ORTHOPEDAGOGIC PRACTICE

Orthopedagogics is directed to a problematic educative
situation. As pedagogics, it also poses fundamental questions
about the essentials of becoming adult with the aim of disclosing
what is problematic regarding this becoming. A search is directed
to everything that belongs to a particular educative problem and
distress and what their possible prevention or rectification includes.

Thus, an orthopedagogical theory is the result of a scientific
fathoming and description of the essential characteristics of the
educative situatedness of a particular child restrained or retarded in
becoming adult and, as such, it is essential knowledge of his
problematic educative situation.24
However, in the first place, a problematic educative situation
remains an educative one and cannot be explained and described
in terms of categories other than pedagogical categories. Even
so, there is no problematic educative situation where the educative
essentials appear the same because each is a particular situation
within which the adult and child participate in the event in
particular ways and, more specifically, in inadequate ways. The
fact of inadequate educating implies that the pedagogical categories
do not appear as they ought to and then there is mention of
distorted or attenuated appearances of the pedagogical essences.
A child who in one or another way is restrained in his becoming
adult finds himself in a different educative situation than a child
who adequately is becoming adult. Orthopedagogical work, as
theory forming, rightly is directed to this different situatedness
as a problematic situatedness. The cardinal question is how
such a child's becoming adult is actualized differently
(inadequately) under the guidance of an adult and how this
confusing situation can be rectified.
For example, to determine how a particular child actualizes his
being-a-person-in-education there is a linking up with
psychopedagogics and how the guidance and teaching are
actualized is determined by connecting up with fundamental and
didactic pedagogics, respectively. Only then can purposive, planned
assistance be given so the gap [between the achieved and achievable
levels of becoming] can be bridged. Among other things, this
means that a child has to be given "special" support to a "new"
readiness to venture, as a purposive resolve to want to enter a life
situation and alter its meaning--with respect to his related possessed
experiences--so that the meanings he gives to educative content are
in agreement with his potentialities.
To be able to answer these questions the orthopedagogue is obliged
to inquire into and acquire proficiency in various aspects that are
implied by the problematic educating.
From a mere psychopedagogical perspective--also in connection
with its so-called practical application--the problematic cannot be
eliminated but without the underlying psychopedagogical
knowledge, the actualization of the psychic life of a child restraine
in becoming adult also cannot be understood.25
So also, "practically applied" fundamental pedagogics merely can
identify the problem and solution since it only indicates what is
involved in actualizing fundamental pedagogical structures.
However, without such knowledge, the problem cannot be decisively
identified or solved.
The various pedagogical disciplines investigate the essentials of the
reality of educating. Only when these essentials appear distorted
and, e.g., there is mention of a disharmony among the
actualizations of educating, teaching and the psychic life is the field
of orthopedagogics entered. Orthopedagogical study implies that
already established pedagogical knowledge always is its point of
departure.
Today there is no discipline that integrates the results of the
various part-perspectives into a unity and that can be described as
postulating categories from a collective perspective. Thus, each
practically directed pedagogical part-perspective is confronted with
the task of converging into a unity all relevant pedagogical
knowledge for attaining its practical aim.
Because this especially raises the question of how a unique child
who is restrained or retarded in becoming adult now has to be
further helped, and since this question cannot be answered from a
particular pedagogical part-perspective, the orthopedagogue is
required to integrate all of the relevant moments from all of the
various part-perspectives with the aim of decisively answering this
question.
When a problematic educative situation is identified by
implementing pedagogical criteria, for example, there is mention of
the inadequate actualization of the fundamental pedagogical
structures, on the one hand, and an under actualization of a
child's psychic life-in-education, on the other hand. In order to
determine how the pedagogical essences appear as distorted or
attenuated in terms of educating inadequately and how the child's
psychic life is under actualized, the fundamental pedagogical,
psychopedagogical and didactic pedagogical criteria, after being
integrated by the orthopedagogue, are implemented as
orthopedagogical criteria.
Thus, orthopedagogical practice requires a collective pedagogical
perspective because the orthopedagogue has to be able to pick out26
the ortho-moments that can be observed with respect to each
differentiated discipline and organize them into an orthopedagogical
Theory to be implemented in the practice of orthopedagogic
intervention with the parties in the problematic educative situation.
Functionalizing of orthopedagogical insights thus means designing
an orthopedagogic practice of assistance by which all particularities
are clarified in terms of their pedagogic consequences. The
demand that the problematic educative situation poses necessarily
has to be met by further specifying how a child underactualizes his
psychic life in it, how the adults inadequately guide him and how he
must be re-educated.
Orthopedagogic assistance to a child restrained in becoming adult
essentially is not different from educative help, but now it is
particular educative help that, in various respects and in accord
with the immediate aims, has to be put to practice on a
differentiated basis.