Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity

Revista de Investigación en Educación, 2021, 19(2), 81-111 DOI: https://doi.org/10.35869/reined.v19i2.3669 https://revistas.webs.uvigo.es/index.php/reined ISSN 1697-5200 | e-ISSN 2172-3427  81 Revista de Investigación en Educación  Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity Construyendo ámbitos de educación desde la Pedagogía: conocimiento de la educación y actividad común José Manuel Touriñán López1 Premio Internacional Educa-Redipe 2019 (Trayectoria profesional) 1 Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. [email protected] Recibido: 25/5/2021 Aceptado: 15/9/2021 Copyright © Facultad de CC. de la Educación y Deporte. Universidad de Vigo Dirección de contacto: José Manuel Touriñán López Departamento de Pedagogía y Didáctica Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación Campus Vida, s/n 15782 Santiago de Compostela Resumen La educación es un ámbito de realidad susceptible de ser conocido, utilizando diversas formas de conocimiento. En el conocimiento de la educación se utilizan actualmente teorías filosóficas, teorías prácticas, investigaciones aplicadas y teorías sustantivas y se han generado ya términos propios con significación intrínseca a la educación. Este trabajo insiste en la diferencia entre conocimiento de áreas culturales y conocimiento especializado y específico de la educación: el conocimiento pedagógico. Se trata de formar criterio sobre la importancia de la Pedagogía en la construcción de ámbitos de educación. El conocimiento de la educación hace posible la construcción de ámbitos de educación con las áreas culturales, transformando la información en conocimiento y el conocimiento en educación. Hay que educar “con” el área cultural y esto exige ajustarse al significado de educar y ejercer la función pedagógica con competencia, estableciendo la relación educativa en la que el conocimiento de la educación y la actividad común son medios necesarios. Veremos cómo la función pedagógica genera intervención desde las actividades comunes. Al ejecutar la actividad común externa, mejoramos y entrenamos las actividades-capacidades internas: sin la actividad es imposible educar con el área cultural y por medio de ella se hace posible que el educando sea agente actor y cada vez mejor agente autor de su propios proyectos y actos. Sin el conocimiento de la educación no podemos construir ámbitos de educación y por tanto no podemos educar con el área cultural. Sin la actividad común es imposible educar y por medio de la relación educativa podemos lograr la concordancia entre valores educativos y sentimientos para hacer efectivo el paso del conocimiento a la acción en cada ámbito de educación construido. Y así podremos concluir desde la Pedagogía que el conocimiento de la educación y la actividad común son medios necesarios de la relación educativa para educar con el área cultural en cada ámbito de educación construido. Palabras clave Conocimiento de la Educación, Significado de la Educación, Relación Educativa, Función Pedagógica, Actividad Común, Intervención Pedagógica, Ámbito de Educación Touriñán López, J.M. 82 Revista de Investigación en Educación  Abstract Education is a real field that people may know through different forms of knowledge. Several types of knowledge and rationality are useful for making knowledge of education: philosophical theories, practical theories, applied research, substantive theories have let them build it. To a higher extent, knowledge of education has already made particular and specific concepts. This work insists on the difference between knowledge of cultural areas and the specialized and specific knowledge of education: pedagogical knowledge. The focus is to form criteria on the importance of Pedagogy in the construction of education fields. Knowledge of education makes it possible to build fields of education over cultural areas, transforming information into knowledge and knowledge into education. We have to educate “with” the cultural area and this requires adjusting to the meaning of educating and executing pedagogical function with competence, establishing the educational relationship in which knowledge of education and common activity are necessary means. We shall see how the pedagogical function generates intervention by means of internal and external common activities. By executing the external common activity, we improve and train the internal activities-capacities: without the activity it is impossible to educate with the cultural area and through the activity it becomes possible for the educate to be an actor-agent and an increasingly better author-agent of his own projects and acts. Without the knowledge of education, fields of education cannot be built and therefore we cannot educate with the cultural area. Without the common activity it is impossible to educate and by means of the educational relationship we can achieve the concordance between educational values and feelings to make the effective transition from knowledge to action in every built education field. And so, we can conclude from Pedagogy that knowledge of education and common activity are necessary means of the educational relationship to educate with the cultural area, in every built education field. Key Words Knowledge of Education, Meaning of Education, Educational Relationship, Pedagogical Function, Common Activity, Pedagogical Intervention, Field of Education 1. INTRODUCTION Along the historical events, knowledge of education has grown to achieve a better understanding of facts and decision making (O’Connor, 1971; Novak, 1977; Broudy, 1977; Berliner, 1986; Carr & Kemmis, 1988; Touriñán, 1987a, 1989, 2018b, 2019b, 2020c; Schulman, 1986; Biesta, Allan & Edwards, 2014). This knowledge has become a specialized and specific one (Touriñán, 2016, 2017, 2020a). This study establishes differences between knowledge of education and knowledge of disciplines which are used in the teaching process. The focus is to form criteria on the importance of Pedagogy in the construction of education fields. Knowledge of education makes it possible to build fields of education over cultural areas, transforming information into knowledge and knowledge into education. We have to educate “whith” the cultural area and this requires adjusting to the meaning of educating and executing pedagogical function with competence, establishing an educational relationship in which knowledge of education and common Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 83 Revista de Investigación en Educación  activity are necessary means to educate with the cultural area. Without the knowledge of education, fields of education cannot be built and therefore we cannot educate with the cultural area. Without the common activity it is impossible to educate and by means of the educational relationship we can achieve the concordance between educational values and feelings to make the effective transition from knowledge to action in every built education field (Touriñán, 2019e, 2019b, 2020b). And this is what I analyse in this article, through the following postulates:  Knowledge of education determines the concept of field of education over knowledge of cultural areas  Knowledge of education and pedagogical knowledge do not mean the same  The starting point towards the real definition of education is in the common use of the term and in the activities which are carried out  Pedagogical function generates intervention by means of internal and external common activities  Educational relationship allows us to go from knowledge to action by accomplishing the values-feelings concordance in every pedagogical intervention, by means of the common activity  Common activity is exercissed in any of the technical meanings of cultural area as education field. 