The 3 Ps

The professional, personal and private self of the social pedagogue – and how holding all three enables authentic, purposeful relationships.

YOU CAN’T BE PROFESSIONAL WITHOUT BEING PERSONAL

relationships are at the heart of social pedagogy

Building trusting and authentic relationships with the people we support is very important in social pedagogy. Through relationships we can show individuals that we care, role model how they can have positive relationships with others, but also learn a lot about who they are. Without relationships we wouldn’t be able to really know a person, find out what they are thinking about and how they see the world. And without that we would not be able to help them, to support their development. After all, every person is unique, and we can only appreciate their uniqueness if we know them well, if we look for their hidden talents and find out what brings them joy or causes them sorrow. For people themselves, these relationships are also very important, and they want to know who we are as a person, not just what we do as a professional.

This can often cause challenges for professionals about what it means to be professional and to what extent we are able to be personal. Social pedagogues would argue that we can’t be professional without being personal, so we have to be both. What we must avoid is not the personal but the private self. Especially in Denmark this distinction is referred to as the 3 Ps: the professional, the personal and the private self of the social pedagogue.

THE FIRST P

The professional self

The professional self is fundamental, because it ensures that the relationship with another person is both professional and personal. It helps us explain and understand a person’s behaviour – for example to know that a foster child might refuse to go to school, not because he can’t be bothered but because he has had traumatic experiences in education before. So the professional self draws on our knowledge of the law, of relevant policies, and of research, practice evidence and theory connected to our practice field.

The professional self makes the relationship with the other person purposeful, because as professionals we will have particular aims for the person – for example for an older woman to be able to look after herself well and feel a sense of meaningful belonging in her community. In this sense, the professional self frames the relationship and ensures that we never lose sight of those aims, that everything we do is informed by a clear purpose.

THE SECOND P

The personal self

The personal self is about how we engage with the person in a way that feels authentic. By sharing who we are as a person, we can develop a better, more genuine relationship with the other person. When we’re comfortable with being ourselves and showing our personality – including our flaws – we encourage the people we support to be who they are and not to feel inferior to us.

Using our personal self in a social pedagogical way requires a lot of professional reflections – we have to know what we aim to achieve through the relationship, how the relationship may help the person, why this requires us to be authentic and how we can ensure that this is beneficial to the individual. But this requires tactfulness and that we’ve processed our own experiences, so that we can keep the focus on supporting the other person.

THE THIRD P

The private self

The private self sets the personal boundaries of what we do not want to (or feel unable to) share and should therefore not be brought into the relationship. The conscious private self draws the line between what is personal and what is private, and where we are aware that our own needs take priority. It is important to be authentic in what we share about ourselves, but these must be processed experiences and our intention must be underpinned by what’s in the other person’s interest.

The private self has a sub-conscious aspect too, where our own needs and feelings can suddenly appear and take priority, causing us to react without thinking rather than respond thoughtfully. Reflection on our own experiences in practice helps us to recognise when our reactions to a person may have something to do with what is part of our private self. We need to be open to discuss this in professional supervision, so that we can gain a deeper understanding of our private, personal and professional self and improve our practice.

THE 3 Ps IN PRACTICE

all three are constantly in play

The 3 Ps are all constantly in play during practice, meaning that we need to frequently reflect on how our work impacts on our professional, personal and private self. Especially in situations where we show our vulnerabilities – or expect our colleagues to be more authentic and vulnerable – we must consider how it might affect our private self, so that we respond in a professional and personal manner. A German youth worker explains how they applied this thinking:

‘One of the boys in the youth group was always acting out and drew everybody’s attention to him through his behaviour. I decided to give him attention for positive behaviour instead and we ended up playing table tennis. I am pretty good at table tennis and he showed a keen interest and was eager to beat me. Using the 3 Ps I reflected that professionally I wanted us to get along well, to have a better relationship, to have an opportunity to find out more about him by just talking. I also wanted him to get better at table tennis. The personal self was about using the opportunity to talk a little about myself, my family and find out more about him and his family. I also wanted him to feel liked for who he is. I also reflected on how I could best work with his sense of competitiveness – he was desperate to beat me and enjoyed getting close to it in a couple of sets. The private self in me would normally have responded with being very competitive myself, so I had to keep that in check, because my professional aim would have been undermined. I wanted him to have a success experience but one that he’d worked hard for and could feel a sense of accomplishment about. In the end we played for about two hours before he beat me. We bonded really well and he was very proud of himself. Also his behaviour significantly improved and he engaged far more than he had previously.’

THE 3 Ps ON SCREEN

using the 3 Ps as creative mentors

In the video below, Emily York and James Blyth from The Mighty Creatives talk about using the 3 Ps in their work as creative mentors supporting care-experienced young people.

REFLECTING ON THE 3 Ps

questions to sit with

Erik Jappe (2010) examines the basis underpinning practice across the three selves – looking at knowledge, influences on action, collaboration and whose needs are uppermost. This can be used as a reflection tool for individual, paired and group reflections, and can be used to aid purposeful planning. Some questions to prompt that reflection:

How do you currently draw on your professional, personal and private self in your day-to-day practice? Which do you draw on most – and least?
Think of a recent interaction: when did your private self come to the fore without you intending it to? How did it affect the situation?
How do you create space to reflect on the boundaries between your personal and private self – in supervision, with colleagues, or on your own?
Where do you see power showing up across the three Ps in your practice – formal authority, informal influence, and unconscious bias?