entire school life and so even after they have been employed, lack what it takes to live on their own and effectively mingle with colleague adults around them. When such limitations to transition arise, chances are that these young people will be engaged in unhealthy lifestyles and activities that are not beneficial to their development and success in life (Courtney, Piliavin, Grogan-Kaylor & Nesmith, 2001). There is also an economic factor that makes it difficult for the young people to live independently. This economic factor arises because the young people are not employed and so cannot cater for themselves will. This situation also comes with the fear of the youth indulging themselves in unhealthy and unacceptable social lifestyles including drug use, alcoholism, vandalism, rape, and robbery. Aim With the problem clearly identified, the aim of the study will be to make an appropriate theoretically informed case for a particular intervention in a community education setting. First, the theoretical informed case will be made through the exploration of various theories on youth transition and an analysis of how these theories can be transferred into practice by the youth. To do this, the particular intervention to be used will be the group work model where young graduates and others in their final years in school will be identified and engaged in various activity sessions that help them develop team working skills through the use of dialogue and praxis. Gilder (1987) explained dialogue to be a structured interaction between people aimed at addressing a specific motion. This means that using dialogue will ensure that the target group is able to enhance and improve their communication skills in a well structured and formalised social setting. Praxis has also been explained to be the process by which theory, lessons or skills are enacted, embodied, or realised in a real life situation (Howard, 2006). This means that using praxis will ensure that there is the integration of theory and practice as a core feature of the intervention. This is because through praxis, various theories, lessons, and skills will be developed for the target group, all of which will be sought to be realised in the real world scenario. Significance and motivation Based on the background and identified problem, it has been seen that there is an existing phenomenon where several young people have successfully completed various educational courses, at least to the first degree level but still remain unemployed because they lack employability skills. Meanwhile, these people have already gone through the mill of acquired education and so cannot be made to go back into schools to gain employability skills. The dilemma even arises when a question of whether there is any chance for these people to be employable if they went through the school system again. This is because if they could, they would have during their first attempt. This is a situation that prompted the need to select an intervention in a community education setting that focuses on the provision of employability and life skills to the youth who have already gone through the formal educational system and successfully completed but remain unemployable. The significance of this theoretically informed case is that it will serve as an agency programme aimed at fostering the government’s goal of extending employable skills to as many young people as possible (Barth, 1990). As noted by Dworsky (2008), government continues to make a lot of efforts in getting young people employed but the real essence of the success with such efforts will be inculcate in these youth, employability and life skills needed to make them absorbable in the working world. Intervention in community education setting The intervention selected to deal with the identified issue of youth transition and acquisition of life skills was the use of group work approach and technique. The approach and technique of group work has been considered one of the most effect ways of ensuring that there is primary interaction with a targeted sample within a community education setting in a manner that ensures that the sample work together as a group rather than individuals (Manor, 2000). In order to use the approach and technique of group work, there are several individual and independent tasks that are performed in among the group and later put together in a bid to harnessing the common goal set for the group. For this, study, some of the tasks that will be used in the group work include activity sessions such as mountain climbing, biking, camping, baking, making café, and public communications. The approach to the intervention is to use a pilot of 6 session group work where the sample or target group work together in performing the named activities. It is expected that as part of the group work, the young people will be provided with life skills that help them improve their interpersonal skills, employability, confidence, teamwork skills, leadership, and communication. The intervention will be approached from a theoretical perspective whiles exploring ways of practicing the main elements of theory. This is done to balance the advantages of theory and practice in a group working context. The rationale for selecting group work for study is that the young people are being prepared as part of the transition to be part of the larger society, more specifically the working world. Meanwhile, whether the young transit into regular life or into the labour market, they will be meeting, interacting and working in a group and with others. It is therefore important that as they develop their independence, they will also be equipped to become good team players (Massinga & Pecora, 2004). It is for this reason that the group work approach and technique was selected. What is more, the team work technique was noted to contain several elements of personal and group skills development through the use of experiential approach, dialogue, praxis, and structured conversation. For the current study, the main procedures to be used as part of the group work intervention will be dialogue and praxis. Both dialogue and praxis will however be incorporated into the activity sessions in a sequential learning format rather than trying to develop them in isolation. By combining dialogue and praxis, it will be possible to integrate theory and practice because both concepts are based on theory and also have a lot of backing in practice (Johnson, 2013). Participants Target Group Because of the involvement of the intervention, the whole study can be described as being an action research. This is because in an action research, the researcher identifies a unique problem within a specified research setting and develops an intervention to solve the problem through the collaborative effort of the researcher and affected people (Riley et al., 2010). The affected people who form the target group for the study will comprise final year students and fresh graduates who are residents of the community where the researcher resides. Based on available data from the community centre, there are up to 102 of such final year students and fresh graduates. 