For a pedagogy of the subject: the centrality of the person in educational interventions

This article proposes and expounds a professional point of view on contemporary pedagogical knowledge and practices, focusing in particular on the centrality of the subjects in education. Pedagogical knowledge is in a state of ‘uncertainty and precariousness’, leaving open a number of core issues concerning educational, cultural and social models. The clarification of the ‘precariousness’ of educational work deserves to be acknowledged: uncertainty becomes a healthy weakness, as Sergio Tramma points out in ‘L’educatore imperfetto’, the ‘unstable constitution’ of the educational area is its intrinsic strength because it represents the constant openness to transformation, to possibility, to the reading of change. What tension should accompany the educational mission of professionals working in the field of social sciences, which values should accompany educational action, and, finally, which proposals can be activated to create a fertile pedagogical terrain harbinger of ideas? The paradigm of complexity that runs through ‘social knowledge’ should not only concern itself with the problems inherent to readings of the contemporary world, but also activate unexpected energies and resources, promoting a rethinking of the role of the competences of all the functions having an educational-social value (teacher, territorial educator, social worker, community animator, psychologist, mentor). The challenge is to generate theories and transformative experiences that can restore a leading role to the subjects in education, both in their individual as well as in their collective roles.