Rethinking the educational relationship from the pedagogy of alterity

• Published in: Teoría de la educación Vol. 31; no. 2(jul-dic); pp. 177 - 196
• Main Author: Eduardo Salvador VILA MERINO
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 01.09.2019
• Subjects: convivencia; filosofía de la educación; pedagogía de la alteridad; relación educativa; teoría de la educación
• ISSN: 1130-3743; 2386-5660
• DOI: 10.14201/teri.20271

This article proposes a journey through how educational relations are constructed from the perspective of the pedagogy of alterity. For this he begins by reflecting on how the educational relationship should be a central theme in the theory of education and what can be some of its most important defining elements, starting from the analysis of the existing bibliography, fundamentally in the Spanish context. From there, it tries to dissect the most important points of the educational relationship from the configuration of a series of dilemmas and tensions whose analysis is crucial for its development and implementation. They are defined from these seven conceptual pairs from which various very significant aspects take shape for the educational relationship: object-subject, intentionality-functionality, influence-autonomy, responsibility-freedom, authority-discipline, trust-respect and singularity-collectivity. Finally, it delves into keys related to the educational relationship in the context of the pedagogy of alterity, establishing a series of dimensions that are put in dialogue with the tensions presented, betting on breaking down the educational relationship from a pedagogy of the sensitive relationship, a pedagogy of listening and a pedagogy of invitation from whose dilemmas emerge categories that help us to understand more substantively those relational dimensions from alterity: representation, corporeity, request and interrogation, for the sensitive relational dimension; understanding, context, experience and process, for the listening dimension; and meeting, dialogue, action and promotion, for the dimension of invitation. Finally, after shelling these ideas, some final thoughts are advanced by way of conclusion.