67 (65.7%) of them are males whiles 35 (34.3%) are females. The ages of the youth range from 19 to 27 with the average age being 22 years. The youth are from almost all ethnic and racial backgrounds including Blacks, Asians, and Whites. Writing on young people with the identified variables, Perry (2006) observed that most of these are people with common social integration problems because they have not been well integrated into adult life. For most of the people within the target group, they are faced with a dilemma of not knowing whether they are still dependent on their parents or they are totally independent. It is because of the dilemma that it is important to give them transition life skills that can help them to be absolutely independent. Group formation The group formation process is expected to take place through the use of a systematic sampling technique. The systematic sampling technique has been described to be a sampling procedure which ensures that the researcher combines and modifies the use of purposive sampling with random sampling to select group members who share experiences necessary to serve as a reference point for the identified intervention (O’Leary, 2006). In the light of this, a purposive sampling approach will first be used to reduce the 102 people within the target group. The purposive sampling will be used by setting specific exclusion criteria. The exclusion criterion is will be exclude all people within the target population who will be employed at the time of the study. This exclusion criterion will be set to ensure that the proposed benefits of the study of equip young people with employability and transition will target the right people who need it most. With this exclusion criterion, the number of respondents will reduce to about 70. After this a random sampling will be used to divide the people into control group and experimental group. There will be 35 people in each group. The 35 people will be selected by the use of a fish bowl method where names of all members will be written on pieces of papers and 35 selected at random. The 35 to be selected will be part of the experimental group who will receive the intervention. To easily control the participants, the 35 people will be grouped into 5, comprising 7 people in each group. Group process and arrangement of activities As indicated earlier, the group work will be performed through an emphasis on the use of dialogue and praxis. However, these two will be incorporated into specific day-to-day activities that will form 6 sessions in all. The sessions are designed to improve interpersonal skills, employability, confidence, teamwork skills, and communication among participants. In the light of this, all the activities will be prepared in such a way that fosters all the skills through the combined use of dialogue and praxis. At each session, there will be a form of competition among the 5 groups where each team will work to accumulate points for the larger group of 7 people. Leadership roles will be shared among the members. Some of the roles will include group secretary, group chair, treasurer, welfare officer, organisation, vice chair, and conflict resolution officer. This means that almost every member in the team will be a leader and will thus gain leadership skills. It is also important to state that the sessions described below will take place in an outdoor environment, where p group members will ride bike to a mountain camp on each day. Each session and what it will entail is described below. Session 1 Session 1 of the group work will involve the use of series of mentorship talks. This session will be designed with emphasis on helping the youth transit successfully into the working world by learning from a group of eminent and successful career workers. The workers will be selected from different occupational areas including some of the commonly studied courses among the participants. It is expected that areas such as accounting, banking, education, health, and safety will be the commonest areas where mentors will come from. There will also be entrepreneurs to share their experience on how they were able to start their own businesses. In line with the theory of praxis which seeks to translate theory and lessons into practice (Francese, 2009), it is expected that as the mentors share their working experiences with the participants, the participants will be offered the opportunity of having a fair idea of what to expect when they finally land on jobs. Because of the working experience of the mentors, they will be expected to give the participants information and education as to how to prepare themselves for interviews on the job market. As different professionals will be used, they will be made to rotate among the teams. This means that each team will have mentors from different working backgrounds. After each session of experience sharing, the participants will be made to ask questions as a means of enhancing their communication skills. Session 2 In the second session, participants will be made to undertake role play activities. The role play will focus on the theme of parenting. Given the fact that the youth are being prepared to transit into independent adult life, it is believed that chances of getting married and raising families is a likely probability (Spencer, Collins, Ward & Smashnaya, 2010). In the light of this, a role play will be designed for each team to focus on parenting. Among the team of 7 members, 2 will be parents, 2 will be children, and 3 will be relatives. The role of parent will be rotated among each member of the team so that they will