2. KNOWLEDGE OF EDUCATION DETERMINES THE CONCEPT OF FIELD OF EDUCATION OVER KNOWLEDGE OF CULTURAL AREAS The level of the contemporary pedagogical research allows us to say that there are enough reasons to distinguish and not to confuse in the technical language (Touriñán, 2013a y 2014):  Knowledge of education, and  Knowledge of cultural areas. It is true that, from an anthropological point of view, education is culture and, therefore, it makes sense to affirm that the function of the professional of education is to transmit culture. But, if we also affirm that the educational terms have no own content, knowledge of the diverse cultural areas is converted into the axis of all pedagogical activity to the point that the same professionals of education accept that their training is simply knowledge of those cultural areas, and that knowing, teaching and educating would be the same thing. For me, by principle of meaning, knowing a cultural area is not teaching, because knowledge can be separated from action and teaching is not educating, because we can affirm that there are teachings that do not educate, based on the meaning of those terms (Touriñán, 2016, 2017; SI(e)TE, 2016, 2018, 2020; Touriñán & Longueira, 2016, 2018). Regarding to cultural areas, it is true that knowledge of the cultural area is a component of educative action, but knowledge of cultural area has a different role when we speak of "knowing a cultural area", "teaching a cultural area" and “Educating with a cultural area”. What we say, is obvious, if we think of a specific case, because it is not the same "to know History", “to teach History" and “to educate with History", and Touriñán López, J.M. 84 Revista de Investigación en Educación  so on with each area of experience which constitutes an object of teaching and field of education. From the point of view of knowledge of education, the teacher requires a certain level of training related to the knowledge of the area to be taught (area of experience and forms of expression appropriate to the area), but hence no it follows that teaching an area is the same as knowing the area, nor is educating the same as simply teaching the contents of that area. Depending on level of placement in the educational system in which the teachers carry out his job, it is undeniable that, regarding the current development of educational knowledge, they do not all require the same level of expertise on the cultural area of experience they teach (it varies depending on its level of placement in the educational system), and also it is undeniable that all teachers should not have the same pedagogical knowledge, because the required technical knowledge varies depending on the level of the educational system in which they work. Knowing, in the broad sense of performance identified with the expressions "I know what, I know how, and I know how to do", is not confused with teaching. Aptitudes and competences to know and aptitudes and competences to teach are not subsumed one into another, nor they do both empty the meaning of the expression “educate with” a cultural área. A detailed analysis of pedagogical context gives cause for maintaining knowledge of cultural areas and is not knowledge of education, because (Touriñán, 2015, 2019c, 2018a, 2020d): a) Although it is true that a great part of the aims of education have something to do with the contents of cultural areas, the scope of the objectives is not drained in the fields of cultural areas. Pedagogical function, referred to teaching, is not drained in knowing which level of cultural information is being obtained when developing a topic of a cultural area in a class; however, pedagogical function becomes apparent when it is known which types of skills, habits, attitudes, et cetera, from the diverse domains the taxonomies mark are being promoted upon working in a special way on that topic. The question, in teaching, is not to know as much about an area as the specialist, but to know what knowledge objectives are achieved and how they are achieved when teaching a subject in the area and what skills, habits, attitudes, knowledge and competencies we are developing when teach that topic. b) The identification of knowledge of the cultural areas with knowledge of education promotes an unsustainable pedagogical situation: the tendency to evaluate the scholastic efficiency fundamentally for the levels of cultural information. Without meaning that the content is merely formal and serves to reach any kind of skill, it is possible to assess that, although not with the same level of efficiency to form a pedagogical point of view, with just one of the cultural topics of the curriculum that a secondary level student has got to study, for example, pedagogical strategies leading to the achievement of almost all the educational objectives of the curriculum could be started, except for cultural information. c) Even if knowledge of education and knowledge of cultural areas are identified, one could understand that, speaking in the field of teaching, there is a determined knowledge of education which is not the knowledge of cultural areas: knowledge about the transmission of knowledge content acquired on the cultural area. The duty of education would be indeed, for example, the transmission of the Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 85 Revista de Investigación en Educación  historic knowledge. In this case, this historic knowledge would be reliable and valid as a problem for historians and researchers from that cultural area; for teaching, knowledge of education would be, more precisely, the knowledge of the strategies for the intervention. d) Considering the above, it is obvious that we need different competences for educating and teaching, and those are different competences of one which are required to know a specific cultural area. In effect, the theoretical, technological and practical knowledge which becomes instructional objectives in teaching are not created by the education professional; it is the researchers of each cultural area who create them. It is up to the education professional, based on technical choice, to decide: if the student can learn them; if they are consistent with the conceptual representation of the educational intervention; if they have a theoretical, technological and practical foundation, as the case may be, in knowledge of education to be used as an instrument of education; what level of content is appropriate in a specific case, what is the appropriate teaching method and what skills, habits and attitudes, knowledge and educational competences can be developed with the teaching of this knowledge. That is to say, the education professional masters theoretical, technological and practical knowledge of cultural area to be taught, at a sufficient level to teach them; But, as an education professional, he masters the knowledge of education that allows him to justify and explain the conversion of this knowledge of a cultural area into an objective or instrument of pedagogical intervention e) From the point of view of educational competence, the key to the knowledge which is valid to educate is not in the domain of cultural areas, as if it were the specialist in that cultural area (artist, historian, chemist, or others), but in the domain of pedagogical competence which enables them to see and use cultural content as an instrument and goal of educative action in a specific case, in such a way that the cultural content is used as an instrument to develop in each student the character and sense which are inherent to the meaning of 'education'. Knowledge of education enables the education professional, for example, not only to establish the educational value of a cultural content and participate in the process of deciding its conversion into an end or goal of a singular educational level, but also to establish programs of intervention adjusted to facts and pedagogical decisions which make the proposed goal effective. Speaking about knowledge of education does not mean, therefore, wondering directly about