Psychopedagogy is the area of knowledge that studies the human learning. This science is dedicated to understanding how individuals learn, what difficulties may arise in this process and how to enhance learning.
Understanding how a person learns is important for the construction of teaching practices and also for helping those who have some difficulty in acquiring new knowledge.
For psychopedagogy, learning is a complex act that involves cognitive, social and affective conditions. This means that in addition to the biological aspects (some disorder, such as dyslexia or attention deficit, for example), it is necessary to understand what is the social context and cultural and what the family relationships of individuals are like.
Some questions that psychopedagogy seeks to answer are:
- How do children, youth and adults learn or not learn?
- What are the causes of learning difficulties?
- How to eliminate or minimize learning difficulties?
Psychopedagogy is a field of studyinterdisciplinary, that is, it involves different disciplines. It brings together knowledge from psychology and pedagogy, but also from areas such as pediatrics, speech therapy and anthropology.
To be a psychopedagogist, you need to graduate or specialize in the area. This professional can work in educational institutions, hospitals, companies or individual care clinics.
What does a psychopedagogist do?
The psychopedagogist is the professional who aims to enhance the learning of individuals. This work can be done preventively or therapeutically.
When the work is done in a preventive way, the aim is to avoid future learning problems. And when a learning disorder has already been identified, a therapeutic treatment is carried out to eliminate or minimize these difficulties.
Learning is a process that involves different aspects of the student and their social context. Therefore, psychopedagogists usually work in partnership with other professionals, such as psychologists, social workers and speech therapists.
Psychopedagogy works from two approaches: institutional psychopedagogy, which works preventively in schools, companies and other institutions. And clinical psychopedagogy, which is focused on individual treatment in offices or hospitals.
What is institutional psychopedagogy?
Institutional psychopedagogy is the aspect of psychopedagogy that works in schools, associations, agencies or companies. In these cases, the psychopedagogist works in partnership with managers, teachers and students collectively.
The role of educational psychologists in organizations is to identify what helps and what hinders students in the learning process. And, from this analysis, propose actions to enhance the development of students.
Examples of how a psychopedagogist can work in different organizations:
- Schools: diagnoses of the school's pedagogical practices, guidance to teachers and administrators about the teaching processes and development of practices that strengthen the relationship of students with educators;
- Companies: training to improve performance and interpersonal relationships among employees;
- hospitals: monitoring of patients who need to be away from school for reasons of hospitalization, contributing to their development and to the inclusion of children in school in the post-hospital period.
What is clinical psychopedagogy?
Clinical psychopedagogy is what happens with individual assistance in hospital offices or clinics, when learning disorders or difficulties have been previously identified.
Learning difficulties can be related to:
- Impossibility or difficulty in learning the contents;
- Slow learning in relation to peers;
- lack of interest in learning.
In clinical care, the professional seeks to understand how the individual's family and social relationships are and what happened at each stage of his life. Knowing the context in which you are inserted helps you to identify the causes of learning difficulties.
Clinical treatment takes the form of therapy and aims to treat the difficulties, so that learning barriers are eliminated or minimized and the student can develop their potential.
What is the difference between institutional and clinical psychopedagogy?
The main difference between these approaches is that institutional psychopedagogy act in a way preventive, to avoid learning problems. THE clinical psychopedagogy, on the other hand, works in a way therapy and aims to cure the identified difficulties.
In organizations, psychopedagogists work together with managers and students, in order to create environments conducive to learning and prevent possible barriers that hinder the development of students.
In clinical care, individuals already have some type of learning difficulty and will be monitored by a psychopedagogist. This professional will identify what prevents or hinders the student's development and then proposes a treatment for their particular case.
The history of psychopedagogy in Brazil
Psychopedagogy in Brazil began to be discussed around the 1960s. In these first decades, as in other countries, learning difficulties were treated as diseases of organic origin, that is, the result of dysfunctions in the body itself.
These difficulties were called "minimal brain dysfunctions” (DCM). This diagnosis disregarded the social and family problems faced by the children and also the problems of the education system itself.
