Social pedagogy: Theoretical legacy and practical work in the field

Abstract

In the discourses and debates on social pedagogy, we do not find consensus on the basic question: Is social pedagogy a field of research or practice?

In social pedagogy, theories (of sociology, psychology, philosophy and pedagogy) are often a frame of reference, rather than tools for analysis.

This article examines the relation between the historical development of sociology and recent debates on social pedagogy.

Both sociology and social pedagogy were born as reactions to the social upheavals of industrialisation and migration. While Karl Marx emphasised the deep social change caused by capitalism, the first sociologists, such as Tönnies and Simmel, found continuity within this change.

Two of the founding fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim and George Herbert Mead, set focus on deeply rooted social mechanisms, which Durkheim called “conscience collective”. Durkheim suggested that conscience collective is presented to each new generation as “a social fact”, while Mead (and later Jürgen Habermas) argued that the foundation of the conscience collective is negotiated in the upbringing of each new generation.

The Durkheimian angle has been married with structural functionalism, and has often led social pedagogues to look for dysfunctional upbringing in homes or/and in schooling and to find the remedies in the toolbox of social engineering.

An alternative approach has been found in the legacy of Mead, focussing on searching processes among youth and social workers, and arenas for discussions with their peers. Habermas has elaborated on Mead’s contribution, not least on Mead’s view that children learn to know the world through interplay with “the significant other”, most often their mother. Habermas emphasised that such learning continues. He takes an important step further than Mead, by insisting on the priority of the life world and its communicative action above the system and its strategic action.

The history of social pedagogy follows the history of industrial cities, migration, periods of unemployment, waves of labour looking for work and finding informal learning in the city landscape shaped by subcultures of youth. Social pedagogic interventions have become more widespread and institutionalised since WW2, and there have been public and scientific debates on the matter. Such debates have ranged from moral panic to demands for serious research.

This article presents and discusses a few major contributions and textbooks that have been published and widely cited in the Nordic countries in recent years. They all present social pedagogy as a safety net for young people who drop out of education, and often they develop deviant, and even destructive life styles. The social pedagogues suggest different remedies against exclusion and different forms of deviance. Such measures often require prolonged education, this time different from the national curriculum. They may offer practical skills, emphasise basic general competences, or focus on individual deficits – together with several other kinds of intervention. The remedies of the social pedagogues refer to sociological theories, but rather as a general frame rather than tools of practical work.

Influential social pedagogues, such as Bent Madsen (Denmark) and P.-Å. Gjertsen (Norway) emphasise that deviant youth often lack basic competences and that they have to be lifted from the school environment into leisure activities Stig-Arne Berglund (Sweden) takes a critical stance towards American criminology, especially its tendencies to stigmatise the deviance of young people.

All these social pedagogues, want to establish arenas that take form as communities (German: Gemeinschafts), while the mechanisms of society in general (German: Gesellschaft) are neutralised. Some social pedagogues, for instance Lisbeth Eriksson (Sweden), want to add that “Gemeinschafts” are often oppressive, and that the present individual search for identity can become a heavy burden.

It is a shared attribute of the social pedagogues discussed in the article that they all aspire to anchor their practical social pedagogy in the major contemporary theories of sociology. Furthermore, many of their concepts are inherited from the founding fathers of sociology from the late 19th century and the 20th century