REGAINING STATUS FOR PRACTITIONERS SENSE FOR GOOD SOCIAL-PEDAGOGICAL WORK.AN URGENT NEED!

REGAINING STATUS FOR PRACTITIONERS SENSE FOR GOOD SOCIAL-PEDAGOGICAL

WORK.

AN URGENT NEED!

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PROGRAM Regaining status for practitioners sense for good socio-educational care work

1. What am I talking about? The field of social pedagogy in Denmark 2. Historical development. How did we arrive where we are?

3. Current challenges. Two tracks: a) governmental regimes, b) professional identities

4. Professionalism and moral agency. Regaining the discipline.

5. Researching profesional knowledge. A narrative approach, stories we live by.

6. Action-plans. New perspectives on the development of competence, culture and jergon.

7. Social Pedagogy: an unfinished project

THE FIELD OF SOCIAL PEDAGOGY IN DENMARK

1. The field of social pedagogy in Denmark

1. Social pedagogy is pedagogy that compensates for bad social conditions and that stimulates rewarding social relations

2. Social pedagogy: the pedagogical dimension in social work with vulnerable and marginalized people and the social dimension in upbringing and

education

3. Between 1960 and 1980, the term social pedagogy gained a footing, but this time in connection with interventions in relation to marginalised youngsters and marginalized and disabled adults

4. Social pedagogy dismantled total-institutions and contains the seeds of new

forms of institutionalization (Rothuizen, J. J., & Harbo, L. J 2017)

HISTORY * 2. Historical development.

How did we arrive where we are?

1. Social pedagogical initiatives in the 19

and early 20

century have roots in civil society . The people involved were driven by social indignation and their force was their attitude and their human capacities. They acted out of a sense of responsibility.

2. In the second half of the 20

Century social pedagogy became a part of the emerging welfare-state. The people involved were driven by social commitment, by becoming a part of a special culture/practice and by a job that makes them earn a living

-workers became organised in a union.

3. In the first part of the 21

the contours of a competition-state emerge and provoke a

break with a quasi autonomous and self-sufficient culture: new public management

(NPM) requires accountability and efficiency. Professional social pedagogical workers

are supposed to apply knowledge.

THE TROUBLE WITH NPM 2. Historical development.

How did we arrive where we are?

1. Perverse effects of performance measurements. Strategic behavior. Principal agent relations: the agent becomes a simple provider

2. Pressure to specify outcomes and outputs upfront: hard to do in complex settings!

3. The reliance on science as a guarantee for knowing "what works" installs an absolute authority in fields that aim at empowerment, recovery and

participation in society as a free individual.

4. Control reflex due to low trust

CURRENT CHALLENGES 3. Current challenges. Two tracks: a) governmental regimes, b) professional identities

• From New Public Management to New Public Governance:

networks, co-creation, focus on proces and outcome (and not input-output).

• Professionalism: neither ”local practices” (welfare-state practice) nor ”technical implementation” (NPM) but

principled professionalism [Goodson]

• Professional identity * : attitude, culture/practice &

knowledge in a particular combination.

MORAL AGENCY 4. Professionalism and moral agency. Regaining the discipline.

• What is peculiar for the (social) pedagogical

work: professionals should be able to improvise as their task is empowerment, helping people to be actors in their own lives.

• So knowing what to do in order to produce

desired outputs is not enough – the job calls for an ability that can be described as……..

• Knowing what to do when you don´t know what to do = moral agency (knowing what is the right thing to do), practial knowledge (Aristotle),

embodied normative knowledge

MORAL AGENCY – PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE

4. Professionalism and moral agency. Regaining the discipline.

• Competence is much more then skills and knowledge (knowing how and knowing that ).

Competence is the ability to improvise in a context-relevant and autonomous way. (Bologna)

• “Acquiring a certain level of competence can be seen as the ability of an individual to use and combine his or her knowledge, skills and wider competences according to the varying requirements posed by a particular context, a situation or a problem. Put another way,the ability of an individual to deal with complexity, unpredictability and change

defines/determines his or her level of competence.”

Bologna level 6 (bachelor):

advanced skills, demonstrating

mastery and innovation, required

to solve complex and unpredictable

problems in a specialised field of

RESEARCHING MORAL AGENCY / PROFESSIONAL

KNOWLEDGE

5. Researching profesional knowledge. A narrative approach, stories we live by.

• Professionalism implies being familiar with the moral goods that constitute the social-pedagogical practice, in such a way that they are helpful for orientation and finding directions.

