Why study Pedagogy? 10 keys that you should value
Pedagogy is a discipline that It is responsible for investigating and offering intervention options in one of the pillars on which any society is founded: education .
As much as educational systems can be criticized or questioned, teaching models are factors that have a direct impact on the values we internalize, the thought patterns we prefer to adopt and the way in which we relate. That's why choosing a university career related to Pedagogy is, on many occasions, the favorite option of a large number of young people (and not so young) who plan to carve out a professional career in this field.
What you need to know before studying pedagogy
As it happens in practically all the university careers and ways of formation of master and postgraduate, before deciding to study Pedagogy it is necessary to take into account a series of factors to be able to decide having the maximum possible knowledge.
These are some of the points to consider.
1. What is Pedagogy?
Pedagogy is the science that studies education to be able to direct it through certain designs and strategies towards the achievement of certain goals. It has a strong philosophical component, since it must explore what are the priorities of education and in what way it has to benefit society, but it also has a scientific-technical component, since it is investigated through what methods and Theories can be better understood and intervened in a more effective way about education.
2. Education goes beyond the classroom
It has long been considered that learning and teaching go far beyond facilities specifically designed for teachers to teach. Education is increasingly understood as a collaborative network in which teachers participate, the direction of the educational centers, the parents and the family in general of the students and, in many cases, psychologists and social workers.
3. Pedagogy is an interdisciplinary science
Within the Pedagogy, many social sciences come together which, together, provide a basis to study, understand and intervene better in education. That means that it has multiple communicating vessels with other disciplines, which allows directing interests to specific areas of other sciences.
4. Pedagogy and Psychopedagogy have differences
Although they have a close relationship, These two disciplines are not the same and contain many differences . While Pedagogy studies the phenomenon of teaching and education in general terms and in relation to many other social sciences such as Sociology or Anthropology, Psychopedagogy focuses on the pedagogical area related to psychological theories that explain the development of mental faculties that use psychological tools for measurement and intervention to improve attention to students.
5. It does not have to be an easy race
In some countries, university careers linked to education give the image of being very easy. However, this depends on political-administrative criteria, each region and each university, on the one hand, and the capabilities and interests of each person, on the other. A science or discipline is not easy in itself, it depends on the strengths of each student and of the filters that the educational entities are willing to put in order to demand a degree of competences and minimum preparation.
6. Pedagogy is not only responsible for teaching
A person with training and experience in Pedagogy can be a teacher and instruct students, but it does not have to be this way necessarily . You can also focus on the other side of the coin: learning, and understanding how it is produced. From that the next point is derived.
7. Pedagogue and teacher are not synonyms
Pedagogues can work far from the classroom and without exercising teachers to the students , working in research teams. They have a relative freedom of choice in this aspect, since their scope of work is broader than the work that is basically done in a classroom.
8. Pedagogues do not teach children and young people
Traditionally, there has been a tendency to believe that education is something that only concerns young people and their teachers, but it is not so. Education is a phenomenon that occurs in all ages , which is demonstrated more and more with the need for adults to be recycled and educated to continue expanding their skills and areas of training.
In a way, this profession puts in value the fact that behind the basic work with students there is a great amount of research and intellectual work that must also be valued as an integral and important part of the educational process .
That is why what is done in schools, academies and universities does not start from arbitrary criteria or from the whims of educators, but from methodological principles that seek to establish useful and effective learning techniques.
9. Pedagogues are not psychologists
Although both sciences are in contact and exchange knowledge, there are clear differences between both . Pedagogy focuses on education, while Psychology studies behavior and mental processes in general, being a discipline bridge between biology and neurosciences, on the one hand, and the social sciences, on the other.
At the moment of truth, learning does not stop being one of the behaviors that can be studied by psychologists, but the pedagogues specialize in this and not in others.
10. Pedagogy does not consist in knowing how to transmit information to the student
Currently, it is considered that education is a process in which students should be active agents in their own training and development of skills. That idea of classes as places where teachers recite and students memorize is considered outdated: today we try to get students to participate in the classes at least as much as the teachers .
