Education on the margins: The training of Educators and Sociocultural Animators in Spain, (1970-2000). A different pedagogical perspective

Abstract

Fifty years ago, official pedagogy in Spain was not concerned with the training of educators and animators. During the sixties, leisure time educators soon noticed the methodological deficiencies they were facing, while the beginning of the seventies was experienced as a boom of leisure time movements. In the years of transition, pedagogical renewal movements and other groups and associations adopted committed attitudes in the social and political fields. It is from this perspective that sociocultural animation appears. The method followed is a descriptive analysis of the events while justifying why we speak of a marginal pedagogy, outside or at the limits of official pedagogy. Several training initiatives emerged. At that time, the training perspectives for the future passed through three levels: the first one of voluntary work, the second one of a certain semi-professionalism based on long training courses, and the third one constituted by higher studies of a professional nature. That marginal pedagogy developed in the training of educators and animators during twenty years (1970-1990) was undoubtedly a vocational work, with few resources, carried out by people who felt the need to improve training in order to face a much more effective socio-educational intervention.