Socio-pedagogical knowledge expertise across the social care sectors in Northern Europe

Abstract

A major challenge in contemporary welfare societies is the delivery of services affirming people’s expectations for their life standard, health and social care services. For decades, there has been a search to understand new ways of conceptualising social pedagogy as a field of practice, as a theory, and as a programme design and implementation. Despite the growing body of literature on social pedagogy, to date, little has been written on the subject of the unique complexities of social pedagogy knowledge expertise when bridging the supporting relationships between an individual and the social dimensions in his/her world. Based on research conducted in Northern Europe, particularly focusing on Denmark and Sweden, the aim of this special issue of International Journal of Papers of Social Pedagogy (PSP) on Contemporary Issues in Social Pedagogy in Northern Europe is to convey the central importance of social pedagogy for the study of vitality and diversity behind social pedagogy thought. The presented research projects in this special issue are, in their foundation, associated with a constructivist approach that views the body of knowledge development as an active and cooperative process of knowledge construction and its application in social pedagogy discipline. This article intends to provide a general perspective concerning the presence of various knowledge forms according to the search for, and implementation of, thinking and acting in a social pedagogy inspired way, and working under various conditions.

Capacity Building Through Knowledge Alliances and Collaborative Creativity

“…Although there are some limitations, the creativity from collaborative networking here suggests benefits such as increased cross-border awareness, professionalism and culturally informed models that embrace global and local fields of practice (Cook-Sather, 2006). These influences reshape the role of educational practices related to the promotion of students' creativity which goes beyond a critique of beliefs and assumptions, to problematising, questioning and imagining how things could be different (Dychawy Rosner, 2018;Osborne, 1996;Witkin, 2014).…”

“…This creative practice may include openness to the outside world, the exchange of ideas across borders, and supporting students' reflective skills through convergent and divergent thinking strategies (Trygged, 2010;Varus, Bartlett, 2012). In relation to curriculum development, these may be seen as perspectives of combining knowledge, values and skills, implicitly and explicitly embedded in diverse academic social work institutions and networks alliances (Cook-Sather, 2006;Dychawy Rosner, 2018;Habermas, 1971;Trygged, 2010). Morgan (1998) describes collaboration as a process-oriented living system.…”

“…Several attempts have been made to redesign HE for collaboration, for example, by introducing requirements for partnership in order to receive funding, such as through European Union (EU) programmes for education. Thus, understanding collaborations within social pedagogy and social work knowledge alliances can be shaped as a process involving decontextualising assumptions typically taken for granted (Burgess, 2004;Bernstein, 1996;Dychawy Rosner, 2018;Hallstedt, Högström, 2005). While some have seen collaborative knowledge alliances as unique relations, social work and social pedagogy practice show that the created networking interactional spaces situate the discipline occurring in social structures and political contexts both internationally and locally (NERA, 2017;NSN, 2019).…”

A proposal for inquiry of network and challenge-based learning in social work education

“…Consequently, the current project aims to draw attention to different aspects of knowledge forms in order to obtain a basis for the interpretation for challenge-based learning (CBL) that may be important for social work students' formation of professional role growth. Students' operational learning also known as modelling in complex realities such as social work and social pedagogy field of practice, call for selective reinforcement in development of knowledge from mastering elementary skills in operant level to contingency shaping in meta-cognitive level (Blom and Morén, 2010;Dychawy Rosner, 2018;Wenger, 2000). From this perspective, CBL is in this research understood grounded in socio-ecological and social learning theory where students learning can be conceptualised as a continuum through which they acquire varying knowledge forms repertoires.…”

“…The student is the active subject in the process but is also heavily influenced by external factors. The social learning theory perspective on knowledge development has been proposed as a viable alternative to traditional operant and observational learning (Dychawy Rosner, 2018;Thyer and Myers, 1998;Witkin, 2014). Consequently, the research suggested here is based on a constructivist and contextual foundation (Jovchelovitch, 2007), where a practical activity in the classroom and knowledge creation in everyday situations is opened up and supplemented with a scientific viewpoint.…”