This master's thesis deals with the question of the perspectives that social pedagogy takes when it is situated in the field of imprisonment. It draws on theoretical premises related to the understanding of social pedagogy as a difficult-to-define discipline whose key tasks are related to both individual work and social critique, i.e. addressing the social structures that generate deviance. I see the second task in particular, that of preventing the reproduction of existing discriminatory and oppressive structures and the importance of an emancipatory approach, as the foundation on which the social pedagogical profession must be based. In doing so, I assume that the theoretical knowledge that the social pedagogue brings and uses to understand both the concrete situation and the broader social critique is crucial for the work in practice. In the area of situating social pedagogy in prisons, I start from an understanding of the prison as a disciplining social apparatus, as Foucault calls it, which in its primary function has little possibility of enacting the emancipatory role of social pedagogy.
The aim of this thesis was to gain insight into the perspectives taken by social pedagogy in relation to prison work at the level of theoretical reflection or written social pedagogical thought. I used a qualitative research method in this study. I carried out a qualitative content analysis of the data, based on a sample of articles addressing the topics of prison and work with convicted people, published in the journal Social Pedagogy from the beginning of its publication to the present day. In this thesis I find that the perspectives of social pedagogy in the field of prison are very different from each other, sometimes even contradictory. Most of the articles mainly deal with the situation in prison, both from the point of view of the prison staff and the prisoners, and the content is mostly based on rehabilitative goals. The socially critical orientation of the articles is only exceptionally evident in a few articles, which are mostly contradictory in their content and objectives to the rest of the articles in the sample. The findings represent the first attempt to reflect on social pedagogical articles in this field in the Slovenian context and a possibility for future analysis of social pedagogy and the professional positioning of social pedagogy in the field of imprisonment in Slovenia.
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