engleski

Social Pedagogues – from Knowledge for Change to Faith in Change

This presentation will show fundamental these and preliminary results of a research “ Scientific Establishment and Development of Social Pedagogy in the Republic of Croatia” that is conducted on the Department of Behavioral Disorders, Faculty of Special Education and Rehabilitation Sciences (University of Zagreb, Croatia) and is financed by Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport. Project aims to verify a basic hypothesis that social pedagogy can be determined as a science, theory and practice of preventing difficulties of social integration, especially through special help in education and resocialization of individuals and specific social groups. Primarily, the project aims to answer some questions regarding the identiy of social pedagogy in Croatia. Project also aims to establish the core subject of social pedagogy which will probably result in some changes in the future. One of the steps towards achieving mentioned project aims is establishment and evaluation of professional competencies of social pedagogues for their successful professional work. This step is also very important for changes in university level education curricula of social pedagogues in Croatia, as well as for needs of social integration of children, youth and adults with behavioral disorders. This step is partially implemented in an empirical pilot research that examines basic elements of professional identity of social pedagogues. Results of this part of pilot research will be presented on this Conference. Research was conducted on a sample of 117 social pedagogues who work in different public sectors of the state: social welfare, education, health, justice, police and NGO. Social pedagogues assessed the significance of different elements for their professional work through three elements of competencies: knowledge, skills and personal traits. Professional competency is defined as subjective and individual estimation that integrates all three elements in daily work. This research will offer a concept of specific position of social pedagogy within all helping professions and describe elements that make it an interdisciplinary profession.

competencies; children and youth; social pedagogues

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