Selected Contemporary Social Threats in the Discourse of Social Pedagogues

Abstract

Introduction: The article provides a descriptive and illustrative overview of selected social threats concerning the theoretical, methodological, and methodical advancement of research in social pedagogy. An essential element of the article’s content is the assumptions of James S. Coleman’s theory of social capital, Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, and Aaron Antonovsky’s salutogenesis. Research Aim: The authors’ attention is focused on the diagnosis of the relationship between the specific and traditional present in the research of social educators’ dimensions of social threats and the views of social educators on their aetiology, significance for social reality, and thus determinants of the psychosocial existence of modern man, and finally the possibilities of overcoming these threats. Evidence-based Facts: In the traditionally understood causative paradigm of social pedagogy, the emphasis is primarily on solutions focused on using resources that naturally constitute the environment of human social participation. However, the text highlights the possibility of supplementing this paradigm with selected indications of the concept of social capital, logotherapy and salutogenesis in counteracting existential emptiness and the loss of the sense of the meaning of life. Summary: Such an approach allows for a deep, multidimensional insight into the issue of social threats. As a result, it provides knowledge about characteristic relationships between variables that condition the occurrence, differentiation, and development of social threats. This, in particular, offers an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of interventions carried out in the daily professional practice of social pedagogues.