Social pedagogues and social workers in primary school
Social pedagogues and social workers in primary school

Summary/Abstract: Seeking connections and boundaries between social pedagogy and social work has a long scientific history. Within the Czech context, this model is indicated in the first third of the 20th century by Hořejší (1928, pp. 72–73), and in the present day, for example, by Skarupská (2016), who identifies a connection between the two professions in social work methods, which social pedagogues also use in practising their profession. Internationally, this is documented by Schilling (1999), and in a review article written by Hämäläinen (2003), who works from three hypotheses. Firstly, that social pedagogy and social work are completely different from each other. Secondly, that social pedagogy and social work are identical. And thirdly, that social pedagogy and social work complement each other (Hämäläinen, 2003, p. 75). Ondrejkovič (2004) considers social pedagogy to be a social work theory. In this case, we need to find a suitable tool just for the area of social pedagogy, which is difficult because, as Kraus (2014) states, research within social pedagogy is varied, and often affected by sampling error. The submitted paper contributes to the discussion through analysis specific work activities of social pedagogues and social workers. Although we realise that these fields and professions, and the working activities they involve, are similar, we also believe that in some areas of their work one can define particular characteristics. The objective of this article is to analyse the specific working activities which apply to both social pedagogues and social workers within the primary school environment. In order to create categories for analysis, we used a breakdown and description of working activities taken from the websites of primary schools where social pedagogues work. The defined activities are characterised on the basis of descriptions published on the websites of the particular primary schools, alongside an analysis of the profession of social workers in the same categories, using the wording of the act describing the occupation of social worker (“Act No. 108/2006,” 2019).

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