knowledge of the cultural areas. When we are speaking about ‘knowledge of education’, it is more adequate to wonder about which certain knowledge become a goal or instrument for the educational action or why the cognitive dimension of individuals can be educated. And as well a historian, a geographer, a mathematician, a physicist, et cetera, could speak to us, depending on the case and with property about knowledge of each cultural area, as they are specialists in each one of those areas of knowledge, we have no doubt when answering correctly if this, which and other historical, mathematical, physical, et cetera content must become the content of the educational action we are carrying out with a certain individual or to cultivate its critical sense, requires wondering about education as a knowledge subject. In the first instance, knowledge or cultural areas -History, Mathematics, Physics, et ceteraare the scientific Touriñán López, J.M. 86 Revista de Investigación en Educación  subject of study; in both cases of the second instance, the same transmission, the exerted influence, is converted into a specific subject for scientific reflection. According to the reasoning previously carried out, speaking about ‘knowledge of education’ is the same as wondering about education as a subject of knowledge, what is equivalent to formulating a double question (Touriñán & Rodríguez, 1993; Touriñán & Sáez, 2015, Colom, 2006; Vázquez, 1981, 2018; Walton, 1971, 1974):  What is there to be known to understand and command the field of education; or what is the same, which are the components of the educational phenomenon that one must master to understand the said phenomenon  How is that field known; or said in other words, which pledges of truth has the knowledge we are able to obtain about the field of education. We think it is necessary to tell knowledge of cultural areas from knowledge of education because, up to the same point that knowledge of education goes further than what is transmitted, the pedagogical function in the field of the education begins to be a subject of specialized and specific knowledge. Precisely for this reason we can define the pedagogical function as the exercise of tasks whose performance requires competences which have to be attained through knowledge of education (Touriñán, 2019f). If we do not tell knowledge of cultural areas from knowledge of education, it follows that, for example, professional competition of teachers would be erroneously determined by the better or worse master of the cultural area which they are going to teach. This type of theory generates terrible aftermaths for these professionals:  First of all, as knowledge of cultural areas taught would not be created by teachers, they would perceive themselves as learners of knowledge of those areas investigated by other people  Secondly, as professional competition would be determined by the master of the cultural area, the mistake of believing who knows more is who teaches the best. If we do not confuse knowledge of the cultural areas with knowledge of education, it is neither true that the teacher is a learner of the cultural areas he teaches, nor is it necessary true that the more History he knows the better he teaches it, and it is also neither true that the one who better masters a skill is the one who better teaches to another one how to master it, unless, tautologically, we say the skill he masters is the teaching. This is so because each one of those activities requires different abilities and skills for their master and practice and perfection in one of them does not automatically involve the master of the other one. In logical rigor, we must accept that knowledge of education is, then, a specialized knowledge which lets the specialist explain, interpret and decide the pedagogical intervention characteristic of the function which it is enabled for, either it is an educational function, or it is for assisting the educational system, or it is a research function. If we review the previous statements, it seems obvious that pedagogical function, for its meaning principle, demands a specialized knowledge about education. Of course, it is obvious that pedagogical function is not reduced to education; the professional group of educators is only a part of professionals of education. But the distinction made between knowledge of cultural areas and knowledge of education Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 87 Revista de Investigación en Educación  allows us to distinguish and identify professionals of education and pedagogical functions (Touriñán, 2013b): a) Sociologists, doctors, psychologists and other professionals, who properly receive the denomination of professionals of the educational system, as they exercise their profession in and on the educational system, work in the educational system. But a group of professionals of the educational system, who properly deserve the denomination of professionals of education also exists; their work is participating, carrying out the pedagogical functions they have been trained for; the proper content of the formative nucleus in their profession is knowledge of education. Professionals of the educational system and Professionals of education are two different expressions with a different meaning; it makes sense to affirm that, not all of the professionals of the educational system are professionals of education, as the only content of their professional training is always knowledge of education. A professional of education is the specialist who controls the theoretic, technological and practical knowledge of education which allows him to explain, interpret and decide the pedagogical intervention which characterizes the function he is trained for. b) If we take as a reference tasks and activities to be carried out in the educational field, knowledge of education and the development of the educational system let us identify three types of pedagogical functions, generically (Touriñán, 1987b, 2020a):  Pedagogical function of Teaching (docentia) or didactic functions, basically identified with the exercise and master of skills, habits, attitudes and knowledge which qualify for teaching in a certain level of the educational system  Pedagogical functions of assistance to the educational system. They are functions which do not deal directly with education, although they improve the possibilities of it, because their task is solving pedagogical problems of the educational system which appear with the increase of it and the one of knowledge of education, and that, unless they were solved, they would stop the teaching or make difficult the social achievement of a quality education through the educational system, as for example the school organization, the socialpedagogical intervention, the educational planning, et cetera  Function of pedagogical research, identified with the exercise and mastery of skills, habits, attitudes and knowledge which qualify for the validation and development of explanation, interpretation and transformation models of pedagogical interventions and educational events. Someone might think that educating function should be added to the collection of pedagogical functions, because educating and teaching do not have the same meaning. To educate is indeed the pedagogue’s most exalted function and this function is assumed by Pedagogy in each of the other functions, both considering education as a field of knowledge and as an action. However, since I am referring to pedagogical functions in the strict sense, it is necessary to maintain the difference between the meaning of Pedagogy and the meaning of education. Because of this distinction, it Touriñán López, J.M. 88 Revista de Investigación en Educación  would be a mistake to exclusively attribute the role of educator to whom has completed Pedagogy, as there are educators who are not pedagogues (Touriñán, 2015). And this statement, I have just