Goals and aims of the social educator training

Department of Social Education, Gedved is a place of learning that emphasises method, analysis, reflection and action in the framework we create for the students' work with education goals.

We consider learning a process of acquisition based on the four dimensions:

• The personal
• The vocational
• The ethical/political
• The artistic/aesthetic

It is central that the students acquire professional as well as personal qualifications to be able to solve educational tasks based on a clear professional identity – borne out of professional knowledge, analytical reflection and competence of actions.

We place particular emphasis on the students' insight into various views of humanity and society and understanding of historical, social and cultural relationships and their effect on educational problems.

Personal values and reaction patterns have great importance in the execution of educational work. It is, therefore, important that the student gains insight into his/her own personal and professional resources, develops an understanding of ethical dimensions and has the ability to make his/her own attitudes visible.

Furthermore, the aesthetic learning processes comprise a crucial element in the programme. There are learning processes that place focus on sense perception, experience and creative processes; in this way, opportunities are created for an extended recognition of the relationship between the cultural expressions of the individual, the group and society.

In other words, this means that the students will acquire – based on a social, personal and professional consciousness – the ability to:

• place themselves behind, next to and in front of those for whom they will be a social educator.
  
• be flexible and full of initiative.
  
• systemise and work out educational problems.
  
• analyse and reflect.
  
• be creative and actionable.
  
• be cooperative.
  
• be constructive and critical.
  
• think in continuity and contrasts.
  
• act based on a complete view.
  
• be process-, product- and development-oriented.
  
• find resources in himself/herself and in others.
  
• be conscious of the difference between private, personal and professional motives and incentives.

Planning of the didactic principles of the Bachelor Programme in Social Education at Department of Social Education, Gedved:

• We work systematically with learning processes and didactic questions – including the student's co-responsibility for his/her own learning and how we implement new goals and experiences in the educational thinking and form.
  
• To as large an extent as possible, we aim toward involving the student in the affiliated research development projects in which the Department's teachers are involved.
  
• We work systematically with the theory-practice relationship.
  
• We highly prioritise the initiatives that support contact and dialogue with the field of practice.
  
• We place great focus on the student meeting a broad variety of teaching and learning forms – team/class teaching, plenum/lectures, group work, reflection groups and independent study work.
  
• The problem-oriented project work comprises a considerable part of the overall programme.
  
• Based on the theme teaching, cross-curriculum and multiple-curriculum collaboration and coordination as well as in connection with teaching and tests, we highly prioritise a close collaboration between the subjects/specialist teachers.
  
• Student guidance including involvement of experience of older students comprises a considerable focal point in the education.

The purpose of the programme
The general purpose of the programme is formulated in section 1 of the education statutory order: 

1. That the student acquires theoretical and practical qualifications for educational work with children, youngsters and adults, including children, youngsters and adults with social difficulties or with physical or psychological disabilities.
   
2. That the student acquires qualifications so that he/she will be able to retain, communicate and develop cultural values through the work, also in relation to people with other linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
   
3. That the student acquires qualifications for collaboration, including collaboration with colleagues and other vocational groups.
   
4. That the student acquires a foundation for developing his/her educational practice and to be able to participate in the development within the educational work area, including experimental and development work.
   
5. That the student's personal development is promoted through the work with the programme content, through participation in various work and collaboration forms and through co-responsibility for the teaching.

These are goals that are common to the social educational function and to educational work regardless of whether it concerns children in nurseries, crèches, disabled, young addicts, etc.

This means that the programme is based on the fundamental common characteristics and in the similarities of the educational work and, thereby, in the qualifications social educators must have.

The programme is, thus, a general education programme and the basic view is that across all differences there is something very central which is common.

The programme's perspective is that the most important qualification required is that a social educator is able to work with all types of clientele and is independent of which institution or type of institution the educational work will take place in.

Having said that, it must at the same time be emphasised that the programme provides the option for what is called ”mild specialisation”. In practise, this means that the student gains the possibility to – and is expected to – prioritise particular subjects and areas of thorough study during the programme. This involves – naturally – that other not so relevant material must be opted out of and left to the student to study him/herself.

Another just as important basic view is that the tasks that must be taken care of are closely connected to the socially related conditions, i.e. that the tasks that must be solved develop/change character – the educational field of work shifts.

A third pillar is that we consider the programme a process of acquisition, where the student acquires competence for vocational educational work through various forms of teaching and learning processes. The focal point is that this process of acquisition manifests itself in new, considered, reasoned ways to act.

The teaching is therefore not considered a process of delivery with the purpose of qualifying the student to carry out what others have decided and where your role as student will be to receive and acquire the knowledge and the theory that the teachers/the college or legislation finds relevant.

It must, therefore, be understood that the education has two aims:

1. On the one hand, there is the teacher's/department's responsibility that the goal of the programme is achieved while the teaching methods and content, to a high degree, are decided through general work within the common framework which is determined either through the Statutory Order (cf. page 2) or the Department's Study Scheme.
   We, therefore, place great importance on involving the student's experiences – both vocational and personal – in the learning process.  
   
2. On the other hand, as a student you participate in the study of what the educational task is and of which criteria form the basis of the qualified social educational function. You are trained in being conscious of your responsibility both as a competent vocational practitioner but also as a citizen in a democratic society. We use the expression: the vocation-capable and life-capable social educator must be provided for in the programme in Gedved. At the same time, this concerns the process of formation, which places the student's personal development at the centre.