Education at the intersection of general pedagogics and social pedagogics

The relationship between general pedagogics and the special disciplines of the field has become increasingly obscure. That applies above all to the relation between general pedagogics and social pedagogics. To this is added the fact that, in the last few years, social pedagogics has been challenged by a slowly emerging science of social work. Refering to system-theoretical considerations, the author proposes to consider the theoretically obscure relation between general pedagogics, social pedagogics, and the science of social work as a consequence of functional differentiation reflected on the theoretical level. If one differentiates between the educational system and the functional system of "social care", it is possible to also deal with the issue of the relation between social pedagogics and general pedagogics: education is clearly marked as that point at which the theoretical efforts of both fields intersect.