made, should not be taken as a renunciation of action and specialized and specific competence in the pedagogical function, but as a recognition of shared responsibility in the educational task. And so, saving shared responsibility, it must be also recognize that educational competences are included in any pedagogical function, because by principle of nominal definition and by principle of finality on activity, we exercise pedagogical functions and it means that they are so, because they use the knowledge of education to educate: it is not about teaching, researching and assisting the educational system for anything, but about teaching, researching and assisting everything what it may educate. In this discourse, the educational function is present as a quality or sense in the pedagogical functions of teaching (docentia), assistance to the educational system and research, which are three different pedagogical functions. The accomplished distinction between knowledge of cultural areas and knowledge of education allows us to distinguish and identify education professionals as professionals different from educational system professionals. Regarding this question, we have to say that sociologists, doctors, psychologists, drivers, cooks, architects, et cetera work in the educational system. These professionals properly receive the name of educational system professionals, because they exercise their profession in and about the educational system applying their specialized knowledge on the specific issues of the educational system: the school dining-room, health, transport, buildings, et cetera But, in addition, there is a part of educational system professionals who properly deserve the name of education professionals; their task is to intervene, carrying out the pedagogical functions for which they have been enabled; the proper content of the formative nucleus in this education professions, their real specialized knowledge, is the knowledge of education. "Educational system Professionals" and " education professionals" are two different expressions with different meanings; and it makes sense to affirm that not every educational system professional is an education professional, insofar as only the training content of this professional, as education professional, is always education knowledge. Education professional is the specialist who masters theoretical, technological and practical knowledge of education which allows him to explain, interpret, transform and decide the pedagogical intervention adjusted to the function for which he is qualified (Touriñán, 2017). Education professionals carry out teaching functions, pedagogical functions for assisting the educational system, and research functions, always with the ultimate objective of educating in each of them. The pedagogical functions of assistance to the educational system, are functions always referred to the pedagogical intervention, they do not deal directly with the teaching, although they improve the possibilities of this; Its task is to solve pedagogical problems of the educational system that arise with the growth of the educational system and education knowledge, and, if that problems are not corrected, would paralyze educational teaching or hinder the social achievement of quality of education standards through educational system. The pedagogical functions of assisting to the educational system respond to the difference between knowing, teaching and educating and, as in all areas of reality which have the double condition of field of knowledge and action (in the case of education), they are functions of two types: Assistant technician for performance of pedagogical intervention (such as the Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 89 Revista de Investigación en Educación  education inspector or the school director, among others) and Specialist technician in performance of pedagogical intervention (such as the pedagogue who builds fields of education and educational designs, the formative-educational counselor, the school pedagogue, the environmental pedagogue, the labor pedagogue, the social pedagogue, the family pedagogue, for example). These functions are summarized below in Chart 1.  Chart 1. Education professionals and pedagogical functions. Source: Touriñán, 2020a, p. 145 On the other hand, the distinction between knowledge of cultural areas and knowledge of education, places us also in a special position to establish the distinction between extrinsic finalities of education (educational goals) and intrinsic finalities of education (pedagogical goals). It makes sense to establish this distinction within the social system and for the subsystem education because intrinsic finalities are a characteristic of the subsystem, as they are derived from the same knowledge about the subsystem education (knowledge of education) and, at the same time, extrinsic finalities Touriñán López, J.M. 96 Revista de Investigación en Educación  a value judgement about the content which is used. If we do not achieve this, we are simply in process of communication, teaching and learning b) Something is education because it obeys to ethical criterion of form: acting on educatees without respecting their freedom or dignity as persons is not considered educational. The educational process has to respect the educatees’ dignity and freedom, because they are also the agents of their own development. If we do not achieve this, we are in process of instrumentalization c) Something is education because it obeys a formative criterion of use: those kinds of learning in which educatees repeat something that they do not understand and that they do not know how to use is not described as educational. The educational process must make it possible for the educatee to develop some type of conceptual diagram about what is communicated. If we do not achieve this, we do not educate, we are only in processes of information, instruction, training and memory dexterity d) Something is education because it obeys a balance criterion of development: talking about education demands the achievement of an integrated personality avoiding situations in which the excessive or unilateral development of one of the areas of experience generates unbalanced men and women. The educational process always demands balanced results. Whether we speak about general formation or skilled formation, we speak about formation built on the principle of balanced education. If we do not achieve this, we do not educate, we are in process of specialism. In the field of educational knowledge and from the perspective of activity, we can affirm that the activities which we carry out do not determine the real meaning. The same activities which we perform to educate are done for many other things, so activities do not identify the educational action. In education we teach, coexist, communicate and take care, but educating is not each of these things separately, or all of them together:  Any type of influence is not education, otherwise influencing a person to stop them from doing what they must do to be educated would also be education  The fact that any type of influence is not education does not nullify or invalidate the possibility to turn any type of influence into an educational process. Logically, nothing prevents educatees, through themselves and through the experience that others communicate them (self-education process) or by means of the experiences that others communicate them (heteroeducation processes), from analysing that negative influence with well-founded criteria on the educational knowledge and from turning it into a process of educational influence. It is not educational to manipulate or transmit as true the knowledge of a cultural area which the theoretical investigation of the area proves to be false. However, it is indeed educational to unmask manipulation and to use false knowledge to prove its error and exercise skills in