Socialinės inovacijos bendruomenėje: socialinio pedagogo požiūris

LTStraipsnyje analizuojamas socialinių pedagogų požiūris į savo galimybes kurti socialines inovacijas ar dalyvauti jas kuriant. Pristatomas focus grupės interviu organizavimas, pagrindžiamas focus grupės metodo taikymas, pateikiama teorinių ir praktinių žinių apie socialines inovacijas bendruomenėje, siekiant nustatyti socialinių inovacijų kūrimo kurso poreikį rengiant socialinius pedagogus ir tobulinant jų kvalifikaciją. Kartu straipsnyje aptariama socialinės inovacijos samprata inovatyvios visuomenės kūrimo kontekste ir pristatoma socialinių inovacijų kūrimo skatinimo politika Europos Sąjungoje. [Iš leidinio]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Bendruomenė; Focus grupė; Focus grupės; Interviu; Socialinis pedagogas; Socialinės inovacijos; Community; Focus group; Interview; Nepateikiami; Social inovations; Social pedagogue.

ENArticle analyses how social pedagogues see their possibilities for creating and implementing social innovations in local community. The article presents purpose of organisation of the focus group interview, provides a methodological explanation for the use of the focus group interview method. The authors also reveal the importance of social innovations to community development within the context of innovation society and briefiy introduce the policy of the European Community in the field of fostering social innovations. The focus group interview provides the understanding of the need for social innovations and evaluation of social pedagogues' development of the curriculum including knowledge and skills for creating social innovations in the community. A constant review of the curriculum for initial and in-service training of social pedagogues provide an opportunity to include new study subjects and aspects with regard to the newest national social policy and trends in the European Union. One of the important trends attracting more and more attention to the social policy in Europe and nationally is implementation of social innovations for the solution to the problems and providing socially responsible decisions to a community at the local level. This is an important issue and social pedagogues as well as school communities could be active change agents and be aware of how to foster the social innovations at the local level. Therefore, it is important to understand the needs of social pedagogues for the suggested new knowledge and skills on development of social innovations.Social innovations are considered as a type of innovations, whereof both means and results are socially oriented: new ideas (products, services or various models), which paralelly respond to actual needs of the society (more than the current situation) and additionally establish new social relations and network of collaboration. During the focus group interview social pedagogues agreed upon the following definitions of social innovations: - innovations that change the natural development of local community (achieving the socially oriented aims and involving new institutions and people for the implementation of these innovations); - innovations dedicated to foster collaboration and communication between representatives of various levels of local community (sharing tasks and responsibilities between them, developing new plans and strategies). From the point of view of social pedagogues the need for skills of social innovation development are urgent, but there are also significant difficulties to use them at work. The biggest of these threats seen by social pedagogues include: approach of managers, tasks overload, lack of communication within community. Motivation of social pedagogues for the implementation and initiation of social innovations would be a real benefit for the community and a possibility for solving problems related to direct tasks and responsibilities. [From the publication]