Evaluation, Impact and Outcomes in working with children and young people in regional and minority language revitalisation efforts

This document reports on the main discussions of a workshop organised by the Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD), ESRC-funded Civil Society Research Centre project on Education, Language and Identity in Scotland and Wales. The workshop was held at the Urdd Centre, Cardiff Bay and we are grateful to the Urdd for providing the location.

The aim of the workshop was to draw together practitioners involved in regional and minority language (RML) revitalisation activities with children and young people, particularly in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland. In terms of context, youth work and work with children and young people face challenges regarding how to evaluate and demonstrate the impact and outcomes of their work. The work of organisations and bodies that seek to promote regional and minority language use amongst children and young people face additional issues and potential challenges in evaluating and assessing the linguistic impact of their activities. In addition to demonstrating outcomes in relation to youth work in general, they must also seek to show the impact of their work on the language skills and use of young people; something that is difficult to demonstrate.

Consequently, the workshop sought to provide a space in which to discuss experiences, to contribute to capacity building, to share and create good practice and identify potential next steps regarding evaluation, impact and outcomes in language promotion work.

The project organised a previous workshop regarding evaluation, impact and outcomes in the context of youth work in Wales. The briefing report provides a context for this second workshop (see link below).

This document summarises the main points arising from the presentations and group discussions during the workshop. The presentations are available on the project website (see link below).