the use of the theoretical proof criteria  The fact that any type of influence is not education, but it can turn into a process of educational influence, does not nullify or invalidate the possibility to obtain educational results by means of influence processes not exclusively oriented to educational aims (informal processes). From the perspective of the activities, distinguishing any other type of influence and educational influences, demands the pedagogical assessment of different ways of Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 97 Revista de Investigación en Educación  behaviour, considering the finality criterion. Coexisting is not educating, as there are kinds of coexistence that are not specified or described as educational. Communicating is not educating, since communication is always a physical and symbolic process whose purpose is to elucidate the message which the speaker aims at and the speaker does not always aim at education. Knowing a cultural area is not teaching, as knowledge can be separated from action and teaching is not educating because we can affirm that there are some types of teaching which do not educate, etc. From the point of view of finality, education is value, because the finality is a value that you choose. As a value, the main aim of education as a task, is the development of skills, habits, attitudes and knowledge that qualify people to choose, engage, decide, effect and relate to values, because the task aims to build axiological experience. From that point of view, the main aim of education, as an achievement, is the acquisition of a set of behaviours that qualify educatees to choose, engage, decide and perform their personal life project in the educational process by using the axiological experience to give an answer to the requirements that arise in each situation in accordance with the opportunities. Concerning achievement, the aim is to use the axiological experience as an instrument of self-construction and formation: it is an activity oriented to construct oneself and recognise oneself with the other in a diverse cultural environment of interaction by means of values (Touriñán, 2019d). At this point, we can say that the educational activity is “educational” because its aim is to educate and it adjusts meaning to the criteria of common use of the term, like any other object which is defined and comprehensible. From a descriptive or expositive point of view which takes into account the activities previously mentioned, the aim of education is to make educatees acquire knowledge, attitudes and skills-abilities-habits which qualify them, from each activity to decide and perform their projects, by giving an answer to the requirements that may arise in each situation in accordance with the opportunities. Nothing of the nominal definition allows us to establish with certainty which will be the concrete aims that have to be related to what the product of education is and to the temporary formative orientation of each moment, adjusted to the individual, social, historical and species-being human condition. The nominal definition does not help us either to accurately know which the structural components of pedagogical intervention are, since it does not let us go deeper into the objectual complexity of education. Nominal definition does not tell us anything about the capacity to solve theoretical and practical problems of the educational action, because it does not allow us to go into the capacity to solve problems of educational knowledge. None of these questions is a matter which is simply deducible from the idea of finality in a direct way. We must build the real definition. And that means answering a double foundational question: what all activities have in common to make it possible to educate and what are those traits inherent in the meaning of educating. From the perspective of the real definition, distinguishing any other type of influence and educational influences, demands the pedagogical assessment of diverse ways of behaviour, paying attention not only to criteria of use and finality, , but also to understand the activity as a common state and capacity which makes the man to educate himself and also to attend to criteria of meaning intrinsic (autochthonous) to the concept of educación so that principles of education and principles of pedagogical intervention can be built through knowledge of education. Touriñán López, J.M. 98 Revista de Investigación en Educación  In short, we have to build the thought that allows us to justify that the educational activity is “educational”, because: 1) it adjusts to the criteria of use of the term, 2) it fulfils the finality of educating in its activities and 3) it adjusts to the real meaning of that action, that is to say it adjusts to its typical traits of character and sense, like any other entity that can be defined and is understandable (Zubiri, 1978). To be able to affirm that something is really educational and is education, we have to ask ourselves (Longueira et al. 2019):  What we can do with all the activities to turn them into education?  What we can do to make an artistic activity be educational?  What we can do to turn a certain content of cultural area from information into knowledge and from knowledge into education?  What we can do to teach a cultural area in some cases and to educate with the cultural area in other cases?  What we can do to turn an area of cultural experience into a field of education?  What we can do to build an educational field integrated into the curricular architecture? We have to advance from discerning, knowing the appearance, to defining the particular traits of education and to understand them in their functioning, because knowing what is education means discerning, defining and understanding. All the types of the education specified (mathematical, environmental, intellectual, physical, affective, professional, virtual, etc.), are education because they are, generically, education and this means that they have in common the particular features that determine and qualify an action as education and, in each case it is performed as a specific and programmed educational action which takes into account each of the structural elements of pedagogical intervention. From the point of view of the real definition, “educating” demands to speak about education, taking into account the distinctive traits of the character of education and of the sense of education which determine and qualify its actual meaning in each educational act. Educating is carrying out the meaning of education in any educational field, by developing the general dimensions of intervention and the adjusted competencies, the specific capacities and the basic dispositions of each educatee to achieve knowledge, attitudes and skills-abilities- habits related to the finalities of education and to the guiding values derived from these aims in each educatee’s internal and external activity, using for this the internal and external means suitable for each activity, in accordance with the opportunities (Touriñán, 2021). From the point of view of the real definition of education, we have to advance in the knowledge of all these distinctive traits and it makes sense to ask oneself where education is and how we achieve the knowledge of its distinctive traits, as it is necessary to go beyond etymology, synonymy and finality to reach the real meaning and to be able to establish principles of education related to the character and the sense inherent in the meaning of education, and principles of intervention linked to the structural elements of the intervention, taking into account the commonalty of the activity. Principles of education and principles of pedagogical intervention are not the same. The principles of pedagogical intervention derive from the structural elements of intervention (knowledge of education, pedagogical function and profession, educational