Pedagogy, which today is linked to work based on education and for which it is necessary to have studied at university, has very humble origins: the paidagogos , so called in ancient Greek, was the slave who accompanied the children to school.

However, nowadays the art of teaching has become a much more diversified discipline, and that is why we talk about types of pedagogy .

Next we will see what the types of pedagogy are and what needs they respond to.

Pedagogy as a broad educational discipline

Today’s education systems are so complex and have so many facets, for better or for worse, that it has been necessary to create variants of pedagogy to be able to respond to all needs and cover all sides of teaching.

To begin with, pedagogy does not focus only on children, but on people, regardless of the stage of life they are in . Of course, in practice, education for children has a special importance, but unlike hundreds of years ago, adults are also considered to be prone to be guided and helped from outside in their interest to learn. Training is the object of study in pedagogy, and it is present wherever there is someone who can learn something, and in order to provide solutions to this wide range of contexts, types of pedagogy have been formulated.

On the other hand, the constructivist approach has had a lot of weight in pedagogy , so teachers are no longer understood as agents who transmit knowledge in a sequential way. Today, it is considered that the task of teachers is to accompany and offer guides so that people learn to assimilate knowledge and to investigate and experiment on their own, instead of memorizing what they are told, for which it is necessary that educators and students constantly give each other feedback.

Types of pedagogies

Thus, pedagogy has become the science that studies education, and therefore has to be adapted to all situations where this phenomenon occurs, from various possible approaches. This has led to the emergence of different kinds of pedagogy, which are the following.

1. Descriptive Pedagogy

This type of pedagogy is focused on making theories that serve to describe well how teaching is carried out in the real world , beyond the basic objectives and theoretical guidelines that have been set about how education should be.

2. Normative Pedagogy

In normative pedagogy a philosophical and theoretical debate is established about how education should be , the objectives it should pursue, the way in which concepts should be defined and how optimal learning situations should be. If descriptive pedagogy talks about what happens, this type of pedagogy talks about what should happen. In other words, it proposes theoretical models that serve as references for setting goals and strategies.

3. Children’s pedagogy

Teaching during the first years of life is very important , since that is when people are most sensitive to their environment: a great variety of situations we experience as children leave a mark on us that we keep when we are adults. That is why it is necessary to create a type of specialized pedagogy in the field of education centered on the youngest.

4. Psychological pedagogy

Psychology has a lot to say in the field of teaching, as it helps to understand and predict patterns of thinking and behavior, something very useful in teaching. In this type of pedagogy, the knowledge, strategies and tools of psychology are used to help in the process of learning and educating.

5. Social pedagogy

This kind of pedagogy is used by social services to respond to the learning needs of people at social risk ; therefore, it is usually closely linked to public administration. Its objectives are focused, on the one hand, on the prevention of behaviour patterns that entail risks or that may lead to isolation and, on the other hand, on providing support services so that people in precarious conditions may learn.

In conclusion: a diversified education

Pedagogy is diverse because so are the contexts in which people who need to learn live inside and/or outside the classrooms of a school.

The existence of the different types of pedagogy is a way of trying to respond to the different needs of the group of students and learners , so that in all cases there is a help and a network of people that facilitates them to be the protagonists of this process.