A bit arcane, I know. And it's a question that's been asked before.
But I've today been reading on a couple of websites descriptions of conductive education and also a description of social pedagogy (downloadable here).
Try this:
"Despite these differences in approach, what combines all pedagogies is the way of thinking, the philosophy, the attitude with which these different methods are used - and this is what makes practice conductive: as H.... (2003) points out, 'conductive education is not a method, nor even a set of methods. As a discipline it has its own theoretical orientation to the world. An action is not conductive because certain methods are used therein, but because some methods are chosen and used as a consequence of conductive thought.' So conductive education is not what you do, it is rather how you approach practice, with what attitude and aims. This also means that conductive education is not something you do or don't do - the question to ask is to what degree you are working conductively."
I like that: "An action is not conductive because certain methods are used therein, but because some methods are chosen and used as a consequence of conductive thought" and this too "the question to ask is to what degree you are working conductively".
"... some methods are chosen and used as a consequence of conductive thought" and "to what degree are you working conductively". Don't you think those two sentiments are brilliant? Don't you think they capture something absolutely essential to conductive education? I do.
But actually I cheated a bit.
In order to help you see what it is I think I see, I swapped some terms, replacing as appropriate words and phrases in the original with 'conductive', 'conductive education', 'conductively'. The original is from the downloadable handout mentioned above about social pedagogy. This is the original (italics mine):
Despite these differences in approach, what combines all pedagogies is the way of thinking, the philosophy, the attitude with which these different methods are used - and this is what makes practice social pedagogic: as Hämäläinen (2003) points out, 'social pedagogy is not a method, nor even a set of methods. As a discipline it has its own theoretical orientation to the world. An action is not social pedagogical because certain methods are used therein, but because some methods are chosen and used as a consequence of social pedagogical thought.' So social pedagogy is not what you do, it is rather how you approach practice, with what attitude and aims. This also means that social pedagogy is not something you do or don't do - the question to ask is to what degree you are working social pedagogically.
So is conductive education a social pedagogy? You don't need to buy-in to the whole social pedagogy description to find the handout (and much else besides on the website) thought-provoking.
In particular, the thought that "conductive education is not something you do or don't do - the question to ask is to what degree you are working conductively" potentially offers us a way of unifying divergent practice in the various locations that profess to be working within conductive education; it offers conductors working in widely different settings (maybe not even directly with children or adults) to perceive each other as working within the same discipline. And that, it again seems to me, is also potentially a perspective from which it is possible to assert the value of conductive education when talking with political or professional colleagues.