relationship, education agents, processes, products and means). The principles of education are related to the character and to the sense that are inherent in the meaning of Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 99 Revista de Investigación en Educación  ‘education'. As we will see in next epigraphs, the specific character of the meaning of ‘education' comes from the objectual complexity of ‘education'. Objectual complexity, which comes from the diversity of man’s activity in the educational action, can be systematised from the axes which determine the features of character of education. Sense, which belongs to the meaning of ‘education', is inferred from the connection between the self, the other person and the other thing in each educational act and qualifies the meaning, taking into account conceptual categories of space, time, genre and specific difference. From the point of view of character and sense, it is said that all educational action is of axiological, personal, patrimonial, integral, gnoseological and spiritual character and that all educational action has territorial, durable, cultural and formative sense at the same time. Since we can develop a conceptual system in education based on its real definition, Pedagogy develops principles of education, adjusted to the traits of character and sense of education, and principles of intervention, adjusted to the structural elements of intervention. The principles of education, derived from the character and the sense of education, support the educational aims; the principles of intervention support the action. Both principles have their own place in the achievement of the controlled educative action. This reasoning makes us face the challenge of going beyond the nominal definition and the activity with a purpose: apart from discerning (knowing the appearance) it is necessary to define the typical traits of education and it is necessary to try to understand them in their functioning. This demands to go beyond the criterion of common use of the term and the criterion of activity as finality and to focalize on what the activity has in common as capacity to educate and on the distinctive traits of character and sense of education that qualify and determine its real meaning in each educative act. To advance in this challenge, two questions must be faced: 1) the analysis of the activity as capacity, from the perspective of the pedagogical function and 2) the systematization of the character traits and meaning of education that determine and qualify its meaning. To the second question, on the concept of education, I have devoted time and reflection extensively and specifically in several works (Touriñán, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2021). In this article I will deal with question number one and approach the issue of the meaning of educating from the educational relationship as an interaction of identities that promotes the passage from knowledge to action through the concordance between values and feelings in each performance. 5. THE PEDAGOGICAL FUNCTION GENERATES INTERVENTION BY MEANS OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COMMON ACTIVITIES In education we carry out many actions in order to influence the educatee and achieve the educational result. They are always mediated actions of one subject with another or of a subject with himself. And all those actions, which must respect the condition of agent of the educatee, seek to provoke the activity of the educatee. In its most common use, 'activity' is understood as a state of activity, it is activity-state: activity is the state in which any person, animal or thing that moves, works or executes an action is found at the moment he is doing it (we say: this child is thinking). This use also refers to the capacity we have for action in that activity, and this is why we can say Touriñán López, J.M. 100 Revista de Investigación en Educación  the child has lost activity (now he thinks less, he has dropped). Because it is the most common use of the term ‘activity’ as state and capacity, we denominate it common activity and it occurs in all people because in all people there is activity as a state and as a capacity to do (Touriñán, 2014, 2019a). Regarding common activity, we have to say that current research distinguishes between actions carried out to obtain a result and actions whose result is the action itself. Thus, for example, the action of solving a problem results in something “external” to the action: obtaining a solution (studying results in mastering a subject). In all these cases, the action of solving the problem and having it already solved cannot be carried out. However, I cannot feel without feeling, think without thinking, project without projecting, et cetera. The former are external activities, and the latter are internal activities. We, from now on, will talk about education, of common activity (state activity and capacity) internal (result is the action itself: thinking, feeling, wanting, operating, projecting and creating) and external (activity, state and capacity, whose result it is external to the action itself, but conceptually linked to the activity itself: I have the ability to play, I have the ability to study, I have the ability to work, to intervene, to inquire-explore, and I have the ability to relate). From the perspective of common internal activity, we can make a taxonomy of activities taking the educating agent as a reference. We all agree that, when we educate ourselves, be it self or hetero-education, our human condition allows us to carry out the following internal common activities: thinking, feeling affectively (having feelings), wanting objects or subjects of any condition, operating (choosing-doing things by processing means and ends), projecting (deciding-acting on internal and external reality by orienting oneself) and creating (building something from something, not from nothing, symbolizing the notation of signs: realizing something -to note- and giving it meaning -to mean- , building symbols of our culture). Nobody is educated without thinking, feeling, wanting, et cetera. To educate oneself is to always improve that internal common activity and know how to use it for specified instrumental activities that make us increasingly capable of deciding and carrying out our projects. We also agree that, when we educate ourselves, our human condition allows us to carry out the following external common activities: play, work, study, intervention, inquiry-exploration and relationship (friend, family member, partner, social, et cetera). They are common activities (state and ability) because I have the capacity for study, play, work, exploration, intervention and relationship. And they are external common activities, because they necessarily have a result to be obtained, which is external to the activity itself, but which is conceptually linked as a goal to the activity and characterizes it as an identitary trait. Hence, we say that studying is having and organizing written information "for" their mastery (mastering or knowing the subject of study); The domain-knowledge of the subject of study is the external result of the activity and this result is the finality which identifies the study, regardless of whether I can use the study to make a friend, to altruistically help another, to steal better, et cetera, which are uses of the activity as instrumental specifications of it (Touriñán, 2016). As an external common activity, studying, for example, has its own purpose linked to that activity in a conceptual and logical way (the proper finality of studying is to masterknow what is studied: information, content or the study technique itself). But, in addition, as an external common activity, studying can become a specified instrumental activity for other purposes, they are specified purposes and external to the activity itself, Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 