Teaching unit 3.1
Module: Theory and methods MWD, Agology

Teacher: Joop Mous

General

Agology is the science of educational and formative action.

Objective

Based on everyone’s practical experiences, professional motivation,
supervision and theoretical training, the special nature of the agogical
intervention, so typical of the profession of social worker, is further
explored and deepened.

Content

To this end, attention is paid (self-reflection) to the complexity of
the relationships in which the social worker finds himself: as ‘spider
and fly at the same time’, in a social web that he has not spun himself.
This complexity requires critical professional awareness for the sake of
professional development.
This concept can be placed in an agogical meaning context with the
concepts of development, decoding, reinterpretation, reconstruction and
self-responsible action. The three agogical viewers or scopes will be
examined for their functioning and, placed in line with each other, will
be sharpened. The micro- and mesoscopes become blurred when we put the
macroscope aside, which often appears to be the case with social
workers, but not only with them.
We will analyse twelve relationships that are encompassed by the
complexity just indicated. At the micro level we place the relationship
of the worker with himself, with the client and his problem; at the meso
level the relationships with colleagues, the professional group, the
institution, the management and the adjacent professional groups in
‘care country’; finally at the macro level the relationships between the
profession, the all-encompassing culture(s), society, the community and
government policy can be positioned.
The whole of the twelve relationships will result in a simple agogic
model of thought and action for social workers, which creatively
connects two contradictory ordering principles, which logically are at
odds with each other: the dual and the dialectical principle. Both
principles are active in the interaction of mother/father and child,
worker and client, worker and management, as well as between I and self,
a problem and its solution and between informal society and formal
society. Failure to clearly distinguish between the two logical levels
predictably generates impasses, double binds, conflicts and other
(two-sided) monological deadlock processes. We usually refer to these
simply as problems that require a solution. The latter is often located
at a higher logical level than the problem itself. Only an agogic (i.e.
dialogic, person-oriented and meaning-exploring) guidance relationship
makes it possible to discover the self-expressed problem and the
self-responsible solution. This royal agogic path to the sought-after,
truly liberating perspectives is fundamentally, i.e. also ethically and
methodologically, at odds with the dominant medical, business
management-oriented and behavioural scientific problem approaches that
characterise the (post)modern labour-divided social system.

Working method: A practicum of meaning-exploring conversation in
different group sizes. Presentations of visions, experiences, profiles.
Attendance required.
Working with the dual and dialectical model, compared to the
values ​​square (Hellwig), core qualities quadrant (Offe), inside,
outside, and across model and the impasse model (Watzlawick)

Time investment: 40 hours.
Study year: Main phase II part-time
Literature:
– Working with the `readers or text bundles that are in fact the stories
of workers and clients themselves.
– Working with a handy study, learning and working method to promote
critical seeing, emotional awareness and self-reflection as a basis for
methodical-agogic action