Abstract
Abstract to NERA Conference 2022 – Network of Socialpedagogy: A Paper presentation:
Title: Socialpedagogical professional potentials and challenges in shaping homeliness and overcoming loneliness among elderly people
By Hanne Meyer-Johansen, ph.d. and lecturer at Copenhagen University College, Denmark
Research topic/aim: This research project is based on a municipal project about establishing new kind of safety housing for elderly people who suffers from loneliness and in what extent social pedagogical competencies can be relevant in this field. Politically it has been decided to employ social pedagogues as a central part of the professional staff to support the focus on social activities as a tool to overcome lonelines and increase life quality. So the aim of the project is to explore, how socialpedagogs can make themself relevant for elderly people in a group home and support their own creating of homeliness and overcome loneliness. The elderly people are recruited on the basis of their loneliness primarily and the idea is to include socialpedagogues in the staff group together with more Health oriented professionels that might consist potentials to improve a more subjective, self-determent and service user perspective in this (medical oriented) working field. The ambition is to involve a different professional staff competences than traditional nursing homes and encourage new, flexible types of work organization, where the employees can be able to organize their work based on the individual residents current needs and wishes for shaping “a good old age”. The question is how socialpedagogical competences can contribute to this purpose?
Methodological design/Theoretical inspiration: The method design is based on mixed qualitative data collections from ethnographic field wok, where I have followed the pedagogues during their working day, made focusgroup interviews with different professionals from the staff, unformal individual interviews with the residents and plan to make Dialogue workshops with the professionals, inspired by Action Research, based on a combination between Olav Eikelands discourse ethical dialogue principles and future workshop inspired by critical utopian action research (Eikeland 2005, Nielsen 2012, Nielsen & Nielsen 2005).
Expected results/outcome: We have already found several discrepants between the perspectives, ideas and hopes of the professionals and the residents, that we plan to present at the workshops to start reflections among the professionals. That might be an important source of knowledge to develop their orientations and practices. An important question will be how the ambivalence between the professional need for common perspectives and approaches and need of differentiated individual concern and awareness be overcomed? And an important challenge that we have already observed is how to change the persistent institutional logics as dominating structures that prevent new socialpedagogical perspectives to arise?
Relevance to Nordic educational research: The project can be seen in the light of a general trend with increased focus on service user perspectives in the welfare professionals' work, especially in view of a greater focus on staff self-management and a greater focus on service user perspectives (Andersen & Pors, 2016; Holen & Fight, 2018). And how socialpedagogical empowermental potentials can be redefinded and developed in a competition and measurable oriented society.
Title: Socialpedagogical professional potentials and challenges in shaping homeliness and overcoming loneliness among elderly people
By Hanne Meyer-Johansen, ph.d. and lecturer at Copenhagen University College, Denmark
Research topic/aim: This research project is based on a municipal project about establishing new kind of safety housing for elderly people who suffers from loneliness and in what extent social pedagogical competencies can be relevant in this field. Politically it has been decided to employ social pedagogues as a central part of the professional staff to support the focus on social activities as a tool to overcome lonelines and increase life quality. So the aim of the project is to explore, how socialpedagogs can make themself relevant for elderly people in a group home and support their own creating of homeliness and overcome loneliness. The elderly people are recruited on the basis of their loneliness primarily and the idea is to include socialpedagogues in the staff group together with more Health oriented professionels that might consist potentials to improve a more subjective, self-determent and service user perspective in this (medical oriented) working field. The ambition is to involve a different professional staff competences than traditional nursing homes and encourage new, flexible types of work organization, where the employees can be able to organize their work based on the individual residents current needs and wishes for shaping “a good old age”. The question is how socialpedagogical competences can contribute to this purpose?
Methodological design/Theoretical inspiration: The method design is based on mixed qualitative data collections from ethnographic field wok, where I have followed the pedagogues during their working day, made focusgroup interviews with different professionals from the staff, unformal individual interviews with the residents and plan to make Dialogue workshops with the professionals, inspired by Action Research, based on a combination between Olav Eikelands discourse ethical dialogue principles and future workshop inspired by critical utopian action research (Eikeland 2005, Nielsen 2012, Nielsen & Nielsen 2005).
Expected results/outcome: We have already found several discrepants between the perspectives, ideas and hopes of the professionals and the residents, that we plan to present at the workshops to start reflections among the professionals. That might be an important source of knowledge to develop their orientations and practices. An important question will be how the ambivalence between the professional need for common perspectives and approaches and need of differentiated individual concern and awareness be overcomed? And an important challenge that we have already observed is how to change the persistent institutional logics as dominating structures that prevent new socialpedagogical perspectives to arise?
Relevance to Nordic educational research: The project can be seen in the light of a general trend with increased focus on service user perspectives in the welfare professionals' work, especially in view of a greater focus on staff self-management and a greater focus on service user perspectives (Andersen & Pors, 2016; Holen & Fight, 2018). And how socialpedagogical empowermental potentials can be redefinded and developed in a competition and measurable oriented society.
Original language | Danish |
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Publication date | 3 Jun 2022 |
Number of pages | 1 |
Publication status | Published - 3 Jun 2022 |
Event | NERA 2022: Education and involvement in precarious times - University of Iceland, Reykavik, Iceland Duration: 1 Jun 2022 → 3 Jun 2022 Conference number: 2022 https://nera.hi.is/ https://nera.hi.is/theme/ |
Conference
Conference | NERA 2022 |
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Number | 2022 |
Location | University of Iceland |
Country/Territory | Iceland |
City | Reykavik |
Period | 01/06/22 → 03/06/22 |
Internet address |
Keywords
- social work and social conditions