Informal Learning during the Early Career CRISIS of Entry-Level Youth Workers as Public-Sector Temporary Employees in the Republic of KOREA

Abstract

In Korea, various initiatives for youth development are the social driver for building a sustainable society by means of the public investment for next generations. The national need to make the society sustainable has been especially salient in Korea as it has accomplished both economic and democratic development in an unprecedent-ed pace since the Korean War. Youth work has been institutionalized with the foci on protection and welfare of youth as well as various activities for youth. In the national youth work, youth workers play a key role in imple-menting youth policies and delivering programs and services for young people. However, the labor marker for entry-level youth workers is far from favorable. Korean youth work agencies such as youth community centers, youth cultural centers, and youth shelters hold less and less capacity to accom-modate newcomers, given the recent recession of national youth work. Due to the limited budget and the unsta-ble market of youth work, the job security of entry-level youth workers in Korea has become more insecure than ever since the Korean government initiated the national youth work. In this career context, even for those who fortunately got some positions in the field of youth work, their career path is vulnerable from the beginning. This early career crisis of entry-level Korean youth workers reflects various aspects of the public-sector labor structure in Korea. At the same time, entry-level youth workers’ understanding of their career and life also illuminate how in-dividual needs and expectations collide with socio-cultural structures and norms in the Korean society. This gap between the personal agency and the societal organization can be further examined along with the conception of informal learning. The purpose of this exploratory study is to illuminate entry-level youth workers’ informal learning about self-identity and career though their job experiences. The study takes a phenomenological approach, a qualitative research method to delve into the nature of a phenomenon, to designing the methodological framework. Through a qualitative data analysis, the research identified a number of open codes that converged into eight categories and three major themes. Subsequently, the analysis results were interpreted along with three activity systems that was constructed upon the three major themes and attendant categories and codes. What and how the entry-level youth workers learn informally on the job emerged from the methodological application of CHAT to their experiences and perceptions. Therefore, this study entails the theoretical implications of CHAT for examining informal learning in the workplace, highlighting its integrative approach to the job insecu-rity and the early career crisis of Korean entry-level youth workers.