Participant Information Sheet
Understanding how we grow the young Community Learning and Development workforce
Background
In 2019, the CLD Standards Council for Scotland in partnership with Education Scotland published the Working with Scotland’s Communities 2018 report (Rocket Science). Along with their 12 key findings, there were also three areas identified as requiring further study. These were:
1. Understanding how to grow the young CLD workforce
2. Understanding how to increase the ethnic diversity of the CLD workforce
3. Understanding the role of volunteers in the CLD sector
In reading the report a critical finding that stood out was that “There is an ageing CLD workforce and around 25% of the workforce intend to retire or leave the profession in the next two to five years”. This research project is being undertaken in order to investigate how to grow our young CLD workforce to enable a stronger and sustainable profession for the future?
The study will include:
(1) the analysis of anonymised online questionnaires. Information submitted will be analysed for evidence of issues related to the levels of awareness of CLD as a profession amongst young people in Scotland. It will also look at any factors which have increased their levels of awareness.
(2) Short semi-structured interviews with a sample of volunteer participants (1st and 4th year undergraduate CLD students). These interviews will cover the participant’s experiences and be conducted by one of the project researchers. They will last approximately 30 - 60 minutes. Interviews may be recorded with the agreement of the interviewee. Participants’ names will anonymised and replaced with a pseudonym.
We hope that the findings from this work will further our understanding into how we grow and sustain the CLD workforce for the future. We will endeavour to provide details of any publications which result from the project with all participants.
Please note this research is being undertaken as part of a Masters of Education in Community Learning and Development programme at the University of Aberdeen.
If you would like to participate in this study or have any questions about the project please contact Ceri Hunter, details below:
Researcher - Ceri Hunter –
t02cmh15@abdn.ac.uk , 07719017209
Research Supervisor – Rachel Shanks -
r.k.shanks@abdn.ac.uk , 01224 274871
The University of Aberdeen’s Privacy Notice for Research Participants can be found here:
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/about/privacy/research-participants-938.php