Young Europeans: the Nordic approach and the pedagogical profession

Abstract

Modern western societies are characterised by new patterns of family life that together with the focus on lifelong learning raise issues about what sort of practitioners are needed to work with ‘young Europeans’. New patterns of family life may collide with historic, national and traditional views and will bring into question existing forms of care and education for children and young people. Today, across Europe, there are many kinds of services offered to children and families. There is debate and discussion of what is the main task of these services and the level of skills needed by practitioners. Do we need an emphasis on worker as care giver or an emphasis on worker as educator? Should they be primarily specialists or generalists within the broad range of social-pedagogical work? What direction is work with young children moving in Europe? A key question is whether young children need to be included as early as possible in the main educational system and taught by teachers on curricula-based content and methodology in order to prepare them for the global economy of knowledge and skills; or whether a different approach should be chosen, one which strongly features integration of education and social care, supported by social pedagogues, that would be experienced more humanistically and democratically by children.KeywordsEuropean UnionNordic CountryEarly Childhood EducationLifelong LearningCompulsory SchoolThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.