Looking for social pedagogy: case study of Precious Playdays

Precious Playdays is a small, owner-run preschool that has developed its own curriculum and method of working based on embodiment. Children attending the preschool very frequently arrive with no English-language skills and often have disabilities. The staff have discovered that an action-orientated learning method helps children to acquire conceptual, linguistic and physical skills and competences more rapidly than they did before its introduction and they now begin school much better prepared. This case study assesses the overlap between the Precious approach and social pedagogy, a discipline concerned with care, education, upbringing, ethics and social justice. It does this through an interview with the owner and a teacher, that took place during a visit to the preschool. We find many areas of synergy as expressed through the Social Pedagogy Professional Association’s Charter. The Precious Playdays approach is social pedagogy without being named as such.