Program or deviation in social pedagogy

Lotte Junker Haarbo , [email protected]; Aalborg University Programs and deviance in social pedagogy
Throughout the last ten years, evidence based programs have come to play a larger role in Danish social pedagogy. This paper arises from an interest regarding which developments, the presence of evidence-based programs can be said to have led to in social pedagogy. More specific, the paper addresses decision making in social pedagogical practice around one of these programs, namely Aggression Replacement Training (a.r.t. in short) (Gundersen, Olsen, & Finne, 2008). The implementation of a.r.t. in Danish social pedagogical organizations has been supported financially by the Danish state/political system in order to ensure transparency regarding both the financial and the social pedagogical perspective on treatment of antisocial behavior among adolescents.The a.r.t. -manual offers a specific structure, described in detail, on what to do in each of the 30 sessions that the program consists of. Also, the program claims evidence that following the program will lead to aggressive behavior among the participating youths being replaced by pro-social behavior (Gundersen, Olsen, & Finne, 2008, s. 6).In practice though, social pedagogues – no matter how loyal they wish to be to the program - deviate from the described structure (Harbo , 2013, Harbo, 2015). This paper present preliminary findings from an ongoing ph.d.-study which has a fundamental interest regarding WHY the deviations take place. With a Luhmann inspired form analysis (Andersen, 2009, s. 27ff), the paper suggests that social pedagogues actualize not only the a.r.t.-structure but a broad variety of meaning structures (Luhmann N. , 2000, s. 98ff), when deciding what to do in a given a.r.t.-session. In the paper, I will present some of these meaning structures.