• What is a pedagogical approach?

We explain what a pedagogical approach is and the characteristics of the executive, therapeutic and liberating approaches.

There are different ways of understanding education.

What is a pedagogical approach?

When we talk about pedagogical approaches, we usually refer to the different conceptualizations that exist around the educational fact, that is, to the different paradigms from teaching possible, each with their own idea of ​​what education is, how it can be achieved and what are the ideal mechanisms for it.

Therefore, there is no single possible pedagogical approach, but there have been many and very different throughout the history of the education. Each one grants certain roles to the educator, or pursues certain teaching environments. Among them, it is possible to highlight the following three:

• Executive focus. It gives the educator a role of "director" of the teaching process, through a properly structured planning, which is put into practice through school assessments, and through a variety of sequenced and orchestrated resources to reward the learning and discourage behaviors harmful. It is a traditional approach, typical of the psychological school of the behaviorism.
• Therapeutic approach.In this case, the role of the educator is thought of as a facilitator, that is, as a companion of the learning process, whose main mission is to channel learning in a meaningful way, without being responsible for teaching. In that sense, he must empathize with the students and know them in such a way that he can tackle the difficulties of each one and provide solutions so that each student is educated in their own way.
• Liberating approach. According to this approach, the task of education is to liberate, that is, to train citizens more critical and better prepared to face the knowledge; and for this a rather constructivist, in which education is something that happens and is built in the classroom, rather than something that is imposed or imparted to the student. So that the teacher must achieve an environment conducive to knowledge and to formulate and test different hypothesis.