Socio-pedagogical knowledge expertise across the social care sectors in Northern Europe

A major challenge in contemporary welfare societies is the delivery of services affirming people’s expectations for their life standard, health and social care services. For decades, there has been a search to understand new ways of conceptualising social pedagogy as a field of practice, as a theory, and as a programme design and implementation. Despite the growing body of literature on social pedagogy, to date, little has been written on the subject of the unique complexities of social pedagogy knowledge expertise when bridging the supporting relationships between an individual and the social dimensions in his/her world. Based on research conducted in Northern Europe, particularly focusing on Denmark and Sweden, the aim of this special issue of International Journal of Papers of Social Pedagogy (PSP) on Contemporary Issues in Social Pedagogy in Northern Europe is to convey the central importance of social pedagogy for the study of vitality and diversity behind social pedagogy thought. The presented research projects in this special issue are, in their foundation, associated with a constructivist approach that views the body of knowledge development as an active and cooperative process of knowledge construction and its application in social pedagogy discipline. This article intends to provide a general perspective concerning the presence of various knowledge forms according to the search for, and implementation of, thinking and acting in a social pedagogy inspired way, and working under various conditions.