The Professional Vision of Social Educators: Problems, Practices and (Inter)Professional Implications

Abstract

Social educators’ professional vision has been rarely “viewed” as a social organized way of seeing and understanding pedagogical events. Drawing on several episodes coming from consultancies in the socio-educational field (involving children’s homes and socio-educational centers for children and vulnerable families), in this article I analyze many prob-lematic issues connected with the lack of awareness pertaining social educators’ professional vision: what I call the adoption of “medical epistemologies”, the (double) adoption of other professional visions, the educators’ epistemic rigidity constraining themselves as “executors of other sights”, with various practical implications in terms of interprofessional relationships and communication. This material constitutes an arena of discussion pertaining epistemologi-cal, theoretical and methodological implications, and can be useful for a more mature and aware pedagogical observation. In the conclusions, I propose the adoption of a bi-univocal and participative approach to the observation phase, a recursive relationship with educational plans and activities and an informed choice over epistemological, theoretical-methodological references and the adoption of a knowledgeable theory of change. These steps can prove to be useful instruments in order to understand social educators’ professional vision(s).

Keywords

• professional vision
• educatori
• servizi residenziali e semi-residenziali per bambini e famiglie
• osservazione educativa
• epistemologia dell’osservazione