In the following decades, psychopedagogists began to realize that learning difficulties were not only related to biological issues. They were also influenced by the individual's social and affective relationships.
O first psychopedagogy course of Brazil was founded in 1979 at the Instituto Sedes Sapientiae in São Paulo, on the initiative of pedagogue Maria Alice Vassimon. This course was intended to complement the training of educators and psychologists who wanted to go deeper into learning difficulties.
From the 1990s onwards, specialization courses in psychopedagogy multiplied throughout the country and the profession became popular. One of the institutions that stands out in the recognition and dissemination of information about the area is the Brazilian Association of Psychopedagogy.
Studies on psychopedagogy began in nineteenth-century Europe. the swiss Jean Piaget and the russian Lev Vygotsky were important scholars about education, their discoveries about learning contributed to the development of psychopedagogy.
The discoveries of European researchers reached Latin America around the 1960s and Argentina became a reference in studies on psychopedagogy in the region. Due to geographical and linguistic proximity, Argentine scholars contributed to the development of psychopedagogy in Brazil.
One of the most important scholars in Argentina was Jorge Visca, founder of the Instituto de Psicopedagogia from Argentina and also from Psychopedagogy Study Centers in Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and in Savior.
What is and what is the role of the Brazilian Psychopedagogy Association (ABPp)
The Associação Brasileira de Psicopedagogia is an organization that brings together and offers support to psychopedagogy professionals. It works in the development of this field of study, aiming at updating professionals and disseminating research carried out by educators.
One of the main objectives of this organization is the fight for the regulation of the profession, which will determine the rights and duties of psychopedagogists in Brazil.
Although psychopedagogy courses are regulated by the Ministry of Education (MEC), the profession is not yet regulated in Brazil. Since 1997, the association has followed a Bill of Law that is being processed in the Federal Congress for the regulation of the activity.
The regulation of the profession would allow these professionals to work according to their own legislation. Some benefits of regulating an activity are: the definition of a wage floor and the rules on working hours.
Psychopedagogists argue that the regulation of the profession is important so that there are well-defined guidelines on the performance of these professionals. In addition, they argue that their work is of great importance in Brazil, where school dropout and failure rates are high.
The symbol of psychopedagogy in Brazil
The symbol of psychopedagogy in Brazil is a "Mobius Tape", consisting of three ribbons twisted and connected at the ends. This image represents the psychopedagogist's view of the individual who is learning.
The turns of the tape represent the individual's learning process, the central ball represents the new knowledge being acquired and the red dot on the outside represents the changes after the acquisition of the knowledge.
The “Möbius Tape” was discovered in 1858 by the German mathematician Auguste Ferdinand Möbius, while studying the theory of polyhedrons.
November 12: Psychopedagogist's day in Brazil
November 12 was established by the Associação Brasileira de Psicopedagogia as the day of the psychopedagogist during the administration of President Nivea Maria de Carvalho Fabrício (1999-2001). The date was chosen in honor of the Association's creation day, which took place in 1980.
This date is a tribute to professionals in the area who, with their work, help students to overcome learning difficulties, contributing to a more inclusive and effective education.
See also the meaning of child development.
references
ARAUJO, Paula Fernandes Corrêa de. Would pedagogy be a possibility to face learning difficulties? 2014. 71 f. Dissertation (Masters) - Education Course, Methodist University of São Paulo 22, São Bernardo do Campo, 2014.
ANGELS, Elza Karina Oliveira dos; DIAS, Juliana Rocha Adelino. Pedagogy: its history, origin and field of action. Reveals: Interinstitutional Academic Journal, São Paulo, v. 8, n. 18, p. 1-12, Jul. 2015. Semiannual.
SANTOS, Denise Moreira dos. How psychopedagogy can contribute to the treatment of autistic children. 2009. 43 f. Monograph (Specialization) - Specialization Course in Psychopedagogy, Candido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro, 2009.
SILVA, Vanderson de Sousa. Psychopedagogy: historical aspects and institutional praxis. Public education, v. 19, No. 15, August 6, 2019.
Brazilian Association of Psychopedagogy (ABpp). Available in: http://www.abpp.com.br/.
