Youth clubs as spaces of non-formal learning: professional idealism meets the spatiality experienced by young people in Finland

Abstract

For many young people, youth clubs constitute a key instrument for learning outside the school curriculum. In this article, we scrutinise Finnish youth clubs empirically as spaces of non-formal learning from the perspectives of both professional youth workers and young people themselves. We propose that youth workers tend to present an educational ideal which can be termed the pedagogy of loose space. This implies that educational outcomes are achieved when a diverse group of young people is able to decide what they want to do under the guidance of a professional youth worker. However, when analysing the experiences of young people, it became apparent that a youth club is not a loose space per se. Instead, the experienced tightness of a youth club can diminish its accessibility to many groups. Our results imply that to achieve the professional ideal of non-formal learning, youth workers need to pay more attention to exclusive spatial practices.