Social pedagogy: an approach without fixed recipes

A historical and theoretical reconstruction of the specificity and
peculiarity of the discipline of social pedagogy, as it has developed in
Denmark. Social pedagogy takes its departure from the idea that the
individual person and the community are at once dependent on each
other and also in the way of each other, so the task of social pedagogy
is rebalancing the dynamics between the two. Social pedagogy is
also characterised as a discipline with three dimensions: a practical
dimension, a theoretical dimension and a professional dimension.
The professional’s task is neither to apply theory in practice nor to
uphold the usual practice; it is to mediate between theory and practice.
The specificity of the discipline gives rise to specific challenges and
dilemmas that theorists make understandable and transparent and practitioners
have to deal with. A big challenge for social pedagogy is the
quest for evidence-based methods that overrides the specificity of the
social pedagogical approach. Balancing different forms of knowledge
implies that programmes and methods are used as inspiration that can
be contained in a social pedagogical approach.