Soziale Dienste, Schule und zivilgesellschaftliches Klima

In an international perspective cooperation between social services and school has a long tradition. In the German speaking countries we can recognize a historical distance or gap between school and “social pedagogy”, but despite this tradition new forms of cooperation are arising since the last few years. This tendency is part of the development of European societies into “knowledge-based societies” where knowledge and cultural capital are becoming ever stricter criteria for participation in society. This puts particular pressure on those adolescents who threaten to fail in the positional competition for educational qualifications. And it tends to the reproduction and reinforcing of social inequalities due to inequalities in education. For that reason in the article the development of school related social services in different European countries is investigated and it is shown that the increasing pressure to qualification and selection in school creates various problems of integration. Social dimensions of education are pointed out delivering starting points for the cooperation of social services in school and opening opportunities for productive forms of coping with differences between family background, informal social environment and educational milieu in school. Particular attention is paid to differences in socio cultural habits, in socio economical opportunities and in collective practices of interaction. A central focus in the contribution is the orientation towards a participative civil society climate relevant for the interaction between teachers and pupils and between professionals and addressees of social services as well. It is a task of future research in school related social services to analyse their institutional structure and their practices of professional interaction and to find out by European and international comparison in which way social services can contribute to the establishing of a participative civil society climate in school.

Learning Paradigms Exemplified by Virtual Experiments with Honey Bees

Learning is based on rules that can be elucidated by behavioural experiments. This article focuses on virtual experiments, in which non-associative learning (habituation, sensitization) and principles of associative learning (contiguity, inhibitory learning, generalization, overshadowing, positive and negative patterning) can be examined using 'virtual' honey bees in PER (Proboscis Reaction Extension) conditioning experiments. Users can develop experimental designs, simulate and document the experiments and find explanations and suggestions for the analysis of the learning experiments. The virtual experiments are based on video sequences and data from actual learning experiments. The bees' responses are determined by probability-based learning profiles.

Neoliberalism, the Third Way and Social Work: the UK experience

For most of the past two decades, the notion that there is no alternative to the market as a basis for organising society has constituted a kind of global 'common sense', accepted not only by the neo-liberal Right but also by social democratic thinkers and politicians, in the form of 'the Third Way'. This paper will critically assess the central claims of neoliberalism in the light of experience in the UK and internationally, evaluate the ways in which Third Way policies are shaping social work in the UK, and in the final section, begin to explore some of the ways in which the anti-capitalist movement which has emerged in recent years might contribute to the development of a new, engaged social work, based on social justice.