Activity

Social Pedagogy has increasingly become of interest in the UK. As a discipline, it is informed by its own traditions, but has some similarities as well as differences to social work. This activity is designed to enable you to learn more about Social Pedagogy.

Read the journal articles by HӒMӒLӒINEN (2003) and ERIKSSON (2014). Both are available on this companion website. In addition, you should visit the ThemPra website – http://www.thempra.org.uk/ – and read the sections on Social Pedagogy (in particular, concepts and practice) and Resources (in particular, materials and literature).

Then consider the following:

1. The relevance of a social pedagogic approach to the social work profession, including consideration of:
   
   1. Which service users the approach could be used with (in some of the literature there is an emphasis on social pedagogy in work with children, but what do you think about different groups?).
   2. Whether there are any tenets of social pedagogy that you can see already in different areas of social work practice.
   3. What you consider to be the advantages of social pedagogy to service users? Do you see any disadvantages?