Research-questions and related methodological questions A. Moral goods?

B. Knowledge –not something that is applied, but something that is ”at play”

(knowledge as an organical part of the situation, not a mechanism and an

instrument)

RESEARCH: A NARRATIVE APPROACH

5. Researching profesional knowledge. A narrative approach, stories we live by.

A. The story of social pedagogy: Philosophical social pedagogical research: from Adolph Diesterweg (1790-1866) to Carl Mager (1810-58) and Paul Natorp (1854- 1924) the common denominator is ”participation”. This story has roots in the break- through of modernity, when the relationship between individual and community became unstable.

- Diesterweg: Social integration of the people marginalized in the process of industrialisation - Mager: Civic education in a democracy

- Natorp: Man can only become man through human interaction and community

B. The stories social pedagogues tell testify the knowledge at play. So we

researched practitioners knowledge (knowledge of - not knowledge for..) by

listening to their stories about whatever they were occupied or preoccupied with.

NARRATIVES OF THE TERRAIN

5. Researching profesional knowledge. A narrative approach, stories we live by

We want to walk: so we need friction.

Back to the rough ground!

(Wittgenstein phil.inv. § 107)

NEW COMPANIONS 5. Researching profesional knowledge. A narrative approach, stories we live by

Viggo is a boy who is not very flexible. He would prefer to completely control what is going to happen and hits and kicks when he feels under pressure.

He is therefore not particularly well-liked in the group. So we are working on changing it and have decided that we will work with changing companionship on our walks. The easiest thing is if he is allowed to go with the best friend Ole, but I have decided that he must go with Jonas the next time.

There is resistance from both boys, so I decide to go between them. When we go home again, I say

to the boys that now they have to go together until we get to the local supermarket and then we

will talk about how it was. Passing the local supermarket , the boys think it's ok and we choose to

continue in the same way to the railway. Passing the railway they still think it's ok and the rest of

the trip home to the kindergarten they shift kicking stones on the gravel path. They laugh and

enjoy themselves.

THE MACKEREL-SANDWICH 5. Researching profesional knowledge. A narrative approach, stories we live by

Madsen has always refused contact with “the system”, except the contact with his psychiatric consultant, Miss Godtfredsen. Miss Godtfredsen was worried. Madsen did not always behave well. Madsen needed care. She proposed sheltered housing, but he refused it. Therefore she contacted the local social work. Peter and Henrik found out where Madsen lived, and they started to explore the place. It was a big building, owned by a pension fund, and all the inhabitants had been members of this pension fund for many years. Peter and Henrik talked with the caretaker and other inhabitants and found out that many of them knew Madsen. Some of them told about uncomfortable situations, when Madsen was yelling and talked and asked them to confirm his strange thoughts. On the other hand the inhabitants seemed to know how to handle this by avoiding eye contact, explaining to be in a hurry and pass him.

Peter and Henrik knocked on Madsen’s door, but he did not want to open it. “Well, we just go around and return in ten minutes” Peter said in a loud voice. Ten minutes later nothing had changed, Madsen did not open the door, so they had to shout a bit in order to tell him who they were, and that they would like to talk with him.

As Madsen did not want tot invite them in, Peter and Henrik organised a network meeting, inviting all the relevant people connected to Madsen, even the tobacconist who used to sell Madsen his 40 daily cigars.

All of them arrived, except Madsen who was admitted to the psychiatric ward, and the tobacconist who could not close his shop in daytime.

At this meeting they all agreed that Madsen could keep on living in the building but on one condition: establishment of a kind of safety net in case of accelerating problems and Peter and Henrik should be this safety net.

The caretaker went to the psychiatric ward and told Madsen about the results of the meeting and Madsen is jubilant. Next Monday Henrik and

Peter knock at Madsen’s door again. It is nine o’clock in the morning, and they carry three mackerel sandwiches, as mackerel sandwich is

Madsen’s favourite. Something had to be celebrated! After the second trial they are allowed to enter, but as soon as Madsen has eaten his

mackerel sandwich, he decides the party is over. He stands up in order to discharge them, but as Peter and Henrik don’t think the mission is

completed, they stay. Madsen drops the idea of discharging them. Apparently he decides, they should not disturb his normal routines, so he

switches the television on in order to see a German program.

