• Everyday expertise in social pedagogy

    Everyday expertise in social pedagogy


Reactions to increasing global complexity seek to manage ambiguity and uncertainty through narrowing the range of possible pedagogical responses. This is evident in attempts to codify professional knowledge in competency or standards frameworks and to systematise practice through ‘evidence-based’ manuals. At the same time, scholarship on learning and teaching identifies the key quality of the contemporary professional as a capacity to cope with epistemological uncertainty and complexity, which, together, result in an existential experience of ‘strangeness’ (Barnett, 2004).

Attempts to simplify, codify and prescribe professional knowledge and, through this, professional practice, pose real problems for social pedagogical work. Social pedagogical knowledge is not abstract, overly scientific but is situated, contingent, fluid and, crucially, it incorporates the experiential knowledge that derives from the lives of those with whom social pedagogues work. In social pedagogy, professionals might be thought of as ‘experts in the everyday’ (Cameron, 2014). Our work is a self-in-action endeavour, which, by its nature, demands ontological and reflexive examination of how we ‘are’ with one another.

This special series seeks to draw out what might be involved in such everyday expertise and how social pedagogy equips professionals to meaningfully respond in complex and uncertain situations. We are looking for papers that begin to draw out social pedagogy’s knowledge base and how this might be defined and contrasted with ‘evidence-based’ or manualized approaches to practice. 

Publication date: From August - December 2020. 



Guest Editor

Sebastian MonteuxSchool of Applied Sciences, Division of Health Sciences, Abertay University and NHS Tayside, UK.
Prof Mark SmithProfessor of Social Work, School of Education and Social Work, Dundee University, UK.



Article list 


Editorial


Introduction: Everyday Expertise in Social Pedagogy special issue

Mark Smith and Sebastian Monteux

2020-12-01 Volume 9 • Issue 1 • 2020

Also a part of:

Special series: Everyday expertise in social pedagogy

Research article


Weaving a philosophical thread linking everyday practice and theory when ‘it depends … ’

Cecile Remy

2020-12-01 Volume 9 • Issue 1 • 2020

Also a part of:

Special series: Everyday expertise in social pedagogy

It really does depend: Towards an epistemology (and ontology) for everyday social pedagogical practice

Mark Smith

2020-11-10 Volume 9 • Issue 1 • 2020

Also a part of:

Special series: Everyday expertise in social pedagogy

Social pedagogical perspectives on fidelity to a manual: Professional principles and dilemmas in everyday expertise

Lotte Junker Harbo and Robyn Kemp

2020-09-14 Volume 9 • Issue 1 • 2020

Also a part of:

Special series: Everyday expertise in social pedagogy

Human encounters: The core of everyday care practice

Sebastian Monteux and Angelika Monteux

2020-09-07 Volume 9 • Issue 1 • 2020

Also a part of:

Special series: Everyday expertise in social pedagogy

Returning to the heart of teaching: Social pedagogy as phenomenological pedagogy

Adrian Schoone

2020-08-31 Volume 9 • Issue 1 • 2020

Also a part of:

Special series: Everyday expertise in social pedagogy

Play therapy insights into everyday social pedagogical practice in residential child care

Mie Engen, Line Søberg Bjerre and Mogens Jensen

2020-08-31 Volume 9 • Issue 1 • 2020

Also a part of:

Special series: Everyday expertise in social pedagogy

Conceptual critique


Towards recognising practitioners working in out-of-home care as experts in everyday life: A conceptual critique

Claire Cameron

2020-11-16 Volume 9 • Issue 1 • 2020

Also a part of:

Special series: Everyday expertise in social pedagogy