Historical Consciousness in Youth Work and Adult Education
1 A social pedagogical perspective on youth work and adult education During the past decades, the fields of youth work and adult education are concerned with questions concerning their identity. Questions that cannot receive a full answer without taking into account our (shared) social and pedagogical histories. For many practitioners, policymakers and researchers the confrontation with our history means a renewed acquaintance with social and pedagogical questions that constitute our field, often in a rather ‘natural’ way, which means that they are not open for critical inquiry (Heyting, 2001). So, in discovering the past we also hope to renew the ‘social pedagogical eye’ (Stickelman, 1993) in our work by investigating how pedagogical questions are always related to social problems or broader questions concerning social cohesion.