STORIES WE LIVE BY 5. Researching profesional knowledge. A narrative approach, stories we live by.

• We heard the stories and responded to them -just as the other pedagogues who heard them. Often one story took the next. Often stories gave rise to dialogues

• We experienced that every story in one way or another dealt with the (open) question of ”good pedagogy” –the story as a conversation with pedagogical themes

• We found out that social pedagogical practice is ”enacting plots” , narrative knowledge at play

• We asked: How do pedagogues find orientation, what are their signposts and beacons? What are the main pedagogical themes?

• The main theme (goals): tensions and balances between socialisation (become like the others) , subjectification (being unique, contribute in an original way) and civilisation (participate in communities of free citizens)

• The main theme (means): tensions and balances between observing the wondrous life, creating frameworks for / scaffolding the childrens/clients own activities and active intervention

• We experienced that the finding and understanding of a story also carries its own rewards; we get moved, gain

new understandings, our “being in the world” is affected.

THE FIELF FOR

PROFESSIONALISM AND MORAL AGENCY

5. Researching profesional knowledge. A narrative approach, stories we live by.

Wondering about children/humans

Direct interventions

Subjectification (coming into being as person)

Socialization

(become like the others)

Civilization

(participate in sommunities of free citizens

Purposes Means

Here the plot is unfolded in unpredictable movements Knowledge at play…..

Good pedagogy?

Scaffolding the childrens/clients

own activities

PLAN OF ACTION 6. Action-plans. New perspectives on the development of competence, culture and jergon.

• (Continuing) Education: The competent practitioner is familiar with the professions moral goods -as a story to live by; (s)he is a nascent able and virtuous person.

• Governing and leading social pedagogical institutions implies

* Setting directions

* Making room for autonomous professional judgment

* Stimulating a culture ”in search for good social pedagogy”

• Accountibility as democratic professionalism : showing an ability to respond on

questions concerning appropriateness and adequacy of the professional work; storytelling

and reflections on good pedagogy as an essential part of a professional jergon.

SOCIAL PEDAGOGY –AN UNFINISHED PROJECT

7. Conclusion: the unfinished project of social pedagogy.

• The project has roots in the doubleness of modernity: the unstable solution between individuality and community as a challenge and a curse (an existential demand).

• There is no final end-point – a never ending story (so the answer on the question “what works” is blowing in the wind)

• Knowing ho to search for good social pedagogy can help practitioners in regaining status and in developing

competence

• Research can be helpful in explicating what is at stake and

in the discussion about accountability and professionalism

REFERENCES

• Biesta, Gert ( 2007): Why “what works” won’t work: evidence‐based practice and the democratic deficit in educational research. Educational theory 57:1

• Biesta, Gert (2013): Cultivating humanity or educating the human? Two options for education in the knowledge age. Asia Pacific Educ.ation Review. 15:1

• Bruner, Jerome (2003). Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Harvard University Press

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• Goodson, I.F. (2000). The principled professional. Prospects 30:2

• Gadamer, H-G (1999): Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Ges. Werke I. Tübingen: Siebeck Mohr

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• Manen, M. von. (2014). Phenomenology of practice. Meaning-giving methods in phenomenological research aand writing. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press.

• Natorp, P. (1974) Sozialpädagogik. Theorie der Willensbildung auf Grundlage der Gemeinschaft. Paderborn: Schöningh. (original work published 1899).

• Osborn, D., Gaebler, T.(1992) : Reinventing the governement: how the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector. New-York: Addison-Wesley

• Ricoeur, P. (1984). Time and Narrative I-III. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

• Riessman, C. K (2008): Narrative Methods for the Human Science. London, Sage

• Rothuizen, J. J. (2008). Quality Assurance in Social Work Practice Qualification of knowledge in action. I J. Dunne & D. Carr (Red.), Towards Professional Wisdom. Edinburgh. Hentet fra https://www.academia.edu/2534670/Quality_assurance_in_social_work_practice_-

qualification_of_knowledge_in_action_2008

• Rothuizen, J. J., & Harbo, L. J. (2017). Social Pedagogy: An Approach Without Fixed Recipes. International Journal of Social Pedagogy, 6(1), 6–28.

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2017.v6.1.002