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Know What Matters: Values in Digital Youth Work
Know What Matters: Values in Digital Youth Work
Content
What truly matters to you in your youth work practice, especially in digital environments?
Our attitudes often have deep roots in personal and professional values, which guide how we behave, respond, and make decisions. In digital youth work, being aware of these underlying values helps us navigate complexity, embrace diversity, and respond ethically to rapid change. This activity helps youth workers uncover how values shape their attitudes and actions, and how this awareness strengthens digital practice.
By completing this activity, you will:
- Recognise how values influence the formation of attitudes in digital youth work
- Reflect on personal, cultural, and professional values relevant to digital youth work
- Explore how value tensions can affect decision-making and collaboration
- Take a step toward aligning your values, attitudes, and behaviours for digital youth work
Get Inspired
Watch the video "Values and Attitudes" while relating to digital youth work practices.
Source: This video as part of the #YOCOMO Attitudes and Behaviours – an #ETS online course on competence-based development for youth workers.
Other resources:
- The relationship between Beliefs, Values, Attitudes and Behaviours
- Similarities and dissimilarities between values and attitudes
Take action
Task 1: Trace the roots of an attitude
Think of a personal or professional attitude you’ve developed, perhaps toward digital technologies, online collaboration, or innovation. Reflect on what values or beliefs shaped this attitude.
Write your reflection in a journal or on a worksheet. You can also create a digital board or visual using tools like Miro or Canva.
Task 2: Explore a value tension
Describe a moment in your digital youth work where your values clashed with someone else’s, perhaps during the design or delivery of digital activities. How did this tension shape your attitude or response?
Share and discuss this reflection with a peer or group. Alternately, record a video, audio reflection, or post a written response in your learning group.
Task 3: Clarify what matters most
Choose one value that is central to your digital youth work (e.g. inclusion, safety, freedom, participation).
Describe one specific action you can take to better reflect this value in your digital youth work practice.
Use a reflection card or worksheet to prioritise your values in digital youth work (e.g. making a values tree). You can also create your values tree as a digital note, visual, or short voice memo.
Claim Open Badge recognition
Upon completing this activity, participants can earn a badge that recognises:
- Clarity and awareness of personal and professional values in youth work;
- Ability to reflect on value tensions and their influence on attitudes;
- Commitment to aligning values with digital youth work practice.
Who created this resource?
This activity is based on the video “Values and Attitudes” from the YOCOMO MOOC, and adapted by the Cities of Learning Network. It is grounded in the ETS Competence Model and the Digital Competences in Youth Work (DYW SNAC) framework, supporting personal reflection and competence development in digital youth work.
Next Steps
Use the values you’ve identified in this activity as guiding principles in your learning and digital youth work planning. Continue to the next activity: Facing Change: Growing in Digital Youth Work, where you’ll understanding your own process of change, recognising resistance, and identifying personal growth strategies in response to digital transformation.
Engage with others in your team or learning community to strengthen shared values and collaboration.
Get activity badge
Rooted in Digital Youth Work Values Get this badge
This badge is awarded to youth workers who have reflected on how values influence the formation of attitudes and actions in digital youth work. Through this activity, they explored real-life situations, identified their core values, and examined how value tensions can impact collaboration, behaviour, and learning in digital contexts.
To earn this badge, youth workers needed to:
- Trace the roots of an attitude and connect it to underlying values
- Reflect on a situation involving value tension in a youth work context
- Identify one core value and describe a concrete action to strengthen it in digital youth work practice
Skills and experiences gained
This activity badge is aligned to the following Digital Competences in Youth Work (DYW SNAC) areas:
- Self-reflection and lifelong learning – being aware of one’s own learning process and actively planning and engaging in lifelong and life-wide learning.
- Facilitating inclusion and well-being – promoting well-being, inclusion, and positive interaction in digital youth work settings based on core youth work values.
- Shared guidelines and peer learning – engaging in shared understanding and co-creating value-based approaches with others in digital environments.
- Ethical and values-based digital youth work – acting in accordance with ethical standards and values in all digital youth work practices.
This badge shows the earner’s ability to recognise and reflect on personal and professional values and their role in shaping attitudes in digital youth work. Cities of Learning Network partners value badge earners’ reflections and issue this badge after reviewing the provided evidence.
Tasks
Task no.1
Evidence verified by: one activity organiser
Complete at least two of the following tasks by providing evidence to earn the "Rooted in Digital Youth Work Values" badge:
- Task 1: Identify one of your attitudes relevant to digital youth work and reflect on the values or beliefs that shaped it
- Evidence 1: Upload a written or visual reflection (e.g. visual board or mind-map) showing how specific values contributed to the formation of a personal or professional attitude relevant to digital youth work
- Task 2: Reflect on a digital youth work situation where your values clashed with someone else’s, and how this influenced your attitude or response
- Evidence 2: Submit a written, video, or audio reflection describing the value tension and its effect on your behaviour in a digital youth work context
- Task 3: Choose one core value and describe a concrete action you will take to express it more clearly in your digital youth work
- Evidence 3: Provide a short written or recorded action plan that connects the chosen value with your future digital youth work practice
Organisers
Digital Youth Work Resource Hub
Awero not-for-profit organisation manages this platform and develops it together with leading educational organisations. The European Union's programme Erasmus+ granted co-funding for building the first version of this platform. Contact support@awero.org.
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