101 Revista de Investigación en Educación  but linked to the activity of studying in an empirical or experiential way (studying becomes an instrumental activity specified, because we can study to steal, to make friends, to help another, to educate ourselves, et cetera) (Touriñán, 2020b). It is a fact that common activities are used propaedeutically for educational aims, but they can also be used for other purposes. Common activities can be used to perform instrumental specified activities and they have propaedeutic value; they are preparatory for something later. And this is so, on the one hand, because everything that we use as a means in a means-end relationship, acquires the proper condition of the medium in the relationship (the means is what we do to achieve the end and the end is a value chosen as the goal in the means-ends relationship) and, on the other hand, it is so, because the medium shows its pedagogical value in the conditions that are proper to it, adjusting the means to the agent, the educational aims and the action, in each circumstance (Touriñán, 2021). From the perspective of internal common activity, we can say that activity is principle of education, because no one is educated without thinking, feeling, wanting, et cetera, and from the point of view of external common activity, we can say that we do many activities whose purpose is to 'educate'. Always, from the perspective of the principle of activity as the guiding principle of education: we educate with activity respecting the condition of agent (Touriñán, 2015). If this is so, it follows that the means have to adjust to the activity of the subject and the meaning of education. They are means for a specific subject who thinks, feels, wants, operates, projects, and creates. They are means to carry out activity, playing, working, studying, inquiring, intervening, and interacting. But the agent performs these activities to educate himself: he does not think in any way, but of the one that is built to educate himself and act educatedly, and so on with all activities. It follows, therefore, that any medium is not "the means" for a specific subject; In educational action, the educatee-subject acts with the internal means that he has and with the external means that have been made available to him. And all those means are only educational means if they serve to educate that educatee-subject. The means are not exactly the same if I want to train the critical sense, or if I want to educate the will to produce strength of mind. This is precisely why the tendency to focus on the specific and particular means of an action is explained, forgetting the common and shared means with other educational activities (Touriñán, 2020d). Activity is present in all education: from one perspective, as a principle of intervention and, from another, as a principle of education. And precisely because this is so, it is explained that the activity becomes the backbone axis-principle of education and represents the real sense of the meaning of education as an activity aimed at the use and construction of valuable experience to generate educated activity. We use the common activity to educate; we educate the appropriate competencies of the common activity and hope to get educated activity. In short, we use the activity in a controlled way to achieve educated activity and educate the activity through the appropriate skills (Touriñán, 2016). The principle of activity is neither passivity nor activism; it is the use of the activity in a controlled manner to act educatedly. And in this way, activity and control are principles of pedagogical intervention, derived from the condition of an agent who has to construct itself and recognize itself with the other person and the other thing in a diverse cultural environment of interaction, through values he has to choose, commit Touriñán López, J.M. 102 Revista de Investigación en Educación  oneself, decide and effect, executing through concrete action what is understood and interpreted in the means-end relationship, expressing it, according to the opportunities. This is so because, as a principle of activity, no one is educated without thinking, feeling, wanting, operating, projecting and without being creatively interpreting symbols of our culture. We educate ourselves with internal common activity. But, in addition, we educate ourselves through external common activity (studying, playing, working, inquiring-exploring, intervening and relating to the self, the other person and the other thing), because by exercising a specific external common activity we activate the internal common capacities, we train them, we exercise them, we drill them, and we improve them to do well each external common activity. The external common activity, by principle of activity, activates the internal common activity in each specific execution of the external common activity, whatever it may be (playing, studying, working, inquiring, intervening, or relating). By executing the external common activity, we improve and train the internal activities-capacities: without the activity it is impossible to educate and through the activity it becomes possible for the educatee to be an actor-agent and an increasingly better author-agent of his own projects and acts. The principle of activity allows us to affirm in Pedagogy that external common activity (for example, playing) activates the internal common activity of thinking, feeling, wanting, operating, projecting, and creating, but that does not mean falling into activism: do activity just for the activity does not educate; to think in any way is not to educate oneself, since getting educated, at a minimum, requires that, when we are thinking, the habit and way of thinking has to be improved. From the scope of common activity, education is everyone's problem, and we all contribute to it because we all must become educated, and we have to use common activity to educate and educate ourselves and it is not possible to do so without it. 6. THE EDUCATIONAL RELATIONSHIP DEMANDS CONCORDANCE BETWEEN VALUES AND FEELINGS WHEN MOVING FROM KNOWLEDGE TO ACTION BY MEANS OF COMMON ACTIVITY I can choose to do something, I can commit myself with that ‘something’ and I can even decide to integrate that ‘something’ as part of my projects, but then I must accomplish it, I must go from thought to action, I must go from attained and attainable value to effective accomplishment. This implies, in every execution of action, interpretation, comprehension, and expression. There is not education without affectivity, that is to say, without facing the problem of generating heartfelt experience of value. We need operative, volitive, projective, affective, cognitive, and creative habits for this. The effective accomplishment of the action requires operative, volitive and projective habits, but we also need affective, cognitive and creative habits. Only in this way we accomplish the action, which always implies to execute regarding to the comprehension, interpretation, and expression (cognitive, creative and affective integration) By means of feeling we express the state of mind which has been produced; depending on the fulfilment of our expectations in the action, we manifest, and we expect recognition for our choice; we manifest, and we expect acceptance of our voluntary commitment; we manifest, and we expect receiving to our projects and Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 103 Revista de Investigación en Educación  manifest devotion to them. Choosing, engaging, deciding and effect a value positively has its affective manifestation of linking and attachment in attitudes of recognition, acceptance, receiving and devotion to the action. What characterises attitude is its condition of significant experience of learning born from the affective assessment of the positive or negative results in the achievement of a particular behaviour. We reflect it below, in the form of the complex relationship of value-educatees' internal common activity, by making concordance between values and feelings when moving from knowledge to action (Chart 3).  