Social Pedagogy and Critical Theory: A Conversation with Hans Thiersch

Abstract

Hans Thiersch was born on May 16, 1935 in Recklinghausen, Germany. His work became particularly influential since the 1970s, when he applied the concept of lifeworld orientation to social pedagogy. Indeed, Thiersch can be considered one of the representatives of a critical social pedagogy. Since his retirement in 2002, he has been a professor emeritus of Education and Social Pedagogy at the University of Tübingen. He has also co-edited the handbook of social work / social pedagogy. Professor Thiersch has published extensively on a variety of topics related to education, social work, youth welfare, residential care, morality and justice. However, because most of his publications are in German, his work is not well known outside of Germany. On a rainy evening of October 2013 in Frankfurt, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Professor Thiersch.

Affiliations

Arizona State University, USA

Author notes

Correspondence to: D. Schugurensky, Arizona State University, School of Social Transformation, P.O. Box 876403, Tempe, AZ 85287-6403, USA. Email: dschugur@ 123456asu.edu

*Daniel Schugurensky is the coordinator of the Social and Cultural Pedagogy Program at Arizona State University (ASU), where he is a professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Social Transformation. Before coming to ASU, he was the coordinator of the Adult Education and Community Development Program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Among his recent publications are Volunteers for democracy: informal learning through participatory budgeting (2013), Social pedagogy: historical traditions and transnational connections (2013), Volunteer work and informal learning: a conceptual discussion (2013), and Paulo Freire (2011).

Journal

Journal ID (hwp): ijsp

Journal ID (publisher-id): ijsp

Title: International Journal of Social Pedagogy

Abbreviated Title: IJSP

Publisher: UCL Press (UK )

ISSN (Electronic): 2051-5804

Publication date (Electronic): 1 January 2014

Volume: 3

Issue: 1

Pages: 4-14

DOI: 10.14324/111.444.ijsp.2014.v3.1.002

Copyright statement: Copyright © 2014 The Author(s)

License:

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-NC-SA) 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/, which permits re-use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided any modifications of this material in anyway is distributed under this same license, is not used for commercial purposes, and the original author and source are credited

Counts

Figures: 4, Tables: 0, Equations: 0, References: 0, Pages: 12

Product

Self URI (journal page): https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/international-journal-of-social-pedagogy

Self URI (journal page): https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press/browse-books/international-journal-of-social-pedagogy