Pedagogist as Social Professional: Sozialpädagogik and Professional Pedagogy

Abstract The profound changes that have occurred over the last few decades to the social, cultural and relational reality have added a new emphasis on pedagogy even though the emerging need for the profession of “pedagogist,” a new intellectual and social profession in common consideration, but which boasts over 2500 years of history and tradition as its reference science. This profession is at the top of pedagogical and education professions. Its conceptual and operational framework, its methodologies and procedures, its technical vocabulary and everything constituting an advanced professional knowledge were born and developed in the ancient times, beginning with its origins in classical Greece. The recent re-foundations can be found in the Sozialpädagogik, in the same Mittleuropean cultural environment where other social professions of recent birth have their ground. Re-founders of this science and profession were Mager, Diesterweg, Natorp and Durkheim Pedagogist. In this paper, we summarized the essential features of this profession, its methodology, its principles, its practical procedures, with special attention to the problems of couple and family, and those belonging to its initial education and its recognition by law which in Italy have been solved only at the end of the year 2017. The branch of General Pedagogy that includes this subject is called Professional Pedagogy.