Chart 3. Value-feeling concordance when moving from knowledge to action. Source: Touriñán, 2014, p. 356 Counting on the opportunities, we reach the concrete fulfilment of a value, but we always have to make use of operative, volitive, projective, affective habits, and notative-signifying, creating habits. Whenever we carry out something we think, feel, want, choose to do, decide projects and create with symbols. Only in this way can we reach the concrete fulfilment of something, which always implies choosing processes, committing oneself (engaging voluntarily), deciding goals and projects (according to the opportunities and in each circumstance), feeling (integrating affectively, expressing), thinking (integrating cognitively, comprehending) and creating culture (integrating creatively, interpreting, by giving meaning through symbols). Only in this way can we reach the execution of an action as an author agent, according to the opportunities and in each circumstance. The effective accomplishment of the action demands in the execution of action, interpretation, comprehension, and expression. The realization requires executing through action what is understood and interpreted, expressing it. To make this possible, apart from making an affective integration (expression), we express ourselves with the feelings which we have in every concrete situation and we relate what we want to achieve to specific values affectively through positive attachment. We need to do cognitive integration (comprehension of Touriñán López, J.M. 104 Revista de Investigación en Educación  what is thought and believed), by relating ideas and beliefs to our expectations and convictions so that we can articulate thought and believed values with reality because our action is explicitly based on knowledge through rationality. We also need to make a creative integration (symbolising-creating interpretation), that is to say, we must give meaning to our acts by means of symbols (symbols which interpret each act), since every act that we perform requires the interpretation of the situation as a whole and in the entirety of our actions and projects within our cultural context. Creative integration articulates values and creations by relating the physical and the mental to build up culture through symbols. Creative integration articulates values and creations, linking the physical and the mental to build culture, symbolizing (Touriñán, 2019e). If the above reasonings are correct, the double condition of knowledge and action puts us in the integral vision of the complexity of action. In order to perform the action, the operative, volitive and projective habits demand, in order to effect the action, the affective habit which derives from the value-feeling concordance in each accomplished action and generates heartfelt experience of value in its realization. However, the accomplishment of value is not possible in its concrete execution, if we do not make an affective, cognitive and creating integration in every action according to the opportunities and in each circumstance. The educational relationship is, therefore, interaction to educate and this implies assuming the complexity of education itself, and the demands derived from the characteristics of the meaning of educating, which must be manifested, in each intervention through common activity (Touriñán, 2016; Naval, Bernal, Jover & Fuentes, 2021; Ibáñez-Martín & Fuentes, 2021; Perines, 2018). We intervene to establish an educational relationship that manages to educate and for this we use the activity of the educatee and the educator. The educational relationship is the focus of the function of educating in which the interaction between myself, the other person and the other thing takes place. And precisely for this reason, from the perspective of the educational relationship, the interaction of identities (the relationship with the other) is a defining component in education. Regarding ourselves and others, in the self and hetero-education processes, we have to achieve in the educational relationship the passage from knowledge to action and this requires achieving a staging in which the educative values-feelings concordance occurs: Choosing, committing, deciding and carrying out must have their concordance in concrete action in attitudes of recognition, acceptance, receiving and devoting to the task and to the achievement, respectively. In educational relationship, therefore, we look for values-feelings concordance in each interaction and for this we choose, commit ourselves, decide and carry out what is decided. And to effect, we execute through action what is understood and interpreted, expressing it. Accomplishment requires executing by means of action. And that action, in addition to the internal common activity of the subject, always uses the external common activity of the educatee. We carry out through play, work, study, inquiryexploration, through intervention in each act, and through the relationship established between the self and the things we use in each interaction, which is always defined as a relationship the self-the other person-the other things. And all this is made by the educator in the educational relationship. Building fields of education from Pedagogy: knowledge of education and common activity 105 Revista de Investigación en Educación  7. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS IN ORDER TO BUILT FIELDS OF EDUCATION: COMMON ACTIVITY IS EXERCISED FROM THE TRIPLE TECHNICAL MEANING OF CULTURAL AREA AS EDUCATION FIELD From the perspective of the knowledge of education and regarding the formative sense of ‘education’ we can identify and define, three possible meanings of the cultural areas as an instrument of education in any of its expressions. They give meaning to the cultural areas-education relationship “as education”, “as cultural experience” and “as professional and vocational experience”, that is, the conceptual difference of cultural area is justified as a field of education, as it is reflected in Chart 4:  Chart 4. The triple technical meaning of cultural area as a field of education. Source: Touriñán, 2014, p. 659 In the first two meanings, and by means of the cultural area, we perform the aims of education in general, related to the meaning of “education” and the aims of general education identifiable from the conceptual sense of cultural area. The third meaning covers the sense of education itself from the cultural area as professional and vocational orientation for a certain area. In the first two meanings, we give content to the expression “education through the cultural area”. In the third meaning we give content to the expression “education for a cultural area”. For us, the cultural area, seen from the perspective of field of education is not only education “for” a cultural area (vocational development and career), preferably focused on the area as a theoretical knowledge, field of research and creative activity, whose technical mastering and practical execution can be taught. The cultural area is also education “through” the cultural area (general field of education and field of general education). General field of education which permits focusing pedagogical intervention on the cultural area so as to develop the character and sense which is typical of education, -as it should be done with mathematics, language, geography or any basic curricular discipline of general education- and field of general education in which we acquire competences for the use and construction of valuable experience about the conceptual sense of the area, assumable as common heritage for all educates as part of their integral development. We can know a cultural area, we can teach an area and we