Why study Pedagogy? 10 keys that you should value

A university degree that teaches us the ways to learn and practice teaching.

Pedagogy is a discipline that is responsible for researching and offering options for intervention in one of the pillars on which any society is based: education.. 

As much as educational systems can be criticized or questioned, teaching models are factors that have a direct impact on the values we internalize, the thought patterns we prefer to adopt and the way we relate to each other. That is why opting for a university degree related to pedagogy is, in many ways Pedagogy is, on many occasions, the favorite option of a large number of young (and not so young) people (and not so young) who plan to build a professional career in this field.

What you should know before studying pedagogy

As is the case in practically all university careers and master's and postgraduate training, before deciding to study pedagogy, a series of factors must be taken into account in order to be able to decide with the best possible knowledge.

These are some of the points to consider.

1. What is Pedagogy?

Pedagogy is the science that studies the education in order to direct it through certain designs and strategies towards the achievement of certain goals. It has a strong philosophical component, since it must explore what are the priorities of education and how it should benefit society, but it also has a scientific-technical component, since it is used to investigate which methods and theories can be used to better understand and intervene more effectively in education.

2. Education goes beyond the classroom

Learning and teaching have long been seen as going far beyond facilities designed specifically for teachers to teach classes. Education is increasingly understood as a collaborative network involving teachers, school management, parents and the wider family of the students. involving teachers, school management, parents and the wider family of students and, in many cases, psychologists and social workers.

3. Pedagogy is an interdisciplinary science.

Pedagogy is an interdisciplinary science. that, together, provide a basis for better studying, understanding and intervening in education. This means that it has multiple communicating vessels with other disciplines, which allows directing interests towards specific areas of other sciences.

4. Pedagogy and Psycho-pedagogy have differences.

Although they are closely related, these two disciplines are not the same, these two disciplines are not the same and contain many differences.. While Pedagogy studies the phenomenon of teaching and education in general terms and in relation to many other social sciences such as Sociology or Anthropology, Psychopedagogy focuses on the pedagogical area related to psychological theories that explain the development of mental faculties and that use psychological tools for measurement and intervention to improve student care.

5. It does not have to be an easy career

In some countries, university careers linked to education give the image of being very easy. However, this depends on political-administrative criteria, on each region and each university, on the one hand, and on the abilities and interests of each person, on the other. A science or discipline is not easy in itself; it depends on the strengths of each student. and the filters that the educational entities are willing to put in place to demand a minimum level of competencies and preparation.

6. Pedagogy is not only in charge of teaching

A person with training and experience in pedagogy can be a teacher and instruct students, but this is not necessarily the case.. He or she can also work on the other side of the coin: learning, and understand how it is produced. From this follows the next point.

7. Pedagogues and teachers are not synonymous.

Pedagogues can work away from the classroom and without being teachers in front of the students, working in research teams.They can work in research teams. They have a relative freedom of choice in this respect, since their scope of work is broader than the work that is basically done in a classroom.

8. Pedagogues do not teach children and young people.

Traditionally, there has been a tendency to believe that education is something that only concerns young people and their teachers, but this is not the case. Education is a phenomenon that occurs at all ages.This is increasingly demonstrated by the need for adults to retrain and educate themselves to further expand their skills and areas of training.

In some ways, this profession places value on the fact that behind the grassroots work with students there is a great deal of research and intellectual work that must also be valued as an integral and important part of the educational process.. 

That is why what is done in schools, academies and universities is not based on arbitrary criteria or the whims of educators, but on methodological principles that seek to establish useful and effective learning techniques.

9. Pedagogues are not psychologists

Although the two sciences are in contact and exchange knowledge, there are clear differences between them. Pedagogy focuses on education, while psychology studies behavior and mental processes in general, being a bridge discipline between biology and neurosciences, on the one hand, and social sciences, on the other.

When it comes down to it, learning is still one of the behaviors that can be studied by psychologists, but pedagogues specialize in the study of learning. but pedagogues specialize in this and not in others. and not others.

10. Pedagogy does not consist in knowing how to transmit information to the student.

Education is currently considered to be a process in which students should be active agents in their own training and development of competencies. The idea of classrooms as places where teachers recite and students memorize is considered outdated: today we try to involve students in the classroom at least as much as teachers do.