all have a feel of what it is to be a parent. Ahead of the role play, there will be group discussion on the duties of the parent as well as best practices that should be followed in becoming a responsible parent. The discussion will take place as an open forum where each member will freely contribute to the discussion. The discussion on parenting will also involve lesson about how to deal with single parenthood. This will be done due to rising cases of single parenthood among young adults. The role play will be supervised by the researcher a group of marriage counsellors. This notwithstanding, the setting of the role play will be made as free and informal as possible so that participants will not be tensed when acting out roles. After each role play, there will be discussion on the outcomes. Session 3 In session 3 of the group work model, participants in each team will be made to go through a vocational training skim. There will be 5 major vocational areas that will be balloted among the 5 teams. These include making of café, baking of pie and donuts, making of hand woven cloth, making of handbags, and making of fruit juice. The idea behind the vocational training will be to equip participants will skills that will ensure that they can independently raise a vocation for themselves even when they are not immediately employed after school. Even among those who will land on jobs, the vocations will be useful in serving as part time jobs to help them raise extra revenue. The vocations can also be undertaken on leisure basis to ensure that the participants use their free time effectively. The vocational training will be undertaken by skilled vocational educationists who will use learner-centred approach to teach the participants. This means that there will be hands-on opportunities to enable the participants try their hands on the selected areas till they gain perfection in their vocations. Session 4 The fourth session will entail the use of brainstorming in policy formation exercise. This particular session will be in place to ensure that the participants are equipped with basic decision making skills. According to Lee (2014), one unique characteristic of an adult is the ability to make independent decisions. Meanwhile, Ramsey and Miller (2003) observed the use of brainstorming as one of the best means to acquire decision making skills. The brainstorming will be used with policy formation in perspective and so each team will be asked to draft a policy on best ways in which the government can reduce unemployment among the youth. In line with the principles of brainstorming, views will be welcome from all team members as to what should constitute the policy (Ramsey & Miller, 2003). After a first round of idea sharing, the itemised ideas will be subject to critical analysis where the list will be reduced based on outcome of discussions noting the most applicable, feasible and realistic ideas. Again, the brainstorming will be a means by which the participants can effectively dialogue their opinions and ideas in the most convincing manner as the principle of dialogue provides (Francese, 2009). Ahead of the brainstorming, a representative from the legislature will be brought in to educate the teams on how decision making and policy formation takes place in the country’s parliament. Session 5 Another activity within the session to help foster the dialoguing skills of participants will be the use of debate. The debate will be conducted as a formal interactive talk session where all 5 groups will come together to debate each other on a topic relating to youth empowerment. The topic will urge each group to come up with a plan on how they think graduate unemployment should be addressed in the country. Each group will have one main speaker to speak for 5 minutes and two supporting speakers each of who will speak for 3 minutes. Even though three people will come from each group, the team working spirit is still expected to be there because it will be the whole group who will sit to draft the arguments to be used in the debates. Through the debate, the oral communication skills of members are expected to improve. The differences in arguments by the groups will also ensure that there will as many lessons as possible that participants can practically adopt as part of the principle of praxis when forming their own independent lives after school (Freire, 1970). This means that the debate will be a means by which participants will be offered the opportunity of integrating theory and practice in a natural environment. Session 6 All work and no play will make the participants dull. After all, as part of transition into adulthood, it is important that the youth will learn the skill of becoming good team players who can learn from games by accepting to accept defeat, improve their skills, and strive for the best (Lee, 2012). With this in mind, the last session will be designed with the name the Challenge Game. This is where the participants will be given a game task to be competed for based on each group. In this game, there will be a form of treasure hunt where the groups will be hunting for a hidden treasure box in the forest area where the camping will take place. There will be clues provided around the forest area to lead to the discovery of the treasure box. The clues will be coded, requiring the participants to work together as a group in decoding so that they can discover the treasure. Each group will have its own treasure and so performance will be rated based on how long it takes a group to make their discovery. Evaluation of practice At the end of the six sessions, it is expected that all the named skills and competencies will be developed. These include interpersonal skills, employability, confidence, teamwork, leadership, and communication. With the manner in which the group work will be used where there will be the combination of dialogue and praxis in common group based activities, it is expected that all participants will make themselves fully available to go through all the sessions in order to gain the full benefits of the intervention. To evaluate the usefulness of the study, a post-intervention data collection exercise will be performed where members in the experimental group and those in the control group who did not receive the intervention will be interviewed. 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