The pedagogical relation: A perspective from continental pedagogy

This historical overview traces the emergence and development of Western ways of thinking about pedagogy in specifically relational terms—namely as a special relation between the educator and the one being educated. Such a relationship was initially described in ancient Greece, specifically in terms of the elicitation, the making explicit, of knowledge latent in the child. Later, emphasis was placed on the development of the other's emotional and cognitive relation specifically to themselves, and on ways of initiating and facilitating the development of this self-relation from the outside. In the 18th century, J.J. Rousseau established the notion of “negative education,” seeing the education of the child largely as a matter of their protection from influence external to the pedagogical relation. In the 20th and 21st centuries, finally, the challenge of overcoming the alterity, foreignness, or otherness of the one being educated is paramount. This overview concludes, however, by arguing that difference and non-identity play a valuable generative role in pedagogical relations, for example, in supportively provoking and motivating the other's growth and self-development.