Ideas of education: reflections and convergences

Abstract

This scientific article briefly reflects on some of the structuring concepts in Education. Due to the fact that education is often understood as a diffuse reality, which needs to be organised, for a better characterisation of its nature, three of its main purposes were analysed: education as a social idea; education as a process idea of individual and personal development; and education as a teaching idea. It is shown that the normative knowledge of education derives from the descriptive knowledge, which considers the student's otherness, his context, and his history, also considering the duality between the formative vision of education and its perspective in the light of Bildung. In continuation, a reflection is promoted on some meanings associated with the concepts of pedagogy, andragogy, anthropagogy and synagogy. It is concluded that education is essentially an eminently human, dynamic and perpetually unfinished process.