Angelical Pedagogy Forty years of the History of Pedagogical Practice in Colombia Group

Abstract

This article is a modified written version of a lecture read at the Universidad del Valle, on october 29, 2018, on the occasion of the event celebrating 40 years of foundation of the History of Pedagogical Practice in Colombia Group (HPPCG). Conceived as a fable, featuring a heated debate between “pedagogical angels” and “epistemological devils” in the author's head, the article proposes a balance on the meaning and evolution of two foundational notions that the HPPCG has contributed to the conceptual field of pedagogy in the country, the notions of pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical practice. Through exchanges and counterarguments, two antagonistic positions are outlined today in this field: those who support the necessary and inevitable disappearance of pedagogy and those who maintain the project of strengthening it as the knowledge proper to the work of teacher and as a critical discipline of relationships school-culture-society. The fable ends up insinuating how both positions are right and why each one of them is not right.