13220 - General and Social Pedagogy

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course the student:

- Knows the epistemological status of General Pedagogy: the conceptual nodes of the discipline, the areas of interest and the related research and intervention methodsand the main authors of tradition and contemporaneity;

- will be able to identify and analyze educational emergencies in our socio-historical-cultural context; - masters the notion of personal identity, its polysemy in the various disciplinary fields, its plural declinations in the contemporary context and the related processes of discovery-elaboration-construction-comparison from the pedagogical point of view; - will be able to research the elements of the historical-social-cultural context that influence both the daily work of educators / animators / socio-educational operators and the overall system of the educational services of a territory; - will be able to design and implement educational paths that can support an autonomous personal construction of subjects who turn to social, socio-health, cultural services; - will be able to manage collaboration with other professionals, in particular to face processes of change in the “problem-system” that encompasses educational subjects; - is able to create, in the services in which it operates, an atmosphere and contexts of active listening; - is able to educate to empathy; - is able to reflect on the construction of the professional identity of educators / animators / socio-educational operators, at the crossroads between: social negotiations, cultural elements, conditioning, historical phases, belonging, individual and group encounters and clashes, family identity modeling, etc .; - knows the role and educational specificity of the professional who works in social and socio-health services, in cultural, recreational and sports services; - will be able to analyze and use, from a systemic point of view, the training system that exists in a given territory; - knows the main characteristics of the educational relationship - is able to enhance, in himself and in others, the intertwining of emotional and cognitive processes in the educational relationship; - is able to exercise critical and meta-reflective functions towards disciplinary knowledge and one's ability to know in relation, also, to the constraints, problems, potentials, modifications of the context.

Course contents

The course will start with the analysis of cases, experiences and concrete problems inherent to the professional figure of the Social Educator and then, progressively, it will be drawn the pedagogical frames, the heuristic trajectories and the theoretical references useful to address the educational practice and contributing to define the professional status of the Social Educator.

The course will be divided into 4 didactic units:

- during the first phase some emblematic and indicative experiences with respect to the skills and specificities of the profession of the Educator will be presented;

- on the basis of these stimuli, and also referring to the students' previous experiences and latent skills, some conceptual and methodological categories that make up the professional epistemology of the Educator will be highlighted. From the methodological point of view, the purpose of this phase will be to stimulate individual and group reflection, meta-cognitive and meta-communicative practice, participatory learning on the topics in question;

- subsequently the students will be involved in groups of study-research activities, to further develop the analysis on the political-social-cultural emergencies of the contemporary era and their connections with the educational context, to highlight the 'meaning the pedagogically founded action of the Educator, to outline the fundamental competences and professional expertise of the Educator;

- finally, the horizons of reference of Pedagogical Problematicism and of the Epistemology of the Complexity will be used as hermeneutic devices to deconstruct and relocate the concepts developed previously in the broader general pedagogical framework and to trace their theoretical foundations.

Readings/Bibliography

P. Freire, La pedagogia degli oppressi, 2018, Edizioni GruppoAbele, Torino

A. Tolomelli, Rimuovere gli osatcoli, ETS, Pisa, 2019

A. Tolomelli, Il valore pedagogico della divergenza, Guerini, Milano, 2022.

Teaching methods

Lessons, seminars with experts and study of documents and other sources.

Assessment methods

The final test will be written and includes multiple closed-ended and open-ended questions.

Teaching tools

Audiovisual contents, powerpoint presentations will be proposed and also active teaching laboratory activities will be proposed.

Office hours

See the website of Alessandro Tolomelli